Dawn Barclay

Helping you align all that you do with your core values

Moxie Work and Career

You Have a Brilliant Idea, Now What?

“The air is full of ideas. They are knocking you in the head all the time”  Henry Ford

‘Wanna play?

Let’s assume you have a ‘Oh, what a brilliant idea’ brain flash: a moment of sheer fecking genius, inspiration on tap, creativity bounding, what do you do with it?

A. Sit on it.

B. Act on it right away.

C. Question it’s brilliance.

E. Dismiss it because it probably wouldn’t work anyway.

F. None of the above.

Let’s now go have a tangent moment.

Remember your summer school holidays?

Endless fun, fun, summer fun. The days when you returned home filthy, rugged, scorched from the sun, covered in scratches, bumps, bruises but by goodness you were one happy being.

Remember what you used to cram in, in the space of what, 12 hours?

If you, or one of your friends had an idea, it would get tried and quickly, depending on it’s success, it would be dumped, or played out for days, and days, and days, and days.

Yeah, I know you aren’t a kid, the ideas that you have now will (probably) have a greater impact on your life, to those you had when you were an 8 year old.

Deciding to go for a bike ride is not, I agree, the same as changing career.

Deciding to make a den out of sheets, is not the same as creating a new product, or service if you’re a small business owner.

Different consequences, perhaps a higher risk, needing more thought, research and planning.

But the point is, the time it takes to take action on an idea as an adult is too long, for most. 

Why? (Fear aside for a minute)

Right, some ideas you have are going to be massive and their implementation won’t happen right away. But you probably have hundreds of little ideas that crash into your head, those are the ones we’re talking about here.

The ideas that present themselves to you in the strangest times: on the loo, in the shower, having a casual conversation, reading a blog post or comment on the Internet, a tweet, a visit to a website, watching a soap opera (okay, maybe not that!)

Do you keep them safe?

Do you nurture the idea?

Do you write them down?

Do you take action right away, at the risk of not finishing something else?

A big fault for many of us is we don’t complete one project before we move onto the next. If that’s you, you have a not so good habit there, finish what you start, don’t be hypnotised by the shiny green on the other side of the fence, until your own grass is topnotch.

And your ideas, try this:

This is what I do, most of the time (do as I say, not as I do!)

1. Write the idea down.

2. Take some form of action on it right away (when you have finished the most important tasks that require your full attention at that moment of course.)

3. Take action:  research, running it past someone, writing a blog post, tweeting it, give it your full attention for 20 minutes.

4. Commence the ‘sit on it’ part here, 2 days max. Even if you’re tempted to revisit. Do nothing. Just hold onto your galloping horses.

5. Revisit after 2 days. How do you feel about it now?

6. Still the same way? Take more action.

7. Not as excited? Shelve it for one month.

8. Revisit after a month.

9. Does it inspire/fit/mean more now? Yes? Take more action.

10. No? Ditch it. (Or keep a little folder of ideas!)

You’ll have other ideas. Probably better ones.

 

 

Who Else Needs More Self Discipline?

Do you have self discipline? Many don’t, no shame, mainly because they haven’t worked out yet what to get self disciplined about.

  • They wish to be able to play the guitar like Jack White or Jimi Hendrix, but they won’t put the time in to learning the chords and notes.
  • They wish to pen the next Harry Potter or Booker Prize winner, but spend the time watching ‘I’m a Celebrity Get me Out of Here’, rather than write for two hours.
  • They wish to change career or create their own economy, but would rather update their Facebook status with ‘life is shit’ or ‘I really love my job (not)’ and do nothing towards the shift.
  • They want to end living in fear. They won’t apply what they already know, instead they ‘like’ a thousand ‘positive quotes with pretty pictures’ but ask them if they took the information and applied it? They won’t have. They probably don’t even remember what the quote was within in 2 minutes.

This year, I really wanted to avoid the ‘How-To-Live-Your-Best-Life’ post, or the ‘New-Year-New-You-Impossibilities’ post and the ‘Live-The Next-365-Days-With-Kapow and Wow’ post.

But here I am, a week into the new year, and I think this is going to be one of those types of post.

And I would love your ideas and suggestions at the end.

Give Your Year/Week/Month a Theme

See, I’ve decided that this year my life will have two events running throughout, I’m not sure if personal lives can have year long events.  I know it happens in tourism, Edinburgh had  the Year of the Homecoming (when people returned to Scotland with kilts and bagpipes for a weekend.) The Chinese calendar has Year of The Pig, Dog, Cat, Monkey, and mine is…

Ta-raa…

‘The Year of (Use Big Boom Voice) Discipline’

Mmm, it isn’t mega exciting, I know. However done well, it will allow more time for things that really matter.

So. K’tsh. K’tsh. Whip ready? Let’s go…

What exactly am I getting at?

Us Coachy-Peepleey-Helpery-Personal-Developmenty-I-Fied types talk a lot about taking action, setting goals, self talk and the rest ‘ye all!  But hardly ever go heavy on discipline.

In coaching, you could be asked ‘On a scale of 1-10, 10 being committed to meeting your goals for next week, 1 not at all, what number are you?’You’re paying for coaching, so chances are you will keep the peace and declare ’10! Oh 10! Yes! 10! Yes!‘

Which may please the inexperienced coach because they aren’t really that sure about how to question your ambivalence and why you say you are a 5!

Coach-y probably would never say (cough cough) ‘are you going to, or not,  or are you just wasting your time?’

Routines, Regime, Regular

Let’s make one thing clear, we’re talking about having a routine or regime here, one that makes sense, one that is good for you and one that serves you, not severe heavy penalties, commando and ninja style of discipline.

*sigh* It’s not a great word, huh? Past learning and experiences again, darn brain programming and conditioning.

See, I don’t know about you, but for me, discipline conjures up childhood memories of being quickly whipped across the back of the legs as I dived out the road of my mums flapping hand (Why the legs? Why?)

Or it reminds me of those ‘do this, or else’ threats  or ‘Dawn, I’m warning you, if you don’t stop, you can kiss goodbye to (insert pleasurable experience!)

Even at school, I was ‘disciplined’ 4 times by a foot long piece of leather, graciously applied by my Indoctrinator, whoopsie, sorry,  teacher, to my young backside.

So look, I get the fact discipline may not be as rosy and touchy-feely as ‘focus’ or ‘action’ or ‘drive’ or heaven forbid ‘ambition’.

But geez, it’s only a word.

Have you got much discipline? Do you get done what needs to be done? Are you easily distracted?

I think I was 31/32ish before I realised that I perhaps needed a little bit discipline back in my life, you know, my own kind, not the sadistic measurement taken by the adults I had dragging me up.

Back when I was what 15, 16? I exposed myself to this ‘shelf help’ and personal development malarkey. Name the book to tell me how to live a fabbylicious life, I bet I’ve got it.

The next step was training and courses, qualifications,  conferences, NLP, Coaching, Counselling. I ‘learned’ the theories and techniques, and yes, I used them with clients.  I paid attention, studied hard, listened, read, applied but I still wasn’t disciplined.

How did I know? Erm…simple, life sucked!

It continued to suck  just into my 30’s, it wasn’t until I set up my own little biz, that I really started to get serious, and…erm, well, a little bit more disciplined.

You see when you realise that nobody is going to pay you anymore, that you can’t hide behind a team, when you have to make decisions at lightning speed, when all your mistakes, faux pas, misdemeanours and the such are totally your own doing you get serious. You change.

When you can’t ‘pretend’ to be working, or go a week and get to Friday, then say to your workmates ‘I’ve not done much this week’. You learn, apply and get disciplined.

When banks want to talk to you when you have money in your account and when they refuse to even pick up the phone because you don’t have enough, when you have to convince mortgage lenders and mobile phone contractors you’re a safe bet, when you know you and your pets will eat that month if you are serious about what you do.

You accept discipline is part of this process.

Which begs the question, does the mean that when the motivation is high, discipline is more likely to play a part?

How Do You Discipline Yourself? (My Philosophy!)

1. Find What Motivates

Discipline was wasted on me as a youth. Rebel. Oh Yes! (Not as much as my sister though, eek!)

Growing up, the motivation came from not wanting to be controlled by parents or any other adult. Standing firm, wanting to be ‘free’ of them was a great motivator (probably is for any young adult!)

There are days when I would much rather put on a wash, clean the house, cook tea rather than sit down and write a blog post or an update. These ‘tasks’ though are just fillers. They are procrastinators.

Asking yourself ‘what is motivating me to do this’ will probably work better than ‘how can I discipline myself to do this‘.

Or try these, think of the task(s) that need your FULL attention and need done:

  • What will happen after you have completed it?
  • What are the consequences for not finishing?

2. Avoid The 3 W’s: Wishy. Washy. Wasteful.

This is an easy one. Time. How often do you waste it? Time is precious. It slips past.

You don’t have to fill every single minute, of course you don’t, geez, you aren’t superhuman. But there is a clue in the wishing part.

Wishing doesn’t get it done (whatever your it is.)

Where have you wasted so much time? Were you motivated? 

Let’s assume you have everything you need right now to ‘get stuff done’, you may find it useful to set yourself some deadlines, real deadlines. And to do that you may be someone who needs some goals, real goals. Ones that take into account every step.

Want to change career? Then stop ‘wishing’ it were so, and get disciplined. Lay out the all the small steps. And you know, don’t be surprised that once you break it down, it doesn’t look that exciting. But all these steps make up the whole picture.

3. Be Ruthless and Delete, Ignore or Switch Off

Cut out the noise, mind fillers, unnecessary nonsense, and if you keep ‘to-do’ lists, how about deleting what you have been moving for a fortnight, if it was that important would you not have done it already?

To really get disciplined it requires you to pay full attention, refuse to be diverted and give your precious time to others (apart from children and pets!)

Today, stop doing three things that will give you an hour to put the attention back to you.

Need ideas?

Okay, desperate to change career?

I know you won’t give up Coronation Street, Bones or Downton Abbey, but record them. Gain of 10 minutes just by zipping through the adverts. Free up an hour every evening for a month. Make a trade, use the time on Linkedin or Twitter connecting with people who you can network with and connect.

Get your favourite tipple, snacks and music blaring. Make it pleasurable, dammit, make it fun!

Work and little biz:

Check your emails 3 times a day, maximum. Then close the program.

Discipline yourself to an hour tops every day on social media. Try it for a month. Give social media your full attention for an hour each day. Not 10 minutes every hour when what your really doing is procrastinating.

Why Bother With Discipline?

To me, discipline is about giving life some structure, making sure that there is space and time for all the things that need to be in there in my life (and business.)

For me this year, that includes stuff-like: work, business, and that things that really matters stuff-like: family, relationships, being a better auntie, being a more attentive daughter, longer doggy walks, being a friend, shopping, cooking, cleaning (well, maybe), going to the library, out for coffee, meeting people, learning and applying.

The trade will be worth it.

It also means going on a diet (not a foody one), I’m refusing to consume time fillers and continually asking myself ‘what is my purpose in doing this?‘, or ‘is what I’m doing right now, this second adding or taking away value?’

Your Turn…

Would you say you were disciplined? What do you do to get the stuff done that matters? What techniques work for you? Or do you have a theme for the year?

Writing a Personal Mission Statement

It’s nearing the end of the year and chances are, someone somewhere has asked or you’ve read ‘so what are your goals for the New Year’ or worse ‘what are your New Year Resolutions?’

When you read those statements you may get a fleeting little fuzzy picture of some sort of ideal scenario in your mind of how you would like your life to be.

Then it passes as quickly as it came and you carry on doing what you were doing.

See, goals are great, yet they are only guestimations.

And resolutions, well…erm… I’ve said my piece on resolving gunk at new year before, and I still feel the same as I did last year.

Guestimations are fantastic.

Even better is having direction. A mission. A statement of intent if you like.

Let’s play with writing a mission statement:

Assume you’re a cruise ship heading from the Mediterranean to the Bahamas, the chances are you will make it to the sunny shores. You may venture off course every now and then and have to correct yourself by making adjustments to get yourself back on the right path unless you sink, you’ll make it!

You will arrive because you at least know the direction you’re sailing.

You will have set sail with a good enough plan.

Most people set sail in life with no direction.

No plan, no rough idea, or no thought of the land on the horizon.

They have the goal to sail, but that’s it.

The entire crew of your ship before they raised even the anchor knew their mission and direction. Everyone systematically playing their part to make sure that you arrive in one piece.

Do you have a mission statement?

Have you sat down and thought (great first step, thinking that is), then captured (written, even better second step) your mission statement?

It’s not the easiest task in the world.

Mainly because it’s not something we’re taught and does require a little self-reflection and awareness. And you may need to ask yourself some breakthrough ‘Quest-ions’.

How to write a mission statement

Just write. Bullets, words, statements, remember the quotes that have stuck in your mind? Maybe they will help. I know, you may be have expected some secret tool, but there isn’t one.

In short, you want to create a statement (how long is up to you) about who how you want to live your life and what person do you want to be.

Remember the ‘fuzzy little picture’ you get when people ask you what are your goals? You only need to spend some time making those pictures clearer. Seeing and describing what would be your ideal (make sure your mission isn’t someone else’s mission.)

Don’t edit, plenty time to refine later, just write.

You do know how you want your life to be, we all do.

Consider your career, your business (if you have one), lifestyle, health, spirituality, learning. It’s your mission, it can be whatever you want it to be.

Don’t question what comes up as you write, don’t dismiss what you think is ‘impossible’ or a dream. A mission is usually a big deal!

Refer to it often.

Rewrite it if needed.

Play with it. It will change.

It will begin to include values, goals, hopes, dreams, ways of being, ideas. The end result is creating your own little manifesto, a piece you can refer back to when you are making decisions about your life and career.

You may write to be a ‘loving, considerate, listening parent’, the next time your children test your patience where in the past a quick barking may have been on the cards, you may pause and remember your mission.

A mission sits in alignment with your core values. It’s another piece of the life of passion and purpose puzzle.

It’s just another tool to add to your personal development toolkit, yet a powerful one. Your choice if you want to give it a shot.

Your turn

Have you written a personal mission statement? Does it work for you? Is it something that keeps you on track? 

Here’s What (Some) Hiring Employers are Really Thinking…

So you spend hours (days, weeks, months even) writing a CV, and completing application forms. You pour your soul over it, it’s tough going and then you send it away.

You wait, you wonder, you think about the ‘hiring’ employer and hope they have read your masterpiece.

You wait some more, and then a little more.

You hear nothing.

You say ‘I’ve sent out my CV to 20 places and heard nothing back’. You get disheartened.

You think you might call them and ask for some feedback. But you don’t.

Okay, what I’m about to share with you is not good news, in fact, it’s a bit of a horror story.

I couldn’t even make it up.

But don’t panic, just yet.

Ready?

Let me give you a little background…

I spend a lot of time online.

I stalk a mammoth amount of websites mainly looking for questions that people are asking about careers, confidence and starting a little biz, which in turn help me to create blog posts for you (well that’s the plan!)

Part of this addiction is forums, you know, online communities where people with similar interests, ideas or businesses hang out and get inspired, motivated, annoyed and sometimes generally have moan.

Just a couple of weeks ago I visited a very large and popular small business forum, and there was one thread that caught my eye.

It had the title ‘How hard do you find it to hire staff?’ and it had about 50 replies from various business owners who are responsible for hiring and firing.

My interest was in the replies.

I wanted to know from the horse’s mouth (people hiring) what they found hard, mainly so I can help you.

This isn’t pretty but here are some of the replies to that thread and the reason why I’m so glad you’re here.

Rather than write that usual trite nonsense, just tell us if you are a psycho-loner liable to go on a shooting rampage or are insecure with a strong herd instinct.

Spent all afternoon reading vacuous nonsense-filled CVs composed of trite phrases which mean little and tell me nothing about the person as an individual. I could feel my life ebbing away.

The more people are given ‘help’ with CVs by well-meaning people the more all CVs are saying the same thing. Several of the ones I read today left me with no better idea of the person behind them at all so were binned.

I will choose on looks and that’s entirely human nature – last time we interviewed, one bloke had no chance before he’d even spoken as he was scruffy with tattoos everywhere. (What!)

The other ball-ache about recruiting is the job centre applicants that turn up because they have too or their benefits will be stopped. (This one made my blood boil)

I heard about one person who had 200+ CVs on their desk.. they split the pile in 2 randomly and threw one-half in the bin. They claimed that they did not want to hire unlucky people! (Stunned, I’m stunned!)

Blame the job centre and the “back to work” organisations that assist young job-seekers. It’s practically part of the template they use – jobseeker’s home address, today’s date and trite fluff. (Blame? Seriously?!)

The worst part about all this interviewing malarkey is that clearly some of the people you have seen cannot even read the advert so how are they supposed to the job?

It was the same crap CV after CV of generic answers taken from job websites. In the end, I put all of the what I called ‘void of personality’ CV’s on one side and interviewed the one’s that looked as though they actually gave a damn about getting a job and tailored their CV to the particular job.

I told you it wasn’t pretty.

How do you feel about these? Surprised or angered?

The above is negative news. Some of them are against the law, rude and so darn obnoxious (in my humble opinion). But my professional Careers Hat understands some of the frustrations.

We aren’t given these career lessons in school, we don’t learn this ‘stuff’ until the time comes when we need it.

Your Turn

Erm, your thoughts? I’m still stunned, what do you say? Please feel free to leave a comment below.

Resistance, Quit It!

‘The Resistance’,  I love when people insert the word ‘the’ in front of resistance.

I like breaking arrows. With my throat. I like to see other people break arrows with their throat.

Now, I first got to try this when I was training to become a fire walking instructor, and I actually wasn’t thinking (at first) ‘this is impossible’ because I knew it could be done, I’d witnessed others in the group: snap snap snappity snap.

Rejoice. Clap. Clap. Clap. (cue winning punch)

The time came for me to get up there, in front of my peers

Wow, what a thought rush was had.

In the space of 10 seconds my brain screamed: ‘don’t do this, risky, this is risky, it’s going to hurt, what if you’re the first person the arrow doesn’t break for, oh you’ll be fine, don’t make a fool of yourself, get up there, others are watching you better do it, what if it goes through your eye, what if you can’t do this, you’ll look a right fool, just do it, don’t, relax, your so nervous…on and on’.

Quietly asking my brain to butt out, up I continued.

So there I was, with the sharp end of the arrow on the soft supply part of my throat, the other end against a wall, all I had to do was take a step forward.

One step. One slight movement. Just enough to encourage the shaft to bend, then snap.

That was it.

One push.

And in that ‘moment’ is where most get stuck.

Not just in breaking arrows, but all through life.

That point when the task, activity, goal, idea, whatever it is, requires a final push. When you need to deliver.

That point where a little pain is felt. It’s uncomfortable, not life threatening, but still not pleasant.

That point where there are moments of doubt and ‘can I actually do this, oh wait, hold on, let me stop and think’.

That point where the easiest option is to take a step back and say ‘oh I can’t, maybe next time‘.

Or even worse, getting stopped. Not being able to move forwards or back. There you are stuck with pain and you’re choosing to do nothing about it.

But, you’re going to have to let go at some point, yes? Either by choosing to release yourself from the pain or by going through it.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

One day, you may decide to take part in this activity. And I can’t even express in words how you’ll feel, because it’s not really about breaking arrows, but smashing through resistance.

Where do you need to take one small step forward today? What requires a final push?

Do it. Or release it.