There is another meaning in the title though. We can set goals regularly and with plenty of meaning and purpose, only to find other events or circumstances take away our focus on these. If you have experienced this, as I have recently, it can be extremely frustrating and disappointing – you know you set those goals because they were leading you in the direction you wanted your life to go, yet you seem to be unable to re-invest your energy, time and enthusiasm in them.

Let me explain my situation and you may find this familiar to you. When I set up the Positively You™ website, I very diligently established a business plan, identifying my short and long-term goals, the resources I would need to achieve these goals with time-lines etc. I was excited, passionate about the purpose of Positively You™, and ready to invest as much of my time as possible into building the business. At the same time, I am working full-time, completing some higher education study and making sure I have quality time with my family and friends.

This was all manageable for a while. Then, my study requirements became more intensive as compulsory deadlines loomed, a parent became extremely ill which took me away from home a lot, then I got sick, closely followed by an ill husband! All in the space of two months.

When lots of external pressures build up, your physical and mental capacity to cope with these can be really challenged. Mine definitely were, to the point where the thought of tackling even the smallest activity felt like an enormous task – too big for me to cope with ‘right now’. Trouble was, the ‘right now’ has extended itself, so that I feel I have not put time and energy into the goal-directed things in my life, my website being a prime example.

Does this story sound familiar to you? Have you found yourself diverted from achieving your goals for reasons initially beyond your control? If you have, as I have, what did you do to change this? What have I done to change this frustrating situation?

The first thing I did was let myself off the hook, so to speak. I realized that the more I wound myself up about not getting back to my goals, the less motivated I felt to do anything about changing this.

Part of this ‘being kind to myself’ process included deciding what I could manage to get myself back into the swing of things. So, instead of thinking “I must write that Newsletter tonight” or “I should spend today researching”, I broke these thoughts down into smaller steps – “I will write the first two sections of the Newsletter”, “I will spend one hour after dinner doing my research”. Classic goal-setting behaviour that I had lost sight of!

Once I started changing my thinking, my actions followed, as they seemed much more achievable and naturally, I returned to the level of interest and motivation I had started with.

Oh yes, another important aspect of this process was to let myself be unwell and not expect to manage everything ‘as usual’.

It really was (and is) up to me to achieve what I want, by being realistic and recognizing when I was struggling – and finding out why I was struggling (especially when I am a steady, motivated person most of the time).

And, it is up to you – to realize that it is okay if you veer off from your goals at times, but at the same time recognizing why you have done so and putting in place a plan to return to that enthusiasm and energy those important goals provide you with.

Whatever the reason for this, what you want to be more aware of is how to hold on to the times when you feel motivated – high energy, enjoy the moment, anticipation, relaxed, buzzing, organized, planning ahead….whatever the emotion or experience you can relate to. So how do you hold on to these positive, feel-good experiences?

I remember a time, quite a long time ago now, when I was in a job that I dreaded going to each day, mainly because of the person I was working for but also because I felt like the job was going nowhere. Now, if that situation wasn’t de-motivating for me, I don’t know what would be! A tactic I started using to help me through this time was, when I was in a meeting, I would find a blank page in my diary and start creating a list of all the things I could look forward to outside of this work environment.

You know, a key activity on that list was reminding myself that at the end of the working day, I would have a lovely drive home around the Bays and appreciate the tranquility of the area I was driving through. I often stopped during that drive, got out of the car and sat on the beach for a while.

I don’t know if my story fits here, but whenever I found myself in a situation that severely effected my motivation (and at numerous times, my self-esteem), I had to make sure I didn’t let this totally consume and control the other parts of my life that I knew I received a lot of enjoyment and satisfaction from.

The beach scenario is just one example of how I kept myself together during that time. My daily ‘motivation’ list contained many other thoughts and activities and plans.

How do you keep yourself motivated? What do you do to ensure events or situations larger than you don’t dominate and take over every part of your life?

Have you experienced that sort of challenge before? What did you do? What would you like to have done? I know I have experienced these situations throughout my life, sometimes dealing with them successfully, at other times not.

So, what can help us successfully manage other people’s challenging behaviour and maintain our self esteem and positive thinking about ourselves?

Here are a couple of ideas of my own. It would be great if you posted a comment to this blog post and share with us a strategy that has worked for you, or an experience you have had and are still looking for answers.

• Talk about it with someone you trust. Maybe they have some suggestions as to how you could deal with this person/behaviour

• Walk away. This is actually an assertive response, because you are choosing to remove yourself from their negativity……so long as you don not end up berating yourself for not dealing with the situation.

There really are just some people in this world who will never be prepared to look at themselves and how their behaviour affects others. You are prepared to do something about it, when you choose to walk away in order to look after yourself.

• Take care of your self esteem every day.

I think this is vital. Acknowledging your strengths, celebrating your achievements, appreciating the good things in your life (friends, family, simple things like walking the dog, enjoying a sunny day) are ongoing activities you need to engage in on a daily basis. They are not something to take for granted because you have thought about them once, in the past!

A great example of staying positive in these challenging situations is planning to actually develop some specific skills, such as completing an assertiveness course, getting some mentoring help, attending a self-esteem workshop, reading self-help books and using the suggested strategies.

Practical actions like these can give you a sense of purpose and definitely help you feel (and be) more in control of what happens to you when someone else decides to impinge on your world.

What do you think? How do you stay positive and hold on to your self esteem? Click on the ‘comment’ link below and post you ideas to this blog.

Do you ever ask yourself “What’s important to me in my life?”

I have learned that if I don’t ask myself this question at regular intervals, I start to very quickly get caught up in other people’s issues, or start to feel totally frustrated that I just don’t have enough time or energy to achieve everything I want to do. Or, I start projects that I actually don’t have the right or enough skills to achieve or complete. And following this, I become demoralised as I realise I am getting nowhere with my great exciting ideas and plans!

Can you relate to any of these examples? I certainly don’t enjoy feeling like or experiencing any of them. Life begins to feel like a fast moving seesaw with no balancing axis in the middle. And it’s definitely not a healthy way to live - emotionally, psychologically and physically.

So, here is an exercise I take myself through whenever I realise I am back on that seesaw. You might find this helpful as well, to regain and maintain balance whilst you are moving through your life and deciding what it is you want that life to be.

Firstly:

I compile a list of all the things I want in my life. What goes into my list will depend on which junction I am at at the time. I find it useful to structure my list into various categories. For example, Health, Financial, Home, Relationships, Career, etc. Then I just write down everything I want under each category.

Secondly:

It is the next step that makes or breaks this exercise - the reality check.

Working through the list again, decide against each item how important it is in your life (see, I’m expecting you think this will be a useful exercise and that you have or are in the process of compiling your own!). You might find it useful to apply a grading scale to help you decide the level of importance, e.g., 1= extremely important, 5= minor importance.

As you complete this part of the exercise, you may even find some items can be struck off your list altogether, as they just aren’t as important as you first thought. I can tell you, it certainly makes the prospect of achieving all those things you want in life a lot less daunting and out of reach, as your list becomes more manageable.

For this exercise to work, you need to be really honest with and realistic about yourself. If there are any things on your list that are important but not necessarily right now, then transfer these to a separate list, a place where you can revisit them at a later time and start setting some longer-term goals and action steps around them. See, your list has become that much more manageable again. The other part of being realistic is being honest that the items you have on your list are actually within your abilities to achieve. There’s no problem with wanting to earn a million dollars in a year - are you in a position to achieve this? Have you got a plan in place? How will you do this?

A want list is your starting point. Asking “what’s important?” helps you to then establish the priorities and identify the things that will make a difference for you and are realistic. Prioritising as an exercise is a helpful method for focusing on what is really important and where you are going to direct your time and energy to get the best results.

There is much more to creating the life you want, of course. This is one idea of many that might just prompt you to explore other strategies and ideas for how you can make changes or keep working on the things that you want in life.

Asking the question “What’s Important?” is a core theme in my e-book “Dare To Be You and Create the Life You Want”. Click here for a preview of the Introductory Chapter and visit my Positively Shopping Guide to purchase your own copy.

Human beings are so complex and multi-faceted. I think this task (of describing ourselves) can be quite difficult for a lot of us. Having said that, making a conscious effort to really get to know ourselves can open many positive doors to feelings and experiences we never dreamed of.

Here’s what I mean. I recently helped a colleague recognise their style of time management - yes, we have our own styles of managing use of time - and how they could use parts of this to their advantage; for example, become more organized and a better planner, as well as then change other aspects of their time management habits.

The most satisfying outcome from our conversations was the colleague’s relief that their time management skills were pretty normal and a reflection of their natural learning style and personality. By reducing the separation between the self (our personality, values, etc) and the tasks or concepts we come in contact with in our daily life, you can find a situation becomes less daunting or less difficult because you know why you behave or respond to that situation more clearly now.

Maybe that’s not the best example, but I want to focus on practical, everyday things that really don’t seem to have much obvious connection to our self-knowledge and the importance of knowing ourselves, but in actual fact do.

If you know why you find yourself rushing to complete a task or project when in reality you had at least four weeks say to complete this task, you can feel much calmer about this, because you know the task will get done. Your learning style dictates that you work best when under a time pressure. For others of us, completing a task step by step over the period of time available is what will work best. One isn’t better than the other - unless of course you experience a great deal of stress by leaving things to the last minute and would like to change this.

You see, I have accepted that my most productive time on a project or task occurs when I leave things to the last minute. I don’t do this with everything in my life, but quite often! Other people would panic and be in complete stress mode if they approached tasks this way, because it is not their style.

Get to know who you are, what your preferences are, how you tend to deal with people or approach problems. We are all different afterall, and knowing who we are can make a huge difference in our lives.

My Card Game “Positive Thinking” is a fantastic and fun way for you to get to know yourself and review your thinking about who you are and where you want to be in life. Read more about this fabulous product…….

How did I discover this as my passion? It took a while (a number of years!) to realize as I have been in different jobs that require development of written material for all sorts of reasons………but the real passion is writing about what I believe, value and what I am totally interested in.

What’s you passion in life? If you had to select one thing, what would it be?

Try not to clutter your choice with a whole lot of options - really seriously think of the one thing the “floats your boat”! Because if you do this, you create the space in your thinking and your life activities to invest the time and energy into something that has total meaning for you.

I have used a lot of my ‘free time’ to engage in writing, juggling this passion with my work and my coaching services. Because I discovered this passion, I was prepared and able to successfully manage this juggling act. Where it will lead me, I believe, is to a position where I won’t have to juggle my time and focus anymore…..because I know writing is what I want to do.

So, how can you discover what your inner passion is?

Here are a couple of questions for you to consider, to help you find out what really is important, energizing and motivating in your life.

• Think of your skills. What are you really good at? Where do you apply these skills and get satisfaction from or a feeling of success as a result?
• Think about your past. When have you received positive, constructive feedback about your skills or abilities? What were you doing when you received this feedback? For example, I used to get comments such as “Where did you learn to write?” and feedback about how well I expressed an idea or concept in the written material I developed.
• When do you feel most energized and motivated? What are you doing at these times?

Maybe your inner passion is worth pursuing to achieve financial gain or freedom. Perhaps it provides you with immense satisfaction and enjoyment of life as it balances out your work commitments. Whatever the reason, discover what you really want to do to add meaning to your life.

This feeling can be caused by any number of things, from having no plan or goals in place to map your own direction to other people and their behaviour towards you.

The second of these examples is what we will focus on here, as it is a common situation in many aspects of our lives - dealing with other people’s behaviour and attitudes at work, in business transactions, in our family lives, etc. In these situations, we can come across a whole raft of personalities, attitudes and behaviours that either complement our own (we then often forge friendships, collegial support or positive intimate relationships) or create conflict in our lives.

I can hear you say “Yes! That happens to me at work”. So what is happening in this scenario and what can you do about it?

Here’s an example I have experienced. I will talk through this scenario, then we will explore ways to deal with these behaviours, attitudes and personalities that are often so opposed to our own.

Scenario

In a past work life, I had the displeasure of working with a colleague whom I believed had little interest or respect for other people. They communicated this by speaking arrogantly to people who weren’t working in the same level of job position within the organisation, using put-downs, ignoring you if the mood took them, and most frustrating of all, who would address the senior person in a meeting in response to a question or comment I had made to them! Grrrr.

Thankfully I didn’t have to work with this person on a daily basis. But when I was in meetings with them, I would end up feeling extremely aggravated and insulted - and yes, experience a pervasive sense of powerlessness to be able to do anything about their behaviour and how it made me feel.

And I would describe myself as a reasonably assertive person!

Have you ever felt like this? Maybe you have found a way to cope with a) the person or b) the feeling of powerlessness you experience as a result or c) both?

Here is one technique I learned to use whenever I dealt with this particular person at work. And I have found it is a technique that is easily transferable to using with other people and areas in my life. It’s not rocket science and you may have come across a similar idea before now - but do you use it?

There are actually three parts to this technique, so read on…….

Prepare Beforehand

If you know or have experienced the behaviour from that person before, then be assured they will seldom change how they behave and communicate; because this is (or has become) part of their personality.

The advantage you have is knowing this and putting in place for yourself some strategies that will help you.

For example, deciding that if they let the telephone interrupt a meeting you are having with them, you are prepared to ask them to divert the phone calls until the meeting is finished. You don’t have to tell them or demand they do this; an assertive request is far more likely to be heard and listened to, therefore acted upon. Yes, you are the person having to be assertive, but we already know that the other person doesn’t communicate assertively.

Respect Your Rights

You have the right to ask for the phone to be diverted or switched off. You have the right to be spoken to civilly. You have the right to be spoken to directly, not selectively ignored.

When you want the other person to change their behaviour towards you, you need to constantly remind yourself of your rights, all the way through the interaction with them.

As you do this, use “I”statements. For example, instead of “You should have turned off the phone before we started the meeting”, try “I would appreciate it if you would turn the phone off until we have finished our meeting”, or something similar.

Dealing With Your Feelings Later

For all of your assertive communication, you can sometimes still come out of a meeting feeling angry or insulted. But I tell you, if you approach the situation - and therefore the person - assertively, you hold on to your own power. Yes, you may still have some negative feelings, but being able to say to yourself “I handled that well; I held on to my values and I communicated assertively” is far healthier than the self message “I always feel so powerless; I wish I had said…….”.

And to finish off, go and talk to someone you trust about it to release all that pent up frustration - that’s healthy!

There are numerous assertive communication techniques available to you to practice with and use in situations where you would like to regain control and your personal power. These are just a couple of ideas that may just help you. If you would like to explore this some more, my book “Dare To Be You and Create the Life You Want” has some great chapters about personal power, assertiveness and lots more. See for yourself !

Footnote

If you have experienced a feeling of powerlessness in a similar or other situation and you have discovered a way of dealing with it, I would love to hear from you. I am putting together a booklet of ideas and feedback I receive from people (citing them as the author of their idea/s of course). I see this as a great tool to share with each other and with people who find themselves in these situations and don’t know what to do.

So, if you have an idea or strategy you would like to share, send them over - lesley@positivelyou.com

There are numerous strategies for helping you to make decisions, so that’s the plan in this article - to give you some tools for your own toolbox. What you have to do with these suggestions is to try them out, see what fits and what works for you.

We always have small and large decisions to make in life, from daily activities and task decisions to setting long-term goals for our future. We make decisions within our relationships, how we plan to look after our health, our career path - in fact, in every facet of our lives there are decisions to be made, even some we unconsciously make.

And we are all so different in what we find difficult or scary in the decisions we have to make.

The three tools provided here focus more on helping you with the conscious decisions facing you in your life. Some of them may not be as relevant as others, depending on what areas you find okay and areas you experience difficulties with making decisions for yourself. But these are tried and true tools that any one of us can use successfully.

1.   Write it down

When you have a significant decision to make, you can really get to grips with what you will do by writing everything down. Start with the outcome you are aiming for, then identify every step you think will be involved to get there. Making decisions around all those smaller steps is much easier.

2.    Talk to other people

Talking through the decision/s you are trying to make can be so helpful. When I find myself in a quandary as to what I should or want to do - when it’s an important decision for me - I ask for advice and support from someone else, to see what they think or what they would do in a similar situation. This can provide you with alternatives and other options you may not have considered, as you seek out other perspectives.

Make sure to talk with people who are good listeners and who won’t try to tell you what to do and make the decision for you.

3.   This is a really useful, practical tool: What is the best and worst that can happen?

Divide a piece of paper in half. At the top left-hand side, write in “What’s the best that can happen?” and on the right-hand side, “What’s the worst that can happen?” Or use language that suits you, such as “Positives” and “Negatives” or “If I do this…..” and “If I don’t do this…..” Whichever you believe will help your thinking.

Now you have spaces to brainstorm your thoughts about what would or could happen if you decide on a certain action or pathway….and what might not happen as a consequence also.

Do you get the picture?

If you think you are an indecisive person, there may be other things going on in your life that create this behaviour in you, some which you may not even be aware of. For example, you may be in a relationship where your partner is stronger or more forthright in making decisions and you find yourself letting them take over that role for both of you.

Whatever the reason for your indecisiveness, keep exploring ideas and different strategies that can help you take the indecision out of making decisions for yourself.

To explore more tools and strategies to help you make decisions, my online e-course “Values and Beliefs” is a six-week course that helps you identify your core values and realise how these guide the decisions and chocies you make in life. To find out more and to enrol, visit the Positively Shopping Guide .

What does it mean to have a positive relationship with another person? When I think of this statement, I come up with thoughts of

Y Respect for their point of view

Y Appreciating the time spent with them

Y Recognising their individuality

Y Accepting differences of opinion

Y Knowing you can ask them for advice as you work through an issue

Y Being more than willing to offer your time and advice to them

What do you think of? Reading the last two points there, one thing to emphasise is that a positive relationship is a reciprocal thing – the relationship is based on mutual respect for each other’s rights and uniqueness as individuals.

With that in mind, what can you do to help create and maintain positive relationships in your life?  A lot of this will be based on what you bring to the relationship - what you are willing to offer, how much of you you invest in it, how much time and energy you are willing and able to give (remember, if the other person in this relationship was reading this right now, they would be getting the same message!).

Here’s a short exercise to get you started in your thinking about what you can do to create the positive relationships you want in your life.

1.  Think about a past or current relationship you believe was/is positive. This may be with a friend, a work colleague, your partner, mother
2. If you want to, write down everything you can think of to describe the things that make that relationship so good. You might write sentences, lots of descriptive words or draw symbols or pictures.
3. Next, underneath this list, write down what you believe you contribute to the relationship that must create that positiveness. Ask yourself the question: “What qualities do you have that influence the relationship with that other person?”  It will be interesting to see how many of your ideas are reflected from your first list. 

4. Okay, now lastly, think about this – how do you know that what you bring to the relationship adds to it being so positive?

  We can take so many things in life for granted and only really appreciate them when we lose or about to lose them. Taking some time and space to think about the good, positive things in our lives leads to a real sense of enrichment, which then becomes a daily reality for us. 

Building positive relationships in your life is just one of many ideas for using your time and finding some space to appreciate your life and realising what aspects of it you want to nurture and sustain. Click here to read a preview of my Special Report “Building High Quality Relationships with Others” and to purchase a copy of this Report, see the great deal on offer for you!

1. Clearly identify your symptoms and
2. Figure out the cause or causes of these symptoms

 Near the end of this article, I will suggest a couple of actions you could take to really start trying to reduce or eliminate these unhelpful, unhealthy symptoms and the stress factor causing them. Okay, find yourself a quiet space where you won’t be interrupted and try and find a half to one hour of time to do this.

Step One: What are the symptoms?

On a piece of paper, write down words to describe as specifically as possible what you are feeling. Your list may look something like this:

• Tired
• Sore shoulders
• No interest
• Bored
• Headache
• Low energy
• Wanting to sleep
• Stinging eyes
• Negative thoughts
• Not wanting to make decisions

 When you have created your list, look back over the words to see which symptoms are physical in nature, which are emotional in nature. Strategies you can use to manage these two different ‘types’ of symptoms (physical and emotional) will differ quite markedly.

Step Two: What is causing these symptoms?

This can be the tough part as it is not always clear what is causing how you feel. You need to dig deep and really think about why you feel this way. I can’t do that for you; however, I can give you some ideas to get you started…….. 

• It may be that you have been working a lot of overtime lately and although you have felt like you coped fine, your body is now telling you it needs a break
• Maybe you have a lot of projects or tasks to complete and there never seems to be enough time to get everything done to your satisfaction
• You may be worrying about something that is unresolved. Even though we don’t always associate ‘tiredness’ and ‘lack of energy’ with worrying about something external, our bodies will again send us signals to tell us something isn’t right
• What sort of expectations do you have of yourself? Are they realistic? Are other people’s expectations making you feel overwhelmed or unworthy?

 Okay, now that you have done the more difficult parts of what is commonly referred to as “managing stress”, here a re a couple of strategies for you to try, to combat those symptoms of tiredness and lack of motivation, and also, to try and deal with the stress that is causing them.

Strategy One:

This can give you temporary relief while you still figure out what is causing the symptoms:* Keep in balance your Nutrition, Sleep and Physical Exercise. Make sure you are eating plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, and drinking plenty of water through the day. Combine this with taking regular breaks from whatever you are doing and getting plenty of fresh air bursts.

Strategy Two:

This strategy aims to give a longer-term solution. Of course, it does depend on what your symptoms are and the cause of them. But I’ve found this one works wonders for me:Tap into your support network and talk things through with someone you know will listen and not judge you. Alternatively, start a Personal Journal and write down your thoughts and feelings using a problem solution approach to help you work through it. Don’t use this opportunity to talk (or write) around the problem. Actually talk about how you feel and why. This can often lead to you working out how to manage the stress causing your symptoms without the other person having time to offer you advice or suggestions.

There are hundreds of different stress management strategies and plenty more discussion points about why and how people react to and manage their stress in different ways. So the strategies I suggest above may not be the answers for you. You may need to explore this topic further and discover management strategies that do work for you.The main point here is that there is no point in just using a stress management strategy to get rid of stress. You first of all need to know what you are managing - the symptoms - and why you are managing them – the cause of your symptoms, therefore the cause of your stress.

To explore this topic further, I recommend getting a copy of my “Lessening the Stress” Card Game, which has over 40 different cards, each with a stress management strategy for you to use in your own life. Click here to read more about this Card Game and purchase your copy by visiting my Positively Shopping Guide.