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Practical creativity: how you create and experience your world

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Your brain is a meaning-making machine. At all times, your imagination and creativity are actively creating scenarios and potential outcomes in your head. How you experience your world is mostly a creation of your perspective and beliefs.

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While situations create emotions, our thoughts and beliefs about a problem often run the show. I previously shared the cybernetic loop in a blog post about how stress and anxiety block decision-making.

Practical creativity recognises your mind’s role in how you experience your world: what do you want to create? 

You can awfulise and catastrophe: allowing your inner critic to judge and tell you all that is wrong with you. Your anxiety and stress limits can be pushed by imagining the worst-case scenario. Your relationships can be strained by thinking the worst.

You might go the other way and dissociate into fantasy, creating in your mind an idyllic scenario where everything is perfect. Do nothing. And nothing changes.

Or you stay present and look at yourself and others through the eyes of compassion, practising the self-awareness of emotional intelligence and creating opportunities to change the situation and your relationships for the better. Continue reading Practical creativity: how you create and experience your world

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Juggle your joys: values and priorities, do what you love

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A friend recently commented, “You always impress with how smoothly you handle so many loads“. She then corrected herself, “I know they are joys”. And they are. My “so many loads” align with my values and priorities.

I love coaching clients and thrive on investing my time with other coaches and helping professionals in book clubs. Spending time with my daughter and ensuring I attend school and children’s events is essential. I carve out time for writing and creativity. And I make it a priority to continue learning and growing, surrounding myself with people that are also on a growth journey. Continue reading Juggle your joys: values and priorities, do what you love

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25 authentic questions to evaluate yourself this year

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The new year is approaching, and it’s time to look back and take stock of how far you’ve come, planning your goals for the future. Before you start your vision board or planning, here are 25 authentic questions to ask yourself:

Five authentic questions on vision and purpose:

  1. Have I clearly defined for myself my vision and purpose?
  2. Did I set clear goals for myself at the beginning of this year and make a plan for this year to fulfil these goals?
  3. Was I persistent in following my dreams through to completion?
  4. When my plans met with failure, did I regroup and adopt a new method to fulfil my vision and purpose?
  5. Did I use my vision and purpose to help me make effective decisions, aligning my decision-making with my priorities?

Continue reading 25 authentic questions to evaluate yourself this year

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Intuitive decision-making: what you need to know

I’m sure you would like to use more intuitive decision-making, learning to rely on your subconscious for wiser decisions. It’s more than just a gut instinct or quick reflexes. There’s an element of mastery when subconsciously noticing all the patterns and data without rationally analysing every detail.

Let me share with you an example I read about a few years ago:

In the Monaco Grand Prix, back in the 1950s, the race winner (Juan Manuel Fangio) braked as he came out of the tunnel on his second lap, which allowed him to avoid a mass pile-up. Other drivers accelerated rather than braked.
Why did he choose to brake instead?
Unbeknownst to him, his peripheral vision noticed that all the spectators were looking away from him rather than towards him. And while he didn’t make a conscious decision to brake, his body automatically knew that something was off.
Years of experience kicked in as the sea of faces was turned away and looking towards the accident rather than at the drivers exiting the tunnel.

This is intuitive decision-making: the ability to notice a subtle change in patterns (like the crowd looking another way) that guides you to a wise decision. Continue reading Intuitive decision-making: what you need to know

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Author your life: make choices for authentic relationships

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With so much talk about living authentically, we seem to have forgotten the origin of the word “authentic”. Etymologically, it derives from “one acting on one’s authority” – from the reflexive “auto” – self, one’s own, by oneself, of oneself. If authentic, you author your life, acting on your authority. 

On the other hand, most of us get stuck trying to find our way back to “our authentic self” – as if there were some original, static version of self that we could find and refer to.

If only I were true to that version of me, I would be authentic!

Continue reading Author your life: make choices for authentic relationships