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CONFIDENCE BOOSTER No.5: Stop Comparisons

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THE CHALLENGE: To stop using unfavourable comparisons to others as a stick with which to beat yourself.

Look out for this popular trip wire if you are trying to restore some lost confidence. If you are comparing yourself unfavourably to those around you: friends, colleagues, even relations, then you are actively undermining your own position and where’s the upside to this waste of mental energy?

  • Finding inspiration in the achievement of others can be a great source for motivation, however, be careful this does not slip into negative comparison – which is very fruitful ground for weighing down your own self confidence…..completely unnecessarily.
  • You are unique and possess your own skills and abilities, but how can you properly concentrate on your own performance if you are busy getting anxious about how someone else is doing?

How many sprint races were lost when, instead of dipping for the finishing tape, a competitor decides instead to glance across at the competition? 

 

EXERCISES:

Improve your own game – you have already identified your skills in BOOSTER No.2 so:

  • Set out a plan to enhance the things you are already good at, and to challenge yourself in areas where you may need to improve.
  • What new element would you like to add to your skill set? Identify it and then set about getting it

Up your own game – this is where true motivation comes from….not in glancing at what others are doing….they will have different strengths and weaknesses to you. Watch out for wasted energy wishing you were like someone else – it’ll never happen so rule it out of your thought process.

 

MAKE IT STICK! How to set goals & stop back sliding.

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CLICK BELOW FOR THE VIDEO:

MAKING IT STICK: understanding how to set goals & not backslide

The workshop was conducted together with Adam Strong of www.xclusivecorporatefitness.com. In these excerpts, I concentrate on speaking about the ‘head game’ – not just the preserve of elite sport, but also vital in business and managing and sealing goals.

THE LIGHT BULB MOMENT – Challenge yourself by asking the right questions

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After one of my recent public speaking events a member of the audience gave me some feedback – which incidentally is always welcome – how else can I adjust my sights?  The point he raised actually goes to the core of coaching, and the quest of personal development in general:

“I thought you were going to be giving some answers”.

That fact that I am often quizzed on a wide variety of life strategy issues highlights our fundamental need, as humans, to search for answers. Nowadays there are the added imperatives of wanting answers right now, on tap, and the simpler the better – an impatience that is hardly surprising given the spirit of our age.

 

WHO DOES HAVE THE ANSWERS?

Of course I, like everyone else, have loads of answers, but they are mine, applicable to my life and my issues, and are of absolutely no use to anyone else whatsoever. The fact is, the best person to provide answers for your life is you. However, in creating positive lasting change, the greatest challenge is not actually in finding the answers as we already have them within us in abundance. The real issue is to find the right questions as it is through them that our answers will become apparent.

“It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.”

Eugene Ionesco

 

THE LIGHT BULB MOMENT

The need for asking the right questions is all about reaching that light bulb moment I see so often in my clients. One of the most frequent statements from those I work with is “I’ve never looked at it like that before”. The realization that we already possess our own solutions is both very dynamic and immensely empowering. We have the answers all along – but often we are  just not able to challenge ourselves.

 

THE RIGHT QUESTIONS:

  • Challenge our perspectives and test our thinking
  • Can make us look more critically at the way we do things and the way we view ourselves and our world.

When I say critically, I mean in the most positive and constructive sense – after all, we cannot build anything lasting upon negative foundations.

 

“We cannot solve our problems

with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Albert Einstein

 

IT DOES NOT END WITH THE QUESTION

Whether in a private one to one session or speaking to large groups, my work is all about challenging people’s existing thinking and perceptions – and my principle asset for that is posing questions and then waiting for the answer. Waiting for answers is equally important for individuals planning their own life strategy: do not rummage around looking for them. Allow calm and space to do the work and if the answer is a natural fit, it will come to you and, quite simply, it will feel right.

Alan Keyse is a fully qualified Business and Life Coach who now applies his 30 years of experience as a sales executive to coaching Emotional Intelligence to business leaders, executives, managers and their staff. Alan specialises in stress reduction; conflict management; low self confidence & employee engagement. 

 

 

IN THE QUEST FOR NEW LIFE STRATEGIES, IS PATIENCE A VIRTUE?

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Offering patience as a possible option in fashioning new life strategies can meet with short shrift – and that’s putting it mildly. Patience is often regarded as ‘off the pace’: a waste of time when we should be out there ‘making things happen’. Patience is seen by many as too ‘wait and see’, or being passive, docile and even weak.

 

REVOLUTION OR EVOLUTION?

Most of us know of individuals who on deciding to make a new life change just do so: quitting smoking, training for their first marathon, losing 40lbs… they seem capable of a 180 degree with unshakable determination. We can respect and applaud such discipline & force of will but revolution is not for everyone. AND we certainly must not make comparisons and use those as a stick with which to beat ourselves. For many people evolution is a better fit: a more measured planned approach can get us to where we want to be.

 

BABY STEPS

It’s all bout forward momentum. Have you ever put a toddler down and turned away, only for a matter of seconds, and then turned back only to have to begin trying to track them down? Well, there’s nothing wrong with baby steps! So the sort of patience I refer to has nothing to do with ‘wait and see’ but is all about planned persistence at your pace. It does not signify lack of proactivity – quite the contrary, it’s all about devising an action plan combined with perpetual and most important of all – relentless forward momentum:

  • you do not lose sight of the target
  • you will not be knocked off course
  • and you’re not stopping for….anything!

 

MEETING THE CHALLENGE ON YOUR TERMS

By setting your own pace, you can manage your own evolution by taking measured and positive steps every single day, for example:

  • going for a walk
  • not tackling a pile of mail but one piece at a time
  • making a point of smiling at shop assistants and bank workers
  • avoiding emotional vocabulary
  • periodic ‘turn ‘em off time’ – TV, tablets, smart phones etc (tough one!)

To achieve goals it’s not a prerequisite to take giant leaps, or to turn lives upside down (however, if that’s the pace you want to set that’s fine). Change can be gradual: it evolves, and as such is grows into a natural fit and this time it will take!

The practice of thinking in new ways and doing new things often enough can alter lives a piece at a time. Quick fixes and short term enthusiasm so often leads to short lived benefits, disappointment & regression. Evolution can be the key to real change in thinking and in behaviour and replicates how we took on bad habits – we’ve just reverse the flow. So positive changes can ‘take’ and become our new good habits. What took decades to condition our lives cannot necessarily be turned around in weeks, but real beginning can be made – in bite size pieces….buon appetito!

Alan Keyse is a fully qualified Business and Life Coach who now applies his 30 years of experience as a sales executive to coaching Emotional Intelligence to business leaders, executives, managers and their staff. Alan specialises in stress reduction; conflict avoidance; & employee engagement. 

 

 

1000 miles journey

HOW TO ENHANCE YOUR OWN SELF BELIEF

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Belief is the key to all work related to changing life strategies regardless of whether someone is setting such plans for their home life or their business.The belief referred is not that associated with faith, but instead is concerned as it applies to facts, to our reality and to objective judgment. So what it is we need to believe in order to take control of our lives?
BELIEF IN THE POWER OF POSITIVITY…
We can all agree that allowing negative thoughts and actions to preoccupy us, contributes nothing towards positive change in our lives. If, on the other hand, we recognise the positivity that already exists for us, there will be a change in our thinking – and that can only have a beneficial effect.
BELIEF IN OUR POTENTIAL…
We need to recognise, acknowledge & connect with our strengths – we all have them – the stuff we are good at. At this point, if we can hear a voice saying ‘I’m no good at anything’ then that is a trip wire alerting us to the fact that we are allowing excess negativity into our thinking. If we allow negativity to run the show the results will be predictable. The truth is that by the time we reach maturity we already possess everything we need to achieve our own fulfilment – we just have to reveal it.
BELIEF IN OUR CIRCLE…
Lets make sure that we are surrounded by people who are truly in our corner, and who bring positive energy with them. The power of intention – our will to make things happen – is a matter of fact and it works so much better the more of us there are all wanting the same thing.
BELIEF THAT IT’S OUR DECISION…
Of course, we are not in control of what others think and do, but we are totally responsible for our own thoughts and behaviour and, importantly, our reactions to people and events. It’s our choice to turn off the autopilot & once we take ownership of what happens next, it gives us much more clarity as to the choices we have to make.
This all leads to one thing: BELIEF IN OURSELVES….
This is what it all boils down to. We can set our goals and formulate our plans but the engine room is to be found in believing we can do it. Once we back our abilities, once we create an environment where our strengths can be enhanced by drive and optimism, there’s nothing that can stand in our way.
“If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves”.  
THOMAS ALVA EDISON 
Alan Keyse is a fully qualified Business and Life Coach who now applies his 30 years of experience as a sales executive to coaching Emotional Intelligence to business leaders, executives, managers and their staff either in one-to-one sessions, in groups, or speaking to larger audiences. 

 

BUILDING INNER MOTIVATION

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In the first of two blogs I shall be discussing the nature of, and the need for, inner motivation. In the second piece I shall detail some straightforward things that can be done on a daily basis to help generate and sustain it where it matters – from the core.

As with all change be it in our thinking, our actions, our behaviour, and our habits, it all originates and is sustained from within ourselves – and from nowhere else. The same is true of motivation be it in business or in our private lives.

Motivation begins with a thought, a desire for achievement. Achievement, that is, on any scale: it does not have to be an Olympic gold. Whatever it is, we have to want it badly enough to push ourselves on, to challenge our own boundaries, and to move towards preset goals instead of waiting for our lives to simply ‘happen’. Ultimately there is nowhere to hide – it comes down to how badly we want it so, if it is not already the case, now is the time to take responsibility and to take control.

 

When reaching out to achieve a goal, we can sometimes find obstacles in our path so there may be times when we ask ourselves, wouldn’t it be easier to compromise our goal? Wouldn’t it be simpler to lower our expectations of ourselves? These are the times when we feel ‘on the anvil’ and it’s right here where our inner motivation really needs to kick in and make the difference.

 

While the motivation must from within, we can boost it through external inspiration from any number of sources: our loved ones; famous figures; stories of hardships overcome; a novel; the list is endless. Inspiration can help us to fire our motivation, but it cannot be anything more than an occasional boost – it is from far deeper within us that we find the real power to realise our desires.

 

It is for each one of use to throw down the gauntlet at our own feet. With our goal well set we can rise to our own challenge, remain focused – reinforced in our motivation to finish what we started. In that way, if our path appears blocked by an obstacle, our initial and only reaction is in deciding whether we go around it, under it, over it, or straight through it. Basically, we’re not stopping for anything!