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!

Disposable Lives

I saw a tweet recently by Leslie Kohler about completion of her book Disposable Lives. It's a title for a fiction book but it resonated for me for life in general.

I don't have any story to tell or insights to share as such on this today just a few questions:

Are you treating your life as disposable?

Are there aspects of your life that you treat as disposable - health? relationship? work?

Are there people you treat as disposable - partner, family, friends, colleagues, those who making your life easier?

Are there behaviours that you treat as disposable - connection? balance? honesty?

Are there beliefs you treat as disposable - sustainability? greater good?

and more importantly

what will you to do to make the necessary changes.

Alison

Alison Smith
Helping procurement offer permanent and sustained difference to your business

Finding the motivation

We know that in order to have the energy to do all the things we'd love to have achieved before we die that we should:

Exercise - or at least cut down on the couch potato impersonations

Eat & drink healthily - of the min #5aday & max #14aweek variety

Spend time with those we love - and not just on the 14th of Feb

Spend time doing things we enjoy

and avoid food, drink, people, places, activities etc that are not good for us

Yet so often we continue to do that which depletes our energy. Since we know what we should be doing I'd suggest it's finding the motivation to make the changes we need to work on.

One suggestion is to find a big enough PAIN we want to move away from and then anything is possible. The issue is often the pain (less years and less active body in our old age) is seen as too far away and even "wont happen to us". So we don't take action until it does happen to us (or someone close to us) or it's too late. The key is finding a pain we can relate to now. That's why challenges such as climbing Kilimanjaro or events such as getting married act as a great motivator - the pain of not making the changes are too big and not even worth contemplating that we take action.

2 things happened this week that might shed some light on another solution.

The first was burning my fingers on the oven. I've burnt my arms many times and they've spent many minutes under the cold tap. This week it was my fingers turn - what PAIN - and was followed by 2 hrs in water. But you know what? I've a new respect for the oven that has changed my behaviour towards it.

The second was cutting tomatoes out of my diet for 2 weeks along with some other potential culprits for my screaming knees. Long story short but lets just say that a little squirt of tomato sauce on Wednesday teatime led to severe reaction. Suffice to say that any doubts I had about persevering (It's too hard, I like cheese, I don't know what else to cook, it's wont work etc etc) were soon kicked into touch. Resolve has been bolstered and exclusion continues for a few more weeks to give my body time to find balance before trying to reintroduce foods.

In both instances without the physical pain I would have wavered and continued to do what I'd always done. I'm not suggesting we all run out and physically do harm to ourselves in order to find the motivation. However if you do want to make changes you might want to look for a short term pain that will fortify your will power.

Wellbeing Champions

Earlier this week I tweeted that 'it's in all the ways we can't see that we make the biggest difference'.

Is our quest for wellbeing any different. Whilst we can educate, inform, blog and even provide policies that support wellbeing, is it enough to inspire others to be motivated to make the necessary changes? For me it’s all the small things we do and are seen to do that provide the inspiration. As I was reminded before Christmas when someone sent me a note to say ‘you inspire me to live more healthily’. I know this comes from how I am in the world and in all the small things I tweet/blog/chat and share photo's about (as above) rather than the work I get paid to do.

In any organisation, therefore, the key is identifying those individuals who influence others behaviours and ensuring they are seen to be demonstrating the behaviours that support wellbeing. Many organisations won’t stand a cat in hells chance of having wellbeing if those with the most influence ignore and override the signs of stress, have no life balance, don’t take their holiday’s, skip lunch, live on adrenaline and coffee when adrenaline is lacking and/or are known to consume a week’s allowance of alcohol every Friday night?

Who are your wellbeing champions – and how can you ensure they are able to express how they achieve wellbeing rather than hide it?

Alison

Alison Smith
Helping procurement teams find balance and wellbeing and keep on track

Job satisfaction - how important is it?

I’m currently working on a contract cleaning project. As part of this we’re developing the business requirements which has involved considering how we define what clean looks like. It’s also involved an assessment of current practice. This assessment has included the time taken to undertake the cleaning. Comparison of these times across the organisation may, along with other data gathered, enable us to identify best practice.

Imagine then my quandary when I read in the Urban Worrier by Nick Thorpe about his experience of bed making at a monastery in New Mexico. He realised that his need for speed and competitive nature wasn’t enabling him to fully embrace the activity and enjoy it. So “I give in and slow down”... “I would not, I suspect, win a hotel cleaning contract – but I defy you to find more contended cleaners.”

As a procurement professional my goal is to ensure value for money for the organisation and have, and I’m sure will continue, to negotiate contracts that focus on speed to undertake activities. As a coach my goal is often about ensuring job satisfaction including wellbeing and passion for life. I just wonder whether, how and when as a procurement professional I should be considering job satisfaction of our suppliers?

Your habits are contagious - so are theirs

It's often been said if you want to be wealthy to hang around with the wealthy and certainly stop spending time with those who aren't. Having spent a day with Dr David Hamilton at the weekend I realise that’s also true for all our:

Habits – health, relationships, team working, communication, performance
Emotions – happiness, fear, anger, depression
And yes even yawns!

That is these are all catching – we can get infected by others and of course we do our fair share of infecting too. So if you have goals you want to achieve you’d best check that the habits and emotions of those around you, up to 3 degrees of separation, would be useful to you. Although the closer you are to someone the more likely you are to get infected!

David has just released his new book ‘The contagious power of thinking’. The main premise of the book, supported by lots of research and science, is that we’re hard wired to copy others! The mirror neurons in our brain pick up on what others are doing and want to copy them. So if someone smiles at you your mirror neurons will subtly copy that smile and there’s very little you can do about it. Just as there’re very little you can do when someone passes a frown, anger of fear your way – not instantly anyway.
This can have a significant impact in organisations as one study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology showed where for each one point increase in a retail manager’s job satisfaction there was 5 percent increase in customer spending. Other studies including from Harvard support the findings about the ‘contagious power of thinking’.
Who are you infecting and is it helping?

Well Being

Source: grainedit.com via Karen on Pinterest

6 weeks ago I set you some homeplay for the weekend to notice the impact how you were feeling had on those around you and what you wanted to do that weekend and in life generally.

My invitation to journey with me as I've blogged since has been about not waiting until you've smashed up a shop (of the cup cake or any other variety), or you're signed off with stress or your relationships are falling apart to make the necessary changes.

I certainly didn't want anyone believing the stories they tell themselves about not making the changes - you know the ones - it's my age, I can't, it's too late or even it won't change anything! In short if we don't have the energy to do what we need or want to do every day something has to change! and we can do it! you can do it!

The suggestions on changes to be made are certainly known to us all. Unless I'm unique, I know the challenge is following through on the logic. As I found to my embarrassment today when, having realised I still wasn't eating enough of the right things to sustain what I'm up to on daily basis, my personal trainer decided to abandon the fitness element of my session and go look in the fridge to help me 'see' the healthy options that lay within!!

The changes I've invited you to consider over the 6 weeks have included:

• Mind: Putting yourself first


• Mind: Understanding yourself


• Mind: Changing what your telling yourself


• Body: Reviewing your diet


• Body: Having enough sleep


• Body: Getting your body moving - esp on the days when it's the last thing you want to do


• Heart: Asking for help


• Heart: Letting go of the past


• Spirit: Finding our legacy

I hope something I've said during these blogs has triggered something for you to help you understand what changes you might want to make and/or what changes you may be able to support others in your life with.

Helping purchasing relationships find well being because it starts with the individual.

Alison

Alison Smith
07770 538159 alison@alisonsmith.eu

The final piece of the jigsaw

At the beginning of March I started with a plea:

Please don't allow yourself any excuse for not exploring how to make improvements in your life. And I mean practical things you can do that could dramatically improve your energy, positivity and overall well being and joy for life. Thus allowing you to more easily achieve your goals and live your dreams rather than purely exist.

Recent weeks have seen me blog about the mind, body and heart's relationship to achieving the above. As you will see from this diagram, used by Stephen R Covey in the 8th Habit, there's still one element I've not covered and that's SPIRIT. It's not a topic that's often discussed in business circles and yet for me SPIRIT is the glue that brings it all together. For me spirit is simply finding a bigger meaning and purpose to what you do. Seán Weafer in a recent blog asked the question "what is the meaning of (your) life" and of course it's what ever you want it to be. In his blog Seán asks 10 questions to help you identify what a purposeful life would be for you. One question I often ask clients is "what do you get on your soap box about?" I know Neil Dorwood asks "What's your legacy?"

What ever your answer it's that which will provide the motivation for you to get up on the days when perhaps your mind, body or heart would prefer that you just stayed in bed.

What do you get on your soap box about? and how does what you do every day connect with that?

"You just needed your brain re-tuning"

My final blog this week was always going to be on exercise but I wanted it to be topical rather than just restating what we all hear time and time again about exercise. Which explains why I'm here again so soon after my last blog because I've got my example and blogging it on Friday pretending it had just happened wouldn't have felt right ......

I woke this morning in one of those moods - negative, achy, dizzy and struggling to motivate myself. I'd even managed to convince myself that I might have a cold coming. I wondered about cancelling my personal trainer and taking to my bed. I realised, however, as he is often a better judge of my health than me, and since he's got me to the other side too many times in the past to ignore, that he might help again today.

He arrived and very quickly decided to do something different and cut short the warm up and proceeded to give me my most strenuous session for a long while. Boxing - kick boxing - running!! He repeatedly asked me to push through my resistance and keep going when every muscle (and my head) just wanted to give up. At the end he just pointed out that all I had been thinking before the session was in fact not true and I had just done better than I had for many months "your brain just needed retuning."

There was a lot going on not least the need to push through but please don't under estimate the power of exercise to shift how we're feeling. I know when we're in one of those moods it's hard to find the motivation and that's one reason I have a personal trainer - but there are other means of ensuring we keep on track e.g. I arrange to go to yoga with a friend to keep us both committed etc. For others it's simply finding a more convenient time.

My plea is just ensure you do something because it really can make a difference.

Sleep Scotland - England and Wales too

It was announced yesterday that a teaching pack created by the charity Sleep Scotland is going to be used to help teenagers in Scotland to get enough sleep.

In addition to highlighting the benefits of getting enough sleep they are also going to be advised on the impact of watching TV, using mobiles and computers late at night.

A great example of a simple thing we forget about that can seriously impact our well being. Like all of what I'm sharing this month it's not new. I just hope, like me, you find the occasional reminder useful. If you have all the energy you need and are getting all you want done in life then you're already doing the right things for you. Of course that's the challenge - what works for you might not work for someone else. It's about finding what mix of work, rest and play, and all that encompasses, works best for you.

So today's question is

• Are you getting enough sleep?

That is:

• Do you know how much sleep allows you to operate at your optimum level?



• Do you know what personally impacts your ability to get this much sleep?



• Are you taking appropriate action to make any changes needed?

Loving what you do isn't enough

I was listening to Aled Jones talking to Katie Melua this morning and she mentioned having to cancel her last tour due to ill health. She said it had come as as shock because she so loved what she did and thought that was enough. Aled then commented that when on tour himself he's constantly reminded by others not to live on junk foods.

We don't have to look far in the media to be reminded "we are what we eat". Or the benefits of cutting down on alcohol, caffeine, refined sugar and processed foods. The difficulty, for me anyway, has been taking that information and making it meaningful enough to act as a motivator to make different choices. At some level we all know that too much of all these foods can have a negative impact on our health, weight, mind, energy, vitality, well being and yes even longevity. Yet many of us keep eating too many of these - or is it just me?

As someone who is very sensitive to the impact of caffeine and alcohol it's not been difficult to cut them out (although I may have something to drink at the CIPS dinner of Thursday). However living on my own and working as I do has always meant I find it easy to skip meals and/or choose ready meals and also reach for the sweets mid afternoon to give me that extra oomph to get through the rest of the day.

3 weeks ago I went on a food4life workshop that seems to have provided the motivation to start to make healthier choices. I'm sure much of what went on over the 3 days contributed to the change in mindset but 2 statements come to mind and, so far, have stopped me making choices that include ready meals, refined sugars and processed foods. These statements are:

* Food is medicine
* Our body doesn't recognise processed foods and doesn't know what to do with them!

I'm not suggesting that these statements will miraculously change your actions. However if life isn't as you want it I'd strongly encourage you to find your own motivators to making healthier choices because they will ultimately make a big difference in ways I'm not sure we can always expect.

Please do share what motivates you to make healthier choices - you never know it just may make a difference for someone?

Alison Smith
Helping purchasing relationships remain healthy

This week I'm moving onto our Body's contribution to well being and our ability to have the life we want and get things done. Last week my blog touched on the Mind's contribution.

Don't let it get so bad you smash up a cup cake shop!

Source: hummingbirdbakery.com via Alison on Pinterest

My blog this month is going to explore the following plea from me:

Please don't allow yourself any excuse for not exploring how to make improvements in your life. And I mean practical things you can do that could dramatically improve your energy, positivity and overall well being and joy for life. Thus allowing you to more easily achieve your goals and live your dreams rather than purely exist.

In other words if you're not happy with how you're feeling, acting or the things you're achieving or not achieving in life, then please do stop using those excuses and do something. You know the excuses don't you:

* I don't have time
* I can't
* It doesn't matter
* I can't be bothered
* I'm happy as I am
* It wont change anything
or even
* It's my age you know

The homeplay last weekend involved observing how you were feeling and then noticing the impact it had on other people and the impact it had on the outcome of what you were trying to achieve.

If your answer was 'I was enthused, energised and very happy and it was contagious' you may already know what I'm going to say. If you didn't then for me the crux is this - if you're feeling negative, tired, anxious, angry, or just down right grumpy it can't but have a negative impact on your life e.g:

* You don't go out to meet friends because you're too tired
* You fall out with a close friend over something silly
* You still don't take up that hobby you've been promising to do for years
* You put on the video for the kids rather than go outside and play with them
* You sit in front of the TV all weekend and eat rubbish
* Your blood pressure sky rockets
* You smash up a cup cake shop or worse (yes someone did just that)

We often act as if that's what life has thrown at us and just get on with it and put up with the anxiety, the grumps and negativity. My blog this month will explore all those small steps we can all take to make the necessary changes - and some of them are sooooooo easy, and even more effective, and WILL make a difference - or your money back.

Homeplay for the weekend

A year ago I was asked to blog on well being for HRZone and have been an active blogger since then. Over that time I've continued to share insights, observations and challenges from life. This has covered an array of subjects including motivation, effective communication, integrity and authenticity etc. In other words things that can transform our relationships and help us out of the creeks we find ourselves.

In March (and possibly even a smidgen in Feb) I'd like to go back to look at well being - for two reasons:

The 1st: I've just been on a Food4Life workshop and would love to share the learning
The 2nd: Our well being has a HUGE impact on the quality of our relationships

To provide you with the motivation to read my blog for the next few weeks I'd like to set you some homeplay (homework but of the fun variety) I'd like you to notice the impact how you're feeling has on others - whether you're:

Happy, Energised and motivated or
Angry, tired and apathetic or
somewhere in between.

The blog will then look at how to get more of what you want and less of the other.

Are you in 1st or 5th gear or on cruise control?

Go on humour me and just try sitting there doing nothing for 5 minutes.

Please.

How did you get on? I would imagine there will have been a number of reactions:

Not bothering to do nothing
Start and give up after a minute
Do nothing with one eye on the Internet
Do nothing successfully for 5 minutes
Do nothing for 10 minutes

It was such great weather at the weekend - yes even in Scotland - so I sat in the garden chatting with a friend. We must have been there for 4 hours. During that time I never managed more than 20 minutes in the chair at any time. I fidgeted for the whole time - I moved my chair, went to get a drink or wandered around the garden. My friend on the other hand was in her chair for the duration. In fact 4 hours relaxing was a record for me and that was only possible because that took place after a holiday of 2 weeks.

I would suggest my friend was in cruise control and I was in 1st gear! I wouldn't dream of running my car in 1st all day so why do I think I can do that to myself?

I can hear some people saying they don't need to do nothing and anyway it's such a waste of time. I met someone last year who worked 60 hours a week and then relaxed by being on so many committees and in what time he had left was on the golf club!! Wired wasn't the word for him!

Quite time doing nothing daily helps our mind, body and soul in so many ways. Just try it for a week and notice the positive impact.

Recharge your batteries

I don't know about you but I have to keep an eye on my energy levels. A recent increase in activity and enthusiasm has meant the need to recharge my batteries has been at the forefront of my mind.

So imagine the scene - I've just sent some emails mentioning the need for me to ensure my energy levels are maintained. I walk into the kitchen and decide to make myself some porridge. I put the spoon into the box to bring out some oats and what comes out but some oats and an AA battery!!!

A long story how they (there was 2) got there but a great reminder that recharging our batteries is as much about what we eat as it is exercise and everything else we do.