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My Blog
Well being
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Posted on Friday, April 27, 2012 7:48 AM
I have been bumping in Sinead at events over the past couple of years, as well as reading her excellent free eBook, From Apps to Zen, and her informative monthly newsletter. I have always loved her energy, insights and world view. She sent me an advance copy of ‘The Business Yogi’ and asked me to read it. Knowing Sinead, I was happy to say yes. However, I will admit to being anxious on hearing that the book used yoga and its’ philosophies as a starting point for business ideas. I had a blind spot about yoga as it is one of those things I feel I should do, as it will make me more limber and fit, but having tried a couple of classes briefly long ago, I found it too slow.
As I began to read, two things immediately jumped out at me: a) the only thing I thought I knew about yoga (that it is all about stretching the body into interesting shapes) was superficial to say the very least and b) slowing down is precisely what so many of us need to do in this 24/7 digital strive, strive, strive culture.
The book uses ideas and insights from yoga to show how work life (and life in general) can be enhanced and happiness achieved. It covers 5 key areas (Starting; Challenges; Progress; Relationships; and Focus) and takes you through each one with clarity, wit and honesty. The writers are both yoga practitioners and have developed a deep understanding of the powers of patience, stillness and balance. However, they freely and endearingly admit to their own bouts of anger or mental busyness in order to show how they use the yoga techniques to overcome these moments.
The book is a fascinating read interspersed with ‘Mat Moments’, useful practical activities to help you regain balance and perspective. These include simple physical exercises alongside short meditations. (There are also podcasts and other materials available from the website to support you.)
Do you need to be interested in yoga to read the book? No, although obviously it could be a great starting point for yoga beginners and a valuable resource for those more experienced yogi. I am a tango dancer and I found several of the concepts of focus, just doing it and letting go applied as much in my dancing as it does to yoga. There are a few yoga postures which are recommended in the ‘Mat Moments‘, but even if you chose to leave these out, there is still a wealth of practical material which you can build into your day to day life, making tiny changes which could have major impacts on your well being.
So, if you are put off by the yoga tag, please don’t be - this is a really inspiring book for anyone who wants to find headspace and happiness.
And the Elephants, Frogs and Monkey Minds? Go buy the book and find out for yourself! |
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Posted on Friday, November 25, 2011 9:59 AM
What is visioning and what is the point of
it in your creative career?
In 5 years time, we will all be
somewhere. Do you want to choose where
you will be or just allow yourself to drift and hope for the best?
The benefits of having a vision include:
Giving you a direction and a purpose: Think about planning a holiday. When deciding where to go, you start thinking
about different places, imagining what they will be like and what you can do
there. Then you start to make concrete
plans: how you will travel, how long it will take, where you will stay. How could you plan your holiday if you hadn’t
had the vision of where you were going?
The same goes with your career.
Keeping you focussed and positive,
especially when things go wrong: It would be great to say that if you think
happy thoughts only happy things happen, but life isn’t like that. However, by being positive and keeping your
mind focussed, you will be more resilient when any negative stuff comes along.
Giving you a clear message you can
communicate to others who might be able to help you: You never know who you are talking to. The theory of 6 degrees of separation says
that you are at most only 6 people away from the person you want to meet. The problem is we don’t know how that chain
of 6 people fits together. That person
you might be casually talking to tomorrow could be the indirect key to your
future. If you can quickly and
passionately communicate your vision, you can enrol them in helping you to reach
it.
Focussing you and heightening your awareness
to opportunities: How many times have you thought of buying
something and suddenly you notice it everywhere? Just think of buying a red car and then red
cars are all you see on the roads. Nothing
has changed except your perception. With
your vision clearly in your mind, you will start to see everything from within
that context and find yourself thinking “how can this person / situation /
group etc. get me to my vision”.
It makes you more proactive You are more able to make informed decisions
about your career and just take charge of it, rather than being buffeted by
circumstance.
It is a key element for funding Whether you are looking for an investor or
are applying to a trust, they will want to know what your overall vision is and
what you want to achieve. Having a clear
purpose makes you seem more serious in terms of funding.
What
should your vision be? Your vision should be true to yourself and
should inspire you. If you are inspired,
you in turn will inspire others.
To help you find your vision:
- go back to what originally made
you become a creative person
- look at your values in life
- think about what inspires you
- notice when you are
professionally most happy
When you start thinking about your vision,
take away all restraints, real and imaged.
Think of what your perfect professional life would look like and make
the image as big as you can.
Now, in reality, none of us have a blank
sheet in our lives. We have the rent to
pay, the family to think about, the children settled in schools, etc. If you start building your vision from where
you are now, it cannot help but be limited, because you will be thinking from a
mindset of “I can’t do that because ... “.
It is only natural. However, if you
start by thinking of the unlimited vision, it is more powerful to then look at
how you can get from your current situation to your vision. Your vision may take years to reach, so you
wouldn’t necessarily be changing your whole life at once, but you can start
making small changes and getting on track.
You can read here about how visioning has helped me to move forward. |
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Posted on Friday, November 18, 2011 8:58 AM
 Nefra Canning is a wonderful dancer
and teacher who uses movement to promote the well being of the whole
person. I have been to many of her
classes and found her to be an inspiring and encouraging teacher. Dancing since she was four, her training is in classical, contemporary, temple
dance and Argentine tango amongst other dance disciplines as well as mime and
drama. Nefra has performed
internationally as a dancer and mime artist with film and TV credits include
Milos Forman's Ragtime with Twyla
Tharp. She has taught abroad and in the
UK at Pineapple, Rambert School, Ealing YMCA, Gymbox, the Vitality Centre, The
Tango Club, Dalston Tango and Morley College, as well as abroad. She is a qualified Blue Belt Nia teacher.
Nefra runs Nia classes at The Tango Club in central London and has just started
a new class at the Maudlsey Hosipital Gym.
Full details can be found on her website.
In your
professional life, what is the single best thing about what you do? That I completely love dance and all things related to it and I get to
explore and share this for the rest of my life. I love the way that all the
laws of the universe are reflected in my own body. In my movement coaching work
I discover different aspects of this afresh each day, and see the liberating
effect for others as, with attentiveness, they begin to find joy in alignment,
connection and freedom.
Do you have
a creative hero / heroine and if so, why?
Cheryl Stoll - a truly original and prodigiously gifted artist and
coach. Her paintings light up my house and she has, over the years, helped me
to understand that being present is the only way to remain in a flow that makes
it possible to deal with life's challenges with grace. I owe much of my approach
to life to her teaching.
What piece
of advice do you wish you had been given at the beginning of your career? Not to be afraid of doing what I love - just to trust that it is
possible. Everything else is detail.
If you hit a creative block,
what is your top tip for getting through it? Make time to get out and walk to connect with nature - to see and touch
the trees and plants - take in the sky, the birds and the changes in the light. All of this interacts with something in me to allow something fresh to come
into me, creating a renewal of energy. This may also provide inner space so
that anything that is waiting to be resolved can come up and be dealt with
rather than blocking me.
And finally,
for fun, if you were a shoe, what type of shoe would you be and why? Well, I have thought long and hard about this. I like a well-balanced
blend of functionality and aesthetic value. Finally, I have decided that I
would be a superbly designed, delectable but comfortable Tango shoe that holds
the foot well for excellent support, has a strong back that will not break,
does not pinch the toes, but is sexy and gorgeous to wear. This shoe makes the
wearer feel secure, confident, elegant and alluring, and, of course, dancing in
this shoe is effortless because it is the perfect partner to the foot that
wears it!
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Posted on Friday, October 14, 2011 9:58 AM
"Attitude
is a little thing that makes a big difference."
Winston Churchill
When
I first went to big school, I went along to a parent’s evening with my Mum. During the course of the evening, a teacher
told my Mum that as I was very good at English, I wouldn’t be good at
Maths. As a quiet, make no fuss,
trusting 11 year old, it never occurred to me to question this sweeping and
frankly, unsubstantiated, statement. A
teacher, an elder, said it and so it must be true.
Until
recently, this “truth” followed me about.
Show me a page of text that I have written and point out what you
perceive to be errors and I will argue every word with you. Show me where I have written 2 + 2 = 4 and
tell me it is wrong and I will take your word for it because, hey, I can’t do
maths.
But...
Throughout
my career, I have, for example, successfully created and managed large budgets;
produced financial reports for box offices; sales reports and analysis for
retail outlets; and managed cash flow forecasts for charities and
businesses. And what do all these things
have in common? Yep, you’ve spotted it –
maths.
Now,
I am never going to be George Osborn (and indeed, why would I want to be!), but
I can comfortably hold my own with most people on basic, everyday maths. I have even been known to walk around Sainsbury’s
adding my shopping bill up in my head, when not being distracted by an urge for
their giant cookies (the white chocolate ones - yumsk!). I am actually very
good at managing figures and money.
However,
any type of maths task has filled me with dread. I put off doing them as they would be “hard”
and I would probably get something wrong.
When I got around to doing the work, my heart would be in my boots and I
would feel vaguely like “I will do the very best I can, but I can’t really do
this.”
A
few months ago, I was working with a client, helping them put together an
income projection for a potential new project.
They were very financially savvy so I was quite anxious when they were
looking at the figures and I was waiting for the “you got this number wrong”
comment. They put the budget down and
said, “Yes, that’s about what I thought it would be. Thanks.”
It was very matter of fact; they had expected me to do the figures right
and that’s exactly what I had done. No
fuss, no drama. We carried on with the
meeting.
Afterwards,
I thought about the stress and worry I had put myself through prior to the
meeting about these figures. (And all the other meetings.) Had they
been hard? Not particularly. Had they used calculations I had never used
before? No. Had I created lots of these projections
before? Yes. Then why was I worried? Because I can’t do...
Hold
on a minute, who said I can’t do maths?
Certainly one teacher, once, a thousand years ago. Then me every day since. But if I had been less distracted by my
negative attitude, I would have noticed that I have been knocking off accurate numbers
left, right and centre. So now, I have
changed my attitude and inner conversation and if I notice a negative thought,
I Catch It, Check It, Change It.
I’m Deborah and I do maths.
So
what do you do successfully on a regular basis which you are convinced you
can’t do?
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Posted on Wednesday, August 24, 2011 2:59 PM
“To die
is nothing;
but it is terrible not to live”
Victor Hugo Les Miserables
© "Stone Rose" by Deborah Henry-Pollard
A popular
technique used by coaches, including me, when helping people to focus on their
long term goal is to ask what they would like to have said in their
eulogy.
It may sound a bit grim to ask
people to think about their death, but it can be a powerful tool to help
concentrate peoples’ minds on what they want their legacy to be and what they
need to do in life in order for that legacy to happen.
Sometimes,
however, it is difficult to know what you might leave behind.
A few
years ago, someone in my family was diagnosed with a terminal illness. When his illness was first diagnosed, in his
mid-40s, I wondered how I would feel if I had received the same news, what
would I think, what would I wish I had done?
Out of this, I decided the two things I really wanted to do were to visit
to Russia (which I did in April 2007) and to try the Argentine tango. Russia was amazing on so many levels and I
loved discovering Russian art. Out of
the tango, as well as the sheer enjoyment it has given me, I discovered new
levels of creativity, improvision and communication, and developed a new
outlook, including the confidence to take the plunge of starting up “Catching
Fireworks”.
We all
make ripples as we go through our lives and sometimes we have no idea of the
effect that we have on other people.
Therefore, even if you are given to introspection and wonder how you
will be remembered, I suspect that you will never really know – you can only
hope. All you can do is live as honestly
as possible, being true to yourself, your vision and your values. Enjoy the moment and even if you feel you are
working in isolation, somewhere, sometime, there is a good chance you will influence
someone (just think of Van Gogh).
For the
here and now, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but we are all going to die
and alas, it is not always going to be when we are old. If there is something you have always wanted
to do, a burning desire or dream that you will get around to “one day”? Well, as
long at it is not going to hurt someone else, may I suggest that you just do
it?
You
only have the one life; ensure that you make the most of it, both for yourself
and for all those people you impact on positively, and possibly unknowingly,
along the way.
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Last night, I was at the launch of a new book, ‘The Business Yogi: How to be Happy at Work’, by Sinead Mac Manus and Bridget Stacey Luff.
