It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.

I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.

I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

These are the opening lines of a book by Oriah Mountain Dreamer which she wrote after coming home from a party of dissatisfying small talk.  A girl after my own heart – how many meaningful conversations do we have at a party?  During our day?  In our week?

Meaningful conversations are where we meet each other, hear each other and acknowledge each other as living, loving human beings.  So let’s go have some!

I was musing over an article in the Sunday Times Magazine this week entitled ‘Sitting Pretty in the Recession’ (and you can read the full article here). http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/career_and_jobs/article6627011.ece

Fran Murphy lost her property firm and luxury lifestyle, but in her own words – found herself. Fran lived in a one million pound mansion, drove an eighty thousand pound Porsche and thought nothing of spending three thousand pounds in Selfridges. She was making fifty – sixty thousand pounds a month and spending it just as quickly. She described herself as arrogant and a bit of a bitch with a certain cockiness that came with looking down on people. Fran says she never wants to be that person again.

When the property market collapsed, she lost her business overnight and continued to spend in the same old way, until she had to recognise the debt and sell all the luxuries. Fran now volunteers at a Citizen’s Advice Bureau and is a single mum to Olivia aged three. ‘We’re so happy.’ She says. ‘I feel really lucky I’ve got the chance to spend time with my daughter. It has been hell – I’ve been stood in Tesco counting out 2p pieces to buy bread and milk, and gone from driving around in a top of the range Range Rover to scrabbling around for the bus fare. But now I see what’s important. I’ve found out who I am. You can have all the money in the world, but the things that make you happy, you can’t buy.’

I am sure there are many stories like Fran’s at the present time. For Fran it seems to have ended happily – and I wonder if this is always the case. What Fran has discovered is the power of living inside-out rather than outside-in. She realises that the ‘stuff’ out there is just things that we have and do – and like the rest of us often think (and encouraged to believe) we need the ‘stuff’ to create inner happiness and contentment.

Once we reconnect with our innate state of wellbeing – and I bet Fran saw it in Olivia when she was born – we see that happiness, love and contentment are decisions to ‘be’ or ‘return to’ rather than created by the things we ‘have’ and ‘do’. Yes having ‘stuff’ can be fun, and doing ‘stuff’ can create so much good in the world – and our happiness does not depend on it. As my coach the supercoach Michael Neill (www.geniuscatalyst.com) says ‘what we want is inner peace and a nice piece of real estate overlooking the ocean’. He also asks one of the best questions I have heard.

‘What would you want if you didn’t have to be unhappy about not getting it?’

Yes you have to read it once or twice!

My bet is that Fran goes on to create new wealth knowing that her happiness does not depend on it – and will teach Olivia the same.

When I meet new people, say at a party and they discover I work as a coach – and sometimes even with people I know well, I often get the request to ‘sort out’ a wife, husband, partner, son, daughter, boss (add whoever else you fancy here … mother in law, dog, cat, hamster. Not that I am suggesting that mothers in law or any other in laws should be likened to hamsters!)

Of course this is sometimes a joke over a glass or several of pinot grigio – although there is often a desperate look behind the eyes. I wonder how much time we spend thinking, talking and gossiping with others around such notions as ‘well if it weren’t for Fred my life would be perfect’, or ‘I would be really happy if only Freda would change this or that behaviour?’

One of the wisest, kindest and funniest women I have had the pleasure to see in action is Byron Katie (find more at www.thework.com and I truly recommend tuning into some of the short videos available on her site and youtube). Katie says ‘I can find only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours and God’s (For me the word God means “reality” because it rules and is out of my control, your control and everyone else’s control). Much of our stress comes from mentally living out of our own business. When I think, “You need to get a job, I want you to be happy, you should be on time,” I am in your business. When I’m worried about earthquakes, floods, war, or when I will die, I am in God’s business.’

Katie describes ‘war breaking out’ inside ourselves (ie stress) when we are outside of our own business – busy knowing what is best for everyone and anything else. Instead our business is with knowing ‘what is right for me’. If someone (we want to fix!) is living their life and we are mentally living their life, who is here living ours? We have become separate from ourselves whilst wondering why our lives aren’t working.

As Katie explains, when we understand the three kinds of business enough to stay in our own business it can and will free our lives in ways that we can’t yet even imagine. And when we start feeling stressed or miserable or uncomfortable, just pause and consider whose business we are in mentally – bet it’s not ours!

So to delve a little deeper, ask yourself ‘who am I trying to fix?’ or in other words ‘whose business am I mentally in?’ and then answer Katie’s four simple and very revealing questions.

For example ‘If only my boss would take me more seriously I would achieve more at work’ or ‘My daughter really shouldn’t be mixing with that particular person – they are a bad influence on her’

1 Is that true?

2 Can you absolutely know that it’s true?

3 How do you react when you think that thought? What do you think and feel, and how do you behave? How do you treat yourself and others?

4 Who would you be without the thought? Go on imagine it – how would you think and feel differently and how differently would you behave? How differently would you treat yourself and others?

And when I am asked to ‘sort out’ the person someone else wants to fix, I always smile and say yes of course get them to call me. They very rarely call because it is very rarely them that want to make the changes……

This week I am continuing with the themes within the book the Big Leap – Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level by Gay Hendricks. (www.hendricks.com)

Our relationships with such things as time and money are of interest to me as a coach as they often appear to create stress for people. It is not money or time per se that is the issue, rather the ‘I don’t have time…. and ‘if only I had more money….’ thoughts and stories and our reactions to them (!) that create the problems. And if you are in the business of swapping your time for someone else’s money (or vice versa) what a minefield that can be!

Gay Hendricks found that when he discovered the secret of Einstein Time he worked half as much and got at least twice as much done. Well if that intrigues you half as much as it intrigued me we are all half way there – as following our curiosity is one of the best ways I know of expanding our growth, knowledge and experience.

The Newtonian paradigm of time (the old way) suggests that there is only a finite amount of time, assumes there is a scarcity of time and that it must be carefully portioned in order for us to have enough for all we need to do. This guarantees we will always have a problem with time – too much as when we have ‘time on our hands’ or are ‘twiddling our thumbs’ or too little when we are ‘running out of time’ or ‘have no time at all’. Furthermore we then lurch from one uncomfortable feeling of being bored out of our skulls to another uncomfortable feeling of chasing our tails to stand still.

Now just as we will never have enough money to buy all the things we don’t really need, says Gay, we will never have enough time to do all the things we don’t really want to do. To make the shift from Newtonian Time to Einstein Time we have to take full ownership of time – and our lives – and recognise we are the source of time and in Gay’s words ‘since I am the producer of time, I can make as much of it as I need’. The magical breakthrough is that we then become the creator of time rather than the victim of time – and no longer being and feeling at the mercy of a ‘me versus time’ conundrum is a very liberating experience.

It is so easy to say ‘I don’t have time to do that right now’ when we mean ‘I don’t really want to do that right now’ (even when we do not yet realise the truth of what we are saying). It is polite and socially acceptable. However, we are not being honest with ourselves and we perpetuate that victim role for ourselves – always reacting to the notion of the scarcity of time. Now it may not be useful to say the honest thing out loud – it can get us fired, cause rows with our spouse and lose us our friends, but let’s at least be honest with ourselves.

How many of your conversations during the day focus on complaining about time?

‘sorry haven’t got time to chat now – will catch you later’

‘wish there more hours in the day’

‘where did the time go?’

‘if only I went to bed earlier’

All theses statements put time out there rather than in here and we all know that when we chase out there to make us feel good in here it doesn’t work.

Gay Hendrick’s invitation which I pass on to you now is to notice these ‘time complaining conversations’ – whether they pass out of your mouth or just through your mind. He suggests that by eliminating them one by one we will find ourselves growing steadily less busy while getting a great deal more done. I would like to add that sometimes just being aware of those dodgy conversations we have with ourselves lessens their impact – just smile and thank them for sharing……..

See you next week and hope you make time to join me!

It is not often that I pick up a book – and then literally not be able to put it down until I finish it.  Well last Sunday I spent the whole morning devouring The Big Leap – conquer your fear and take life to the next level by Gay Hendricks.  (find out more at www.hendricks.com)

Those who know me are probably aware that I am not the kind of coach who thinks I am somehow separate from what we are all about –  reconnecting with our own innate happiness and well-being, and unfolding all those riches (in all their forms) we would love to create and enjoy.  I am in there with you.  There is no way I am already magically ‘cured’, think the rest of you need to be cured – and heaven forbid know just how to cure you!

Anyway back to the story. One of the themes in Gay’s book is the Upper Limit Problem and describes it in the following way:

When you attain higher levels of success, you often create personal dramas in your life that cloud your world with unhappiness and prevent you from enjoying your enhanced success.

This is about all those little thermostats that we have which are set quite early on in life and set quite unconsciously in response to our view of the world around us – whether it be about how happy we can be, how fit and healthy we can be, what level of career ambition we can achieve, how much money we can earn, how much we can be loved etc.  When we get to those upper limits – the thermostat setting is reached and we somehow scupper ourselves.  Just like when the central heating system reaches a thermostatically controlled temperature – something kicks in and tells the boiler to turn down or off (or something like that, I am not a heating engineer…)

Just this week my husband and I spent the afternoon visiting a farm where my mother and brother had lived before I was born.  We poured over old photos (the farm is now a museum dedicated to some artists) and had tea with the owner who remembered my mother and brother.  The sun was shining, the countryside beautiful and the whole afternoon was idyllic – and a very happy experience.  I arrived home relaxed and at peace with the world until I checked my email, where I found one that I could (and did) spend the rest of the evening gnawing at like the proverbial bone – the meaning, the tone etc etc etc.  (There is always one isn’t there?), ruining my wonderful peaceful contentment.  Well I had reached my Upper Limit in happiness and tranquillity, so went and found that email – I didn’t have to check my email at that time of day……

Hendricks explains how we develop barriers as a result of those thermostat settings which lead to the scuppering and the self sabotage.  Here are the four he describes:

• The false belief that we are fundamentally flawed in some way.  If we carry this feeling within us, we sabotage our success because we think we’re essentially bad.  If something good happens, we must mess up – good things can’t happen to bad people.
• The false belief that by succeeding, we are being disloyal to and leaving behind people in our past.  If we harbour this feeling within us we sabotage our success because we think it’s disloyal to our roots to soar too far into the stratosphere.
• The false belief that we are a burden in the world. If we carry this feeling inside us, we sabotage our success so that we won’t be a bigger burden.
• The false belief that we must dim the bright lights of our brilliance so that we won’t outshine someone in our past.  If we hold this feeling inside us, we tend to hold ourselves back from expressing our full genius.

Realising and understanding our own personal barrier or barriers, enables us to release them, turn our thermostats to higher settings and let the temperature rise!

For me it was the first one – I wonder which one you think yours might be?  (You are allowed more than one by the way.)  Here are some things which you might like to ponder on the next time you suddenly find your thoughts feelings and actions taking a dive just when things seem to be going so well – or preferably before that happens………….

• How high are your thermostats set for happiness, love, success, money etc?
• How do you self sabotage or scupper yourself once you reach your Upper Limit?
• What barrier or barriers might you have developed?
• Once you realise the barriers and see them fall away – how high do you want to reset those thermostats?

I for one will no longer be checking email in the evening – so catch me earlier in the day if you want me to worry about the tone, the meaning……..

Well when I signed up to this new blog – I had a little google as one does.  I tried coachannescott for fun and this is the first sentence of the first site that google came up with:

The coach Anne Scott led the team.  She loved the team and they loved her.  She watched them grow, helped them become incredible athletes, and prepared them for the rest of their lives.

It is about a basketball team apparently, and doesn’t she just sound wonderful?

Coaching to me is about loving others, being loved, watching people grow and become incredible (fill in whatever you like here and athletes is as good a word as any), and preparing people for the rest of their lives.  What better job could there be?

If you were to replace the word athlete – what would you put in its place?

What help would you want in order to recognise how incredible you already are?

How would you like to be prepared for the rest of your life?

Who do you love and who loves you?

What and how would you love to grow?

How about letting me know…………………………..