Life's lessons - swimming

Hello - first of all an apology for being a bit quiet on the blogging front - have been really buy working on some coaching programmes as well as a great weekend where lots of social events collided!
I am trailing out my first teleclass on helping parents develop good sleep habits for their children and am really enjoying it, so a big thanks to those parents (and children) who are my guinea pigs. I am also writing the copy for my website and will be able to launch that soon, very exciting!

Due to all of the above, today's post is going to be short and sweet.

I saw a wonderful thing at the gym today.
One of the regular attendees is a lovely woman, who is in her mid 50's, who always says hello and we've had a few chats in the steam room. Well today she had her first swimming lesson! Isn't that amazing? She was learning how to float. I take my hat off to her, she is an amazing example of how it is never to late to learn something new. I wish her all the best and really hope she quickly enjoys the world of swimming and feels a massive sense of accomplishment.

So if you think it's too late to try something new, take heart - it's not. Don't let age be an excuse and get out there and explore the potential that you have inside of you.

Fell the fear and do it anyway!

You're hired!

In the UK the latest series of The Apprentice has just finished and Sir Alan Sugar has found his new business partner from a group of ambitious young 20 somethings. Watching the series has been, as always, interesting. It is fun to see the people complete the tasks and how they go about it, as well as getting to know the individuals and how they act and react. So well done to Ricky.

What is interesting is that Sir Alan, the chairman of a huge company, actually does very little of the process himself. He delegates. This was one of the best bits of advice I was given when I became a manager. Delegate. (Thanks uncle!)
Sir Alan has two people who follow the teams doing the tasks and who report back to him. Even in the last episode where the final 4 candidates are being interviewed about their proposed businesses, Sir Alan wasn't among the interviewers, he had delegated again.

We too, can delegate more in our lives.

One process I use a lot is the 'turn it over to the manager' process. The basic premise is that instead of trying to control every area of our life and doing everything ourselves, we imagine that we are the the head of a big company and have employed a manager to do the work for us. Just like Sir Alan, we too can hand over things we want to happen to our manager - the universe, then relax and let the law of allowing to do its work.

I have a manager, for some reason I imagine him behind a desk, with lots of telephones on it and one of those green shaded banker's lamps, and when I send a request through, he picks up one of the phones and  re-delegates to the right department in the universe, to sort it out.

Last Friday I needed to renew my gym membership (a year has flown by!) and on the way there I sent a mental request to my manager that Greg was on duty at the gym reception, as I always get apprehensive about dealing with complicated things in French and he had been they guy I dealt with when setting up my original membership.
In the end, not only was Greg on duty, he knew it was time for me to renew my membership and offered me a slightly reduced payment for a 14 month contract. Fantastic!

You have to be quite specific for your requests. I often send out a quick request when I'm running late and ask for good transport connections so that I get to work a few minutes early to have time for a cup of tea! Then I find that when changing trains, I get to the platform just as a train is about to leave. Perfect, no hanging around.

This week I urge you all to hire a manager and have fun seeing what they can do for you!

If you want to know more about how some of these processes can work for you, then contact me and we can arrange a complimentary coaching session.