Spiral up or down?

When you woke this morning what choice did you make? Did you choose to spiral up or down?

I'd suggest if yesterday you were spiralling up that today you found it easy to continue to do the same. If yesterday was hard, you felt a little deflated or had let things get to you that continuing the spiral down may have been set as the default for today.

I've had many conversations with clients and friends about this over recent weeks and noticed the same in myself too. Let me give you my example:

It started with a cough which floored me for 2 weeks - I ended up staying in the house watching rubbish TV, sleeping a lot and eating rubbish too. For the following 4 weeks I was travelling with work which meant living in hotels and spending time on trains, planes and automobiles. The routine of rubbish TV, lots of time alone, grabbing food on the go continued. Weekends were a blur of catching up with emails, housework, sleep and yet more rubbish tv. I was only just managing to keep on top of emails, work and to-do lists. Energy was waning. I was certainly in a spiral down.

It would be easy for me to simply put it down to (ok..blame) the cough and the travelling and take no action. However that's 6 weeks of wasted opportunity, and there are simple things I could have done, even when ill, to enable me to spiral up. Even if only one step at a time. Things such as:

Taking my vitamins

Eating better

Drinking more water

Getting outside in the sunshine

Walking on the beach even when raining

Watching programs that inspire me (via TED, youtube or yes even on TV)

or progs that make me laugh

Reading

Spending time with other people

Taking baths not showers (this is a biggie for me)

Being creative

etc

Why - because these are all things I've written about in previous blogs that sustain me and help me maintain my passion for life - even if one day at a time. Do you know what sustains you. More importantly have you written them down for easy reference in times of need and when you've forgotten?

It's soo easy to buy into the spiral down and make decisions that support that movement. Next time you notice the change in direction go to your list of things that sustain you and make a choice - do one of them or even better do more than one of them. And notice what you notice.

PS you may like the PINTEREST vision board I've just started that acts as a reminder of what sustains me

Alison

Alison Smith
Helping Procurement teams to spiral up!

Image at top of page from On Your Mark's web site where there's an excerpt for a book called Spiral up!

It's YOUR fault

Yes YOUR fault - Your fault we had a financial crisis, your fault that the UK ran out of fuel at the pump this week, your fault many of our children are over weight and yes your fault that many adults are equally unhealthy. It's certainly not the fault of just one banker, one politician or one food manufacturer.

Yes I know it's my fault too - but isn't that the problem so long as we use words that either take collective responsibility or put blame on one person we have a get out? It's no longer something we have to do anything about because someone else is responsible. Don't believe me..... just read the next paragraph and compare it with the first.

Yes OUR fault - our fault we had a financial crisis, our fault that the UK ran out of fuel at the pump this week, our fault many of our children are over weight and yes our fault that many adults are equally unhealthy.

Which paragraph has you even considering you might be to blame or be able to do something to change it?

Two news items today illustrate expects of this:

Earth Hour: Today many monuments and cities will be turning off their power to encourage us all to rethink our energy consumption. How many of us however will applaud those monuments and believe that they've done it on our behalf. In reality they're trying to inspire us to take action.

Neutrino Scientist quits: Putting our head above the parapet, however many provisos we include in our statements, can seem very risky.

Forth coming blogs will consider further aspects of this lack of responsibility we all seem to take and look at how we make decisions - because those living on credit, filling jam jars with petrol, joining the mile long queues at petrol stations and eating those cakes all have made a decision to do so.

And remember it's always others who do these things and not us! (That's certainly what we all believe - if our actions and words are anything to go on)

Alison

Alison Smith
Helping Procurement teams take responsibility
alison@alisonsmith.eu 07770 538159