Overcoming Challenges by Sue Courtney

The Coaching Bit

Last week I suggested playing about with what you think you want in order to find out what you really want. However, a great many of my clients know very clearly what they want, they need me to coax out of them how they are going to achieve it.

Some clients come to me with a precise and immediate need, such as delivering a presentation with confidence. This was a new part of their job and was daunting. We developed a way forward and my client went on to deliver that presentation and future presentations with confidence because she had been able to develop a different mindset and so become a different person around this challenge.

The daunting prospect of presenting can be overcome with coaching.

Another client wanted to move to Spain, along with her family. They had all been learning the language and eating the food. The children even had traditional dresses to dress up in. The missing elements were the belief that it was possible for them and a plan to make it happen. I am happy to report that they have all been happily living in Spain for about nine years now. The girls are bilingual and parents are still happily living and working there.

There are other challenges that my clients have successfully overcome and dreams and goals that they have successfully achieved with coaching, from changing job (sometimes they decide to stay put, but that is OK too), creating a band, getting clarity on the way forward in life and setting up a business. I have even enabled a client to successfully and happily move forward into potential redundancy with so much style and flair that she was kept on and moved to another section, so impressed were her managers, with her positive attitude!

The one thing that they all have in common is that they had to decide what they wanted, make a committed decision to make the change needed and develop a plan of action – and then take the action required.

They all wanted to achieve something new and so they all had to move out of their comfort zone and take new actions and embrace new beliefs about themselves and what they were able to achieve. They had to reinvent themselves and become the person who had already achieved their goals.

So what are your goals? What do you need to believe about yourself and who do you need to become in order to achieve them?

Remember that to successfully achieve them you will have to change your mindset, make new choices and do things differently.

Your response to events will have to change in order for your outcomes to be different.

E + R = O

Remember

“If you always do what you’ve always done

You’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

If you need that listening ear I am here. Just email me at sue@successandimagecoach.co.uk  to share any challenges you may have stumbled upon. There is always a way to move forward.

The Styling Bit

Strawberry 


Remember you are a strawberry shape if you have a wide back and broad shoulders, a large bust, flat bottom, slim legs, and you carry weight around your tummy. 


•      Wear deep v-necks or wide scoop necklines to soften shoulders and draw the eye down the body. 


•      Wide slash necklines are also flattering. 


•      Wrap tops and dresses are flattering and enable a good fit. 


•      Draping cowl necklines also draw the eye down. 


•      Opt for tailored shirts but ensure buttons don’t bulge over cleavage. 


•      Choose tailored jackets or coats without belts for the most flattering shape. 


•      A trick to remember when buying dresses – buy dresses that fit your larger top half and have the lower, skirt section professionally altered to fit. 


•      A professionally fitted bra is essential to accentuate your waist and separate your bust. The bra will also improve the way clothes fit and hang on your body. 


•      Boot-cut or wide, straight jeans and trousers will balance proportions. 


•      Choose elegant high heels to make the most of shapely ankles.

Once you know your body shape it is absolutely vital to get rid of all the clothes that don’t enhance or flatter your particular shape. Don’t be tempted to put them in the back of the wardrobe – get rid of them. But please don’t throw them in the bin: donate them to a charity shop, so that someone else can have the opportunity to enjoy them. In this way, you clear space for flattering clothes that you know look good, and that you feel wonderful wearing. 


Top Tip 


Dress to flatter your body shape at all times.

(Excerpted from my soon to be published e-book “Success with Style: How to Create a Signature Look That Says You Mean Business”)

Mind Map Your Way To Success – by Sue Courtney

So, If you are happy that you have written down all the goals you need right now (using the 4Ps), it is time to take action to create the life of your dreams.

Check your written goals to ensure they are sufficiently specific. A target weight is really necessary for weight loss goals, the specific make, model and colour is needed for a car, but for a house it might be better to state where you think you might like to live and focus on the feel of the home, leaving out the details (which can be put on your vision board). For my house goal I have worded it to say

“I am so happy and grateful to live in my wonderful sanctuary of a home where I enjoy frequently entertaining family, friends and clients and do wonderful, well paid work” because that is what I want. It covers all my requirements and leaves me open to how it is interpreted.

Hopefully you are visualizing and feeling the achievement of your goals daily and creating a vision board – always a work in progress as images are added and removed according to your current requirements.

The next step is to mind map the actions you will take to achieve them – because action is required. This is where the magic really begins.

On separate sheets of paper, write each goal in a circle in the centre of the page. Now chunk it down.

You are going to mind map all the actions you will need to take to achieve your goal and put them in circles around the centre circle. Join these actions to the centre goal, and also to each other if they relate, with a line. Then number each step in the order you will need to achieve them, maybe with dates to keep you on track. Put the dates in your diary and begin to take the first step today!

My mind map to create my book and CD set.

Photo by Alan Dent

It may be that you need to take a course or courses, so put that in a circle, plus the step of researching what course, where it is held and when it takes place. You may need to find extra money, do research on the internet or read some books. List all the steps.

Last week I mentioned experiencing your goal before achievement if possible – by taking the car for a test drive or viewing houses. This might be one of your steps on your mind map. It is often possible to do this for a job by asking if you might be able to shadow the person in your ideal job, for a day. If you fancy working in the film industry, why not join an extras company and spend a few days as an extra or a runner to see whether this really is the industry for you?

Once you have got your mind maps completed do all you can to stay on track. However, life will always throw up the unexpected – extra steps to be added to the plan that you initially had no idea about. That’s fine. Re-assess your priorities, slot the new steps into your schedule and push on to success!

The next tip for successful achievement of your goal is to step out of your comfort zone. This may feel safe but it is your worst enemy! If you want to achieve something you have never achieved before you are going to have to do things you have never done before – and this means venturing outside what feels safe and familiar.

Live here

Comfort Zone                                        Stretch Zone                                             Panic Zone

So, every day, do something different to get yourself used to feeling stretched. It doesn’t matter how small – maybe take a different route to work, try a different drink or meal, read a different genre of book – anything to get those stretch-zone muscles working for the important steps you need to take to achieve your goals. I’m sure you are familiar with the saying

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

You will have to become a different person and do different things to achieve your goals – if you could achieve them in your comfort zone you would already have done so!

I have this on my wall to remind me to be bold and try new things!

Photo by Alan Dent

Sometimes action steps will feel they are beyond your ‘stretch zone’ and in your ‘panic zone’. That is fine, they can still be tackled. You just need to chunk it down. Take steps back from the goal until you reach a step that feels like a stretch and do it. Then work out another small step and do that. In this way you will get there and still feel safe. If you are not sure whether you can do it, take the advice of Zig Ziglar:

“Go as far as you can see and you will see further.”

In this way, in small steps you change your stretch zone to your comfort zone and gradually bring your panic zone into your stretch zone. It is surprising how quickly you can achieve this.

I have done this on many occasions. When I first accepted a place on Jack Canfield’s Success Principles course I was so far out of my comfort zone it was a mere dot on the horizon! Now I am comfortable having coaches and mentors. I have moved my achievements out of my panic zone and into my comfort zone by taking action.

Make friends with your ‘stretch zone’ and it will enable you to do amazing things - in the words of Nike “Just Do It!”

Robin Sharma (author of “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari” and other amazing books) offers this advice

“Dream big. Start small. Act now.”

I will share more tips next time, including how to deal with that voice we all have that tells us we can’t achieve things – because you really can!

I would love to hear what your goals are and what steps you are taking to achieve them, so please email me with your progress and any questions you may have.