What did you pay attention to in 2011?

It’s traditional at this time of year to look forward but I’d like to suggest you take a minute to look back… as I did the other day.

I’m not good at clearing my email inbox (mainly because I have a nifty system where unread mail pops into a folder all of its own and, once read, disappears never to be seen again) and I realised with a shock the other day that I had over 13 thousand emails in my ‘real’ inbox.

They act like a security blanket. All the time they’re still on the system I can always search for information I’ve missed, appointments I’ve half-remembered and phone numbers or invoice sums that have slipped through the net. So before I deleted them all with a keystroke I had a quick look through to make sure I wasn’t deleting anything I needed.

I say a quick look… by the time I had trawled through it all I had lost about 2 hours and deleted way over 12,000 emails. To make it quicker I ordered my inbox by sender name so I could delete whole blocks of emails at a time.

And then it struck me – this list was a guide to where I had directed my attention in 2011.

I could see blocks of people and organisations: my closest friends and colleagues, the college where I’m studying, my favourite inspirational blogs and email services, quite a few from my husband who only works upstairs :{ , and some from my lovely mum. As my eyes flicked through the lines I was reminded of parties and holidays and major events that were the landmarks of the year. Friends old and new who find writing easier than chatting, people looking for support and those warm, fuzzy emails that come in from clients whose lives have turned a corner.

As I also do most of my shopping online there was a reminder of what a ridiculous bookworm I am, and the weekly churn of the grocery shopping and the escalating bills as food prices have taken off this year.

This is the stuff that makes up my life: the merry-go-round that comprises my weekly, monthly routine, all there in black and white.

After I stripped out the reality emails I was still left with hoards of emails that had also – by their sheer persistence – secured a big chunk of my attention this year. Pressure groups and charities and software providers and hardware stores and shoe shops and clothes shops and department stores and supplement sellers and spurious gurus and miracle cure salesmen and online gift shops and interior design shops… my inbox was stuffed with people trying to get my attention and sell me something. Hundreds – thousands – of seconds, minutes even, of my attention wasted on things I didn’t need or want.

I was really surprised. I had no idea how much my private space had been infiltrated by the email high street and how much I had allowed that to happen. I must have unsubscribed myself from about 20 different lists before I felt my space was my own again.

The big lesson for me was to see how easily we can start a year with great intentions to do great things – but how easy it is to be distracted into paying attention to things that really don’t matter at all. I’m a great believer in supporting brands I love, looking at things that are uplifting, reading words that inspire – but somehow I was also allowing mediocre messages into my personal space and wasting precious time and awareness that could be spent on more productive things.

Next year, I’m going to rule my inbox with a firmer grip and make sure that my attention is directed only towards the messages that I want to give my time and support to.

What did you pay attention to in 2011? And how do you want that to change in 2012?

What does it mean to be awake?

The sharp-eyed among you will have spotted that I changed my strap line (why does that phrase always conjure up visions of leather and dungeons?!) to ‘your friendly wake-up call’.

It’s the result of a long process of trying to explain what it is I really do. Yes, I’m a nutritional therapist; yes, I’m a life coach – but that’s just my toolbox. I wanted to describe what my primal motivation is: why I do what I do.

I wake people up.

I help you see that there is only one life and you’d better not spend it napping.

But what does it mean to be awake?

Here are a few pointers:

Beliefs: You are more likely to believe in yourself than in other people or institutions. You will develop an ability to reflect on and evaluate the ideas you were brought up to see as facts and discover whether they are still true for you; including beliefs about yourself, your abilities and the society you live in. Increasingly you will look to yourself for guidance, trusting your own feelings and intuition rather than relying on duty, rules and tradition.

Relationships: You will be seeking win-wins in all your relationships at home and at work. The positive energy created will make an enormous difference to your wellbeing and enjoyment of life. As you feel more supported and supportive you will be able to ‘be yourself’ – risking more honesty and depth with the people you choose to be with. You will find your ‘tribe’. When that happens you are likely to find extra supplies of energy that used to be buried along with your true self.

Money: You will see money as a source of energy in your life, a way of exchanging value rather than power. As you become more confident in your own value you will be less afraid of money and less defined by your financial status. You may even discover that you no longer seek distraction and compensation in material things as you find more purposeful ways to use your time. Money will regain its natural status in your life – a tool, or convenience – not a way to measure your value as a human being.

Health: You will discover that your body is in a delicate balance that you can either nurture or sabotage. When you understand that you can choose to make healthier food choices more often, from a perspective of empowerment rather than restriction. Your idea of a treat – or a good time – may shift as you widen your definition of pleasure to include nourishing rather than anaesthetising yourself. As your energy increases your need for addictive substances will probably reduce and the substances you used to use as props will become treats again.

Work: You will be clear about why you are here and what you want to achieve. That sense of purpose will be reflected in your work, creating a sense of fulfilment that in turn fosters a natural motivation to look after yourself and prolong your experience of this amazing life. You will understand that doing your work can mean more than paying the bills and keeping you off the streets. Your choice of career is a way to express your purpose; so even if you are employed you will identify strongly with the aim of the business you are working in. If self-employed you will be pursuing a personal agenda based on your own needs, the needs of your customers and society at large. There will be a sense of meaning in what you do. It matters.

When all this happens you will be you, in all your glory, alive and kicking. Awake.

Sound good?

Let’s go.

Bad habits are boredom in disguise.

New Year always generates a lot of talk about changing bad habits. No matter how many times we are encouraged to make positive resolutions, most of us stick doggedly to the idea of pushing uphill with negative ones.

We focus on our bad habits because we know, at some level, that the Groundhog Day effect of our daily failures – the alcohol, the caffeine, the sugar, the cigarettes, the overeating, overspending, the evenings slumped, lifeless, in front of the TV – are the things that are keeping us from living our perfect lives. Even if we have no idea of what a perfect life would look like, and no intention of dreaming about it either.

Dreaming is part of the human condition: even if you don’t acknowledge your dreams you still have them. We all have an unbuilt desire for more: better, safer, warmer, tastier, richer, faster, happier. You may not be able to describe it, but if you know what boredom and frustration feel like, or you ever suffer from Sunday night blues, it’s because you know there’s more to life, and you haven’t quite got it.

(Some of our bad habits look like good habits gone mad: overexercising, obsessive eating, compulsive tidying or cleaning, strict rules about what we can or can’t do, designed to keep our dark side firmly locked away.)

Not all so-called bad habits need culling. Surrounded as we are by too much information on how to improve our minds and bodies, it’s easy to become hysterically righteous. We have all come across the self-help guru whose main aim in life seems to be to strip yours of any pleasure.

Bad habits only become a problem when we are no longer in control. When we want to stop but we can’t. There’s a compulsion in us that holds us in a repeating cycle despite the fact that we’ve long since discovered that our habit doesn’t deliver the reward we’re looking for. It never did. It has become an addiction.

This is one of the most telling characteristics of addiction. It’s a frustrated search for something else; no longer a simple pleasure response but a far more complex, yearning desire for life to be different that ends up with you banging your head against the same brick wall, day in, day out. An attempt to fill your day with lots of little highs because the high you really want seems unavailable.

Even so, most addictions won’t wreck your life. In fact, we are such intelligent animals that we’re extremely good at keeping them within manageable boundaries. What’s really wrecking your life is your stubborn avoidance of realising your potential and following your dream.

We fill our days with little highs because we’re too scared to reach out for bigger ones. Afraid we are unrealistic, not talented enough, might wreck the safe lives we already have, or publicly fail. But as anyone who has ever done it will tell you: your dreams are unlikely to be of boat-rocking intensity (unless you are really deeply in your particular closet). On the contrary, once you start looking at your life and trying to get a sense of purpose, everything will fall into place. You’ll feel like you but more so, everything you’ve ever done will start to make sense, it will feel like coming home, not going somewhere else.

Even when we don’t believe in our dreams, we still follow a diluted, blindfolded version of them every day.  Our moments of highest pleasure are when the dream breaks through and our normal path and our dream path coincide. Making a decision to follow your dream simply makes that coincidence more and more likely until, in the end, your daily path and your dream path are one and the same.

And when that happens you’ll find that you don’t need to fill your day with sugar, caffeine, spending or smoking. You’ll get your highs from life itself (and you’ll enjoy your bad habits a lot more!)

—–

Most people step onto their dream path one step at a time. They might take up an instrument they’ve always wanted to play, obey an urge to pick up a paintbrush, apply for a job they are just not trained for or make plans to start an inspirational business that the world needs. Taking the first step is often the most important one. If you want to do that but need a nudge in the right direction, give me a call.