The other day I was doing a thorough review of the analytics of my site with Marketing Coach, Jim Connolly.

We discovered an interesting thing.

Lots of people are reading my stuff at 2am.

There could be two reasons for this:

Either you’re so passionate about what you’re doing that you’re burning the candle on social media searches. Or some problem is keeping you awake, enticing you online in search of solutions.

My writing and outlook on life can be very upbeat. Sometimes I struggle to get across that I know what it’s like to see no solution to your problems. But the truth is I’ve been there myself in spades. Which means I’m not just well equipped, but also delighted to support you find your way through whatever challenges you’re currently facing.

You’re unlikely to disclose what’s going on for you on a post comment. But I just want you to know that I love getting emails and calls out of the blue from people who have read the blog and just want to reach out confidentially.

So, if there’s something you’d like help with, email me on christine (at) adifferentkindofwork.com, or pick the phone up to me on +44 (0) 7767 244977.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Related posts:

1. 4 Reframes To Get Your Career Groove Back

The Detox In Brief

Here’s the journey we’ve been on that’s helping you get a grip on things:

• First, Set Yourself Goals gave you an exercise to help you get clear about what you really, really want from life.
• The Critical Few Activities That Need Your Focus challenged you to consider the key things you ought to be concentrating on if you’re serious about getting off the hamster wheel.
• How Is Time Spending You? got you confronting the realities of how you’re actually spending your energies right now. And,
• Time Shifting For Success had you figuring the difference between what you say you want and what you’re currently doing. And zeroing in on what really needs to change.

So, you’ve got lots of things that you’ve begun to put into action. But how do you keep up and build on your own momentum?

What Gets Focus Gets Results

The organising power of the brain is immense. Give something enough thought and attention and you’ll bring it to life. Consider this: all of the best works, be they artistic or entrepreneurial, began as ideas in someone’s head. It just so happens that their creators dared to put the energy and focus into manifesting them.

Those goals and plans you’ve just spent the last two weeks hatching now need similar commitment and belief from you. They need to be nurtured. They need you to have an active system of planning, doing and reviewing that turns them into hardcore reality.

Today’s challenge is for you to decide how to do just that.

What works for me is to hand write my goals in a beautiful notebook and review them regularly. 5 minutes a day is all it takes. I’ve got a routine of taking myself to my local coffee shop, treating myself to a good strong coffee, and checking in on myself. Every day, I figure out one or two key things that, if I do them, are going to help me progress my life plans.

Morning coffee might not be your cup of tea, if you’ll excuse the pun. But find your own routine. Your own positive habit that’s going to make an ongoing difference. And don’t just take my word for it that this kind of process works. Check out fellow blogger Karen Ruby’s view on it too.

Whatever works.

The point is to bring what you want to the forefront of your mind even if briefly every day. And if you can build in a longer weekly or monthly review so much the better. If that feels like a chore, find ways to put fun into the equation. Go somewhere quirky to think and write. Use funky pens or your favourite note-making tools. Put your favourite music on and rock it.

Make the decision to do it, and watch day by day as your life and work change.

So, that’s the end of the series, folks. Thanks for being here with me. I look forward to hearing how things are changing for you!

Related posts:

1. Introducing The Two-Week Work Detox Series
2. The Critical Few Activities That Need Your Focus
3. How Is Time Spending You?

In fact, if you take a look at the ideal week you created in the third post, with the 24 hour snapshot you made in the fourth, chances are you see quite a mismatch.

So, today your answers to three questions will help you zero in on what really needs to change.

What needs to stay in your life?

What’s already good that just needs to remain as is? Remember that change doesn’t mean throwing the baby out with the bath water.

What needs to go?

What are all the things you’re doing that have reached their sell-by date? What are the attitudes you’re holding onto, implicit in what you’re currently focusing on, that need to be ditched?

What one thing can you do right now to begin the process of moving away from these things?

What needs to be added to your life?

What’s missing that you need to start doing? How are you going to add these things? What’s the action you can take right now, today, that will get the ball rolling on this?

As you work through all three questions, think too about who can help you, and what resources you can lean on.

So, off you go and make some changes, not forgetting of course to share some of your decisions and insights with me.

Join me again on Friday, for a wrap-up discussion talking about how you keep your good intentions alive over the longer term. If you want to be sure not to miss it, sign up here to get it by email!

Earlier posts in the series

Introducing The Two-Week Work Detox

First, Set Yourself Goals

The Critical Few Activities That Need Your Focus

How Is Time Spending You?

photo credit: nnes

Related posts:

1. First, Set Yourself Goals
2. The Critical Few Activities That Need Your Focus
3. How Is Time Spending You?

But what are you currently focussing on?

You’ll get the answer to this question by looking at how you’re spending your time. Bottom line, if you’ve been feeling that work and life need a bit of a sort out, the chances are there’s a mismatch between what you should be focused on, and what you’re actually doing.

I take some of my coaching clients through this process in detail, and the occasional one says, “yes, but there are lots of things I have to do.” The thing is we don’t have to do anything. You may imagine that you have little choice about how you spend your time. That, my friend, is mistake number one. That, indeed, is allowing time to spend you. It’s giving over your focus to things that are not in keeping with who you are and what you say you want.

We’ll get into more detail about the whole mismatch thing in the next post.

But today’s exercise is all about getting to grips with what an average day in your life actually looks like.

A Day In The Life Of…

Over the next 24 hour, what I’d like you do, is step back and review your moment by moment activities. Set a half-hourly, recurring alarm using the timer on your computer, phone, watch or whatever. And when the buzzer goes, make a note of just how you’ve spent the last 30 minutes.

No need to analyse. No need to change what you do. Just observe and make notes.

Bring them back here on Wednesday, ready for the next stage in the process. If you want to be sure not to miss it, sign up here to get it by email!

What occurs to you as you set yourself the task of doing this exercise?

Earlier posts from the series:

Introducing The Two-Week Work Detox

First, Set Yourself Goals

The Critical Few Activities That Need Your Focus

photo credit: Robert von Bangert

Related posts:

1. Time Shifting For Success
2. How To Maintain Your Work Detox In 5 Minutes A Day
3. The Critical Few Activities That Need Your Focus

You may have noticed, as a few of the commentors did, that the questions around goals in the last post were deliberately open. They did not ask you to focus on your current job or your status quo life. They may have taken you, to use Marion Anderson’s words, into the realms on “how else…?” or “what else…?”  That’s fine.

If they didn’t it’s time to go back to your answers to those original questions and challenge yourself. Are you really stepping up to your own plate in the way you’ve approached them?

Off you go and check. I’ll be right here when you’re ready.

Ready?

Today’s key takeaway point

Goals only get realised when you decide you’re going to achieve them, and then put your focus and energy behind doing just that.

It’s that simple. If you say you want something, but you do something else, you’ll get something else. In which case you haven’t got goals, you’ve got fantasies.

Exercise

So, what are the things you must do to enable you to achieve your goals? Start off with a list, or a mindmap, or whatever works for you when you’re thinking freely. Then look at your list, and figure out the few things that, if you gave them all your attention, would really allow you to motor.

Then

What proportion of your time would you ideally need to spend on these things to see them gain traction?

Note, I’m not asking you to think about what proportion of your available time after you’ve done your job and all your other chores. I’m asking, blank sheet of paper, if you were reinventing your life – because, in a way, you really are – how much time do your key activities deserve?

Draw yourself a blank grid of seven days and map it out. Or, better still, download my Ideal Week pdf and use it.

Create your ideal week, step back and feel how good it is to see your life mapped out in front of you, full of the things you really want to be doing.

This is the blueprint you need to take your work detox to the next level on Monday. Meantime, have a great weekend and don’t forget to let me know how it’s all shaping up for you!

Introducing The Two-Week Work Detox Series

First, Set Yourself Goals

photo credit: Dominic Sayers

Related posts:

1. How Is Time Spending You?
2. First, Set Yourself Goals
3. Time Shifting For Success

Often at work and in life we become so accustomed to living out other people’s expectations of us we spend most of our time on automatic pilot doing task after task without consideration for whether it actually serves us any useful purpose or not.

What do you really, really want?

That’s really the crux of today’s post. Because unless you can answer that question clearly, and put your energy behind achieving it, you’re going to find it difficult to break free from any toxic work practices.

So, the first step of the detox process is to take time to figure out what your own goals are.

Now, I’m not asking you to regurgitate the targets you’ve agreed with your board or senior manager, or the goals you’ve written in your 2010 goal-setting form. They may – or may not – be part of the equation. Rather, I’m challenging you to think about yourself.

Here’s how.

Take half an hour or so – longer if you can – and set your imagination free. In your mind, picture yourself having the working life of your dreams:

• What are you doing?
• Where are you doing it?
• Who is working with you? What role are they playing in your picture?
• When are you doing it?
• How are you doing it?
• What purpose does this work serve in your life?
• How does it reward you?
• What else, other than work, is integral to this picture.
• Who, other than your work colleagues, are important to you in this picture.
• What are you thinking, and how are you feeling about considering your working life in this way?

That’s it for today, folks. The next post, and the next step in the detox process is coming up this Friday. Don’t miss it. Subscribehere for email updates.

If you want any help with this, email me at christine@adifferentkindofwork.com, pick up the phone on +44 (0) 7767 244977, or catch me on Twitter.

Oh, and don’t forget to leave a comment and let me know how you get on!

Introducing The Two-Week Work Detox Series

photo credit: TheMarque

Related posts:

1. How Is Time Spending You?
2. Time Shifting For Success
3. The Critical Few Activities That Need Your Focus

The problem is that, unless you do something fundamental to change your status quo, the feel good factor from your expensive break will last about two days.

Then you’re once more back on the hamster wheel, living only for your next break.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Welcome to The Two-Week Work Detox, a series of six articles coming to you over the next couple of weeks. It’s going to work like this:

• Each post will have a brief but chunky bit of content, followed by self-coach homework and/or questions.
• You’ll need something to capture your thoughts, ideas, and actions in. A funky notebook, a Moleskin, your iPad, laptop, or voice-recorder. Whatever works for you really.
• Tune in on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for each update. Better still, make sure you’re subscribed to the blog to get each new post via email.
• Bring your courage, enthusiasm and determination to kick your work-life in the ass.

Sound good?

So, before we get started with the series, I’d love to hear what aspects of your working life you’d like to change? And how can this series help you achieve that?

photo credit: coolinsights

Related posts:

1. How To Maintain Your Work Detox In 5 Minutes A Day
2. First, Set Yourself Goals
3. How Is Time Spending You?

If you worked through the 10 coaching questions in the first post in this series, you’ll have a much better understanding of what stresses you at work and why. You’ll also know what you’d prefer to believe about yourself around work, and how you’d prefer to feel.

But how would you know okay-ness at work if you were to be it? Here are 10 examples to try on for size:

• Believing that your work has meaning for you beyond your day to day tasks.
• Knowing that you have gifts and talents to use at work and nurturing them.
• Managing your time and presence at work in a way that works for both you and your employer.
• Pushing back when your workload goes beyond what you can deliver and stay feeling good about yourself.
• Taking responsibility for setting and meeting your performance goals.
• Telling colleagues when their behaviour doesn’t gel for you, and asking them for what you need instead.
• Trusting that other people can take care of themselves.
• Withholding your judgement of others.
• Believing that when you ask for something at work, or share your point of view, you will be listened to.
• Taking feedback that supports you and is helpful to your development; not taking on negative comments.

What does being okay at work look like to you? I’d love to hear some of your examples.

In the third and final part of the series, I’ll be saying more about how the past influences our work and workplace choices, and how we can break free of its less productive influences. If you don’t want to miss it, subscribe here!

Related posts:

1. How to kick workplace stress in the butt: part one

This is the first of a special three-part series on tackling stress at work.

Stress at work is big news. Figures from the UK’s Health and Safety Executive, reported in the Evening Standard last week, indicate that intolerable office hours and excessive work demands triggered 96,800 cases of anxiety or depression-related illnesses last year in London alone.

The Standard goes on to relate how bosses are being ordered by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence to get touchy-feely with their employees to remedy this problem. But whilst a few more people-friendly bosses wouldn’t go amiss, I don’t believe this kind of mandate helps you in the short-term.

Let me tell you why: because work does not of itself cause stress.

Stress is an experience you create for yourself in response to what’s happening outside of you. It’s the result of some hard-wired, faulty beliefs about yourself having a field day at your expense.

“Stress comes from giving externals power over our life, which comes from the position of victim, of putting the source of happiness outside our life and denying the power of our own mind.”

Healing and Recovery, David R Hawkins, 2009

Most people imagine they have no choice but to suffer. In fact, you have more choice than you think. And exercising it positively, in your favour, can make a world of difference.

Here are 10 coaching questions to start making stress a thing of the past:

1. What is making you stressed?

   After a while, feeling stressed can pervade your whole life. Rather than trying to deal with the stress elephant, break it down into specific things that are stressing you. They might include: a bullying boss, conflicting work priorities, a highly pressurised workload, other people’s behaviour towards you, your partner or family’s attitude to your career choice, or the threat of job change or redundancy.

2. How are you experiencing stress?

   Instead of using the blanket term “stress”, identify exactly how it’s affecting you. What specifically are you feeling? Worried? Frightened? Angry? Frustrated? Depressed? Despairing? Over-excited? The more you can unearth and name your feelings, the better you can deal with them.

3. Are these feelings familiar to you?

   There’s a branch of psychology called Transactional Analysis. In it they talk about each of us having our “favourite rotten feeling”. These are feelings that are uncomfortable, but they’re also ones we’ve gotten well acquainted with over the years. Their purpose is to confirm things we believe about ourselves.

   I wonder where you might have experienced these feelings before?

4. When you feel these things, what are you believing about yourself?

   What goes on in your head when you’re feeling this way? Say you’re frustrated and angry, thinking you can never get to the bottom of your work pile, you might be saying to yourself:

   • “No matter how hard I try, I can never achieve what I want.” OR
   • “My life is a constant struggle.”
5. Where do these beliefs about yourself come from?

   When did you first learn that that is how things have to be? The chances are that it’ll have been at some point in your childhood. Take, for example, the belief, “my life is a constant struggle.” It’s often learned from parents who are experiencing life as tough, and have chosen to respond to it by believing that you have to struggle to get on in life. In the process they either implicitly, or explicitly teach you that this is how life is. So your stress default position develops.

6. How might the scenario you’re currently in at work reflect your early experiences?

   Sticking with our example, it’s possible that you’ve unconsciously chosen a company and organisational culture that piles on problems for itself; that believes you’ve got to battle to beat the competition.

   Give it some thought: how does your current work environment parallel your younger experiences?

7. How does hanging on to your current beliefs and feelings serve you?

   If you believe that “my life is a struggle”, in a strange way it gives you the impetus to exert yourself and get the job done. But the more you focus on the struggle and not what you’re achieving, the more you reinforce how useless you think you are. The worse you feel about yourself, the more “stressed” you’re going to feel.

8. How would you rather feel?

   Maybe it’s things like confident, calm, on top of my workload, achieving what I need to, at peace with myself. Whatever they are, allow yourself to name them.

9. What would you rather believe?

   From conceiving that “my life is always difficult”, you could choose instead to believe “my life allows me to effortlessly achieve what I need to.”

10. What must you do differently as a result of shifting your belief?

    Shifting your beliefs will challenge you to do things in a different way. Fundamentally, you’re beginning to accept that you’re okay as you are and that it’s fine to expect life to go your way.

    You may have to be more assertive in your own or other people’s regard, this might look like challenging conflicting work priorities, or choosing to take care of yourself by paying attention to working hours.

    Thinking this way is tough. It goes against the grain of all we’ve been taught in our early lives. But it is not impossible to feel okay about oneself and live in the corporate world.

In the next article, we’re going to be looking in more detail at what it means to be okay at work. If you don’t want to miss it, subscribe here!

Related posts:

1. How to kick workplace stress in the butt: part two