Z – Zoom your Zeal Posted by Encouraging Excellence

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Zoom your Zeal


Are you passionate about anything?  Is there something you have a burning desire to do, learn, explore or develop?  Are you following that passion or is it simply a dream, something that you might someday get around to, when you’ve stopped hiding behind all the excuses you’ve got stacked up in front of it?  “I’ve got responsibilities”,  “I can’t just drop everything and..”,  “It’s not as straight

money, like air, only becomes important when you aren't getting any!

forward as that…”  “I don’t have the money”,  “It would mean making huge changes…”.  Do you every-so-often take it out from behind all the excuses brimming full of zeal and determination and look at all the possiblities it will bring into your life and then talk yourself back out of it and put it back wistfully, full of “if only’s” resentment and fear?


I’ve heard people say “money isn’t important” and heard others retort that “money is like air, it only becomes important when you aren’t getting any!”.  That can also be applied to other areas of our lives.  A zest or zeal for life becomes noticable when we remember what that felt like to be full of the joys of life, not having a care in the world, having a spring in our step and realising that no longer feel it.  Somewhere along the way we lost it and we’re not always sure how or where.  Or maybe we do know and are afraid to go back and get it, that passion for living.  Perhaps we believe that that type of passion is only for the young and foolish, who don’t know what it means to be a responsible adult.  I used to think that, that fun and a zeal for life was only for the young, that when you became an adult you couldn’t have fun, anymore, just for the sake of it. Life was a chore and boy! did I remind myself, every morning getting out of bed reluctantly to yet another tedious responsibility-laden day that I didn’t want to face.


So what changed for me?  I got so low, to a point that I decided I didn’t want to live that way anymore and I made a remark to someone who said that I didn’t have to, that I was choosing to.  I

The tipping point

rallied against that for a while and slowly came to agree with them and went looking for help to get past me.  Yes, me!  I was the block in my zeal for living.  I had absorbed so many other peoples’ attitudes and beliefs that I had suppressed most of mine and it was crushing the joy from my life.  It was an enlightening journey, as well as painful, therapeutic and freeing, with so much soul-searching and many answers that at first I didn’t want to hear.  But over time I got to know me, my limitations, my expectations – not someone else’s, my hopes and passions that I could turn into goals.  With all of these being awakened I’ve zoomed right back into my zeal for life.


With that zeal for living I now live a life with joy, passion and fun.  So just how do you zoom your zeal?  Start some serious soul-searching.  Are you living your best life, with passion or the life someone else has mapped out for you?  If not, make small changes to get back on your life path.  Do you do things that you enjoy doing, or is everything a chore, responsibility and a task?  If so, take up a hobby you enjoy, simply because you enjoy it, start to put some fun back into it.  Are you always at other people’s beck and call?  Start by saying no to things you normally get roped into by saying you just don’t have the time right now and set time aside for you, just for you, each day, be it five or

A zeal for life

ten minutes.  We all need to have time to ourselves just to be at one with ourselves, to gather our thoughts.  When we make small changes we start to build the foundations for the bigger changes that will follow.


I remember the first person I went to for help saying to me when I gave excuses for not looking after myself: “how on earth as a mother, can you look after your children if you don’t look after your well-being?  Don’t you owe it to them to be the best mother you can be?  Doesn’t that mean being the best person you can be first?” By focusing on ourselves first, developing a zeal and joy for living life to the fullest, we then want to share it with those around us.

Happiness and laughter is contagious, be a carrier!

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Y – Yank your Youness Posted by Encouraging Excellence

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Yank your Youness


What is it about you that makes you different to everybody else?  Apart from the obvious answer of “your fingerprints” can you say what it is about you that seperates you from everybody else on the planet?  Despite being alike as human beings, we are  all individuals, we are all unique, and just like

We are all individuals

snowflakes there are no two the same.  It is that very difference between us that marks us out to other people.  Is that something that you take pride in or do you spend your time covering it up and trying to blend into the crowd, become unnoticable?  It reminds me of the clip from the film “The Life Of Brian” where the Brian is saying to the crowd that they are all individuals and  they all chant after him “we are all individuals” and then he tells them that they are all different and they all chant “we are all different” then one person quietly says “I’m not!” and someone in the crowd goes “shush!“  Do you have moments in your life where you say “I’m not” or do you stay quiet or chant with the crowd?


So which category do you fall into?  The follow the herd mentality or the stand out and be heard individual?  “Sheeple” an acquaintance of mine recently called it, a rather derogitary remark, which he explained as follows: “sheep just follow the  leader, but there is no actual leader and they just wander aimlessly following other sheep, silly animals!.  Some people would prefer be told what to think and do rather than use the brains they have to develop their own opinions and act accordingly”. Are you a “sheeple”?  Do you look to others all the time to see what the crowd is doing, how the crowd feels, what the crowd is saying before you decide to express yourself?  Do you try to cover up the very thing that sets you apart from everyone else like it is something to be ashamed of, kept hidden in case someone might notice and react negatively to your youness? For some suppressing their own opinions and adopting the opinions of the people they associate hoping that by doing so they will be accepted, has become a way of life.  After a while they stop making decisions for themselves and hand responsiblity of their lives over to others, who don’t always steer it in the direction they wanted.  This then leads to resentments and a re-surfacing of the very youness that was suppress in the first place.


I spent years trying to blend into the crowd, to be invisible to the nay-sayers, the teasers, the people who acted as if they had the right to decide what was and was not acceptable.  Mostly at first it was because I accepted the views of my mother who, with good intentions, felt drawing

Yank your Youness

unnecessary attention to yourself was wrong, and then later because of the fear of ridicule and rejection.  Yet despite that I have always had a desire to be recognised and accepted for being different, having my own opinions heard.  Quite a natural  way to be, it would seem.  We like to have our individual opinions accepted by others, yet we don’t want to be open to any form of rejection of those opinions. Do you yank at your youness, expose it to all the elements of human nature, acceptance, rejection, praise, ridicule and do so with pride that there is not a single soul on the planet that is exactly like you, that you bring to everything you do a unique perspective that is worthy of airing.


The best way to overcome the confict of being accepted by the crowd as being one individual seperate yet part of the collective is to become comfortable with yourself.  To learn who you are, what your values and beliefs are, what standards you will and will not accept and to stick with it, not matter what anyone else attempts to make you do.  Like I have said before: “only you are living your life“, so go on, yank your youness!


“Why do we spend our lives trying to fit in, when we were born to stand out?” ~ Oscar Wilde

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X – eXcel your eXcitement Posted by Encouraging Excellence

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eXcel your eXcitement


Do you get excited by your life?  Are you glad to be alive?  Have you even thought about it or does it take something else to trigger a thankfulness to even be alive?  Maybe watching something tragic on the news like the recent earthquake in Haiti, or hearing of a death on the road that you travel along

Haiti earthquake

regularly, or someone needing a life-saving operation being told that they will have to wait even longer because the hospital they attend has further cutbacks, triggers a “glad that’s not me” type of reaction, but does it get you excited to be alive?  Or maybe you just plod along and have moments in your life that you file away as special “to be remembered as special” moments.


That to me, is kind of sad.  Life is for living, to the fullest of our abilities.  It’s not an endurance test, nor is it just for putting up with.  It’s for taking by the scruff of the neck and shaking out all the dust of complancy, all the fluff of tolerance of bad situations we find ourselves in, all the stray hairs of inaction, the crumbs of discontent that we have allowed to attach themselves to us and straightening ourselves out and getting moving, with excitement, longing, an itch and thankfulness to be alive and do something with the life we have.  And it doesn’t have to be world changing or ground breaking, it just has to be something that makes you sit up straighter, or keen to get going.  And it’s not confined to just one part of your life either, that type of excitement should be in all parts of your life, your relationships, worklife, social life and your private moments.


I know for years I plodded along, I did what was expected of me, oftentimes resentful of the burdens of that expectation.  And many people still live that way.  I’ve heard people say: “I can’t …..because it would hurt XXXX”, or “that’s not what my parents want for me and I owe them so

Live your life to the full

much ” and many other reasons for not doing what they want to do with their lives.  Yes, your parents or XXXX may be hurt or disappointed but that is not your responsibility, they are in charge of their own feelings and hiding behind others wishes is no excuse.  I remember my mother retelling a story of someone (an only child) who went to college to study what his parent wanted him to study, law, and when he graduated they asked him where he was going to work and were totally shocked to discover he had re-applied to college to study medicine, because it was what he wanted to do.  He had given his best to his studies, graduated with honours and reckoned the years spent in college were okay to please his parents, but the rest of his life was his, to do with as he pleased and to live to the full.


If you have ever spoken to someone who has had a serious accident and nearly lost their life, listen to how they approach the life they are living now.  I’ve had the great luck to speak to quite a few of these people, some are friends and others are merely acquaintances, but they all have one thing in common – a thirst for life, a gratefulness to be alive (even those left paralysed and dependent on others for their basic needs) and an utter joy at what tomorrow may bring, because they know they will deal with it.  They’ve looked death in the face, decided they didn’t like it and now live life with an zeal and excitement, that type of passion that we often only see in those who have a particular

Happy to be alive

project or mission to complete.  But for these people life is a gift, a second chance to be glad to be alive, and to make the very best they can out of it.


Will you have to wait until you have a near-death experience before you realise that you only get one life, you don’t get to come back a second time and make all the adjustments you’d have liked to the first time around?  So live your life to the full, excited by the dawning of a new day and a new opportunity to live your best life possible.


“If you don’t think every day is a good day, just try missing one.“  ~ Cavett Robert ~

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W – Wither your Worries Posted by Encouraging Excellence

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Wither Your Worries


Are you a worrier?  Do you find yourself realising that you’ve not been worried about anything and begin to worry that something is wrong with that?  I used to be a worrier, if I had nothing to worry about I’d get worried and I’d stay worried until I found something better to worry about.  And the horrible thing about that type of worrying is it is thoroughly exhausting.  It is very difficult to just

Worry kept me awake

switch off at the end of the day.  For me it was impossible.  I’d go to bed worrying about being able to get enough sleep so as to get up on time in the morning and then spend at least an hour and a half trying to get to sleep with absolutely no success.  Eventually I’d drift off into an exhausted haze and wake up late, panic, and start the worry process all over again, rushing to get moving, get dressed, get the children ready, have breakfast and make it out the door so they would get to school on time and I would get the bus I needed to get to work on time.


And all this adds up to a lot of stress, tension, and even more worry, and it becomes a vicious circle.  While on the way to work, worrying if there would be anything that might delay my progress, while in work worrying if the children were behaving in school or if they were being bullied, and then not concentrating properly on the job at hand.  Becoming aware of that and worrying I’d be caught slacking, on the bus on the way to collect the children from the childminder and worrying about being late, then worrying about getting home, getting them settled into doing their homework and me cooking so that they at least be properly fed, would get to bed on time and get the sleep they’d need to be able to function the next day.


Needless to say fun and relaxation were strangers to me at that stage in my life and to a degree it

Worried I'd be caught slacking

was also lacking for my children too.  I was so tightly wound up in worry that there were times that they just took a look at my face and did an about-turn without asking what they had intended to ask.  If anyone suggested that I relax I’d only partly do it.  I didn’t know how to turn of the noise in my head and I wasn’t sure at the time that I wanted to.  It was a type of security blanket I kept wrapped around me, more like a hair-cloth than a security blanket.  I could relax only as far as my shoulder blades but could never manage to get the knots out of them or my neck or tune my mind to nothing, in fact the very idea worried the living daylights out of me.


It was only years later when I first went to a counsellor for help with an issue I had that I learnt to let go of some of my worries.  Over time I realised that the purpose that they were serving was doing me no good, I had no control over some of the things I was worrying about, I had choices over some of them and others were “what if’s” that might not ever come to fruition.  I heard Richard Bandler (co-founder of NLP) ask a women he was working on recently what she could do instead with all the time she was wasting on worrying and she laughed and answered him.  So what can you

Wither your worries

do instead with all the time you waste on worrying?


If you have an unresolved issue, how do you deal with it?  Like my mother said to me a few years ago when I rang her about an issue I had to deal with “what can I do at this time?“  When I said “nothing“, she replied “then please don’t tell me until you absolutely have to, I don’t want to waste my time being worried about something I can’t do anything about, but care enough about to be deeply concerned“.  While at the time I took that as a rather unfeeling response, later with hindsight I’ve come to realise that she is right.   We often hide behind worry as a way of not dealing with issues, or taking responsibility for things in our own life.  We use worry as an excuse to not live a full and fulfilling life.  Now if there is an issue I can’t deal with, I set it aside to be dealt w ith when I either have more knowledge or resources to deal with it, or if I decide it is not a big enough issue I simply let the worry wither away to nothing.

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V – Vanquish your Vagueness Posted by Encouraging Excellence

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Vanquish your Vagueness


Are you one of those people who when asked something says “Mmm…..we’ll see” or “Let me think about that” or “Can I get back to you about that?” and promptly file it in your “Let’s Forget All About It box”, because you don’t want to make a decision?  You might be afraid that you’ll make the wrong choice and won’t be able to correct it.  Or perhaps you feel you might be roped into something

Do you dither on decisions?

that you won’t be able to get out of later.  Maybe the very thought of someone thinking anything negative about you sends you into mental turmoil, so you dither between saying yes or no.  If you say yes, they’ll like you but you’ll have to do something you’d much rather not, on the other hand if you say no they won’t like you anymore.

Or perhaps you are the type of person who knows that you want more from life, but when asked what that more is says “I don’t know” get that uncomfortable feeling deep inside and look for something to distract you from it?.  Maybe you’re not happy with your life and when asked to be specific you don’t have an answer, because you really don’t know.  And you really don’t know because you haven’t been asked the correct questions to be able to find out.  You are not asking yourself the correct questions and mostly others are not asking the correct questions either.  And what is worse is, when someone does ask the correct questions you feel so uncomfortable that you shield yourself from them and change the subject or give very vague wishy-washy answers.  And quite possibly you are vague because you don’t want to appear as if you don’t know, when that is exactly what is appearing.

I used to fall into the category of not wanting to do something but wanting to be liked, and then feeling I couldn’t say no.  So I’d get roped into doing things that I really, really didn’t want to do.  And the way I dealt with that was turn up late, completely unprepared

doing a bad job is more annoying than doing no job!

and then do the task badly, in the hope that I wouldn’t get asked to do anything again.  All the while hoping (unrealistically) that the person who asked me would be able to mind-read my reluctance and say that it was okay, they’d get someone else to do it.   Of course I rarely got asked to do something a second time.   I also didn’t realise until much, much later that it had a much more negative impact on how that person saw me and it did exactly what I didn’t want it to do – they got annoyed with me and liked me less as a result.  Over time  my circle of friends grew smaller and I wondered what I was doing wrong, but would distract myself with other things so as not to have to find the answers within me, it was easier to blame them as needy people who couldn’t just be friends just for the sake of it.

The turning point for me on this was when my middle child was about nine.  Herself and her older brother wanted to go somewhere and needed me to bring them.  At the time money was tight, but this event was affordable.   I was always conscious keeping some money back for “the unexpected disaster” and I was very wary of agreeing to something only to have to back out at a later stage which would have built up their hopes and then dashed them, yet I didn’t want to say no outright, so I said “we’ll see“  to my son when he asked about it.   He walked away and I was outside the room when he was telling his sister what I’d said

no excuses

and she replied in a disappointed voice “that means, NO!, she only says that when she doesn’t want to say no to something”.   And in that moment I made the decision that I would bring them to the event.  I vanquished the vagueness I had of disappointing others because of my fear of rejection.

As a result of that, I learnt it was easier to make other decisions too.  I stopped dithering about other things in my life and started to make changes.  I walked away from some situations and people who were not good for me and make strides outside my then comfort zone that helped me to develop into the person I am today.   There are times when I still don’t give a direct yes or no to someone, but now when I say “can I get back to you on that, I need to check on some other things first?” it is because I really don’t know right then if I can do what they are asking of me and later I do get back to them with a definite yes or no.

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U – Understand your Unconscious Posted by Encouraging Excellence

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Understand your Unconscious


We all have a conscious mind and an unconscious mind.  Our conscious mind is the bit we are aware of, hence “conscious” mind.  Our unconscious mind is the bit we are not aware of, hence “unconscious” mind.  And our unconscious does so much for us and of course until we are made conscious of it, it stays in our unconscious.  From the very basics, like breathing to walking, or sitting.  Our unconscious mind orders all our basic bodily functions, a bit like a back office sorting out all the front office paperwork so it can run smoothly without interruption.  But do you understand what the other functions of you unconscious mind are?  Well let me list some of  them and explain them a bit more for you:

Creativity:

All our creativity comes from our unconscious minds.  The things we make up in our heads come from here, we bring them into our conscious thoughts and expand on them, but they start in our unconscious.  As a famous quote says, “if I can dream it, I can create it”

Our unconscious mind is right-brained

Try this little exercise:  if you are right-handed, use your left hand and vise versa.  Get a sheet of paper and a pen or pencil and sit  down, clear your mind (hum if it helps clear the thoughts from your head) and now just write to your sixteen year old self, or draw a picture for your sixteen year old self.  Just let your hand take the pencil or pen through the process without guidance from you consciously.  Now look at what you’ve put on the paper.  If you’d tried to do this consciously you’d have stopped yourself less than halfway through because your conscious self would have seen “gibberish” that just wasn’t logical, but your unconscious doesn’t have those limitations.

Storing Memories

Our unconscious stores all our memories.  Can you imagine how big our minds would have to get to be able to store all the information that we learn and absorb?  Try this little exercise:   Think of something that happened to you last Friday, something good.  Notice that it comes into your awareness from somewhere else, that it wasn’t already therei in your consciousness waiting for you to call it back, it was called up/in from somewhere else?  That is your unconscious mind doing it’s job properly, so that your conscious mind can get on with all the things it has to do.  Our unconscious mind will also repress memories with unresolved negative emotions, which is why we sometimes can’t remember traumatic events.  But it will also present those unresolved memories for resolution at a later date.    In effect it is protecting us from things we can’t deal with at the time and storing them for dealing with at a later date, when we are more capable of resolving those issues.

Runs Your Body

As I stated at the top of this post your unconscious mind does all the “back office” stuff when it comes to our bodies.  It sends

Our unconscious runs all our bodily functions

messages back and forth to our brains along what are called neural networks.  They range from instructing the brain to instruct our noses to inhale air into our lungs, instructing our lungs to expand to take in that air, extract the oxygen from that air, pass it through the vessels into our bloodstream, instructing the vessels to allow the oxygen to get through,  instructing the blood to carry it through our body depositing the oxygen to the bits that require it and collect carbon dioxide after dropping off the oxygen….phew!!  This is just a small part of breathing, and we do it thousands upon thousands of times a day, every day!  Can you imagine how difficult it would be to have other thoughts if our conscious mind was taken up with the day-to-day running of our bodies: breathing, heart pumping, eating, digesting, moving, etc.  Without our unconscious doing all that work we wouldn’t be able to function properly.

Looks After The Emotions

Our conscious mind looks after the logical side of things and our unconscious mind looks after the emotional side of things.  It isn’t good to be completely logical, nor is it good to be completely emotional.  It is best to have a balance of both.  To varying degrees most of us do, but we tend to favour one or the other.  In fact if you start probing emotional issues with someone who bases their life mostly in logic, you are likely to see them get very, very uncomfortable and very quickly too and this is because they are not comfortable with emotional issues.  Chances are they will probably belittle emotions as over-reacting while not realising that they themselves are also over-reacting and in a negative way too.  On the other hand ask someone who bases their life on emotions to look at something logically and they are likely to tell you that you’ve taken the heart out of everything, that it is too cold a way to look at something.  The best way is with a combination of both logic and emotion.

Highly Moral And Intuitive

Your unconsious mind looks after your intuition.  I blogged about this before, see: Involve your Intuition a few posts back along this A – Z series.  It knows instinctively what is good and not good for you and that is why you get a “feeling” or “sense” when something just isn’t right for you.  Or why you “just know” when you are in a dangerous situation.  It is your unconscious warning you.  Your

Our unconscious is highly moral

unconscious is also highly moral, so if you get a sense of foreboding or a feeling of something not being right when you intend to do something that you know is wrong, it is your unconscious warning you that you are crossing one of your moral boundaries and to take note.  The morals that we accept as we grow up get embedded into our unconscious mind and stay there until we amend or change them.

Does Not Process Negatives

Yes, it’s true, your unconscious mind deletes all negatives from anything presented to it.  It is something that the unconscious doesn’t get to grips with, that belongs to the conscious mind.  So by stating things negatively the very first thing our unconscious mind does is go through the sentence and delete all the negatives.  For example if I said I didn’t want to be a relationship with a boorish bullying brute of a man, my unconscious would take out the “didn’t” and then being the very obliging thing that it is, it would direct me towards what I was asking for.  On the same level, if I said I wanted a relationship with a considerate, nice looking friendly man it would again direct me towards my goal.   Since it doesn’t process a negative and will automatically delete any negative presented to it, isn’t it better to present positively stated goals in the first place and prevent all the difficult situations that are continually cropping up because of the way you think them?

Hopefully this will go some way to explaining the lesser known part of our minds to you.  It might also help you understand yourself a bit better and it may also help you to understand other people around you too.  With understanding comes acceptance for ourselves and others and that is a good thing.

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T – Test your Truths Posted by Encouraging Excellence

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Test your Truths


How often do you accept what other people say to you without questioning it?  Are you one of those people who would “swallow a brick” as we used to say when we were young, the type of person who trustingly believes everything they are told?  I used to be like that and couldn’t understand why others would laugh at me when I’d repeat what I’d been told to others, when it was blatantly

Do you question?

untrue.  Years later and much developed cynicism and the “school of hard knocks” has taught me to question the truth behind some of the things that are spouted as truth.

One of them at the moment is the swine flu vaccination.  It has been the case for many many years that to prevent accidental loss of life that new “medical products” are tested for a period of at least five years to make sure that they are safe to use on humans.  So much so that a product being tested in Ireland on Alzheimer sufferers has had its testing stopped due to an unexpected number of deaths of testers recently, a result that is most certainly not what the manufacturers want.  It is also widely known that there is no known human resistance to viruses, which is why we can repeatedly get colds, recover and get it all over again.  Yet many of the governments of different countries are spouting the swine flu virus’s virtues and this product is only in the testing stage, so the people taking it are effectively “the guinea pigs” for the manufacturers,  and many, many people are being frightened into taking it with media scare tactics.  It just takes one death and the media goes all out to frighten the lives out of parents to get themselves and

So many people act without checking the alternatives

their families vaccinated, instead of  teaching them ways to avoid being susceptible by living a healthier life.  I had a mother at the school my daughter attends give me “telling off” for being what she called irresponsible for not getting my daughter vaccinated.  When I asked her what background study she had done on it, she replied that she’d done none, but that the government said she should get her children protected.  When I told her my version she looked seriously worried, because she’d already had her children vaccinated and hadn’t considered that there was an alternative.  Now it wasn’t my intention to have her worried, that is simply a by-product of her acting without testing the truths for her situation.  She might still have decided to get her children vaccinated with the extra knowledge or she might not, but at least she would have made an informed decision.

There are many areas in our lives where we blindly take the word of so-called experts.  In today’s society the general consensus appears to be let the leaders decide and then if we don’t like it lets moan and groan about it, maybe have a wee protest march or petition against it and then quieten down and accept the situation as it is, because there is nothing we can really do

It just takes one to test the truth and find it lacking

about it.  Yet how often have a group of people when united found that they do actually have the power to do something?   The limits we place on ourselves come down to our own self-imposed limitations. How many times have you heard someone say to you “You can’t do that!” and when you’ve asked “Why not?”  been told that it’s just not done, or it’s not right or whatever reason the objector gives to stop you?  How often have you let that stop you?  Far too many people blindly do, because “it’s not the done thing”, “it will upset XXXX”, “people will talk” or whatever excuse.  Yet when pushed to a limit that becomes unacceptable then what once seemed impossible becomes possible and truths are tested and often found lacking.  In many countries people have rallied to have laws on child abuse, drink driving, drug pushers changed and it started with one person saying:  “Someone has got to do something, and that someone might as well be me“  and then spreading the word and gathering support for their cause.   A quote from Henry Ford is very applicable here “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right!” and that is so very true.

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S – Set your Standards Posted by Encouraging Excellence

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Set your Standards


What’s your bottom line?  The line below which you just won’t go?  Do you know what it is?  Do you have one for different parts of your life?  I have!  For work my bottom line is cleaning and prostitution, they are the two professions I point-blank refuse to even

A job as a cleaner is not for me

consider doing.  They are my bottom line.  In fact it normally gets a laugh when I say it, an awkward laugh, but a laugh none-the-less.  But I am deadly serious about my bottom line.  For me sex is part of a loving caring relationship so to sell it as a commodity just demeans it for me, so I won’t consider it as  a career!  I can’t abide cleaning, absolutely hate it with a passion, so the very idea of it being a profession of mine just doesn’t exist, it is most definitely below the standard for me.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with cleaning – if you like it and I have many friends who enjoy it, they find it therapeutic, even relaxing, so to them it is way above their bottom line standard.

So do you know what your standards are?  Do you stick to them or do you allow others to cross them constantly or even now and again and dismiss it, just like they dismissed you?  Confrontational, I know, but if you don’t set and stick to your standards no one else will.  The standards you set for you, are for you, not your family, not your work colleagues and not your friends.  It is up to you to let them know what they are and to enforce them.  I used to swear a lot, but there was one word I

some swear words are banned

never used, because I didn’t like it.  I remember a linguist explaining that particular word and all the meanings behind it and from then on I decided I didn’t even want to hear it repeated in my company.  I’ll quite readily call anyone who uses it and tell them that I don’t like that word being used in my company and most of the time they stop.  If they don’t, I leave!  If they are in my home they are asked to leave!  That is a small standard but it is an important to me and it is very much up to me to uphold it.

A cousin of mine has set a standard of being a little bit early for everything she has to attend.  She has had this standard for years and when we’d agree to meet up and I’d turn up late she would be quite annoyed at me.  To her it was plain rude to agree a time, go out of her way to meet up and then for them to turn up late, with no notice.    Again, a standard she enforced and upheld.  She even gets a bit frazzled if she ends up being late, even if it is out of her control.  For someone else it could be doing a job to the very best of their ability and not stopping a day’s work until they have achieved that standard for themself.  That could mean having to find out further information to be able to do that job, but that is part of the steps to maintaining that standard.  Others might decide that not having the information to hand is enough of a reason to not

Being ontime was a standard set and maintained

do their job to the best standard that they can.  And that is how we start to let our standards slip and fall away.

For some they don’t see that letting a standard slip is that big a deal.  Then at some point they realise that nearly all of their standards and boundaries are being ignored and crossed and wonder how they got to that stage.   And at that point when they attempt to reinforce them, because they have ignored them for so long the people who have over-stepped their standards continue to do so.  And that is when conflict arises.  We are teaching others how to treat us all the time, so by letting our standards slip we are teaching them to treat us with a little less respect.  When we then attempt to re-introduce our standards we can often find that we are ignored or worse contradicted with scorn.  While it may seem like nit-picking to maintain a certain standard it is the foundation that you base your life on, to strengthen it from the start makes for a better quality later on, just like building a house.  You wouldn’t build a house on rickety foundations, so why do it to your life?.  Set your standards, stick to them, adjust them when necessary and let others know that these are the standards you live your life by and ask them to respect them and enforce them yourself.

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R – Realise your Resourcefulness Posted by Encouraging Excellence

R


Realise your Resourcefulness


How resourceful are you?   If you don’t have all the information or skills you need to complete a task do you give up and give in, or do you go looking for the informations, leaving no stone unturned until you get it, or get the training required, then continue with your

If I want it, I'll find a way to get it.

task?  Or do you look in one or two places for said information and if you don’t find it fairly, quickly give up altogether?  How resourceful are you when you really, really want something?  

I was watching my six-year-old yesterday, after I’d told her she couldn’t have something and put it out of reach.  She walked past the place where the item was and would glance up and keep going.  Now normally she wouldn’t even be in the room where this item was, but she found reasons to go in. 

After a while she stopped and I also left the room and about twenty minutes later she came running up to me with the item and a triumphant expression on her face.  So I got her to show me how she got it – another hiding place gone!!  She kept at it looking at possible ways to get herself up to a height beyond her reach in a safe manner and eventually she succeeded.  It reminded me of how resourceful we can be.

I had a friend ask for advice a few months ago.  They needed to raise over two thousand euro and didn’t think in the current economic climate that the banks or credit union would lend them the money.  Nor would they be able to borrow it from family, none of them would have two thousand euros to spare.  So I suggested that they write a list of twenty ways they might raise the money and it didn’t

Smaller amounts from different sources can add up to the full amount

matter how  hare-brained it might seem, if an idea came into their head it was to be put onto the page.

If they could go over twenty ways, even better.  Most people get stuck somewhere around fourteen or so and this friend was no different.  Some of the ideas were to do with getting an extra job.  None of them were to do with breaking down the amount required into smaller manageable loans. 

When we had exhausted the possibilities on the list I suggested breaking the amount into smaller sums and seeing where those smaller amounts could be found.  They were amazed, all they saw was a huge sum of money to them and no way of getting it. 

I did the very same thing earlier this year when I was upskilling.  I had some of the money required but not all of it, but I was determined to get to the course, so I looked at all the ways I could earn the money and all the ways I could raise it by other means. 

I did my course!

Another example of realising your resourcefulness was the son of a friend of mine who had left school before sitting any exams, who now in his early twenties and in temporary employment wanted to go college to upskill.  He was in a lowish paid job but because he had no formal qualifications he was being overlooked for every permanent position that was being advertised.  He enquired as to what would be needed to secure a place and discovered that he was too young to qualify as a

How resourceful are you?

mature student, but that he could get a place if he did a certain pre-qualifer course to determine his knowledge base and learning ability. 

The fees for the tutor who facilitated that particular course were also outside his financial capabilities.  So rather than let all that stop him, he enquired whether he could do the pre-qualifying course with other tutors and discovered that he could and then went looking for “experts” who would teach him within his budget.   

He kept applying for all the relevant jobs within the company he worked in and always let the interviewer know of his plans to study at night if not that year, then the following year.  He eventually got offered a permanent position, finished the pre-qualifying course and applied to the college of his choice and been accepted.  The really nice upshot of it all was his employer agreed to reimburse his college and exam fees if he passed, which gave him an extra incentive to do well.

So, just how resourceful are you? 

Can you turn a problem into an opportunity, or do you let it stop you in your tracks? 

How do you deal with your problems?  Do you let them build up until you are at exploding point or do you face them head on, tackling each issue until it is no longer an issue?  

A famous quote says: “if you have a problem, deal with it, if you can’t deal with it, change your attitude to it”  and that is very true.  All it takes it looking outside the boundaries of the problems to see the solutions that are facing us if we only pay attention to it.

Where have you found a resourcefulness rising up within you that you hadn’t realised you had?

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Q – Queue your Qualities Posted by Encouraging Excellence

Q


Queue your Qualities


If I was to ask you to write down ten things you don’t like about yourself, I’d guess that you would be able to do it fairly easily.  Some of you might struggle with the last one or two, but in general it would be easy enough to do.  Now on the other hand if I were to ask

Do you know your top ten good qualities?

you to write down ten things you really like about yourself, chances are by the time you come to five you’ll be starting to struggle with your list.  Don’t believe me, go do it, this isn’t going anywhere & the information might serve you better with that little exercise done beforehand.

We all have good qualities.  For some people it is a really good sense of humour.   They can see humour in most things & can lighten the mood in most situations.  For others it is the ability to see both sides of the coin & an ability to reframe a situation so that all sides are clearly seen by all.   Others go out of their way to be environmentally conscious, do their best to reduce their carbon footprint & encourage others to do so with hints & tips without ramming it down people’s throats.  Some people always see the positives in any situation they find themselves in & do their best to pass it on to those around them.  I could go on with a list of different types of qualities that all of us have, that we excel in more that one.  Which do you have?  Do you acknowledge it?  Do others?  How did you do on the exercise above?  How do you use your qualities for the benefit of yourself & others?

I know I am good at being able to see both sides of a situation, am also good at being able to look at it impartially.  So when someone asks my advice I can go through the pros & cons of the situation so that they can make an informed decision, I don’t tend to give advice as such anymore, but do list off the benefits & dis-advantages instead.  I also go out of my way to make new people in

What qualities make for good family life?

my acquaintance feel welcome.  As someone, who for years, waited to be invited to join in rather that just do it, I can understand how daunting making that first step can be, so I go out of my way to make that first step for them, when I see it.

We are not just good at one thing.  We are good at many, many different things.  As life gets lived & we grow up it can be hard to see just how good we are at things.  Of course we can list all the good employable qualities we have when we go job-hunting, we are taught to do that.  Our everyday qualities don’t stop when we go to work, our work qualities don’t get hung on the coat hook when we come home.  I remember a woman on a course over fifteen years ago saying she wasn’t good at anything & had come on that course to learn new skills.  The facilitator asked her what she’d been doing for the previous ten to twenty years, it turned out she had been a stay at home full-time mother to three children, the youngest having just started secondary school, freeing up a lot of her day.  The facilitator pointed out that as a full-time, stay at home mother she had had to develop the following skills:  nurse, maid, cook, cleaner, negotiator, teacher, time-manager, budget planner, mender (clothes), house-keeper & companion.   Her face when he listed them all off was a sight to see.  Because so many people had written stay at

Some can lighten the humour instantly

home mothers off as less than useless she saw herself that way, yet when she went into interviews with the new attitude to her qualities and skills she got offered the job straight away.

So do you do that to yourself?  Negate all the good qualities you have and promote all the negative ones?  Stop, look back on your list of bad qualities & ask yourself, when has there been a time when this bad quality has served a positive purpose for me?   I can sometimes be quick to abandon things, usually this is a quality I see as negative.  However, there was an occasion a few years ago when I quit something & discovered shortly afterwards something else I really wanted to do.  Had I still been doing the first thing I would have missed an opportunity that I’m really glad now that I got.   So even your negative qualities can have a positive purpose for you.   Look at your list every day, see how you can use the best of your qualities to enhance the lives of those around you, also see how you can improve your negative qualities so that they too become positive qualities.

Filed under: A - Z Of Getting The Life You Want — Tags: , , , , , , , —



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