6 Steps to building habits that serve you

6 Steps to building habits that serve you

Habits are powerful. Human beings intuitively know this, otherwise New Year’s resolutions – whether you believe in them or not – wouldn’t be such a big deal. At some point, every individual identifies an old negative habit that they would like to break, or a positive new habit that they would like to start, but what then? How to kick that habitual behaviour that’s been holding you back, or activate new behaviour to move you forward?

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Three things a coach is NOT

Three things a coach is NOT

Few people look for a coach when everything in their life is working well and feeling good. They seek a coach when they need to change something, even if they’re not sure what that ‘something’ might be. It might be their diet, their career, their work-life balance or their sense of disconnection from their life goals – whatever it is, a coach’s role is to facilitate healthy change that connects an unsatisfactory present with a more gratifying future.

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Train Your Brain For Success

Train Your Brain For Success

Proverbs have always made me feel a little sad. When I was a boy, my grandmother used to be gratuitously fond of telling me that, ‘the early bird catches the worm,’ or that ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ Those expressions irritated me because they were usually delivered to cheerfully highlight a lesson that I didn’t particularly want to learn at the time. But they also left me feeling a peculiar emptiness.

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How To Use Your Personality Type To Make Better Decisions

How To Use Your Personality Type To Make Better Decisions

I don’t mind admitting that the Disney movie Frozen brought tears to my eyes. As the father of two daughters, it was the self-sacrificing love between sisters that really caught me in the tear ducts. But the film is full of other powerful archetypal themes: hero, obstacle, quest, death and rebirth, and the story of human transformation that connects them all.

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How The Right Work Can Help You Find Your Purpose

How The Right Work Can Help You Find Your Purpose

A few years ago, my partner and I had the lofty idea of starting our own healthy food business. Like most small startups, we were passion-rich but resource-poor, so I used our growing network of cool customers as a well of intelligence from which I could draw information and advice. In this process, I struck up a regular chat with a customer who was also a fellow small business owner.

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9 Types of Coaches (and how to choose the one you need)

9 Types of Coaches (and how to choose the one you need)

The International Coaching Federation (ICF) recognizes more than 50 000 professional accredited coaches worldwide. This represents tremendous growth for an industry that didn’t exist in the mainstream until the 1980’s, especially as these numbers do not include non-accredited individuals providing coaching services, or managers using coaching skills as part of their work. With so much choice and so many different types of coaches out there, it can be difficult to know where to start in choosing a coach.

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Fear of Change: Your Great Teacher

Fear of Change: Your Great Teacher

Change is unavoidable – it is written into the fabric of our existence. So, it seems, is the fear of change, the opposing force that tries to keep the status quo firmly locked the way it is. Because change represents a step into the unknown, a movement away from the safety of the familiar. Even in those circumstances when we actively seek change, fear of transformation arises, often manifesting in subtle and subversive ways that are difficult to spot. Yet, far from something to be beaten back and repelled, this natural resistance needs to be embraced and understood. Within it lies tremendous value to our personal evolution.

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Want to live longer? Build healthy relationships

Want to live longer? Build healthy relationships

One doesn’t need to look very far to find an example of society’s obsession with age. It jumps out from every magazine shelf and TV ad break in the form of slogans and products promising a cure for the relentless progress of time. Ageing is viewed as a disease or enemy, and slowing it down, or eliminating it altogether, is a burgeoning industry. Everyone wants to look younger and live longer, but the keys to longevity are not found inside a bottle. They reside in the lifestyles we lead, especially in healthy relationships.

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Why Energy Management Is Key To Successful Leadership

Why Energy Management Is Key To Successful Leadership

How have you ended your 2017 work year? Did you enter the holiday season feeling grounded, confident and complete, or did you hobble to the finish line, every resource spent on a year’s hard work? For most people, including many leaders, it is the latter. In this age of relentless pressure and increasing expectation to perform, it is easy to push yourself beyond your limits.

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The Shadow you don’t see (and why it matters)

The Shadow you don’t see (and why it matters)

Human beings feel a strong affinity for the notion of free will – it helps us feel like autonomous beings with power over our own destiny. This is a contentious issue, but while the debate about free will continues, we can reliably point to a mechanism in our psyche that often governs our behavior without our knowledge, awareness, or control. It’s called the shadow, and it’s with you right now.

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Accessing your higher intelligence

Accessing your higher intelligence

The concept of intelligence has undergone, and continues to undergo, a massive transformation in the west. Most western readers will have a personal experience of sitting an IQ test, usually at some point in their schooling career, and for the longest time, your results in such a test were used as the primary indicator of your intelligence. But modern research has revealed that not only is this particular measurement flawed, it has blinkered our view. Intelligence is not one thing, it is many, and to understand the full impact of that is to understand your capacity to access latent levels of higher intelligence.

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The Art (and Heart) of Setting Goals

The Art (and Heart) of Setting Goals

Anyone who has ever sought advice, looked for a mentor or hired a coach has done so because, at least intuitively, they know that transformation and success seldom happen accidentally. Often, we need help achieving our dreams, but we also need a plan. That plan inevitably includes goals, but how does one make sure those goals serve you? Genuinely effective goal setting is part art, part science, and very very personal.

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Do you have these 10 qualities of mindful leadership?

Do you have these 10 qualities of mindful leadership?

In 1656, Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens rocked the scientific world with the invention of the pendulum clock. Admittedly ‘rocked’ is a bit of an overstatement, but there was certainly an audible ‘tick-tock’. The pendulum clock was the most accurate timekeeping device ever know, but nine years late Huygens discovered something possibly more fascinating: when two pendulum clocks are hung from the same wall, their pendulums will always synchronise. So it is with mindful leadership.

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Better listening: the gift that keeps on giving

Better listening: the gift that keeps on giving

Every leader, every parent, every spouse, every friend, every colleague, has at some point or another heard about the importance of being a good listener. It’s intuitively sensible – of course we need to listen well. If we’re not, we lose access to information that could be critical to our careers, relationships, or personal well-being.

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Comfort is a Choice

Comfort is a Choice

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?”...

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How do you know when you need a coach?

How do you know when you need a coach?

There’s a fine line between ‘I’m not having a good day, I’ll be ok tomorrow’ and ‘I don’t think I can meet my goals without expert guidance’. Knowing at what point to seek professional support through the help of a coach is crucial. Coaching is for those who recognise...

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7 ways expats struggle more than most

7 ways expats struggle more than most

The life of an expat may seem like a glamorous one. Many expats move abroad for better job opportunities, or for the lifestyle, or even for the fantastic weather and to enjoy a big adventure. From the outside, life seems full of possibilities and excitement…but being an expat is fraught with an array of unique problems that those remaining in their birth country may never understand. Here are seven ways expats struggle more than others.

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Why coaching is misunderstood

Why coaching is misunderstood

Coaching is for people who are really struggling. Coaching is the same as therapy. I don’t need coaching; I can just chat to my mates. Coaching is for people who aren’t successful. Coaches aren’t as qualified as proper therapists. I don’t need coaching - I already...

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Do I need coaching? and what is it anyway?

Do I need coaching? and what is it anyway?

A common misconception about coaching is that it’s a last resort once your life or business is in trouble. Well think again. Coaching is underrated and misunderstood although it is one of the most powerful ways for self-development. The concept of coaching is a simple...

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