Do you ever get mad at yourself because you are struggling with something so easy? 

I do. 

It could be something like trying to thread a needle, work out how to use a new piece of software or how to express yourself in a difficult email. Maybe you're looking at competitive quotes for utilities or insurance? My hubbie has been doing that recently and I could hear him getting very annoyed at complicated it was. 

My current struggle is with some writing software called Scrivener. No I know that plenty of writers use it, there are lots of helpful You Tube videos and a tutorial on the website but nevertheless I am struggling to work out how to create new documents and where to put the website links for research. My novel is set in Victorian England and I have lots of research resources I want to access easily. 

I look at it, but in no time I want to give up. 

This morning I was out cycling with one of my cycling group, Paul, and we were discussing electric bikes and the idea of my getting one in order to help me up some of the steeper hills. It occurred to me that this was a nice easy (if expensive) option. 

But Paul said "You always seem to get up even the steepest hill" to which I replied "yes eventually". Then I thought about how I do this. 

One of the NLP principles is that we have our model of success somewhere, we just need to find it because 'we already have all the resources we need'. 

So how do I manage to cycle uphill?

The thing to do is to look at the structure and break it into steps.

1. I go down to the lowest gear I have.
2. I focus on the road just in front of my front tyre - if I looked at the top of the hill I would probably give up! I need to take it in baby steps. 
3. I maintain an even rhythm and listen to the sound of the tyres on the road or track, like it was music.
4. I might even make up a little song or rhyme to jolly myself along.
5. I notice how well I'm doing and imagine how great I'll feel when I get to the top and join my cycling pals.
6. I get there and have some water, enjoy the view and thing how amazing I am! 

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​That's not me by the way! I wish! 

So how can I take this model of success and apply it to understanding how Scrivener works? 

Instead of giving up, deciding it's too complicated and feeling I'm hopeless, useless and incompetent, I could apply this model from cycling. 

1. Set myself up into a slow gear.
2. Make a list of what I'm trying to do so it's clear in my mind.
2. Focus on one small task at a time. 
3. Celebrate each new task completed
4. Imagine how great I'll feel when I feel I've got the files in some sort of order
5. Celebrate, a new skill learnt. 

You may need to learn a new skill due to changes as a result of the pandemic. Maybe you're starting your own business, going freelance, becoming self. Perhaps you're supporting a friend or one of your children to learn something new? 

Use this approach. 

Ask them where in their life have they overcome a challenge, learnt a new skill, persevered despite obstacles. What was the structure of their success in that situation? 

Children are always learning new skills, like the boy in the image above, putting on socks for themselves, laces, doing long division, multiplying fractions, spelling three syllable words and so on. Right now they are struggling with changes in their schooling just as you have been struggling with home schooling or managing to share the house with a family with different needs who all feel fed up. 

Once you believe you have the skills and just need to figure out where you have them, you have the answer. 

Sometimes it will help to ask someone else who may have the answer. This in NLP terms is called modelling. We grab someone else's model and apply it for ourselves. Look around you. Perhaps someone in your family can help. Rather than asking them to do it for you, ask them to talk you through their structure. You need 

a) all the steps
b) the belief that underpins them

Because - you won't succeed in doing this thing with your existing belief that 
- it's complicated
- you can't do it
- you're not techie

As I know now! 

I have attended a number of Author interviews with The London Writers Salon, The Society of Authors and The Guardian Live and they all discuss whether they are 'plotters or 'pantsers'.  I thought you might enjoy doing the quiz I found online. 

The plotter is someone with a plan and sticks to it, working methodically through it ensuring there are no unforeseen problems. They are risk averse and wary of last minute changes to a schedule. Flexibility is not 'their middle name' so to speak! 

​A pantser is one who 'flies by the seat of their pants' . They go with the flow, take changes in their stride and have a more general broad brush idea of what they have in mind. 

Although I write non-fiction, I am a pantser in that my ideas flow thick and fast about my overall intention but the details get fleshed out along the way, often with structure forming much later in the process. 

When I thought about what kind of writer I am, I wondered if the principles also applied to life in general. Are there plotter parents and pantser parents perhaps? 

I am pretty sure I was a pantser parent, feeling my way, day by day and focusing on more general things such as 'is my child happy' but over breakfast this morning my hubbie was talking about an article he read about parents struggling with getting their children to bed and ensuring they had enough sleep. The article said that they were surprised to find that having a routine made all the difference. He commented that this was amazing that they didn't realise this and that we had always had such a routine. So clearly my perception does not quite match reality. We did indeed have a very specific and military bed-time routine even to the extent of lowering our voices, slowing our movement and using a monotonous tone to imply that staying awake with us was the most boring thing they could do. We would choose books to read that offered a gradual slowing down and less and less action based read, with fewer funny voices so they gradually succumbed to sleep as our voices reading the stories became more and more soporific. 

Other aspects of parenting were more pantser-like though as we tended to be quite flexible about activities depending on whether it seemed the children needed to let off steam or whether a more arty crafty activity would fit their mood best. 

So this got me thinking. Maybe we simply need to be aware of the two ways of being and have the discussion with our co-parent, as to which we should be plotters about and which we should be pantsers about because I imagine co-parenting with someone without having had these discussion would lead to a very confused child. 

Also, on the basis that our children tend to pick up our way of being, it might be better for them to have that flexibility to decide which approach best fitted what they needed to do. Because having a 'pantser' approach to homework, revision and so on would probably not be the best approach, a 'plotter' approach to making friends may be a bit restricting. 

I'm now thinking about dating...... well not me personally of course! But any of you who are.... are you plotters or pantsers on the dating scene? Do you make a list of attributes and plot to date someone who fits as many of these as possible or do you fly by the seat of your pants and date more by intuition and hope you'll connect with someone you enjoy being with? 

Sooo what do you think? 

I hope this short video goes some way to introducing myself to you so you learn what I do, what is important to me and what I bring to my writing, training and coaching. 

I have been very busy over the last year writing two books, I can hardly believe it myself! 

The first came out in November and it is primarily aimed at those of you who work professionally with children who are experiencing problems. 

You'll find chapters on every NLP and EFT technique, how to use Art and mix it up with EFT to do picture tapping. Every exercise and technique is explained in detail and I've included examples to show how I've used the techniques with children and teens. 

If you are a parent this book will also be helpful although if you're not so interested in the NLP and EFT theory and want to simply help your child with fear or anxiety, anger, low self-esteem or coping with change, learning etc then my next book is for you! 

It's called 'Empower your kids! A coaching guide for parents.' The first part covers more general parenting use of NLP and EFT to improve communication with your child or teen. The second part takes every issue, a chapter at a time and talks you through techniques that will help as well as tapping scripts for each. 

I don't have any copies of this yet but you can pre-order it now on Amazon. Once I have copies you can buy it from my bookshop. 

If you're looking for workbooks that your children can use to learn basic NLP and EFT techniques to help them with confidence, learning, resilience, anxiety and so on then buy them the Engaging NLP workbooks. You'll find each one gives you an extract so you can decide if they will be able to understand and enjoy the material.  

I had all sorts of ideas about what I wanted to write about today and then I got distracted by a whole load of things I knew I needed to do, my 'to do' list. I love what I do and pride myself on being able to do something active most days in addition to my dog walk. I also make time to read and do yoga but the down-side of all these things is that the work stuff gets squished and then I get stressed because I haven't really allowed enough time for it. Obviously clients get their time, as do my students but it's the other stuff we have to do to keep the business vibrant and visible, social media posts, articles and of course, in my case, writing books. But today, i'm going rogue and writing just about how I'm feeling right now, which is overwhelmed. 

So what does a coach, whose business it is to help clients with their overwhelm, do to ease her own? 

1. My 'go to' is journalling. Many call it 'morning pages' although in truth I tend to write my journal at the end of the day as a 'wind down' from work and 'ease into' the evening or family time. I just sit with a cup of tea or a G&T and I write. I offload all the busy thoughts and once they are on the page, they are gone! 
2. On a really bad day of overwhelm I might have a bubble bath, close my eyes and just 'be'. Then I might take myself to bed for a nap. I 'ok' that on the basis that I am an early bird and am often working at 7am so an afternoon nap seems perfectly acceptable and a good way to get some rest before whatever I'm doing that evening. 
3. I tap. EFT tapping clears the energy pathways, leaving me feeling freed up and in flow again. I start tapping on the karate chop point, saying whatever I'm feeling. I might say "Even though I feel overwhelmed right now, i love and accept myself anyway." I say this three times and focus on where I'm feeling it in the body and the colour. Then I gently tap around the tapping points.
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As I tap on each point, I say a reminder phrase such as "so much to do" , "feel out of control", "tired", "overwhelmed", and so on, depending on what has triggered the feeling. 
I soon begin to feel relaxed and more able to function at my best. 
4. I love music, I find if I put on my favourite radio station 'Magic FM' there's always some great music to dance to, so assuming no-one is around, I sing and dance in my kitchen and this also helps me feel happy and able to cope. 
5. I call my mum! My mum is 93yrs of age and is disabled but she manages well on her own. When I speak to her, I realise that what is overwhelming me is really quite trivial compared to what she has to cope with especially in recent months with lockdown. Even putting on her shoes and getting dressed in the morning takes her ages and she needs to rest afterwards. She is delighted by simple things like the sun shining, someone putting their head round the door to see if she's ok, a new flower out in the garden or an interesting radio programme. She's always happy to speak to me and I, her. Talking about nature, being in nature and thinking of simple pleasures like the kindness of neighbours gets me grounded again to what's really important. 

I'd love to say that yoga and mindfulness help me and indeed they do but when I'm really in full overwhelm, I need the above five things. Once I'm no longer feeling overwhelmed I am happy to spend time doing yoga or pilates, tennis, cycling and all the other lovely exercise activities but I am not an expert in yoga so it isn't relaxing. Perhaps it will be one day! I do mindful meditations and use essential oils before I go to bed and find that a great way to end my day. 

I'd love to hear what you do. 

I've been reading a lot about attachment theory because after empty nest stage and hubbie retiring I found myself a bit adrift; unsure who I was as a woman and unsure who I was as a wife. We met fairly late in life when I was 30yrs old and we had our children straight away so we didn't have a long period together as a couple. So when the kids no longer really needed me as a mum, I started wondering what my role was. My hubbie is very self-sufficient and found my constant need for attention, stifling and he rebelled. This caused me to be even more anxious and I felt quite unloved. I started to read up on everything I could find and like most therapists, I sought therapy for myself. 

My learning has made a profound difference in my life because I realised that right from childhood, I had the potential to have anxious attachment. There were lots of very happy social times and I had lots of friends but I was very sensitive to fallouts or conflict, taking them very personally. 

In a nutshell, here are the descriptions (taken from Attached - Dr Amir Levine and Rachel Heller) 

Secure attachment - you are comfortable with intimacy and are usually warm and loving
Anxious attached - you crave intimacy and are preoccupied with your relationships and tend to worry about your partner's ability to love you back
Avoidant attached - you equate intimacy with a loss of independence and constantly try to minimise closeness

Although mostly (75%) we acquire our attachment style during childhood, we can find that as a result of our early romantic relationships during adolescence, we can switch attachment style. 

The healthiest attachment style is clearly 'secure' and that's happily what I have now and this style influences so many areas of ones life. Here are some of the benefits of working towards secure attachment.

- no longer needing to react defensively in an argument
- more flexible reaction to criticism, willing to think again
- feel more confident about expressing needs, knowing they will be heard
- no interest in 'playing games'
- more able to connect intimately because I feel safe
- quick to forgive

Another book I read which helped me enormously was Greg Baer's book 'Real Love' which emphasises the need for children to experience unconditional love from their parents so that they feel safe and free to make mistakes, knowing they will still be loved. 

You can check your attachment style using the link in the Attached book or there are lots of online quizes you can try. 

Remember, I can help you if you'd like some coaching on your relationships. 
​Call me 

Here's a video of me talking about communicating with children and the work I do.