Categories
Choice consciousness Growth Perspective Problem Relationship

The 3 Essentials Parts to Setting ‘Effective’ Boundaries

Listen or Download – me reading this from Dropbox

Hands up if you are slightly crap, or totally crap, at setting boundaries.

Want to know a secret?

It might not be that you are bad at setting boundaries.

It might be that you are missing two other essential elements to get the best out of your BOUNDARY setting.

Or then again…

You might never have given enough thought, attention or energy to establishing what a boundary looks like for YOU.

In my experience there are 3 ESSENTIALS when it comes to getting the most out of boundaries.

When I say ‘getting the most’ I really mean…

More PEACE, harmony and space to be and express YOU.

Let’s dive straight into the 3 Essentials, which are presented in the order of their application.

Categories
Acceptance Choice Emotional Fear Growth Pain

A “7th” Way We Make Life Harder Than It Needs to Be

You do know I could go all year on this topic.

And I am now committed to writing a short, compact book, on 18 ways we make life harder than it needs to be (and more easeful alternatives), which will be published by the end of the year.

But for now, we will keep the conversation going, which we started 2 weeks ago.

If you didn’t see the first list of 5, check it out here.

This week, we will continue the theme.

Essentially the theme is this:

By the choices we do or don’t make and the actions we do or don’t take, we make life much HARDER than it needs to be in the long-term and for a majority of our waking hours.

And for you, me and everyone on the planet, I think we could all do with less HARD and more PEACE.

Plus if we do hard, it is because we chose to, knowing the highly positive benefits at the back end.

So let the conversation continue…

Categories
Acceptance Belief Choice consciousness Feeling Perspective

A 6th Way We Make Life Harder than It Needs to be

Since so many people enjoyed last weeks article, where I spoke out 5 ways we make life harder than it needs to be, I thought I would add to the list, while answering this question…

“How do we unintentionally (or accidentally) make life harder than it needs to be?”

I am a big fan of words like ease and grace.

Also I like a high return on investment, for the lowest expenditure of energy, time and resources.

I am always looking at how to improve things or make them easier and more impactful.

Life is hard enough as it is, so it makes a LOT of sense to not make it harder than it needs to be.

And given my work coaching for the last 15 years, I have had plenty of time to see people doing it tough, when they really don’t need to.

Plus I have seen how they are the ones – knowingly or unknowingly – making their own life hard.

It is most often not something “out there” which is causing pain, discomfort or disturbance in their lives, it is often something they are doing, because they are not aware of it, or don’t know better.

Categories
Choice consciousness Decision Making Emotional Fear Life Lessons Perspective

5 Ways We Accidently Make Life Harder Than It Needs to be

Hands up if you want a ‘hard’ life?

I am guessing we had about 0% of hands showing.

I reckon the numbers would swing back to approximately 100% if I asked who wants more PEACE in their lives!

Who wouldn’t?

So let’s imagine at one end of the spectrum there is HARD and the other end is PEACE.

This article is about what we mostly ‘unconsciously’ (or accidentally) do, which sends us closer to the HARD end of the spectrum, and what we can do to move closer to the PEACE end of town.

So let’s dive straight in with the first way we make life harder.

Categories
Choice Decision Making Growth Life Lessons Perspective

How Not to Make Terrible Decisions

This post might save you an inordinate amount of pain in your butt.

And who wouldn’t want a bit less of that?

You know I am big on decision-making, and how it shapes our reality.

I also have a lot of experience in the decision-making space, having not only written a book on it (Decision Making Mastery), but also having attended one of top leadership academies in the world (Royal Military College, Duntroon), was an Army Officer for 14 years, did consulting on bomb management to a bunch of Olympic Games, and been coaching for over 15 years.

I am not tooting my trumpet.

I just want to let you know I have some experience in the topic of decision-making, and how not to suck at it.

Sucking at it, is something I find is pretty common (unfortunately).

And the consequences are significant and make peoples lives much harder than they need to be.

I have also paid extra attention to a blind-spot playing out in a number (most) of my clients of late.

And because I am super curious, I am now even more clear about what the issue is.

Which is something you will DEFINITELY benefit from.

So let’s walk through the process.

Categories
Choice consciousness Emotional Negative Emotions Personality Relationship

Proving, Pride, People-Pleasing and Projecting and The True Cost

I hope you enjoyed the Health Tips over the last couple of weeks.

This week I want to explore a topic that comes up very often with the coaching clients I work with, and which I also observe with friends and family.

It is a whole mix of “P” words.

I have talked at length about how PRIDE holds us back from the full expression of our true potential and its relationship to our ability to raise of our level of consciousness. So although Pride is in the mix of the P’s I won’t detail it again in this article.

The other day I was with a client and we really started to explore why they are doing what they are doing.

And whether it was what they really wanted to do, or were they motivated by other reasons (a few of those “P’s” for example) and what was the cost.

So that is the catalyst for where we are heading today.

Categories
Choice Emotional Negative Emotions Nutrition Optimum Health

My Top Health Tips to Thrive in 2023 (Part 2) Talking Toxicity

We are back again to my favourite topic.

Yours and my health and vitality.

Essentially if we don’t have health, vitality and energy, it is hard to stretch yourself into your FULL POTENTIAL.

Achieving your big hairy audacious goals (BHAG) requires a large amount of consistent, high-grade energy.

So this health stuff is essential.

If you haven’t read Part 1 (Health Tip 1-6), focused mainly around nutrition, check it out too.

Plus you might want to check out my book The Guidebook to Optimum Health, where I obviously go way deeper.

Now, let’s check out round 2.

Categories
Choice Growth Nutrition Optimum Health

My Top Health Tips to Thrive in 2023 (Part 1) Nutrition

This is not only my favourite topic, but something I have been reading, writing and researching since about 1999.

It was in 1999 that I started playing with different ways of eating, living and thinking.

Over the decades I have experimented with numerous concepts, philosophies, practices and elements, and here are some of the things I have discovered along the way.

In 2014 I even published a book called The Guidebook to Optimum Health, which is still current, though I might have to update the section on ‘detoxification’.

So with all of that said, let’s jump straight in.

Note: They are not in priority order, but the order they came to mind and this is Part 1 of a 2-Part “Health Tips” Blog.

Categories
Choice Decision Making Perspective Success

Without This Insight, Great Decisions are Unlikely

You know I love the art and science of Decision-Making.

And I am sure you are all aware that the quality of your decisions, shape the quality of your life.

Bad work decisions can lead to loss of money or loss of job.

Bad financial decisions can lead to being broke, or indebted, or in possession of a share portfolio where the zero’s keep disappearing.

Bad relationship decisions…well, I think I don’t need to elaborate on that.

You get the point.

It’s important to be good at this thing – this thing called DECISION-MAKING.

So I want to focus on at least one element today, which is based on the very simple graphic below.

It’s looking at the relationship between reality and story when it comes to decision-making.

And of course if you want to go even deeper, check out my book Decision Making Mastery.

Categories
Choice consciousness Decision Making Money Perspective

Merging Money, Consciousness and Knowledge

Welcome back.

Last week we spoke about Health (and root causes) and this week we will be talking about MONEY.

Especially as many people might have a bit less at this time of the year (January) after Christmas and the end of year (and start of year) festivities.

You know I am a big fan of Wisdom (knowledge + experience).

Increasing wisdom grants us the opportunity to make better choices (and co-create our destiny).

So I have been curious to better understand things like Digital ID’s, digital currencies (e.g. Bitcoin, etc.), central bank digital currencies, and the likes; as money impacts us all.

I recently watched a Dutch-produced documentary called State of Control and I also read a book by of one of the presenters (Brett Scott), called ‘Cloud Money‘, which was quite insightful. Plus one of my favourite reads in 2021 was ‘Your Money or Your Life‘ by Vicki Robin.