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Even the most successful people need some support sometimes. Getting support isn’t a sign of weakness, or failure. In fact it’s a positive step and shows commitment to personal development and self growth. A coach is someone who can offer that support, and help you to flourish.

A good coach can help you get into the mind set and routines that will help you create the life you want to live. They can help you figure out what you want to do and, more importantly, how to do it. In my work I support people in all areas, including health, relationships, family, business and self care.

You might have some self doubt and a sense of being lost, and need support finding clarity. Or maybe you know where you want to be, but just have no idea of the steps you need to take to get there. You might be stuck in a routine and need to break out of it, or need help in setting up healthy habits.

If you need someone to help keep you accountable, a coach is a good person to have at your side, and on your side. Regular check ins can keep you on track, helping you to get things done and stick to a plan. It’s easy to let self progression fall by the wayside when daily life gets in the way, and a coach can help you prioritise and keep committed to the bigger goals.

Success is as much about attitude as action. A coach can reveal the inner blocks and self limiting beliefs are working against us and stopping us progressing. I help people with self confidence and assertion, helping them to realise that they can achieve their goals and dreams.

If there’s a gap between where you are and where you want to be, having some coaching can help you. If you want to know more, get in touch.

We all want to be the best we can be. Indeed, my work is all about helping people to do exactly that. But sometimes this striving for best can actually stall progress. We’re so obsessed with trying to reach a perfect place that we fail to notice the very good situation we find ourselves in.

There’s no such thing as perfect, and a drive to achieve it just stops us from noticing the great. We measure things against impossible standards, meaning that we fail to realise how good things are. This means that even the good stuff ends up being viewed with a negative lens. We’re always dissatisfied. It becomes something of a trap, as we can’t achieve our high standards and then feel frustrated. This causes us to get angry and beat ourselves up, which is not going to bring us towards happiness.

Having high standards is not the same thing as demanding perfection. You can want to do well without holding yourself to unrealistic and rigid rules that can never be achieved. Having goals that are so high that you can never reach them isn’t helpful, but harmful.

It often comes from a desire to impress others, and a need to show them how good you are. Yet not only are most people less severe judges than we are, but if we stop and assess things by moderate  standards that reflect what we actually want,  we may find that we’re doing just fine.

Instead, we have to recognise when good enough is good enough. When reaching a place of 90% is enough, instead of chasing the elusive 100%. It doesn’t mean that you’re underachieving. In fact you might do more – reaching 90% in a number of areas of your life is better than 100% in just one.

Voltaire once said ‘Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.’

He’s right.

Whilst sometimes not being satisfied can spur us on to do more and achieve better things, when it’s an all pervasive feeling that takes over your life, it’s dangerous and has a negative impact. Rather than moving us to a happy and positive place, it holds us back and stops us from recognising our successes. It makes us view our lives through a dark lens, failing to see the good.

Celebrating our wins is important. It fuels us on to achieve more because we’re buoyed by excitement and joy. It gives us the opportunity to acknowledge what has gone well, learn from it, and see how we can apply those lessons for the future. By working towards good standards rather than perfect, we can achieve brilliant things and enjoy the fruits of them.

Coaching is more than just giving instructions. Being a coach involves a process of empowering individuals to change their lives, teaching them the coaching skills they need to change their lives, or aspects of them. Whether I’m helping people with relationships, leadership, health, performance or something else, the process is the same. I’m helping them to become their own best coach.

Coaching involves supporting people to think independently. As adults we all need to feel secure to try out new strategies and ideas, without fear or worry, safe in the knowledge that ultimately we are in control of our own lives. I don’t tell people what to do, I give them the tools to explore for themselves.

You are the expert on your own life. I can’t tell you what to do, or change things for you. But I can help you to bring about change.

One great skill that coaches try to facilitate is that of learning. You’ll notice that coaches ask a lot of questions. This is because they are trying to empower you to think and discover.

This learning process is about asking good questions to and giving objective, non-judgemental feedback to ourselves, and supporting our growth, rather than criticising our errors. By helping people to learn from their actions, I’m helping them to grow into their best coach.

So next time you’ve done something different, whether that’s raised your hand at work, dealt with a tricky situation at home in a different way, or just cooked something different dinner, ask yourself what you learned. What went well? What might you do differently next time? How can you set yourself up for success?

And then go do it.

Keep asking questions, and you’ll keep growing.

There have been a number of events recently that we’ve all found it hard to deal with. It’s difficult to know what to do when tragedies occur, and the impact can be both direct and indirect, immediate and long term.

Here are a few ways to help deal with a difficult situation.

Talk or Don’t Talk. It’s an individual decision. Respect other people’s decisions and ask them to respect yours. While for some people talking about the event has a healing effect, for others it becomes the source of more stress. If a child doesn’t want to talk about the event, let it be but monitor their behaviour and patterns. Look for signs of worry, any spontaneous and unusual outburst of tears or temper, changes eating or sleeping patterns. If any of these happen, it is time to have a conversation or ask for help.

Stay connected with your support network (e.g. family, friends) and make an effort to maintain a healthy social environment around you that combines a variety of activities, groups and locations.

If possible, try to maintain as much of your normal routine as you can. Be aware of your emotions and feel free to give yourself breaks and time to stop and think if needed.

Keep active and moving. Exercise is great for you physically and mentally.

Keep aware of your responses and learn how to self regulate your emotions. Keeping calm and focused using small techniques such as conscious breathing can have a big impact on your sense of wellbeing.

Goal setting is in every part of our lives, yet we often struggle to do it properly.  As a consequence, we struggle to achieve. From very early on we set goals – ourselves, we want to achieve something good, we want to do great things, and often we want to validate ourselves. As parents, we might set our children goals and push them to do better and more. What we don’t realise is the effects a bad goal might have on us or them.In the corporate world everybody talks about SMART goal setting and things like that, yet so few people do it for themselves.

Finding the right goal and defining it in the right terms will be the difference between failure and success. Here is a simple technique that I work with. It’s great for children and adults. It’s called the excitement scale.

How excited are you about your goal? Really excited? Thrilled? In our sessions I ask children to create their excitement scale. We represent it as a 1-10 scale in which 1 is boredom and falling asleep and 10 is delirious excitement. I then ask them to fill the gaps in between with whatever representation comes to their mind (ie. 8 is fireworks going off, 5 is a clock, precise and constant, half way). Unless you’re up at a 7, 8, 9 or 10 – unless you’re really excited, chances are it will be difficult to achieve. So change your goal. Get excited. And achieve your dreams.