Ruth Sanderson

A new year and a new decade are almost upon us.  Where does time go.  Before the 1st January arrives will you have taken time to work out what you want to achieve in 2010?

Here’s a short video that let’s you in on a little secret of something I do between Christmas and New Year.  I already have all the ingredients mentioned in the video and I’m looking forward to the indulgence.

I think that one of the key things, no matter what sort of year this has been,  that is critical when you decide what 2010 will be about (and even the next decade if you’re being bold) is you feel fantastic.

Success is a feeling first and foremost, it’s not a destination.  So when you set your goals (work and personal) for the next year, do it in style, feeling fabulous, confident and successful.  What you believe is possible, what you desire, will be very different compared to if you set goals for next year feeling beaten from this year, creeping in with small wishes, hoping that life doesn’t crush those too.

Whether your recipe for success includes a G&T, a cup of tea or a glass of champagne, may this next decade bring you all your heart desires.  No creeping now

Some people might think I study odd things - like success.  Every time I meet someone who’s been successful my curiosity is peaked, I want to know how they did it, the process, the context.  Then I’m looking at how that matches my current process for achieving the same thing and I play around till I get the desired results.

As you can imagine this also means I’ve worked out various ways of delaying success.  So let me share with you one very good way of putting off the success you desire and deserve.

“When I _______________ then I’ll _______________”

That’s it.  You get to fill in the blanks.

Typically it’s along the lines of when I have my goal, then I’ll act in a different way.  Now this is as close as you can get to putting the cart before the horse and not realising it.  If you had your goal and you’d either behave differently, dress differently, do something differently, then what’s stopping you from doing/being the difference now?

Several years ago I did a paper exercise.  At the top I wrote    When I’m successful I’ll….

and then I just wrote lots of different endings.  After which I looked at all these things and said so which could I be/do/have right now.

One of the endings was I’ll always have a bottle of champagne in my fridge.  So I went and bought a bottle and there it lived and every time I opened my fridge door, voila success, well the feeling of success to be precise and that’s exactly what you want, the feeling.  Then something significantly fabulous happened and I wanted to celebrate and so out came the bottle of champagne and I felt really, really, successful.  Now over the years depending on just how flush I’ve been (running a business does have some hairy moments), it’s been a bottle of cava but it was always something that enabled me to feel successful.

So make your list and see just how much success you can have in your life already.

What are you worrying about?

What’s keeping you awake at night?

Years ago I was very good at worry.  For example I’d lie awake worrying myself into quite a state over whether I’d passed an exam.  My Dad, with consummate patience would ask me if I could do anything about ‘it’ right now.  Always the answer was no.  “So why worry, what good is it doing you; it’s currently stopping you from sleeping and right now that’s what you should be doing, sleeping.” Sadly this was a regular conversation we had, until I learnt to ask myself the question “what can I do about it right now”.  Clearly if I was worrying the night before the exam, then the answer was either get out of bed and do some more revision, or go to sleep cos I’d done all the revision I was going to do.  In other words, the worry was pointless.

It’s possible to sub classify worry, yes really….

There’s the worry that’s guilt.  Guilt is that awful emotion when you feel bad after an event; you did or said something that you now wish you could alter.  Most guilt is pretty quick to shift.  Here’s the question, just before you did/said whatever you now wish you hadn’t, what was going on for you, did you know it was ‘wrong’?  If the answer is no, then learn the lesson, take the feedback for next time and move along, don’t whip yourself to bits over it.  If the answer is yes, then go ahead and do guilt, although perhaps it’s more productive to re-assess your values or will power depending on what was going on.

There’s worry that’s anxiety - this is where your imagination is having a field day coming up with possible outcomes or scenarios for a particular event, e.g. giving a presentation.  Here’s the kicker though, by doing this you’re training yourself to fail.  Yes in order for you to be anxious you must be running various movies of you failing, either spectacularly, or just embarrassing yourself.  Again the question “what can I do about it?” helps.  Let’s take a presentation, you’re worrying that the IT won’t work, well practice with it a bit more, do what you can so that you’re comfortable with it.  Or you’re worrying that you’ll forget what to say, again practice.  Or you’re worrying you’ll fall over whilst walking on to the stage to begin your presentation, now let’s assume here you’ve mastered the art of walking and falling over isn’t a daily occurrence.  In which case the question to ask yourself is “how likely is this to happen and if it did how would I recover?”  Now once your mind has finished having a field day of disasters at your expense, and you’ve come up with ways to mitigate it, it will a) get bored - now persecuting you is no longer fun and b) you’ll be running movies of things going just the way you want them.

Anxiety is failure imagined.  You can beat it by imagining success - it takes just as much mental capacity as the failure part, however it’s a lot kinder to the rest of your body, yes your heart rate and stress levels are a lot lower too.

Of course there is pure worry, that’s when you’re not sure what’s going to happen in life in general.  Forget one specific event to imagine failure on, here you get to do it on everything, so in a way it feels more normal because it’s about everything, it’s that general worry and when this becomes a habit it’s called pessimism.  If the ‘unknown’ causes you to worry you end up being fearful of life.  Yes the unknown can be scary at times, but sometimes you should also feel excited at the ‘unknown’ or curious, or calm even.  Use you imagination and the power of thought and play.  If you can see life as one long series of experiments, some work, some don’t, but you keep learning, tweaking and moving forward, then you take the pressure off yourself to be perfect and always get it right.

And if all else fails I find shouting “get a grip of yourself woman” works for me

Do you have a vision for your future? 

How often do you spend time dreaming, imagining what you’d like to happen.  I’m not talking about fantasy, that’s when you dream of something you don’t believe could or would ever happen. 

In most cases we don’t allow ourselves enough time to envision our future, we’re so busy with today and our to do lists.  It’s almost the end of October and before you know it we’ll be schooching into Christmas, with bags of tinsel under our arms, hoping to make the last post and pick up a turkey.  And then 2009 will arrive.  Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun.

So if you haven’t considered your future for a while, then stick it on your to-do list.  Find a quiet space, with your favourite frappie-cappie-mocha-super-skinny drink should you so fancy, and have a think.

Now when you’ve done this imagineering what then, well write it down, it starts to crystallise your thoughts and it’s the first step on the road to making them happen. 

Next scour the Internet, magazines, and any other sources for images that represent what it is you want.  It can be an exact image, eg a car, or it can be an image that embodies what it is you want.  So it’s not a literal representation.

Then put these images on a board or large sheet of paper with blue tack or pins.  It means you can move them around into a combination that is very powerful for you.  It’s like you’re writing the story of your future. 

On a daily basis look at your vision board - drink it in, immerse yourself, feel like you have it, either the whole thing, or the individual components.

Now pay attention.  You see your vision board is what you want, but right now you won’t know the how you’re going to make it happen part.  I certainly haven’t a clue for mine.  Yet here’s the spooky thing, you don’t need to know the how’s if you pay attention, because ideas, opportunities etc they just show up.  Clearly you have to be awake to listen to them, which is why looking at your board on a regular basis is important, cos now you’re focused on what you want to create.

So here’s the recipe:-

Set aside a good 30 mins to let your imagination run riot

Write it down in glorious technicolour

Find images that best represent your future

Get paper and scissors ready and have a wonderful Blue Peter moment - remember always get an adult to do the cutting for you and you don’t need that pesky sticky backed plastic stuff, which is a bonus I say.

Stick the images on the board

View daily and move the images around until you get the best feeling (as in you feel like you have them)

Pay attention

Simple really - well some of the best things in life are.