Woody Wonders

As you may have gathered from my recent blogs, I've been doing a lot of reflection and self-development in a bid to become more curious and fire up some creative neurones. When someone asks you, it's very easy to respond with "yes, of course I'm open-minded" .  But are you?  Truthfully?  If you're anything like me, then you'll tend to mix with the same like-minded people, have the same kind of routines, go to familiar places etc etc.   Sticking with what you know feels safe and comfortable, it gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling inside which is great and we absolutely need that in our lives.  However, if you permanently stay in that environment, it doesn't help you grow as a person. A couple of months ago, I went away for a long weekend and although I knew the majority of the people, many of which were family, there were a few people that I didn't know.  I felt a little nervous, I have to admit, as I was staying in the same lodge as some of them.  Mee...

Last week, I did something that I hate doing ... I asked for help.  I finally admitted to myself that despite knowing exactly what I need to do, I knew I wouldn't be able to get there on my own.  So I took a deep breath and contacted an amazing coach who's going to help me work through my fears and basically kick me out of my comfort zone.  I'm not going to go into the details at this stage but I promise I'll keep you updated on my progress.  The back story, hence this week's blog topic, is how to go about putting your 'thinking' into ACTION !! As you read through these, you may well be able to crack on and do it yourself BUT if you're 'feeling the fear and NOT doing it' then go to the bottom of the list first and ask for help. Stop procrastinating until the conditions are perfect Let's be honest, there's never going to be an ideal time to start something Stop over-thinking and start doing Don't think, just do.  The more you think ...

I've always been proud of the fact that I'm adaptable, resilient and "fit" for change but recent reflections have made me question that fact.  Yes, I've always embraced change and adapted to it but I've realised that I don't always actively seek it out.  So how can I expect to be resilient if I don't build up my resilience in the first place by doing things that scare me?!   I have a love / hate relationship with change; once I'm in the middle of it, I love it, it's exciting but in the build up to change, I hate it, because deep down I'm scared of it and what it might entail. Lately, I've been reading more and more about "AQ", in other words "Adaptability Quotient".  Many of us know that the demise of Blockbuster came about because they didn't adapt quickly enough to launch a rival streaming service to Netflix.  Likewise with the Lotus 123 spreadsheet program, they sat back when Microsoft's Excel came along. ...

Following a recent, and very painful trip to the sports masseur, it made me reflect on my overall health.   You think you're doing the right things: Exercising on a regular basis - check ✅ Eating healthily 80% of the time - check ✅ Looking after your mental health - check ✅ But, that's just it - are you really and truly fully committing or is it a tick box exercise?  Are you doing things with purpose and intent or simply going through the motions? I've been exercising for longer than I care to remember, I love it so I throw myself into it completely.  It's my escapism, time for me so I'm always 100% committed ... or so I thought.  The lady I see for my sports massage informed me that I have the tightest hamstrings she's ever seen!  This is someone who works with professional athletes so she knows her stuff.  On the one hand I was thinking 'yay, kudos to me, worst hamstrings ever' , then it stopped me in my tracks and made me think 'so where am I goin...

Am I simply becoming more cynical in my old age (don't answer that!), but it feels like these days there's more and more people either not being held accountable for their actions or we feel a sense of entitlement when things aren't going our way. We're making more and more demands on our employers, schools, doctors, government etc etc and expecting them to fix all our problems.  I'm going to skirt round the fact that our government lie at every opportunity and make the chimps tea party look sophisticated.  However, the fact is that we still expect them to fix everything. It's a very fine balance because on one hand we shouldn't be settling for second best and should, quite rightly, be demanding good service from everyone we come across, but we also shouldn't expect them to fix every little thing.  Nobody wants to receive bad service but mistakes do happen.  When they do, we jump straight onto social media and bad mouth them.  In my view however, you can...