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Being an Executive is like running an ultra-marathon on trails, you start out full of excitement and anticipation at the opportunity and adventure ahead. But how do you keep the motivation and momentum going when things get tough with long hours, high demands, challenges, feelings of isolation and the delicate balancing act of rest, recovery and self-preservation?

With the right tools and strategies in place you can run the ultra-marathon of Executive Life. Here’s five lessons I’ve learnt from being an Executive that’s run the gruelling 135km Cape to Cape track in WA’s South West in 24 hours. You too can stay at peak performance while walking steadily and balanced along the wellness wall.

Become a visionary

Know what needs to be done, what’s right for the workplace and for yourself, develop clear action plans with check points along the way and communicate this with your team.

Ask yourself big questions:

Who will be the key people in helping reach the vision?

What will it look like when you get there?

Why is it important?

Knowing the why behind what you want to achieve is key to your success as it acts like a lighthouse that guides you towards your vision while reminding you to proceed with caution as you approach the rocky shores.

Have the right support team

Nothing is ever achieved alone, building a support team that you know will be there when you need it most is like planning and mapping a running course with support crew strategically positioned.

Support is not just the in the workplace, it’s also those in your personal life. Coaches, mentors, accountability buddies, groups and their leaders, massage therapists, doctors, accountants, family, friends, loved ones etc.

Just like a well-executed training plan, having your support plan in place will help you stay focused, on course and in peak performance.

Rest, refuel and recover

You can’t run an ultra-marathon or build executive endurance without adequate rest, recovery, excellent nutrition, hydration, slowing the pace down when fatigue sets in, breaking things up along the way to stay feeling fresh and ready to face the challenges and obstacles that show up along the way.

Give yourself permission to unplug at least one day per week, plan something fun to do, spend it with those most important to you. Plan quarterly mini breaks to keep you motivated and take annual holidays so you have something to look forward to. Nourish your body with quality, fresh healthy foods and keep a bottle of water with you, aim for a minimum of 2 litres per day. If you’re feeling fatigued or overwhelmed slow the pace down, rest and break things down into smaller more manageable chunks.

When I ran my last ultra-marathon, the beaches were so eroded that my left calf muscle started to cramp from the uneven ground, as I was going up a hill that felt like it was never going to end I felt something give, it wasn’t serious but it hurt and really slowed me down. Our ability to continuously work at the same pace is like the muscles in our bodies with overuse they become fatigued, break down and unable to perform with the same strength.

Master your mindset

Those long stretches where you feel like you’re alone and running on the spot can leave you feeling isolated and wreak havoc on your mindset.

Your mindset is responsible for a great deal of your behaviour and beliefs on success and failure across all areas of your life and your capacity for happiness.

Stay focused on the opportunities not the problems and constantly ask “what needs to be done now?”

When running on trails you are faced with all sorts of unpredictable terrain, you’re constantly adjusting your gait to accommodate what’s under foot. If you tried to run the same way at the same pace you would fall and injure yourself.

Approach challenges with an open and inquisitive world view and a willingness to adapt.

Hitting the wall and bouncing back

In running there’s a saying “Hit the wall” it’s a point where you are so fatigued and overwhelmed that you just can’t see a way forward – it’s horrible!

I experienced hitting the wall after I injured myself, I had been on my feet for over 18 hours, travelled over 100km and just couldn’t see how I was going to manage the last 24km to complete the 135km run.

I sat in the front of my car in pain and exhausted, looking out to the ocean and I visualised what it would be like if I quit. I imagined myself turning up to the finish line to meet my fellow running buddy, but I wasn’t running I was being driven.

Then I started to feel what that would feel like not just in that moment but in one month, six months, 12 months and that felt way more painful that whatever it was going to take to finish the run.

My support crew encouraged me to keep going and one kind hearted man, Ben ran with me for the last leg of the run. It gave me confidence to finish the run.

To conquer what seems like the impossible it’s important to stop, take some time to reflect, look at the bigger picture and allow others to help.

 If you already have excellent executive endurance, I congratulate you.

If you‘d like help on ways to bring wellness into your workplace, here’s how I can help.

Leading edge workshops to help you and your team walk steadily and confidently along the wellness wall.

• WorkWell – Workplace endurance. Have you got what it takes to keep up and step up?
• LiveWell
• LeadWell
• CommunicateWell
• SellWell
• SpeakWell

Private and team coaching to help you find that wellness warrior within you so you can take back control of your life and all be living and working well,

Keynote presentations to inspire and energise your team.

 If you’re keen for more information on workplace wellness, please get in touch.

Whether or not your job title includes ‘Sales’, its likely that ‘selling’ is part of your professional role.  All workplace interactions and many encounters outside of work are a chance to sell yourself as a representative of your business.  If selling a product or a service is directly connected to putting food on your table, these five ways to develop a successful sales mindset might let you broaden your menu.

Here’s what I suggest

Develop a flexible mindset

I’ve already blogged about our amazing brain’s capacity to help move our mindset from fixed to flexible.   

A flexible mindset is attuned to growth and change.  It gives you the wisdom to ditch any limiting beliefs aka negative assumptions about your innate lack of talent in sales or anything else. It makes you resilient in the face of ‘failure and let’s you learn lessons and move on.

It also inclines you towards optimism and generosity of spirit. These are essential attributes for sales success, which contrary to a misguided but persistent belief, doesn’t depend on coercing customers into buying.  Contemporary sales success is all about giving your customers a brilliant problem solving, life enhancing experience. To do this credibly you need to have their best interests at heart.

Self-belief and confidence in the integrity of your product or service flow far more easily from a flexible mindset. As does self-awareness, patience and your capacity for being responsive and unfailingly polite.

Overcome your fear of rejection

It’s perfectly human to feel rejected when a sale falls through. A flexible mindset lets you reframe ‘failure ‘ less as a personal affront and more as a chance to learn useful stuff.

Often our natural impulse is to run from the hurt and humiliation of rejection. However, if you’re going to learn the lessons on offer you need to stay engaged. Try sticking with the experience long enough to explore the ‘why’ behind it.

If you get the chance, ask the customer why they didn’t buy, you might learn how much or how little your efforts influenced their decision. If you know they bought from a competitor look at their website or social media. Can you learn anything useful about communicating the benefits of your product or service?

This provocative and painfully funny TED talk by Jia ‘Rejection Guy’ Jiang has some great insights into the benefits of  ‘fear proofing’ yourself against rejection.

Ask quality questions

Asking ‘why not’ questions when you lose a sale can give you invaluable insight, into what actually happened.  Asking quality questions that connect you to your customer and tease out their needs builds trust and credibility and enhances your chances of success

This list from the marketing maestros at HubSpot is a mini master class in asking genuinely empathetic, practical, sales questions. If you listen actively to the answers, odds on you and your customer will solve the right problem in the right way. Beyond that, you’ll most likely turn your customers into raving fans and lay the foundations for a loyal long-term relationship.

Address the elephant in the room

If you sense your customer is uneasy about something, go straight to it. Voicing a fear or an insecurity tells your customer it’s valid and worth considering. Jia Jiang’s handling of the Manager’s unease around his ‘weird’ request to be a ‘Starbucks Greeter’ is a great illustration of how to defuse an awkward moment and calm a customer’s fear by acknowledging and normalising it.

Know your ‘why’

Conventional sales training stresses the importance of product knowledge – i.e. the ‘what’ of your product or service.  While this is vital technical know how, it’s also essential to know the ‘why’ of your product or service and your personal ‘why’ for selling it. Sharing this ‘gut/heart/feeling’ knowledge with your customer helps you connect on a deeper level. If you’re not sure about your personal  ‘why’ try this fun test from author of “Start with Why’ Simon Sinek’s web site or watch his TED Talk.

Working on these five things will help build self-belief and confidence. Combine this with a clear intention to give your customer a brilliant experience and a fearless approach to learning from failure. Then go out and be an astounding success at selling to customers who trust and like you.

Keen for peak leadership and sales performance?  I’ll be your coach

Testimonial

I recently attended one of Rebecca’s workshops. The setting was great and the environment was very welcoming. Rebecca has a great way of leading you down a path of thought without putting pressure on you and making you consider different options both personally and professionally. I would highly recommend her programmes for your mid-tier management and decision makers in your business to help them become clearer in themselves and thereby lead their teams better in the work place.

Justin Hickman
Director at Stay Margaret River

Keynote presentations to inspire and energise 

I learned almost everything I know about dementia from my dad. At 74 his Alzheimer’s disease is very advanced and he lives in a brilliant care home.

But the story of how dementia unraveled him and the lessons that taught me began over a decade ago.

I’ve written and spoken about how this intensely challenging experience deepened my understanding and love for a man I hadn’t always liked or respected.

Everyone responds differently to a love one’s descent into dementia.

However, lots of us feel isolated and desperate when we’re confronted by the grief and chaos that accompanies a diagnosis and everything that follows.

The positive response when I’ve shared my story has encouraged me publish the essence of it here.

It’s easy to miss the early signs of dementia

It was difficult to pinpoint the beginning of dad’s illness. He behaved erratically for lots of reasons we knew about but never fully understood.

He was an SAS soldier and Vietnam veteran belatedly diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

He was a funny, loyal, hard-wired tough bastard given to horrendous mood swings.

He drank heavily.

The bush and fishing and camping helped him cope with civilian life. When he broke down crying after hours trying to pitch a tent we knew something was wrong.  So began a period of muddle and loss and exhaustion before a vague diagnosis of alcohol related dementia.

Apparently, the damage was done. But dad was advised that giving up drinking would halt the carnage. Eventually he stopped, joking that he’d rather forget his drink than drop it’. Despite this, his dementia got steadily worse.

Grieve for the person you’ve ‘lost’

Dementia deprives you of the familiar adored and infuriating person you know and love. Most of your reliably, well-worn ways of relating successfully cease to work. Acknowledging this difficult disruptive truth is the key to accepting your loved one as they are.

Be present for the person who’s there

I’m not being glib here – not for a moment. Dealing with dementia is grueling and exhausting and heart breaking. Nothing changes that.

However, letting go of expectations and accepting my dad as he is made a huge difference to how we both coped.

In the midst of the tough stuff some things were ‘hilariously sad’. For a time my super macho dad emerged dressed for the day in mum’s clothes. Instead of swallowing his medication he’d stick the pills between his toes. Seeing the fun in these random actions was an excellent coping strategy.

I’ve also learned to let our conversations take their own surreal course free of the sorts of logical links I’m used to.  Despite not being lucid, dad still recognises the feeling of sharing and connecting in conversation.

As dementia stripped away the layers of my dad’s personality and life I knew, I saw vulnerability and humanity he’d buried since forever. I saw the boy aged twelve grieving for his dead mum, the frightened soldier anxious to protect his troops, the husband and father full of regret. I understood how trauma had scarred this gentle, funny beautiful man.

Stay connected as a family

Don’t let the gut wrenching decision to move your loved one into care rupture their connection to family.

Some of the best moments in our family life with my dad have happened since he went into care. He is calmer than I’ve seen him in years and we have the energy to take him on the kind of adventures in nature that he always loved. These outings help us to heal as a family and they’re vital to dad’s happiness and well-being.

Find joy in the experience

Ideally, I would have wished my dad the kind of healthy, contented old age he was never going to have. I would have loved my mum and my siblings to have been spared the distress of watching him lose his mind.

In reality and despite everything I’m deeply grateful for the things my dad’s illness has taught me.

Caring for him as his dementia unfolded showed me that behind challenging behaviours are complex, complete people in pain. I learned that the people who are hardest to love are the people who need love most.

I’m also wary of the potential of alcohol to bring us undone. After four teetotal years I now enjoy a glass of wine on special occasions. Aside from that I don’t drink.

If you’d like to purchase a copy of the book I’ve co-authored on dad’s journey for $20 or have me speak at your work place or event on my personal experience with dementia please  – get in touch.

Keynote presentations to inspire and energise 

I’m not a great fan of buzzwords and frankly the term ‘employee engagement’ comes with a bit of a hum. However, despite its buzz worthy moniker, in practice, successful ‘employee engagement’ can enhance everyone’s performance and grow your business.

What is it and why does it matter?

Employee engagement is a way of thinking and behaving that’s designed to build an inclusive and inspired workplace culture. In an age where work is becoming less secure and more demanding it’s more important than ever.

How does it work?

Genuine employee engagement creates the conditions for everyone to bring their best selves to work. What this means exactly, will vary from business to business.

Generally though, there are four widely recognised ‘enablers’ – things you can do to get employee engagement up and running and build its momentum.

Here they are:

Have a great story – otherwise known as a ‘strategic narrative’. This story starts with your ‘why’  – that simple, amazing thing that motivates you to do what you do. You need to provide the spark but write it as a team so it captures your company’s collective purpose.

Keep it short and highly visible. Make sure everyone knows and believes in it.

Support engaging managers – these are leaders who can also coach and mentor. They see their staff as capable individuals and as integral members of a high performing team. They can set and stretch boundaries and they know how to acknowledge and celebrate success and how to hold people accountable.

Engaging managers have the confidence and the skill to support their staff to be self-directing and purposeful and to master new skills. As this quirky absorbing clip shows, these three things beat money and status hands down as workplace motivators.

Give your staff a genuine ‘say’ – also known as their ‘employee voice’. This means creating formal and informal opportunities for your team to be involved in problem solving, innovating, crisis aversion and much more.
When people are asked about job satisfaction, contributing their ideas and expertise to their organisation’s success consistently tops the list.

Live your values – this means having organisational integrity and zero gap between what you say and what you do.  Keep your promises to everyone – staff, customers and the community. If you can’t always do this give a clear honest explanation why not.

How are you doing?

Current Australian research on levels of employee engagement suggests that only around 25% of our workforce is fully engaged. That means about one in four of us wake up thinking,

‘Wow I’m looking forward to work today. I know what I’m going to do and I‘ve got these great ideas about how to do it brilliantly. I can’t wait to see the team and get stuck into everything.’

If you already have a strong story, a super set of managers, an ace team and oodles of organisational integrity, I congratulate you.

If you‘d like help to build or boost any or all of these employee engagement essentials, here’s how I can help.

Seriously engaging workshops to help you find your ‘why’, write your story, find and keep motivation and momentum.

• Disrupt Dare Direct
• Mastering your Mindset

One on one and small group coaching to develop the clarity, confidence and courage to achieve your most ambitious, values driven goals.

Keynote presentations to inspire and energise your team.

 If you’re keen for more general information on boosting employee engagement, please – get in touch.

For more ideas on how to keep your team inspired Rombourne have some great articles – you’ll see this blog there too!

I love New Year.  It’s a clean slate and a chance to reflect on the year that was. It delivers the rush of optimism and energy we need to review, reset and plan for the year ahead.

So, why is it that despite our best intentions and well-laid plans around 80% of us have abandoned our New Year resolutions by February?

If you’re one of the 20 percenters who realise their resolutions – bravo! If you’re among the fallen and frustrated 80 percenters you’re certainly in good company.

If you’re keen to raise your odds of achieving your 2018 resolutions, here are some tried and tested strategies from my Disrupt, Dare, Direct workshop.

Reflect on the year that was

Be honest and gentle as you review the rapidly disappearing year. Celebrate successes of all sizes and don’t beat yourself up about things that didn’t go to plan. Taking a clear calm look at what worked and what didn’t will help you make 2018 resolutions that you can actually keep.

Ask the right questions

Ask yourself some clever questions about what you would do differently what you would do more of or less of or stop doing all together. Replacing ‘I’ with ‘you’ gives your intuitive feeling brain a chance to offer a gentler, judgment free response before your analytical brain starts slicing and dicing and critiquing what you think.

Here are ten questions you might like to try:

1. What, or who, are you most grateful for?
2. Which small things gave you the most pleasure day to day?
3. What new things did you learn about yourself?
4. Which of your personal strengths was most valuable this year?
5. Which stand out achievement are you most proud of?
6. What was your biggest professional break-through moment?
7. What was the trickiest problem you solved?
8. Which worrying events never actually happened?
9. What one thing would you do differently and why?
10. Which funny moment still makes you grin when you think about it?

Once you’ve completed your review  – let it sit and have it close by when you begin to make your resolutions and set new goals.

Get clear on your values

Resolving to do things differently provides a great opportunity to revisit your values. Which values underpin how you think, feel and behave? If you haven’t thought about this for a while, this exercise could help you get clear about what you believe in and what matters most to you. Reaffirming your values does two important things. Firstly you can check that your New Year resolutions are a good fit. Secondly being confident about this helps you stay courageous and focused as you work to achieve your goals and to realise the magnificent vision they represent

Brainstorm your goals

It’s perfectly natural to want to change everything when you’re hit by the full flush of New Year enthusiasm. For lots of us, this means falling into the trap of setting a huge raft of highly commendable but totally unachievable goals. While losing weight, giving up smoking, eating healthily, exercising more and spending less are all great life affirming aims, going after all of them at once will almost certainly keep you in the 80 percent tent.

That said begin by thinking big. Brainstorm everything you’d love to do more of or less of or differently. Get your ideal plan out of your head and onto the page. Leave nothing out! If you’re short on inspiration try some of these.

Prioritise and pick three

Get help to do this. Revisit your review, talk to a trusted friend, and listen to your intuition as well as your thinking brain.

If you’re a serial stop starter choose a single goal. If you honestly feel you can juggle making multiple changes pick three at most.  Make one a fun thing. This will help you stay motivated and reward you for progressing the other two. Last year I resolved to do something fun with my partner every week and it worked like a charm.

Make sure they’re SMART goals

Lots of us ‘get’ the idea of this sensible goal setting system but it can be surprisingly tricky to put it into practice. Taking the time to apply it can greatly increase your odds for achieving genuine, sustainable change.

Reality check then map each of your goals against these criteria:

Specific         Can you define your goal in terms of WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHY?

Measurable Can you track its progress and measure the outcome?  How will you know your goal has been achieved? How much/often? How many?

Attainable    Is your goal reasonable enough to be accomplished?

Relevant      Is your goal worthwhile and will it meet your needs?

Timely:        When will you complete it by which day/month/year?

Make wobbles work

SMART goals are easier to stick to, but if you lose your enthusiasm, your momentum or even the whole damn plot – don’t give up. Review and recalibrate instead.

If the ‘f’ word looms large try substituting ‘feedback’ for ‘failure’. If your inner or outer doomsayers are telling you you’ve failed, tell them to take a hike.  Take a ‘trial and correct’ approach and have a gentle judgment free look at what’s working and what isn’t. Tweak or ditch the things that aren’t and strengthen the things that are.

For example, if your goal to spend 20 daily minutes in nature isn’t working, try 5 minutes and see if you can build from there.

Think like the great inventor Thomas Edison who said,  “I have not failed, I have found 10,000 ways that don’t work”.

Get support

Work with a friend a colleague or a coach. Choose someone who ‘gets’ your goals and is prepared to offer honest feedback and lots of encouragement.

I’m a coach with a coach who helps me with my BIG goals. I also have weekly and a fortnightly check ins with two buddies. Each of my three supporters has a different role.  My weekly buddy and I swap emails about weekly goals, lessons learned and ‘ah ha’ moments. My fortnightly buddy and I share ideas and chat through our wins and frustrations.

I’m also part of a Perth based Business Mastermind group where I get immediate feedback on my business ideas. I place high value on accountability and time driven deadlines and I get great support for both from everyone on my support team.  In combination, this has been a game changer in my personal and professional life.

I’m launching ‘Momentum Makers’ in the New Year. This is a Business Mastermind group for Margaret River people who are ready to turn great ideas into successful enterprises. If this sounds like you, I’d love to chat.  

If you’re keen to build motivation and momentum to make 2018 your best year yet, my next Disrupt, Dare, Direct workshops are on:

31^st January             Margaret River        9am – 1pm

1^st February              Bunbury                    9am – 1pm

2^nd February            Perth                          9am – 1pm

Wishing you a stellar New Year – If I can help you achieve this – get in touch.

Hands up if you offer your staff a workplace wellness program. Congratulations, you’re one of around 30% of Australian employers who recognise the value of creating a culture of health that helps to build a contented, high performing team 

If your hand isn’t up but you’re wondering about the ‘why’s and the ‘how’s’ of workplace wellness here’s an introduction. 

Why invest in workplace wellness?

Like any other well structured investment, contributing directly to your team’s wellbeing is likely to deliver strong returns. Even in the best-run businesses, some of your staff can struggle to balance competing personal and professional demands on their time and energy. A workplace wellness program can reduce stress in lots of ways.

First up it tells your team that you value them. Feeling valued and supported is high on most people’s list of ‘must have’ attributes for satisfying work.

Secondly a well-planned program that reflects what your people tell you they need helps build physical and emotional resilience and team spirit. This makes for a safer, happier more cohesive and more productive workplace.

If you’d like to read the business case for the benefits of workplace wellness, here it is.

What’s involved?

Like any other successful health initiative, great workplace programs are tailored to fit. They can include one off workshops or series of sessions to help build healthy habits, gym memberships, access to psychological and mental health support and much more. This list of 121 workplace wellness ideas could kick start the conversation for your team.

How to begin

If you’re keen to make a focused start, Healthier Workplace WA has a 10 minute self assessment to help you prioritise your team’s needs.  Complete this self-check and you’ll receive a customised report with plenty of useful suggestions.

If you’d love some input, I’ve run customised workplace programs for many years.

Having recently completed a coaching course with Rebecca Hannan, I have engaged her to provide one on one coaching and a communications skills workshop for my team.

The structure of the coaching sessions, the focus on positive outcomes and the gentle but firm insistence on progress were just some of the reasons for my assessment of Rebecca.

What I found to be most valuable was Rebecca’s warm and welcoming manner. Her ability to stay positive and focused was both motivating and inspirational.

My only regret is procrastinating for so long. I would urge others to ‘just do it’ – the rewards are substantial. “

Ruth Levett
Manager Waste, Health & Ranger Services

Shire of Augusta Margaret River

As the official ‘season to be jolly’ looms large, lots of us feel less than confident about our chances of keeping calm let alone making merry.

If you’re at risk of sinking under the annual flood of family and social and cultural obligations, here are four ways to stay afloat during the festive season.

1. Find your own festive spirit

In its purest form Christmas celebrates the strongest human values found at the heart of all worlds’ great spiritual traditions. These include compassion, hope, optimism, resilience and random acts of kindness. Whatever your spiritual or secular beliefs, chances are these values are among them. Honour the authentic Christmas spirit by celebrating in ways that match your particular values around how you treat others and how you’d like to be treated in return.

2. Find financial peace

Decide not to get sucked into a spending frenzy. Especially if succumbing to the pressure to buy up big, means you’ll start the New Year with a big fat debt.

Amongst the many tricky expectations that come with Christmas, the pressure to buy expensive presents and host lavish events can hit us hardest.

There are heaps of ways to avoid financial meltdown most of which call for a bit of forward planning. Three of my favourites are:

Shop early, shop smart. Accumulating gifts year round helps you avoid ‘last ditch desperation’ shopping on Christmas Eve. Maximise your chances of spending mindfully on thoughtful gifts that people will genuinely love.

Limit the reach of gift giving.  If you never see or speak to third cousin Mildred for the other 364 days of the year perhaps a kind word over a shared lunch is present enough.
I vividly recall feeling strange and a bit bereft when my sister and I agreed not to buy presents for each other or our respective adult children. However, the relief we both felt far outweighed the emotional stress and financial strain of trying to find a sizable pile of perfect gifts.

Play secret and dirty

I’m a fan of Secret Santa AND Dirty Santa.  Anonymous set price gift giving is a fun way not to blow your budget. If organising your Secret Santa at work or at home does your head in this free app helps take the headache out of allocating and communicating with the gift givers in your group.

Dirty Santa is a riotous thieving game that turns gift envy on its head. Here are the rules. Be wary of playing this with small kids who generally do not appreciate having their presents nicked by covetous others.

3. Put perfectionism in perspective

I LOVE things to be just so and I work pretty hard to make them that way. That said I know that even my most pernickety, perfection driven efforts will never equal the shiny, sumptuous displays that pop up in our shops and streets weeks before Christmas actually arrives.

In fact, I’m willing to bet that nobody’s actual Christmas resembles the unfailingly harmonious, picture perfect image we see on screens and in stores.

So do your best to make things as lovely and joyous as you can But be kind to yourself if and when your festive experience falls short of your own or others’ expectations.  Remind yourself that ‘good enough’ is actually great. If the turkey tums out to be well …a ‘turkey’ or the dinner time discussion gets dicey and difficult remember you’re not alone – millions of humans are sharing the same endearingly imperfect festive experience.

Prune your ‘Christmas to do’ list

We get so caught up in thinking that everything HAS to be done ‘by Christmas’ – it doesn’t.

Reread the section above take a deep breath then decide to share the load. Delegate or ditch things that don’t really do not need to be done, at least not by you alone!  Create time and headspace by asking others to contribute to a shared meal, Rope in family and friends to clean and sort and organise. Recycle and reuse decorations that were earmarked for an upgrade.

4. Get and give support

Besides mastering the art of getting support and sharing the work of preparing for a fun festive season, think about giving support to someone who is going to struggle to celebrate.  Christmas can be really hard for people who are disconnected from family and community for whole host of reasons. People who are bereaved or separated or who are travellers or migrants can feel terribly lonely and isolated when everyone else seems to be closely connected.

Throw an Orphans Christmas, volunteer for a charity that serves Christmas lunch to people isolated by poverty or illness or be brave and simply reach out to someone who you know is having a torrid time.

Beyond the lights and the tinsel, the great festivals of Christmas and New Year celebrate kindness and connection and the potential to grow and change. Why not create your own merry traditions that support you in becoming your best possible self?

Feeling festively stressed?  I can help you be present.

Here’s the second of my two blogs based on my recent interview with ABC South West.

The first one looked at neuroplasticity – our brain’s amazing capacity to support  new ways of thinking and being. It also explored how a fixed mindset holds us back when it comes to becoming our best most adaptive optimistic selves.

This blog looks at ways to soften a fixed mindset so you can take advantage of your hardwired gift for growing and changing your mind.

Moving from a fixed to a flexible mindset means gently nudging yourself towards viewing the world and your place in it differently.

The biggest challenge is to ditch the unhelpful belief that your key characteristics – intelligence, creativity and personality are part of your fixed inheritance – like eye colour and height and having your grandmother’s nose.

Tackle this challenge by taking a look at scary thoughts that pull you up short anytime you’re confronted by an actual or imagined big new thing.  This is your opening move towards a more flexible adaptive mindset.

It’s time for some healthy disruptive action

Observe your difficult thoughts

Practice seeing these thoughts without judging them – no ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t required. See if you can simply identify them – ‘there’s fear’ or ‘there’s anger’ without hooking into the strong feelings they bring along for the ride.

This is tricky skill to master so here’s an astoundingly useful bit of biological insight to help you.  It’s called the 90-second emotional rule

Apply the 90-second rule

In the words of the woman who discovered it, bio anatomist and stroke survivor Dr Jill Bolt Taylor,

‘When a person has a reaction to something in their environment, there’s a 90 second chemical process that happens in the body; after that, any remaining emotional response is just the person choosing to stay in that emotional loop.’

So, if you can just sit quietly with a scary thought and a strong feeling for a minute and a half without getting swept away – chances are they will simply disappear.  Reflect on how often you observe the arrival of all sorts of strong feelings and difficult thoughts compared to how often you note their going.

Taking the sting out of scary thoughts and their emotional sidekicks – anxiety, fear, and frustration gives you the calm and clarity you need to make your second move.

Unmask your limiting beliefs

Find out just how fake these fear-fuelled ideas really are. Generally speaking, I’m no fan of acronyms but when it comes to nailing limiting beliefs, here’s one that works.

False Evidence Appearing Real

Fixed minds tend to think alike.  They’re especially prone to unhelpful thinking that shores up their limiting beliefs. Unobserved and unchallenged, these thoughts can stop you in your tracks when you try to do something differently, recover from a set back or start something new. Think of them as your own special stash of ‘alternative facts’. No amount of actual evidence about your competence, capability or courage can counter them.

See if you can spot your favourite forms of unhelpful thinking in this excellent list of 10 common limiting beliefs courtesy of Dr Tim Sharp at the Happiness Institute.  He calls them ANTS, short for Automatic Negative Thinking.

Identify your ANTS so you can start to challenge and dispel them.

Sometimes it’s helpful to ask yourself where your ‘ANT infestations’ started. Perhaps you ‘inherited’ them. If you did, try reminding yourself that although it might feel like it, ANTs are not a fixed feature of your genetic or cultural makeup.

Reframe ‘failure’

Contrary to what your fixed mindset tells you, failing doesn’t make you fatally flawed or utterly incompetent. It simply makes you a courageous, curious human.

When things go awry it’s natural to feel bruised and bereft. This is another human trait. It’s not confined to fixed minded folk – we all feel it.

Once you’ve dealt with hurt and humiliation (hint – remember the 90 second rule) try thinking like persistent genius and light bulb inventor Thomas Edison, who said of his gazillion ‘failures’,

“I have not failed, not once. I’ve discovered ten thousand ways that don’t work.”

Take a clearheaded look at what ‘didn’t work’.  Without a skerrick of judgment ask yourself how well you planned and prepared and how much effort you invested.

Honest answers kindly given will teach you something about how to do things differently and better.  Sometimes this means arming your self with new knowledge and trying again from another angle, other times it means taking a completely different direction.

Finally failing doesn’t mean you made ‘a bad choice’. You did your best with the resources you had at the time. All our choices are chances to grow and learn if we’re prepared to see them as opportunities rather than threats. If your keen for a practical, heart lifting read on this topic, try Susan Jeffers’ classic  ‘Feel the fear and do it any way’.  Jeffers’ message is simple – you can handle anything if you believe every decision you make has life enhancing potential.

So let’s finish where we began – with your brain’s hardwired capacity to do extraordinary things, every single day. If you choose to trust the neuroscience and back your brain’s plastic fantastic ability to adapt you can literally change your mindset.

It will take time and energy and persistence but even the smallest shift in your thinking, feeling and being can make an enormous difference.

Keen to swap ‘fixed’ for ‘flexible’?  I can help