Ah, success ... the dream ...

So we have a question for you, do you make major life decisions based on other people’s ideas of what success looks like?

And if you do, do you then, years later, wonder why you don’t feel quite as fabulous as you thought you might, given all the 'success' you have achieved? 

The truth is – in today’s world – it’s often hard to separate out what we really truly want to do with our life – from what society or our peers, podcasts – or even well intentioned friends and family – think we should do with our life

Here's something to share with you which might help

Have you ever heard of  ‘Congruence’?

Congruence is about…

1. the quality or state of agreeing, coinciding, corresponding
2. a correspondence in physical structure or thought; harmony
3. compatibility, accord, chime, consistency

The key things to take hold of about congruence are – being in harmony, in accord with / agreeing with - the harmony, accord, agreement is with our internal and external w...

A lot of us are doing a lot of judging right now. Have you ever noticed how we tend to be lenient with ourselves whilst looking over the fence and judging others against higher standards?

Left on our own, we judge ourselves by our intentions and we judge others by their actions. This gap between intention and action is often the context for our relational conflicts – we expect others to give us a break and at the same time we blame them for not doing what they should be doing

Have you also ever wondered why people complain about politicians yet not vote? Why do people talk about the importance of climate change, yet moan about recycling their rubbish? Why do people extol the virtue of integrity yet tell numerous white lies every day?

Because we are imperfect, flawed, human beings and our intentions are a different thing from our actions. The great leadership guru, Ken Blanchard said,

‘Intention minus action equals squat’

That is a really helpful way for us to think about Owning C...

‘I don’t get it,’ said one of our clients this week, ‘what does it mean, to adapt and change to suit each situation, yet stay the same? It doesn’t make sense’

This is often one of the most challenging concepts for us to get our heads round and I must say that when Jo first explained this to me, it took a while for it to properly ‘click’ for me too. Now, I really love this concept and use this a lot in in my daily life. What it comes down to is all about how we own congruence which is one of the 5 Progressfull Principles

The 5 Progressfull Principles (Showing Up, Choosing Confidence, Being Playful, Owning Congruence, Welcoming Feedback) help us deal with the wonkiness, flaws and imperfections - which unless we have had an excellent executive coach or a brilliant therapist - we won’t know how to turn around to make progress. Progressfull does this by making the activities, and what we go through in typical executive coaching or therapy, accessible to everyone!

The 5 Progressfull Princ...

Look around and you will see that a lot of us feel overwhelmed and unfulfilled. We live each day with an uncomfortable feeling that we don’t really know why we are here, how to spend our time and what really makes us tick

What’s more, so many of us live like this that for a lot of us, we actually think this is ‘normal’. So, to get rid of the uncomfortable feelings of feeling overwhelmed, unfulfilled and that we may be ‘not doing life right’ – we develop the behaviours and habits of self-soothing with shopping, alcohol, drugs, sugar, social media, and even expensive holidays to ‘escape’ our day-to-day life

We don’t love this behaviour, yet we feel OK about our habits because we look around and see that’s what everyone else is doing – so we are normal

The thing is, honestly is normal really good enough for your one and precious life?

Who even invented ‘normal’ – did they really know what would make you, yes you, happy? Frankly, we know enough now that the shareholders of the companie...

I love this phrase – when things don’t go right, turn left

We often think that turning right is the only way to turn, because everyone else is turning that way. The thing is, sometimes when things don’t go right, it’s because they don’t feel right and actually, the reason they don’t feel right is because deep down, we don’t really want to do them because these are actions which are not in line with our own personal values

Very sadly – a lot of us are living lives that other people have designed ...

Our friends and family, our school teachers, even podcasters and influencers on social media. How sad is that? In truth, quite a lot of us are sleepwalking through our own lives, being someone other people want us to be

I don’t know about you, but I am over being told how to live my life – look around and there is plenty of evidence that a lot of people are making poor life decisions right now – and yet the advice just keeps coming doesn’t it?

What this means is that we often feel buffe...

Isn’t it ironic that so many of us have a fear of missing out, yet how often do we stop to think if we even want the thing we are missing out on in the first place? 

We are so used to society, social media, friends, family telling us what we should be doing, eating, wearing – we often lose sight of our own view of who we want to be and how we want to live our lives 

The thing is – it’s actually quite easy to be swept along with the rest of the world – when we haven’t ever really stopped to think about who we really, truly want to be and how we want to live our own life. Even the big choices we make in life, like if and what to study, where to live, and what job to do, are often more influences of those around us, than our own true choices  

So that’s why, even if you think it might sound a bit like naval gazing, in truth – working out how to live life on your own terms might be almost as important as learning how to read and write 

Socrates summed this up when he said, 

 “The unco...

A lot of us are struggling with what is happening in the world right now

Both mainstream and social media are full of harrowing stories and images of physical and emotional pain, and destruction on apocalyptic levels. For a lot of us it feels almost impossible to work out our response without feeling futile, fearful and frankly hopeless

What is a worthwhile, courageous and hope-fueled response to so much unimaginable suffering?

In the face of suffering and destruction, our natural instinct is to work out what needs to be done to make the suffering stop. Sometimes there is an obvious thing we can personally do, for example, to share our resources with people who need them more than we do to survive the tragic circumstances they find themselves in, or to repair and rescue things which have been destroyed or are at risk of extinction

Yet should we do more than this?

For example, does it genuinely support others by posting things on social media? These are sometimes complex situations...

Do you feel in control of your own life?

Nope? Not many of us do - introducing the life enhancing game-changer you probably have never heard of

I don’t know about you, but I am over being told how to live my life – look around and there is plenty of evidence that a lot of people are making poor life decisions right now – and yet the advice just keeps coming doesn’t it?

The truth is – in today’s world – it’s quite hard to separate out what we really truly want to do with our life – from what society or our peers, our friends and family - even podcasts - think we should do with our life!

What this means is that we often feel buffeted about by life, we make decisions based on other people’s ideas of what success looks like and 5 years later, wonder why we don’t feel quite as fabulous as we thought we might, given everything we have achieved 

Guess what – we have something to share with you which might help

Have you ever heard of  ‘Congruence’ – I mean, outside of the maths class? M...

Living our best life and being our most successful selves is phenomenally noble and wonderfully woke

and yet if we are honest, how many of us have thought about what that actually means

Like generations before us, we all strive for a life well-lived

Today this seems to mean a combination of being woke – the definition of woke, as stated by Merriam-Webster being, ‘Aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues, especially issues of racial and social injustice’ - and living our best lives, which according to social media roughly translates as being present, travelling the world, landing a dream job and being physically and mentally fit and strong - sounds good to me!

So today we are striving to live our best, woke lives

Which makes sense – sort of. Most of us now know, through various pieces of research shared on social media, news articles and blog posts, that success today is not just about the job, the car, the house and the holiday destination. We are rightly ang...