Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Who are the Five People you spend the most time with?

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I became intrigued when I heard the statement expressed by Jim Rohn, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

If we can look at the 5 people closest to us and say we are a reflection of this combined group, we need to ask ourselves, are we happy with what we are seeing?

This is a thought-provoking question. If we sit back for a moment and really think about the people we spend the most time with, we find that some people are on the list because we consciously choose to spend time with them and others happen to invade our time because of circumstances beyond our control.

This requires us to look at what choices we’re making regarding the people we spend time with and asking ourselves - are these people good for us?

Hopefully, we can say that at least 2 or 3 of the people on our list are people that we truly choose to be with – good friends and family members who are so good for us that we appreciate their presence as a gift from the universe. It is easy to see the gifts of care, kindness, love and support that they bring into our lives and we often wish we could spend even more time with them.

At the same time, many of us find ourselves in toxic relationships that we can’t seem to avoid – sometimes out of convenience and sometimes out of necessity. We may have an abusive boss that we need to put up with on a daily basis, landing him or her on the list of the top 5 people we spend time with. That needy family member that we can’t get rid of and is draining us of energy is another that may make our list. It’s important to notice that some of our friendships may be toxic as well, yet we keep going back for more. How often do we find ourselves putting up with a negative person, who saps us of energy so that every interaction leaves us feeling frustrated, angry or annoyed?

Often we feel that we don’t have a choice in this matter but the truth is that we always do. I’m not saying surround yourself with a bunch of ‘yes’ men (or women!) who make you feel good. But I am saying, ask yourself if the people you hang out with are good for you. ‘Good for you’ can mean people that disagree with you, challenge your thinking and provide alternative perspectives for you to see yourself. ‘Not good for you’ means people who demean you, suck all the life-force from you and demand so much of you that there is nothing left. You know what that means and you know who those people are! It’s really about asking yourself if you are making a conscious choice about who you spend time with or if you do it because they happen to be in your space. That choice is always in your hands.

A personal example of this for me was when I changed my career to become an executive coach. As I was doing the research and finding out how viable coaching is as a business, I came across many coaches who said, “keep your day job, you can’t make a living out of coaching”; “coaching is great as a hobby but not as a profession”; and my personal favourite, “what? An actuary leaving their career to be a coach? You must be mad! You earn the highest salaries as actuaries – don’t do it!” Of course all these people were well meaning and trying to give me a ‘realistic’ picture of what its like for coaches in the world of business. However, I was passionate about my career change and determined to make it a success so I began seeking out people who were working as full-time coaches and doing well. With this group of people, a very different picture emerged. Here I began hearing how it is possible to have a successful coaching business if you work hard at it; how the rewards of working in your passion are worth the effort. The spirit of abundance and sharing that I experienced with this group of coaches made me want to be a part of this world all the more. I began hearing success story after success story and consciously distanced myself from the naysayers… And it worked! After 6 years in a full-time coaching business, I can say that it is possible and it is worth it.

It’s easy to associate with a negative group and get sucked into the negativity. Or, we can make a choice to seek out the people who will give us the perspective we want to go for and keep at it!

We need both our supporters and our critics – the people who will encourage us no matter what and the people who make us challenge our own thinking, who offer different perspectives so that we can stretch ourselves even further. So make sure you are intentional about whom you choose to spend time – spend more time with those that bear gifts and less with those that drain us.

So… who are the 5 people you spend the most time with?



Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Simple but not EASY


It seems that a theme for the week in terms of my client coaching interactions was the concept of 'this is simple but not easy' or in other words 'we know this stuff but its really hard to do'. Often the things we need to work on within ourselves are things that we may already know yet find very difficult to do. Whether we need to change certain behaviours, build relationships or give hard feedback, there is always a part of ourselves that we need to stretch to a previously no-go zone in order to just do it. The action required is rarely complicated, yet it is often really, really hard. It is something that we need to push beyond our comfort zone to do and it challenges us to resist doing things the way we always do them.

A client recently shared his story with me about his experience of learning to play the drums. I’m a big believer in learning to play a musical instrument as an adult since it's an activity that allows you to integrate your left and right brain and to fully focus into a completely different zone than you’re used to. So as my client – let’s call him Sam – was describing the process of trying to get each of his four limbs to think and operate independently of each other and the mush that his brain felt like it was turning into, it struck me as a perfect metaphor. Admittedly, I’ve always held the belief that the drums would be an easy instrument to play if you have a basic sense of rhythm and when you consider that the actual action of playing is simple – use your hands and feet to tap out a rhythm. But, when you think of the brain activity that needs to occur in order to co-ordinate all the activities that are happening at the same time, you realise it is far from easy. The actual action may be simple, but the co-ordination and activity required is by no means easy. This is the exact situation Sam was describing in his story. An activity that he took for granted as simple, caused him to test his patience with himself as he learnt to master the new skill. However, with practice and patience, he learnt to make music!

This is a perfect metaphor for life – where we are constantly in a state of learning in order to develop ourselves. In life (and in leadership), it is clearly even more complicated than learning to play the drums because the results are not immediately identifiable and often intangible. However, the effort is worth it and the outcome is a success when it comes with practice and patience.

Once we open ourselves to stretch beyond the 'easy', to do that hard but simple thing, we also open ourselves to possibilities that we couldn't even dream of!

Monday, March 4, 2013

Do you believe in magic?

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As kids we believed in magic. We didn’t question the world of fairy tales, tooth fairies and the charming prince that saved the distressed damsel to live in everlasting happiness and prosperity. We watched magic shows and marvelled at how these things could possibly exist, believing every illusion, every disappearing bunny.

As we grew older, we become more cynical – ‘realistic’ we like to call it – but who’s to say there isn’t magic happening around us every day. Maybe it just depends on how we choose to see things, what we choose to focus on. 

I recently heard a story from a friend who was going through a really hard time. She had lost her job, was running out of money fast and at the same time running out of options. She felt as though her world was falling apart around her. One day, as she was driving back from yet another job interview, she had a car accident and although no-one was hurt, her car was written-off. She had neither insurance nor money to pay for a new car. In her state of anguish, losing the car that she was using to go job-hunting, she was desperate and did not know where to turn. She managed to get herself home and go to sleep. The next morning, a friend with whom she hadn’t been in touch for a long time – and not one who she considered close enough to ask for help –  phoned to tell her that she had just purchased a new car and would like to give her the old one, at no cost. This woman was floored – how could this have happened at this time and from such an unlikely source?

Co-incidence or magic?

A couple of weeks ago I participated in a webinar series with Martha Beck where we spoke about accessing the ‘technologies of magic’ as Martha calls it and she proceeded to lead us through a process of bending a spoon. While I didn’t manage to bend my spoon, picture upon picture of various types of cutlery, all bent and twisted into weird and wonderful shapes, began appearing on our group chats with excited, disbelieving comments accompanying them.

Illusion, trickery or magic?

When you happen to be thinking about someone and in the next moment the phone rings with this person on the other end of the line…

Luck or magic?

Maybe it really does depend on how we choose to view what happens to us… Perhaps if we begin to train our eyes and hearts to look for magic in every day, we will start believing again…

In Einstein’s words,
There are two ways to live our life: you can live as if nothing is a miracle or you can live as if everything is a miracle.

Which do you choose?