Gearing up for Change in 2012

Do you like to set New Year's resolutions so that you have a good set of goals to motivate you for the year ahead? Even better - goals that contribute to your life aims.

Perhaps this year you did not set goals or set them only to abandon them part way through.

Perhaps you did set goals and have achieved them.

Now is the time to start taking stock of what went well for you in 2011 and what you want to achieve in the coming year.

To help you with this task I will draw on a client case study.

Start with a list of areas of your life that are important to you.

My client for this case study listed: Health, Work, Relationships, Finances, Hobbies and Community. You will make your own list which may be different.

I asked her then to think about what she had achieved in 2011 within each of these 'important' values areas.

Again she made a list. For example, against Health she wrote:

• Started working out 3 times per week
• Reduced drinking alcohol to 1-2 nights a week with no more than 2 standard glasses of wine
• Adhered to a healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner pattern without late-night eating

Once complete I asked her to scale each area from 0-10 with 10 representing the high strength end.

Then I asked her to think about what she would like to leave as her legacy and what she would aim to achieve in 2012 towards that end.

For example, within relationships she said her legacy would be to have been a wise counsel to her family and friends.

With this in mind her goal for Relationships for 2012 was to reach out to every family member and friend at least once a month - to ask them questions about them, provide a listening ear and support where she could help.

My client also reviews her goals every 2 months with my support, updating and amending them as required. She intends to continue with this approach in 2012.

I would like to invite you to have a go at this exercise yourself. If you find it helps you, please leave a comment.

If you would like help reviewing your last 12 months and planning 2012 please get in touch with via our website at West of England Coaching and Counselling.

Coaching For Solutions To Relationship Issues

Do you have what seems to you to be an intractable problem which involves other people either professionally or personally?

In certain areas of life, such as, engineering, IT and medicine a problem focus is required so that weaknesses and what went wrong can be understood before a solution can be put in place.

Increasingly in life the most interesting and potentially significant problems are about people - especially their difficulties and challenges in communicating with each other.

Change programmes at work show that the Number 1 challenge is most often communication between the workforce.

Research also shows that when it comes to people issues analysis of the problem rarely assists in finding the solution.

Rather, by focusing on the problem you become problem-focused with an excellent strategy for defining it.

Understanding why things are like they are does little to help you to decide what to do next.

Negative emotions brought about by people interaction issues, such as fear, anger, frustration, feeling overwhelmed and misunderstood do not pave the way for a clear solution.

Following the 'What you focus on is what you get', neuroscience helps us to glean that focusing on what the solution is can help enormously with problems relating to people interactions.

The solutions-focused approach is used in all of our work. We start with some initial questions to elicit the issues as you see and experience them and then move forward to articulate specifically what you do want - your goals and objectives - in positive and measurable terms.

We move forward by scaling where you are now and identifying what is already good and what is already being done right.

This helps us identify what already works for you - so you can aim to do more of it - as well as highlighting resources, strengths which can be used to move further forwards to help you gradually achieve your goals and objectives at your own pace.

We also work on the premise that problems rarely happen in all contexts. Identifying times when problems do not occur for you helps us to think about transferring this knowledge, skills and so on to other contexts where the problem does happen for you.

One example of this came to light for a client of mine last night when he realised he felt calm and in control the days after a good night's rest when he was not up until 1am emailing.

This had the knock-on effect of him being calmer with his wife and children the next day which subsequently helped his wife feel warmer towards him, more supportive and so on.

The solutions-focused approach is a positive and pragmatic way to progress with people issues and problems communicating and interacting.

Your challenge is to apply this approach in your own life and if you so wish let us know how you get on.

Our mission is to teach you an approach which you will find useful again and again in your life.

If you would like to know more about receiving solutions focused coaching or counselling please visit our website to see our full range of services West of England Coaching and Counselling.

Improving Our Relationships

How much time do you spend improving your key relationships?

Is there room for improvement or would you score yourself 10/10 in this area of your life?

If you do score yourself less than 10/10 perhaps consider your most valued relationships - most of us have between one and four - and think about what you can do to move up one point say from 6/10 to 7/10.

Then when you are at 7/10 what can you do to score 8/10 with the person you have in mind and what can you do to score 9/10 and even 10/10.

Many relationships are improved through better communication. Arguably the most important part of communication is listening and being heard.

Let's first focus on your most important relationship - perhaps your partner or child.

When was the last time you really listened to the key poeple in your life without interrupting them or passing judgment on what they say?

One of the ways we improve relationships is asking the important person/people in our life what we can do to make the relationship stronger.

We can then ask the other person if they would like us to reciprocate and let them know what we feel they can do to strengthen our relationship.

The idea is that we actively listen to the other person for about 10 minutes without interrupting, without thinking of a response and without being distracted by other thoughts such as 'I really should be getting the dinner on'.

After 10 minutes we can comment for about 5 minutes e.g. 'Yes I can do that' and have a discussion with the person about what to do next.

Perhaps you cannot do what they are asking but you are willing to meet them half way and compromise in some way. If this is the case say so.

Then you swap over and let the other person know what you need from them e.g 'I feel that we have an excellent relationship with x and y working really well for me...what would make it even better is if this happened..'

Another exercise that works well is to imagine that you are the other person and walk in their shoes in relating to you. What do you see now?

The idea is that looking at you from another's perspective helps you to both be aware of what it is like living with you / working with you and also to think of those changes that you can and are happy to make to strengthen the relationship.

Has this post been helpful to you? Please do let me know or contact me via my website at West of England Coaching and Counselling.