Setbacks need not make us cry

Although it is fair to accept they happen, setbacks need not make us cry. Whether we mean this literally or figuratively is of little relevance.

Once an event, situation or other unwanted issue arrives in the form of a setback, it is up to us to manage our reaction to it and the impact it has or could have on our plans.

Finding a positive side to a supposedly negative occurrence is not always possible. Nevertheless, once again setbacks need not make us cry. We might be able to at least find learning within the moment and use this to help further our progress.

With so many projects probably on the go at any one time, it is only right to almost expect the occasional challenge. Perhaps we should actually be concerned if all proceeds as hoped for.

But accepting passively a disappointment or interruption to our schedule is not what this ‘Setbacks need not make us cry’ post is about. Choosing a proactive approach, to make the best of whatever turns up, is.

However, thinking about the idea that setbacks need not make us cry, I’m curious to learn how you handle difficulties along the way to your desired objectives. To share your ideas here, please leave a comment below.

In the meantime, thanks for reading this ‘Setbacks need not make us cry’ offering today.

Brian.

About Brian

Brian Groves DipM MCIM Chartered Marketer, Coach, Trainer and Author, supplies professional and personal development to a portfolio of corporate and individual clients.

As an Adjunct Professor at the Catholic University of Milan, Italy, Brian taught a postgraduate course, using four characters taken from dramatic texts as coaching clients, to examine various work-related performance matters.

Brian’s goal is to support through coaching, training and writing all who wish to live their potential, in education, work or life in general.

You can contact Brian via e-mail (brian@bgdtcoaching.com), by clicking on the icons or leaving a comment below.

Advertisements

Is seeing red our most beneficial response to the moment?

Anger has its place in our toolkit and occasionally is useful as a way to focus our efforts but then again, is seeing red our most beneficial response to the moment?

We might wish to lash out and let our frustration have its time in the spotlight. However, rarely are we rewarded with a positive outcome when this occurs. Just as we heighten the tension in an already stressful situation, others will likewise react to our outburst in a similar way.

Asking ourselves ‘Is seeing red our most beneficial response to the moment?’ and taking a while to ponder our answer goes a long way toward managing our reaction. After an appropriate amount of reflection – each of us knows how much is appropriate – we are in a position to take action, react or let go.

If we are the type of people who like to keep our emotions in check, a laser-like sharp-tongued quip would impact greatly on those around us. Accordingly, the reply to the enquiry ‘Is seeing red our most beneficial response to the moment?’ is a resounding ‘Yes’.

Folk more inclined to puff and blow at the slightest provocation have in a certain sense already given away any advantage by responding angrily as ‘Seeing red’ will be viewed by everyone as ’their natural way of being’.

All in all, finding our ‘best’ approach to life remains a personal quest. To join the conversation here on the issue of the question ‘Is seeing red our most beneficial response to the moment?’ please leave a comment below.

Kindest regards.

Brian.

About Brian

Brian Groves DipM MCIM Chartered Marketer, Coach, Trainer and Author, supplies professional and personal development to a portfolio of corporate and individual clients.

As an Adjunct Professor at the Catholic University of Milan, Italy, Brian taught a postgraduate course, using four characters taken from dramatic texts as coaching clients, to examine various work-related performance matters.

Brian’s goal is to support through coaching, training and writing all who wish to live their potential, in education, work or life in general.

You can contact Brian via e-mail (brian@bgdtcoaching.com), by clicking on the icons or leaving a comment below.

What is stopping us from letting go of unnecessary baggage?

Coaching clients often appreciate tough questions and, hopefully, you too will find benefit from pondering this one: What is stopping us from letting go of unnecessary baggage?

We might be carrying around with us any or all of the following items:

• Out-dated beliefs about ourselves;
• Negative input from people no longer part of our life;
• Unfair comparisons regarding ourselves and others;
• No longer valid opinions about religion, politics and so on;
• Habits out of sync with our life today;
• Acquaintances who represent our past instead of our present.

What is stopping us from letting go of this unnecessary baggage? Perhaps our answer can be found among the list here:

• Fear of fully embracing who we are today;
• Concerns about offending folk even if they are no longer part of our life;
• Our identity is linked to the baggage, causing doubts about our ability to survive without it;
• Uncertainty as to whether they are truly items of unnecessary baggage.

Attempting to release everything immediately is a strategy. We could also implement a step-by-step approach and give up each item/thought/idea one at a time, starting with the most obviously redundant piece of baggage.

It takes time, however, to adjust to life without such things but by starting today we give ourselves the chance to make the adjustment sooner rather than later. So, what is stopping us from letting go of unnecessary baggage?

Thanks for being here and please don’t hesitate to share your input on the matter of ‘What is stopping us from letting go of unnecessary baggage?’ by leaving a comment below.

Kindest regards.

Brian.

About Brian

Brian Groves DipM MCIM Chartered Marketer, Coach, Trainer and Author, supplies professional and personal development to a portfolio of corporate and individual clients.

As an Adjunct Professor at the Catholic University of Milan, Italy, Brian taught a postgraduate course, using four characters taken from dramatic texts as coaching clients, to examine various work-related performance matters.

Brian’s goal is to support through coaching, training and writing all who wish to live their potential, in education, work or life in general.

You can contact Brian via e-mail (brian@bgdtcoaching.com), by clicking on the icons or leaving a comment below.

Benefits of freeing our potential

The benefits of freeing our potential are most likely many. At any moment, the most relevant will be linked to our current mindset.

Focusing on the efforts we make each day to bring our best to the table of life, I think the following two are especially important benefits of freeing our potential.

1) There can be no question as to whether we are giving our all to all we do. We are living fully as we engage with the moment.

Likewise, there are no doubts as to if we could be doing more, right now our efforts represent our potential.

2) Operating in such a mode, and hoping others are doing the same, the world gets to experience the real us rather than a half-hearted version. If some folk decide we are ‘too much’ for them then that’s their choice. Playing small to please others is surely a waste of our potential.

Other benefits of freeing our potential are, as mentioned above, linked to the mindset of each of us at any moment.

To share your ideas related to the issue here, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.

In the meantime, thanks for reading this ‘Benefits of freeing our potential’ post.

Brian.

About Brian

Brian Groves DipM MCIM Chartered Marketer, Coach, Trainer and Author, supplies professional and personal development to a portfolio of corporate and individual clients.

As an Adjunct Professor at the Catholic University of Milan, Italy, Brian taught a postgraduate course, using four characters taken from dramatic texts as coaching clients, to examine various work-related performance matters.

Brian’s goal is to support through coaching, training and writing all who wish to live their potential, in education, work or life in general.

You can contact Brian via e-mail (brian@bgdtcoaching.com), by clicking on the icons or leaving a comment below.

Adding a splash of creativity to the day

What would change if we were to indulge in adding a splash of creativity to the day?

Hearing a group of postgraduate students moan and groan about room changes, timetable clashes and such like, makes me wonder how they will deal with the typical chaos associated with many working environments nowadays.

Deadlines brought forward, reports requiring last-minute additions, plus a whole host of other unexpected challenges are in their way adding a splash of creativity to the day we could say. Operating with flexibility is a skill worth acquiring and using in any setting, sooner rather than later.

So, getting back to the concept of adding a splash of creativity to the day, what would be different if we were to put ourselves mentally into the shoes of those with whom we are feeling stressed?

Let’s imagine ourselves as call centre operators before we send them away with a flea in their ear for having dared called us as part of their job. And to what extent can we experience empathy for airport ground crew who are attempting to make the best of trying situations caused by poorly produced check-in procedures?

Please feel free to share your input on the issue of adding a splash of creativity to the day by leaving a comment below.

Kindest regards.

Brian.

About Brian

Brian Groves DipM MCIM Chartered Marketer, Coach, Trainer and Author, supplies professional and personal development to a portfolio of corporate and individual clients.

As an Adjunct Professor at the Catholic University of Milan, Italy, Brian taught a postgraduate course, using four characters taken from dramatic texts as coaching clients, to examine various work-related performance matters.

Brian’s goal is to support through coaching, training and writing all who wish to live their potential, in education, work or life in general.

You can contact Brian via e-mail (brian@bgdtcoaching.com), by clicking on the icons or leaving a comment below.

How rounded is our approach to life?

Appreciating there are occasions in which issues need to be faced in a direct fashion, without even pondering opposing strategies, how rounded is our approach to life?

We might wish to think about our ‘usual reaction’ to challenges forming our everyday routine. Letting some things go whilst concentrating on others, more significant items we can say, is part of what it may mean to have a rounded approach to life.

On the other hand, taking a stand on every issue, confronting people before us as if each of their words and actions were declarations of hostilities, suggests we are anything but rounded.

There are times this confrontational attitude could be viewed as appropriate. All the same, knowing when to hold our ground and when to, figuratively or literally, walk away, is a skill worth developing. So, how rounded is our approach to life?

When considering the question ‘How rounded is our approach to life?’, the words of Don Miguel Ruiz are worth recalling: “Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream.”

Thanks for reading this ‘How rounded is our approach to life?’ post today.

Kindest regards.

Brian.

About Brian

Brian Groves DipM MCIM Chartered Marketer, Coach, Trainer and Author, supplies professional and personal development to a portfolio of corporate and individual clients.

As an Adjunct Professor at the Catholic University of Milan, Italy, Brian has taught a postgraduate course, using four characters taken from dramatic texts as coaching clients, to examine various work-related performance matters.

Brian’s goal is to support through coaching, training and writing all who wish to live their potential, in education, work or life in general.

You can contact Brian via e-mail (brian@bgdtcoaching.com), by clicking on the icons or leaving a comment below.

To what extent can nature clean up after us?

 

Any urban planners, construction experts or even waste disposal specialists reading this post may be able to pull the ideas expressed here to pieces.

It is not an article written on the twin pillars of facts and figures, merely a heartfelt pondering aloud, based on a love for our world, as to what extent can nature clean up after us?

Most locations in the so-called modernized world have a collection of derelict buildings that, for reasons certainly unbeknown to me, is neither being destroyed nor restored.

We hear so much about the need for more housing and that land to build new dwellings is at a premium nowadays.

Given these points, why are so many disused facilities just left to blight the landscape? To what extent can nature clean up after us?

Rather than asking “To what extent can nature clean up after us?”, the question possibly should be “Why should we expect nature to clean up after us?”

Thanks for reading this today.

Brian.

About Brian

Brian Groves DipM MCIM Chartered Marketer, Coach, Trainer and Author, supplies professional and personal development to a portfolio of corporate and individual clients.

As an Adjunct Professor at the Catholic University of Milan, Italy, Brian teaches a postgraduate course, using four characters taken from dramatic texts as coaching clients, to examine various work-related performance matters.

Brian’s goal is to support through coaching, training and writing all who wish to live their potential, in education, work or life in general.

You can contact Brian via e-mail (brian@bgdtcoaching.com), by clicking on the icons or leaving a comment below.