My One Word For 2015

December 30, 2014 by 34 Comments

My one word for 2015 is…

We’ll come onto that in a minute, but firstly I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and that you’re looking forward to a fabulous New Year.  If you don’t celebrate Christmas then I hope you had some well deserved time off.

We had a lovely time, lots of time to read and doodle, playing board games and just generally relaxing, something I find a bit of a challenge but seem to really enjoy at Christmas.

At this time of year I like to set myself a word for how I want to feel in the New Year.  I’m a coach and I’m all for setting goals but I also like to have a word to guide me.  A word I come back to time and time again is FABULOUS.  It sums up everything for me; happiness, fun, joy, glamour, relaxation, family time etc.  This year for some reason I want a different guiding word.  Fabulous will still very much be me but this new word will be my driver.

My one word for 2015 is going to be;

SIMPLICITY

To help me remember this I’m going to use my favourite motto of KISS – Keep It Simple Sweetie.

I can sometimes overcomplicate things in life so I want to bring in simplicity.  This is going to be across the board – in how I run my business by bringing in systems so that I can move it up to the next level, the services I offer and how I offer them, and in life I also want to keep things simple, to go with the flow of the day rather than keep ‘pushing’ in my normal style.

Simplicity #simplicity #goal #coaching

I plan to organise my day, my home, my life in a way that feels easy, in a way that enables me to be more present with my family and have time to spend with my friends. I can spend a lot of time in my head and find it hard to shift into relaxation mode, so being more organised will help me with this.

I plan to choose what things are right for me and what aren’t, to set the right boundaries in my personal and business life.   One of the big lessons I learnt this year is that I know when it’s the right decision because it brings me peace.  I am going to read ‘whole’ books, so that I feel like I’m completing them rather than dabbling and not finishing them.  I want to create more things, whether that’s in my card-making, crochet, doodling or creating things for my business – I love creating.  Part of that is co-writing some chapters for a book – exciting!  Simplicity for me also means I’m going to spend more time on my own self-care.

Focusing on how you want to feel what word would be right for you for 2015?  It doesn’t have to be just one, you can have more but having one is a great way to stay committed and focused.

How would life be different if you used your word to guide you throughout 2015?

Check out this fab website where you can start to explore one word that’s right for you.

I hope you enjoyed the mini series leading up to Christmas.  If you missed it you can find the links to each day here…

These steps are the steps I used to build my own coaching business and they also relate to each of the modules I teach on my live Coaching Rocks Bootcamp programme that’s starting up again on Monday 12th January.  I’m going to be running the bootcamp with LIVE weekly training so if you’ve been thinking of working with me then bite the bullet and grab my Early Bird Offer.

Due to the VAT guidelines I’m withdrawing the Self-Study programme tomorrow, 10pm GMT, 31st December.  If you want to build the foundations of your fabulous coaching business in 12 simple steps then now is the time.  After tomorrow the self study version is gone.  Here’s what one of my clients said about the programme;

Anna BC Testimonial

Let me know in the comments below what your word for 2015 will be.

Happy New Year!  Here’s to a fabulous 2015!

Until Next Time Blog Image No Logo

Filed Under: Boundaries, KISS, Simplicity Tagged With: ,

Overwhelm

April 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Overwhelm is a horrible feeling.  I experience it from time to time and to be honest it’s mostly self-inflicted!  I over schedule myself and often underestimate the time it takes to do things (or get easily distracted by shiny things!)

Sometimes a great place to start with overwhelm is to do nothing.  When we stop just for a moment and look at that overwhelming list of things to do, places to go, people to see, we realise that actually there aren’t that many things that are going to be serious if we delay them or remove them from our list altogether.

It’s very easy, particularly in this digital age, to be on the go 24/7.  We neglect the important things in life.  A friend of mine challenged me last Saturday to an ‘unplugged’ day.  I found it really stressful!  I kept thinking I would be letting people down, missing out on important messages etc.  I couldn’t manage one whole day?  Seriously?!!!  I’m an iPaddict!

Most things we do in life come down to making choices.  We ‘choose’ to book ten meetings over two days, we ‘choose’ to take on too much work, we ‘choose’ to keep adding to our never-ending to-do list and to try and be all things to all people.  It’s uncomfortable to hear but often it’s our very own choices that bring on the overwhelm.

recite-2519-1115106715-1vjhops (2)

Here are six simple strategies that I’m working on right now to make life a lot easier..

  1. Be realistic about how long things take – When booking appointments allow in some time between them, so you’re not running from one place to the next.  If you think a project will take 1 hour write down 2 hours to cover unexpected eventualities
  2. Prioritise & Keep It Simple – this is about identifying what your most important tasks are that day – I set 3 a day.  You can find out more about that & the KISS principle here.
  3. Say ‘no’ – don’t immediately commit yourself to something, tell the other person that you will check your diary and get back to them.  That way you can check it properly to see if it is realistic to schedule in that time.  You then won’t be letting either them or yourself down when you’ve overcommitted
  4. Get rid of the ‘I don’t want to do that’ tasks – you know… those tasks that you know you really need to do but you keep moving them to the next day in your diary.  Just do it!  Even if you only spend 15 minutes a day on it you will have made progress.  If procrastination is your issue read this article here.
  5. Let go of perfectionism – sometimes good enough is.. well, good enough!  (I may have to get your help with this one – it’s easy to say, not so easy to do!)
  6. Chunks of time – by allocating chunks of time you can group tasks together and be completely focused on what you need to get done

Remember most of this is about being disciplined and making the right choices.  Make sure you put some time in that diary for you too!

Liked this post then please feel free to share using the buttons below.  Want to get your life in order?  Then have some 121 Coaching sessions with me.

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Filed Under: Clarity, Coaching, KISS, Life Coaching, Overwhelm, Procrastination, Simplicity Tagged With: , , , , ,

KISS (not a lovey dovey post!)

February 15, 2013 by 5 Comments

* Edited to add a link to a fabulous resource from Leonie Dawson ..

So the focus has been mostly about love this week; whether it’s love of pancakes or the love of (or lack of love in) your life, but I’m not going to be talking about love today.

I want to talk about how you KISS

Wikipedia’s definition: ‘KISS is an acronym for “Keep it simple, stupid” as a design principle noted by the U.S. Navy in 1960’.  Well I would never be so rude as to call you stupid, so you might want to change it to Keep It Short & Simple, Keep It Sweet & Simple, Keep it Seriously Simple?!

So what do I mean?  Life can be complicated, if we allow it to be.  We have to make so many decisions in a day and often we make things a whole lot harder than they need to be.  Even buying a coffee nowadays is a challenge; you get asked, ‘Would you like cream, marshmallows, skinny or whole milk, decaf or regular coffee, tall, skinny, to stay in/to go??’  Phew, decisions, decisions!

My most peaceful and calm days are when I keep things simple, so I now try and simplify life by making very small changes.  If I can create a habit or routine to make life easier then I’m going to give it a go.  I don’t know about you but I’m a big list maker.  I love having lists in little books that I can then work through and I hate to admit it but I get a great sense of satisfaction when I tick them off as completed!  The trouble was my lists were getting so long that at the end of the day I would be moving them over to the next day and feeling as though I’d achieved nothing.  One of the big changes I’ve made is to prioritise my top 3 tasks for the day.  By having to think of just 3 things you then have to prioritise what’s really important to you.  At the end of the day it’s likely that you will have achieved 1, if not all of them, which gives a great sense of satisfaction instead of feeling like a failure.  Leonie Dawson has created a really colourful poster here that can be a great help with daily to do’s.

So my questions to you are..

  • How can you simplify your life today/this week/this month?
  • What needs to happen to make your life a whole lot easier?

KISS

(I’ll leave you to decide what the two ‘S’s represent!)

I’d love you to comment below about how you KISS(!) and if you liked the post then please share it with others using the share buttons below.  If you want to learn more about goal planning then read my blog post here.  Sign up for my newsletter here and you will receive my goal planner so you can start setting some ‘FUNKY’ goals.

On a final note my launch offer has been really successful.  I only have a couple of places left now for my free coaching session when you book one of my packages.  Interested?  You can find out more here.

Filed Under: Clarity, Coaching, KISS, Life Coaching, Simplicity Tagged With: ,
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