Dawn Barclay

Helping you align all that you do with your core values

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Day 7 Invent ‘Comfort Zone Poem’

Comfort Zones, when did you last step out one of yours?

This is by the famous poet called Anonymous, The Comfort Zone Poem! 

I used to have a comfort zone

where I knew I couldn’t fail,

The same four walls of busy work

were really more like a jail

I longed so much to do the things

I’d never done before,

But I stayed inside my comfort zone

and paced the same old floor

I said it didn’t matter that

I wasn’t doing much,

I said I didn’t care for things

like diamonds or furs and such

I claimed to be so busy with

the things inside my zone,

But deep inside I longed for

something special of my own

I couldn’t let my life go

by just watching others win,

I held my breath and stepped outside

to let the change begin

I took a step and with new strength

I’d never felt before,

I kissed my comfort zone good bye

and closed and locked the door

If you are in a comfort zone

afraid to venture out,

Remember that all winners were

at one time filled with doubt

A step or two and words of praise

can make your dreams come true

Greet your future with a smile,

success is there for you!

 

Day 6 Letting Go

“There are things that we never want to let go of, people we never want to leave behind. But keep in mind that letting go isn’t the end of the world, it’s the beginning of a new life.”

Do you find it easy to let go?

There is no doubt in my mind that 2010 has been a year of closing doors and letting go,  2009 (in hindsight) was 12 months of holding on far too tight, not willing (or emotionally ready) to let go. 

What about you?  Do you find it easy to let go?  When was the last time you said to yourself ‘in order to move, change, develop, grow I choose now let go’.  It doesn’t have to be an object:  it can also be a feeling, a way of behaving, a project or an idea. 

Letting does not necessarily mean ‘the end’.   It’s not giving up.  It’s a conscious decision, you are in control.

It’s paying attention to what your heart and your head is telling you.  For some they hold on to ideas, beliefs, values, friendships, relationships even partners when they know that the time has come to say thank you for the learning, time for goodbye, close the door and release.

If there is just one thing you need to let go of,  what would it be?

Are you able to complete it before 2011?

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Day 4 Invent Where’s Your Life At?

We talk about ‘crossroads in life’:  the paths, the journey, the direction headed – how can you know where you are heading if you don’t know you’re starting point?

Think about it, you would never be able to plan a journey from A-B, without first knowing the destination of A!  

Nowhere is this more visible in the questions ‘what do I want to be paid for?’. Many don’t know their current strengths, skills, weaknesses, knowledge, information, expertise, abilities, passions and goals.  How do you know which direction to take, until you know the current surroundings? 

How do you discover where you are now? 

Here’s a few questions that can help you figure out where you’re at:

  • What motivates you the most? (NOT what do you like, what DRIVES you, what MUST you inclide in your life?
  • If you had to make one decision, what would it be? 
  • Describe in detail where you add most value, not what you do.
  • What does your current reality ‘cost’ you?
  • What has been your ‘finest hour’ so far? Is it a hint?
  • What fears keeps you awake at night?
  • What skills do you KNOW you have, yet others don’t yet?
  • If you could have a meeting with your ‘future boss’ who, where would it be? (It could be you!)
  • What do you know, that you excel in and could teach to others?
  • What opportunities did you let slip? Are they still available?
  • What do you fear won’t happen for you? Is it enought to drive you forward?

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Day 3 Invent Make a Decision

When working with clients there is one stage of the process that is more painful to work through than others.  It’s the stage right before they make the breakthrough they want or the point before the ‘a-ha’ moment. 

It would be so much easier to ‘rescue’ and say ‘this is what you need to do next, then this, then this, then that’ (if their answers were obvious), big no, in a ‘typical’ coaching session that is extremely unprofessional and not part of the ethics (direct coaching perfectly okay!) It’s the indecision stage I’m talking about.  Not being able to make a decision is PAINFUL experience, it costs you big time… 

Make a DECISION:  there is so much power in deciding what is best for you.  Some people get it all jumbled up with PERHAPS or MAYBE, they are not the same! 

The meaning of decision is not ‘choice’. 

To make a decision is cutting off and detaching self from all other options.  It’s the conclusion to the process of weighing up choices.  You take the role of the wig wearing judge and you slam the gavel (judges hammer) down and have the final say. 

I’ve had friends who dragged themselves through torment on a daily basis because they could not decide what to do that day, then ended up doing nothing at the end, or dipped into 40 things and at the end day they were so disappointed with the no results.  

Imagine a life of the same quality…no decision = no result = ongoing disappointment!

Decision making is extremely empowering.  You call the shots, you decide that those other options are not GOOD enough and close them down.

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Day 2 When Doors Bang in Your Face

Day 2 of Closing Doors – Invent 

When you are working on a goal, your plan and taking massive action and then all of sudden *SLAM* you hit a brick wall and doors are banging in your face from all sides.  You have choices: you can continue to bang solely on doors or you can find if there is a window to break through, a trap door to go under, a chimney to climb up…  

The following is an extract from Milton Eriksons (Hypnotherapist)  book ‘My Voice Will Go You’  

“I asked a student, ‘How do you get from this room to that room?’  He answered, ‘First you stand up then take a step…’

I stopped him and said, name all the possible ways you can get from this room into that room.’ 

He said. ‘You can go by running, by walking: you can go by jumping; you can go by hopping, by somersaulting.  You can go out that door, go outside the house, come in another door and into that room.  Or you could climb out a window if you want to…’ 

I said, ‘If you want to get into that room from this room, I would go out of that door, take a taxi to the airport, buy a ticket to Chicago, New York, London, Rome, Athens, Hong Kong, Honolulu, San Francisco, Edinburgh, Dallas, Grand Canyon, come back by limousine and go in the back yard and then through the back gate into the back door and into that room.’ 

In 2011 Close the Door on ‘NOT Seeing BIG, BIGGER, BIGGEST Pictures’…if there is one way, there will be a THOUSAND Ways to breakthrough!  

— Dawn

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Fear, Lions, Tigers, Bears and Ice Cream

I used to be fearful of the dark, or so I thought!  

Around the age 13-14, I could be found scuttling from lamppost to tree: my heart would pound, I’d be sweating, my brain conjuring up images of all the nasty things that could happen, oh they were dark, dark, dark times.

I would launch out my skin (bizarre play on words there) at the slightest rustle, movement or scratchy noise.  I’d crisscross streets and walked in the middle of roads to avoid open gates! Oh, brr, I’m getting the shivers even now.

How powerful our brains are: I’m having an experience: an emotional and physical  response to something that happened years ago, it’s only a memory, it’s not happening this moment, but my brain (dammit) remembers!

We lived at the ‘top’ of the ‘scheme’ (that’s a posh Scottish name for housing estate)…lamp posts were few and far between, and to tell you the truth they weren’t that bright.  (Aside: why do we have orange streetlights, is there a reason for that, would white not be better, answers on a postcard please to…)

This fear went on for years, then in one night it ceased. What happened?

Fast forward to 1995, I traipsed across the pond to the States (Boston) to become a dogsbody, sorry camp counsellor for children (I’m joking, it was great, loved it, wouldn’t do it again though, wait, for a million pounds you say…)

Just before the children arrived we ‘Brits’ had to be inducted and part of ‘duct-ing’ was an Adventure/Skills/Beat the Lions, Tigers and Bears 3 day Boot camp affair.  It was (apparently) to be a gruelling, tough, wilderness adventure, no contact with the outside world, remote, an emotional and physically taxing experience  – mmm, we thought it was at first, until we heard the distant, then nearer, then very close clear crispy chimes from an ice cream van, then we realised we were actually on a rather nice 5* campsite!  They thought they had fooled us by taking us in the back entrance.

The ‘Commander’ assigned to our ice cream loving group was non other than a living, breathing, talking, and walking Action Man who thought he was leading up an SAS mission!

The first night on ‘campout’ we had a spot of improvisational theatre, acting out the Blair Witch Wimp Project at his request: just like the father in Hansel in Gretel (minus the sweets to find our way back) he led us into the woods, dumped us, and then told us we had to return one at a time (20 minute intervals apart) back to ‘base camp’.

Now, as this was my first night with a group of strangers there was no way I had disclosed my ‘hidden fears’, we were still at the social/group ‘norming’ stage, you know, niceties, pleasantries and talk of the very small variety!

Here’s what happened…

I walked back to ‘base camp’, in the pitch black, alone. Instant belief change.

I know! Weird eh?  How?  This is the technique I used, ready? You don’t need a pen…

Before I give it to you: as I set off and took those first steps into pitch blackness my thoughts were all over the place:

‘you’ll get mugged’, ‘no you won’t walk’, ‘someone will steal you’, ‘who’s going to steal you’, ‘you’re ‘gonna cry soon’, ‘just say you can’t do it’, ‘no, don’t do that someone will laugh’, ‘just run’, ‘don’t do that, you’ll fall, noone will find you for days’

that sort of thing.

Have you ever noticed that? The conflicting voices or thoughts that wake up when at the point of breaking through a fear are heightened!   It’s a horrible ‘mental space’ to be in.  I call it the Uncertain Memento or the Indecisive Minute.  Do I? Don’t I? Will I? Won’t I?

Right the technique.  Ready?

When you’re thoughts are overwhelming you: when they are conflicting, noisy, full of advice and YOU can’t think straight or decide which thought to go with…stop, breathe and say to yourself  ‘shut the f*ck up’!

That’s a technique? Yep! Then…

Manage your own thoughts.  How?

Okay, back to the walk in the woods, when you stop the thought (using abovementioned technique) you have created space in your head to really listen, you relax, and (with practice) you can hold onto that calm, peaceful state.  You control what you think, always.  You’re smart, you’ve more than enough mental capacity to create states that are good for you.

An example: public speaking, that fear is renowned and yet the ‘nervous’ speaker makes it a thousand times worse by saying or even thinking:

  • I’m ‘nervous’
  • I’m going to dry up
  • I’m shaky, sweating
  • I can’t speak in front of people

Then on top of those are the other thought streams…

  • It’ll be fine
  • Ill be okay
  • I can do this

Talk about mismatch! By the time they get onto the podium they genuinely are confused, rattled, incoherent, lost and spaced out, then the talk/speech is the same!  All their own doing.  Their subconscious has no idea how it should be instructing them to behave, too many conflicting messages.

Stop, breathe (breathing is good you know!), deep breathe in, and slow breathe out.  Pause your thoughts.  Focus on the internal dialogue not the fear itself.  There is nothing in life we cannot overcome; there is NO fear bigger than you.  None.

Maybe like what I did, you have convinced yourself that YOUR fear (because it’s YOURS and noone else’s) is so very real.  It’s not.  The only thing that is real is your thoughts and your emotional and physical reaction to those thoughts. 

Okay, suppose you have a ‘fear of flying’, what is the truth?  Are you frightened of flying or is the truth you are frightened of crashing: the wings falling off, sticking your head between your knees as you make an emergency landing into some shark invested waters?  In order to overcome fear, we have to be genuine and honest to ourselves, and acknowledge the truth.

And my last note about fear, lampposts and wilderness walks.  Here’s what I DID learn that night…

Up until my GI Jane moment, I was living someone else’s fear: my mums.

Who to this day still says ‘you walked in the DARK, WHAT alone?’ (with verbal emphasis on the capitalisations) and the clanger ‘you don’t know WHAT can happen in the dark’.  Her fears, not mine, I’ll put in the therapy bill at some point, my Dad’s had his, only fair.

The truth for me was, I was never actually frightened of the dark, I was fearful of what could happen in the dark.  This was based on ‘fake evidence’ I had gathered through my formative years that turned into beliefs: parents telling me to ‘be careful’, media, my peers as we told ‘horror’ stories in the dark.

In order to breakthrough and let go of a fear, you don’t need to know where they came from. 

If you’ve collected so called ‘truths’ that are stopping you, start questioning them.  Who gave you them?  Did they give you them in good faith?  Are they true?  Are you’re thoughts your own or hand me downs?

You may have needed the hand me down beliefs at one time in life, but not as an independent adult.  Time to give them back, return them to their rightful owner!

Have you overcome a huge fear? 

How did you do it? 

Feel free to leave a comment below