Welcome to the first of my monthly newsletters! How incredible is this! Who would have thought a year ago I would be putting pen to paper (well fingers to keyboard) to write a newsletter…definitely not me!
This last 10 months have been very exciting for me, but also filled with a great deal of uncertainty so I thought I would take this opportunity to write a little about the unknown quantities that surrounds us all and share with you a few “tricks” I am using to make everything a little less scary!
As you may be aware this year I took the giant leap and left the corporate world of I.T. to follow my dream and passion of owning my own health and wellness business. When I left my job as a project manager in London, I have to admit to not having any kind of plan; I was desperately in need of some time to gather my thoughts, which given the hours I was working was just not possible…so I left with not much more than a wish for a little time out and a simple dream of creating my own business, to help other people get back to good health. As you can imagine for someone that is a bit of a control freak it has been a tough journey to this point and it is only just beginning. Here are 3 ideas that I have tried to embrace over the last year, I hope they will be of use to you too…
Try New Stuff: As adults we tend to shy away from trying new things in case we end up looking foolish, but it is only by trying new things that we ultimately learn how to do them and grow as individuals. I believe children generally find this slightly easier, mainly because much of what they do in their daily life is new so they are used to grabbing hold of new experiences rather than shying away from them as we do.
Ask an audience of young children who would like to be part of an experiment and most hands will go up immediately; ask a bunch of adults and a few tentative hands will be half raised and the rest of us will be saying in our heads, we want more information before we do anything as crazy as putting our hand up! I feel like my hand has been raised for the past 6 months. Have I been scared? Hell, yes! Most of the time! I am continuously putting myself out of my comfort zone which is never easy, but I feel more alive than I have in a number of years and it is ultimately helping me do something I really love! So my advice is the next time someone asks you to do something new and different don’t think too much about it and just say “yes, ok!”.
Get It Wrong: As I mentioned above we want to know that the things we try for the first time will go well. The only trouble with that is the first time we do most things, things generally don’t go how we would like them to! It is only by doing them over and over that we can hone our skills, learn from our mistakes and become better and better. Believe me I know how frightening this can be, but try to keep in mind that by doing something new for the first time means you will know more for next time; i.e. this experience will only be new this time, next time I will have more information and it won’t be such a big deal.
A good example of this is, driving to a new place holds a fair amount of anxiety for most of us because we do not know the route or what to expect at the other end. However once we have done the journey it is no longer such a problem and the more we do it the easier it becomes. If we end up getting lost, sure it’s a pain, it might even mean we are late, but it generally isn’t life threatening and we might find somewhere we never would have found if all had gone perfectly. It is a wonderful skill to be able to find the silver lining in every situation, especially the nightmares! So go out there and be prepared to get it wrong, re-evaluate with your new found knowledge and try it again!
Make Better Pictures: Many of us when faced with an uncertain situation start forming pictures in our heads about what will happen. These pictures tend to portray the worst scenarios possible and make everything much more frightening. For instance, you have been invited to an evening event and you only know the organiser, you start to think about how hard the evening will be, you see yourself sat on your own feeling miserable as no-one is talking to you. My challenge for you here is to make better pictures, visualise how things would look if everything went well; visualise yourself talking easily with the other people there and really embracing the evening, see yourself having fun! It may sound strange and is sometimes tough to do but trust me it really does work!
I hope these are helpful to you and I look forward to catching up with you soon!
For more information about the therapies I offer or to book an appointment please call 07814 019180, email wellbeing@familymcp.com or go to my Facebook age: https://www.facebook.com/lorimcphersonwellbeing
Health and happiness
Lori