Golden Lining

Sometimes a collapse is a catalyst for change we didn’t even know we needed.

Yesterday our kitchen cupboard collapsed onto itself, and we were irritated because we had work cut out for us that we didn’t intend to have. 

However, we were forced to discover what was actually inside that cupboard. I had no idea we were hoarding 13 empty pickle jars.

Now it’s completely clear and the sense of satisfaction I get from being able to see every item of food we have is unexpectedly brilliant. 

Of course, the cupboard is just the starting point. It got me thinking, what if with every collapse that occurs in our lives, we didn’t just look for a silver lining, but also a giant benefit?

The Importance of Personal Development

Personal development gets given a bad wrap. I’ve had people tell me it’s selfish, self-indulgent and even superficial. I don’t know where this idea comes from, but it has permeated our culture so deeply that we feel guilty for the slightest self-care.

Personal development isn’t the selfish pursuit of personal gain at the expense of others. Personal development is about building up the human strengths that buffer against mental illness in order to increase fulfilment in life.

One way to explain mental health and illness is by using a number line from -10 to +10, where the negative numbers represent degree of mental illness such as anxiety or depression, and the positive numbers represent degree of mental strength. We want our baseline (the number we’re on) to be as high as it can be, right? However, with the current disease model, we’re only expected to get help when we’re ill. We’re led to believe if you’re not sick, there’s no reason to focus on personal development at all.

Not-sick sounds good in theory, but it means our baseline is at zero. Zero mental illness – but also zero mental strength. At zero, if we take a hit (a breakup or job loss, for example), we’re at serious risk of dropping into the negative, into mental illness. However, if our baseline is at say, +6, and now we take a hit, we’ve got a much better chance at coping with it, and we may only drop to say, a +3 – still quite mentally strong. Therefore, increasing our mental strength is an incredibly effective preventative measure to protect against anxiety and depression.

That’s great on a personal level – but what about other people? Isn’t it selfish to spend so much time on our own mental state when we could be helping others? Well, no. When you’re sick, you demand not only your own attention but the attention of others too. Ever heard the phrase, ‘you can’t pour from an empty cup’? To give, you must fill up your own cup, and then you’re in a much better position to help the world.

As a High Performance Coach, that’s what I help people do – heighten and sustain their mental strength so they can make an impact that truly matters in the world. I help them push their own limits and rewire their thinking, using their own life as a training gym.

And how do I actually do that?

By having deep conversations, sometimes face-to-face, but mostly on Skype, and asking a lot of questions. I ask questions you’ve never thought about the answers to, until you begin to think differently, and you discover new ways of handling life’s lemons. Most of the work happens outside the conversation – when you go and apply your strengthened mindset to all the different areas of your life and watch what happens. I also have my clients set commitments and then fulfill them by a deadline they set for themselves. I push them to reach their mental potential in the most supportive way possible – like a personal trainer.

To be physically strong, you don’t need a personal trainer, but you do need to exercise your body. Similarly, to be mentally strong, you don’t need a coach, but you do need to exercise your mind. A coach is one way you can do that more effectively, but you can also read personal development books, take courses, listen to podcasts, watch documentaries and cultivate growth-friendships.

The point is, we shouldn’t take developing mental strength for granted – it’s not self-indulgent, selfish or superficial. In fact, it’s the exact opposite, because when we are mentally strong we have the capacity to help others and contribute to the world in a way that we can’t when we’re stuck in a cycle of dropping from neutral to negative and back again. Personal development is a worthy pursuit.

Get in the arena

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.” – Theodore Roosevelt

I was at an event recently where one of the guests drunkenly pulled me aside to give me her two cents on my career choice as a coach: “You’re not experienced enough to help people.” I just sat there, smiling and nodding, with no idea what to say.

I have often wished people understood what I do as a coach better. I occasionally receive criticism for it, on and offline. I get told that personal development is self-indulgent or superficial. However, today I want to share exactly why I disagree.

I’m outrageously passionate about personal growth because I believe wellbeing is a necessity, not a luxury. I believe it is a key ingredient missing from our world. Imagine if we empowered people to truly focus on strengthening their mental health and wellbeing, and living a life full of meaning and fulfillment – truly imagine how much better this world would be. Imagine if we took the time to reflect on how to be more loving, create less conflict, contribute more. And worse, look at what happens when we don’t. We don’t protect ourselves against becoming ill, and being sick is demands far more self-indulgence than investing in our wellbeing ever does. When you are sick, there is nothing you can do but focus on yourself. When you focus on growing and thriving and becoming the happiest you that you can be, you’ve got the capacity to give to others and you have the energy and stamina to focus on outward issues. Put on your own oxygen mask first before assisting others. Everyone knows that.

You know when you think of a really good come back to a comment someone has made, but it’s already too late? For me, that was today, which is about 3 weeks too late to respond to the critic at that event. This is what I wished I had said: “If you’re not in the arena also getting your ass kicked, I’m not interested in your feedback.” – Brené Brown

I’m almost certain one of the reasons my heart pumps blood around my veins is with the intention for me to do the work I do as a coach, a writer, and a personal development enthusiast – and as a woman with that much conviction I’m not about to dull my light or change my entire career just because a spectator is booing me from the sidelines.

Humble Vision

"Gatsby, he had a grand vision for his life since he was a boy. No amount of fire could challenge the fairy tale he had stored up in his heart. He had an extraordinary sense of hope but I had the uneasy feeling that he was guarding secrets. It had gone beyond her. It had gone beyond everything."
– The Great Gatsby

A Grand Vision is a beautiful but intense idea to thrust upon our psyches. A grand vision can bring a lot of hope, but it can also bring a lot of pressure.

A Grand Vision is your full of impossible achievements, their legacy, and their overall mission. It’s not just for wealthy romantics like Gatsby – Martin Luther King Jr had a Grand Vision, a dream. It helps shape our lives and direct our efforts.

However, day to day, a Grand Vision can leave us feeling overwhelmed and unfulfilled, and the gap from where we are now to where we want to be is so huge it can be crippling.

That’s why I like my coaching clients to set both a Grand Vision and a Humble Vision.

Unlike a Grand Vision, a Humble Vision is full of things you can do right now to be living your dream. It doesn’t require you to be richer, thinner, better looking, more accomplished or any of the things you think you need before you can achieve your Grand Vision. You don’t need to become anything other than who you already are. Your humble vision is available to you right now.

How do you set a Humble Vision?

For example, if your Grand Vision is to win a Gold Medal in freestyle the 2024 Olympics and raise a million dollars for sports education in underprivileged schools, then your Humble Vision might be to train every single day at the local pool, and volunteer at your local school teaching kids to swim. This relieves the pressure of being a Gold Medalist today, but still moves you towards the ultimate goals of your Grand Vision.

Another example?

Say, in your Grand Vision, you’ve got a full-time live-in assistant to help you run your tech business. To live your Humble Vision, you could start by hiring a Virtual Assistant from Craigslist for an hour a week.

I love setting a Humble Vision. It feels so authentic and really helps dissect what is important about your Grand Vision. The point is, your Humble Vision is a way to live your Grand Vision today – but on a smaller scale. Doesn’t that just feel so good?

Building your success story

Whenever anyone tells me they’re struggling, or they feel like they just so far away from their goal, I always like to tell them: You are building your success story.

Nobody wants to hear the story of the person who sailed through life with no struggles and achieved every goal they ever set without any trouble. Seriously – you’d just feel irritated hearing that.

We want to hear the story of the person who grew up with a hard life and despite all odds, made it to success.

Whatever you’re going through right now, whatever feels tough – know that one day you will tell the story to a room of people hanging on your every word, gobsmacked at what you overcame to become the success you are known for.

Keep going, you are building your success story.

What you think, you become

What’s your desired outcome?
Stop smoking? Lose weight? More money? Better relationships?

Your thoughts create your feelings, which create your actions, which create your results.
think > feel > act > get

That is the meaning of the saying “What you think, you become.”

The reason we don’t get what we want is that we try to change our actions without changing our thoughts. You’ve seen it. The person who tries to stop smoking, and says they will – but hasn’t changed their beliefs, their identity, their THOUGHTS. They fail and they can’t understand why. Changing things at the action level alone won’t work. You have to change your thoughts first.

Ask yourself, “Now that I have (insert desired outcome), what do I believe, what do I think?”

Start there. See how it ripples out to your actions.

Handling Criticism

Brooke Castillo said (and I paraphrase), if someone told you “I hate your blue hair” it doesn’t hurt, right? Because you don’t have blue hair. That’s not offensive. You just think “Um, okay?”

Criticism only hurts if part of you believes it.

If you believe you’re not good enough, and someone tells you you’re not good enough, it will hurt. But if you believe you are good enough and someone tells you you’re not good enough, it won’t hurt (Unless there’s a tiny part of you that still believes you’re not).

Your beliefs determine your feelings, not other people.

How to handle criticism? Examine the part of you that believes it, and find out why. Then instead of leaning into your anger or upset, spend your energy working on changing those beliefs.

Things I'm never doing again

I’m never going to record another concert on my iPhone.
I’m never going to take another picture of food for Instagram.
I’m never going to go somewhere just for the photo.

Because in trying to capture a moment, we are the ones captured from the moment.

How much is a follower worth?

The more followers or subscribers you have, the better, right?

But what is the true value of a follower? We think that thousands or millions of followers makes our content heard by more people – but those people are also following between 300-2000 other people. No wonder the social media algorithms aren’t showing your content to your followers. You’ve got to compete for their attention, which means your message is being diluted in a swarm of other content also vying for your audience’s attention.

If you read my last few posts, you’ll know I’m currently considering quitting all social media entirely. But wait, what about my 16 thousand Instagram followers? I’m just going to throw that all away?

I just want to examine exactly what having 16 thousand followers actually means.

As of the moment of writing this post, I have 16,598 followers, and it’s been stable in the 16k mark for about a year.

According to this engagement calculator, I have an engagement rate of 1.71%.

This is low, but not unusual. Most accounts my size have around 2.43% engagement:

Let’s do the maths:
1.71% of 16,598 is 283.

That means, if I delete my Instagram, I’ll be losing the consistent engagement of around 283 people in total.

Puts it in perspective, right?

One of my core values is connection. I truly love being with people (I score highly on the extroversion scale), and I value every single one of the people who connect with me on social media. It just happens to be that there’s fewer than you might think.

Unfortunately, because we think we’re more popular than we really are (well, I'll speak for myself), we let the social media machine run our lives. Wouldn’t it be so much better if we personally connected to those 283 people (or however many are truly engaging with you), and had a decent conversation with them instead of obsessively pumping out perfectly curated posts at them?

I think so. I’m on a mission to put the social back into my life – by deleting social media.

Social media is optional, and as a society, we tend to forget that. It feels essential.
The point is: whether or not you feel you need to delete social media to get back in control of your life, don’t let the numbers fool you.

Hell yeah or no

Hell yeah or no.

High performer and brilliant mind Derek Sivers invented a genius cure for overcommitment:

When you've got a decision to make, if you don't think HELL YEAH! at the idea, then say no.

If you say no to almost everything, then when a truly incredible opportunity comes along that makes you think HELL YEAH, you have the time, energy and space in your life to fully commit to it.

Too many of us take on far too many things at once to function at peak performance.
Say hell yeah, or no.