I recently took up a cold shower challenge and can say the first shower certainly woke me up and I don’t mean from a good night‘s sleep… it really gave me a jolt and got me thinking.
What am I doing – it wasn’t about taking a cold shower it was about my life and business. I was in a tired space and had got into a negative loop of thinking about all the things I wasn’t doing or had not yet done and getting stressed out about it.
The cold shower was my wakeup call… it’s time for a realignment. I made a cup of tea and thought what do I want. And right off the bat I slipped and found myself thinking of what I didn’t want which wasn’t helpful because it was wrapped up in negativity. The fix is easy, remember to focus on the “want”, you know you can – where focus goes energy flows.
The second realignment is get specific – the pre-shower thoughts were “I am not making enough phone calls and don’t have a good work life balance. If we breakdown the first thought not getting on the phone enough there are three problems the first one is the thought is negative, the second it’s rather vague and third… if I’m honest, I don’t want to be making more calls, I want to be having more thought-provoking conversations with the right people.
As you can see the thoughts are slowly becoming more focused but we can do even better by asking more clarifying questions like what is meant by thought-provoking and who are the right people and how will that help achieve a better work life balance?
From a coaching perspective my thought-provoking question is, “what do you want to achieve” and the right people to chat to are those that can answer that question and are willing to get into the specifics.
For example, when a client says, I want to be a better leader that’s too vague and my question is – how could you be a better leader, when we have that answer we are getting somewhere. By being curious and asking the “how” question the client has moved into a solution mode and we can start to understand what the real issues are; to be more commanding or perhaps be more empathic or better equipped to handle conflict…
The third realignment, acknowledge what has been accomplished… you know what I am talking about it’s all those tasks that did get completed, the clients you worked with, the proposal you submitted, the content you produced and all those bits and pieces that got discounted. These positive thoughts release those feel good hormones, which relieve stress and are energising. Feeling good and energised will put you in a much better more positive frame of mind to start working toward the desired goal – even over the phone a person can feel a smile.
Quick recap for a quick realignment:
- Revisit what you want
- Get specific
- Recognise and celebrate what you have accomplished
- Take action
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