Month: August 2020

Mornings are a magical time. Quiet, still, empty and full of promise.

I love to lie in bed and appreciate the day ahead. I listen to the sounds. I listen out for sounds. I take in the day and let it welcome me into it, we agree to be friends each and every morning.

I have areas of my life that I focus on to keep balance. Each area is stored as a project in the Todoist app and each project has a list of actions.

Mind – I complete the 5 minute journal in app form and feel gratitude for the day and reminisce over the brilliant things that happened the day before and add one photo for the day.

Body – I do an early morning walk on my own, it clears my head and allows some time to listen to pod casts.

Emotions – I visualise my day ahead and see me in it experiencing true joy despite the set backs and challenges, in fact, because of them.

Career – I review my daily affirmations and review my annual and monthly goals. To help focus on the important actions.

Finances – I don’t do anything specific in the morning but do make frugal choices all day.

Fun – I have a list of suggested fun things to do with my family. I review when I will fit them in and remind myself that this is a very important part of life knowing I am naturally not very good at it.

Relationships – A list of people, work and personal I should contact, the goal is 3 per day. I have a reminder to book one time slot per week with a friend. Again this gets pushed so it is a helpful reminder.

I love the morning, the bit before the current of life picks up and you are still in control.

Keeping a list of areas of focus and actions verbs assigned to each one has increased my sense of balance.

What do you do to keep your balance?

I don’t know about you but since the Covid lockdown I have spent many hours in Zoom meetings.

An amazing piece of tech that many more of us may have been furloughed without access to it. Thank you Zoom!

It is a bit more tiring than physical meetings though. I find I tend to sit down and don’t get up again until being driven to through a bio break. I get very distracted looking at myself and other people.

Two things that have helped with this is switching off the video for 4 minutes in an hour and doing a Radio Taiso (you can find this on You Tube), it is a set of gentle movements that get blood flowing and lift the energy level. 4 minutes seems very reasonable in an hour. I also always click the speaker only view (not gallery) so I am only distracted by the behaviour of one person at a time, as the speaker they tend to have the most energy and this lifts rather than drains the batteries.

My energy is very impacted by what I am doing with my body and what my mind is focussing on. Home working is not the best in an impromptu working from home situation.

I feel very blessed to be gainfully employed during this Covid time.

Yes this period has required significant adaptability and resilience, but it has also provided the space and room for some serious self reflection.

Being more aware of your own energy is a helpful tool and an area of life that gives great rewards.

I feel really grateful that I get to take part in training courses at work, for free. We are actively encouraged to take time to develop ourselves, through coaching, Linked In learning and trainers.

One course we did a while ago was called the ‘Five Voices’, the theory is that we tend to have a leading voice and the other 4 fall in line behind that. Each voice has tendencies.

On this scale my leading voice is a ‘Connector’, this means I focus on the future, speak a lot and don’t listen too much. It is totally true. Part of the exercise that taught us this new way of thinking invited the ‘voices’ to work together, the ‘Connectors’ were a bit of a disaster at getting the task completed. We spoke too much, interrupted each other, sought first to be understood then to understand (sorry Covey) and generally spent too much time communicating and not enough doing.

There is no ‘best’ voice of the five but each one blends together to form very different areas of focus in teams.

As a consequence of this course I now try to spend more time trying to understand where people are coming from rather than explaining my point. It is a helpful thing and obvious to a lot of people.

My weakest voice is a ‘Guardian’ this is the one who likes to keep things just as they are, they like a very clearly defined process (which is funny as I love a good process and spreadsheet). When I communicate, it means I have to actively dial up the area that looks back to the past and celebrates it, and then demonstrates how things will be today before leading into future visions (my comfort zone).

I am grateful to have learned through the Five Voices and believe it would help anyone who takes a quick scan of the theory online. Communicating with others is a key life skill and can be a source of great joy and great loss.

Check it out and see if you can work out your loved ones voice, if you speak to that, it will go even better.

I aim to tread lightly on the Earth and believe we should all strive for this.

Gaining status through possessions is a long tradition and one that sadly shows no signs of abating.

It is confusing that the rich act like they are poor and people with limited cash spend like they think the rich do.

We have always been careful with money and tried to make it work for us, not against us. We almost never buy a coffee out of the house. I limit my purchases to essentials and replacements. I don’t have a lot of clothes. We don’t drive fancy cars.

We don’t have a lot of stuff.

I do love to go through each room looking specifically for things I can remove. It is liberating to clear out three bags to charity. Things I will never have to pick up, wipe, fix or think about ever again.

I love the feeling of knowing the cupboards and drawers are not rammed. I can look into spaces behind doors and see everything in there. I can reach things with one hand. We don’t have an abundance of ‘just in case items’.

It jangles my nerves when the surfaces are covered, the cupboards are hap hazard and the kids floors have things ‘resting’ on them.

Mrs Slimmer for clutter, organising and having a relaxing home to live in is achieved and maintained through 3 simple rules.

1, Everyday aim to release one thing into the Universe and away from you.

2, Spend 5 minutes everyday putting things where they live.

3, Don’t buy anything unless you know where it is going to live and that it will work hard for you.

You don’t need things to have a great life, in fact, you need to not have things to have a great life.

People, places and memories are the only ‘things’ truly worth having.

Will you use the rules to get to a better you?

Act today to give yourself the very best tomorrow.