the-blog

New Plunge into Official ReSlant Coaching

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 12:34:42 +0100

Formerly Sarah's Coaching and The Silver Perspective, ReSlant has moved site locations.

Taking things more 'officially' I have decided to make the move to ReSlant.com.

This new name change comes from a perspective shift - effectively re-slanting my view.

I look forward to meeting you on my new interface.

Making a break for it

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 08:54:53 +0100

The pressures we face are often unique to each of us. Diabetes, poor background, epilepsy, neglectful parents, introversion.. they all play a role in shaping our lifestyles and behaviour. Sometimes the feeling of isolation can overwhelm us to the point where we cannot recognise the light showing us the way out. We're often at a loss of how to overcome these obstacles and challenges. Many times, I'm sure, after we've pulled through a particularly rough patch, we believe that we'll be stronger next time, be wiser and know what to do. However, each time it can get more difficult, less understandable and more out of your control.

Strangely enough, as insignificant as we may feel in these moments, they are more often than not the most important times we'll experience. True, low points aren't given much credit, and honestly most people don't talk about them. We're ashamed that we can't cope, that we're not good enough, that we're the weaker of the species...

Think about it..

Politican vs Politican't

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 14:18:25 +0100

At the moment there's a huge drive towards skilling the masses. It's even been referred to as training the 'intellectually disabled'. Now I'm hardly one to get involved in this messy business but this touches on my role as a life coach in this South African cultural advancement. From government funding to NGO sponsorship, the lack of skilled artisans has hardly gone unnoticed. Why it's coming up in the media at this point might be particularly relevant what with all the international scrutiny we're facing. Will we pull through, won't we?

Truely we do need some organisational support for our cultural advancement, however I question the role of the individual in all of this budgeting and forming of committees. Naturally we'd like to see something come of all this fuss, but aren't we the ones ultimately responsible for the level to which we skill ourselves? Apart from the technical skills we pay our lives for, companies need people to fit into their culture if their overall goals are to be reached. My question is how are the unskilled going to learn to adjust their personalities without initially realizing they need a culture of learning in order to do so?

In this catch 22 between wanting to learn and being able to learn, an individual's power gets lost in thinking that this responsibility lies outside of them. Ok so what does it mean to learn, and to keep learning, to be receptive to learning? Really to be open to learning and embrace it requires a cultured mind - one particularly tuned to a level of awareness capable of picking up the relevance of their experiences.

Now how do you culture a generation of minds unaccustomed to embracing cultural change, no matter which culture? Our last decade has our formally organised boards stuck in this question, running in circles tied back within their own cultural boundaries. Breaking through means looking through and pushing on to new ways of being, so that new ways of doing things can emerge. Practically speaking this means negating everything and every way you've known and done things before...almost throwing it all out of the window in order to start on a clean page. The reluctance to do so has been well founded in the importance of recognising the past in order to implement preventative structures to avoid repetition.

And after all of this, taking these structures into account, paying due attention to differences, and ultimately having a definitive plan of action, we're just about due for a cultural revolution for the better - for anything proactive actually. So without further ado, there's nothing left for us to do other than get our act together and put it all into motion.

What's REALLY going on?

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:18:51 +0100

Somehow, throughout all the times we're presented with choices, we're never sure of how much control we really have. I mean, did we choose what we prefer, did we choose that preference for one thing over another, did we decide on that method that allows us to discriminate one thing from another as better or worse? How far does our power extend? If you look at it from the outside, you're the one making a choice. However, have you ever thought about what framework you're using to make that choice? Have you carefully considered that your preferences are based on your values and priorities, thereby bad choices are a reflection of mismatched or simply bad values and priorities?

Your inclinations towards certain things really say a lot about who you are. Who really wants to face that they screw their own lives up? I'd rather stick with my success stories, as many of us prefer. The trouble with facing your choices means you've got to face all the stuff leading up to those choices. It can be such an unpleasant experience that we can end up rejecting the whole notion of having free will altogether.

So how do you face a situation which has an automatic off-switch triggered when things get too real? Well it's a fear response, so recognising that might help. Then changing your belief about fear - that it's not a doomsday explosion, rather it's a source of power that you can use to fuel yourself into better situations. How else can you manage such an illogical force if you don't direct it at something positive?

Against the Current

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 12:42:28 +0100

The feeling of being in the right place at the right time doesn't come around all that often for most people, even those actually focused on personal development. So we're stumbling along until things become clear, till they make sense. We keep going forwards or backwards, however, looking for the next big thing. In the meantime we're stuck feeling our feelings, thinking out thoughts and going about our routines.

You can call it autopilot, habit, unconsciousness, but there's this way we go about doing things most of the time that's easy and comfortable. We like things to carry on being this way, and so we fight off change, we reject criticism and try our hardest to prevent the loss of what we know. Change comes anyway and you're left thinking wtf was that all about, then settle into our new routine or go back to our old one.

Now what happens with personal development and coaching, is that you're made aware of the fact that all this is happening. Usually we're confronted with a change that's beyond what we're capable of, before we look for help or guidance. You might not always need to talk about your feelings with a psychologist, but instead you really just want to come to terms with where you're at now and figure out how to move forward from there. That's what a coach does. No mess, no fuss, just a whole bunch of reality, in an empowering way.

Facing personal development head on means recognising that change is inevitable, so why the hell not make the most of it! If you're faced with a choice and given the opportunity to carry on in the same way, or evolve into something greater, who wouldn't want to take on the challenge? Often when we're held back by fear, we've got to learn to work with it instead of against it. Use fear to fuel your fire... do something because you're afraid!

The richest rewards come from the darkest places...

Radical Changes

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 21:32:37 +0100

SHOUT SCREAM BREAK STUFF - and you might feel better.
sulk withdraw cry - and maybe it'll pass
Decide Commit Follow Through - and things will actually happen

Of all the reactions we have to life, even we're unpredictable to ourselves. We want this, that, everything, nothing, hell who knows. Still, we want things to change. Good things must be great, bad things must be better, strawberry should have been vanilla. Will we never cease to argue with ourselves when we get what we want but find that we don't want it anymore? That's change for you, always appearing when it's most inconvenient.

So the only constant is change, and change becomes routine and routine becomes normal and change never surprises us anymore. What a life! And then things change again. The 'never-a-dull-moment' becomes what we expect, and then when things don't change we get surprised. Haha, how ironic that the lack of change which causes our expectations to be let down, is simply a change in itself.

It continues to entertain me how we still set ourselves up, still make vague attempts at believing otherwise yet still somehow end up at the same place...in our skin, doing the same thing. That familiar place we call home, that lives within us and ultimately defines us as who we are, is like a fountain of life that reminds us of our humanity. Some call it their soul, some their heart, and to others it's their unchangeable self.

For all your choices and closed doors, what do you really have to show the world that you're different, responsible, wiser - how do you show the changes you've made inside? And more importantly, what will you do when people notice?

The Next Step

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 22:02:20 +0100

Often we wonder if we're taking things too far, but what about when we're not taking them far enough? Much like giving up prematurely or resigning yourself to a predetermined fate, not taking another step forward often leads us back to where we started in the first place.

So what am I getting at here? The challenges I've been through lately have forced me to face my methods and I've had to confront the ways that no longer work for me. Change comes in many forms, and in this case I'm having to change the way in which I implement change in my life.

For a coach, this is quite fundamental. It affects my whole perspective and process of personal growth. For a person, it feels like a whole pile of drama is attacking me. What's really happening is that my defense mechanisms are being triggered by this investigation into what isn't working for me. It turns out that I'm the one not working for me, my beliefs and attitude are creating consequences to my actions that weren't planned for.

My ego is freaking out, partly taking the blame, partly projecting responsibility onto other things. My brain has no idea what to do because 2+2=@ at the moment. My physical being is taking all the stress and churning it around inside. My emotions are doing back-flips while rollercoastering in a tumble-dryer.

All this tells me is that whatever I'm doing, is not working, and whatever I'm not doing doesn't help either. Thus I've had to grow my awareness outside of this situation in order to get a handle on the beginning and end of this cycle. It comes down to my perspective, the very thing I am using as a reference point in this situation, is the cause of my confusion. I am looking through tainted glasses, holding onto a moving anchor, believing in an illusion.

Realizing this has only been the first step. What is the next one? Just like identifying a problem, next you identify possible solutions and evaluate them to determine which is best. My next step will be to shift my perspective in such a way that I am able to crystallize the flaws in my equation, thus allowing myself to reshape those flaws into opportunities for growth and renewal.

Trusting Yourself

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 21:48:25 +0100

Trust is like faith - an invisible force that can bind or break, create or destroy. Trusting others is both a bold leap forward and a carefully calculated risk. Trusting yourself is quite different in terms of the experience. The outcome of misplaced trust in others is much the same level of disappointment as misplaced trust in yourself, however the process of arriving at the choice to trust yourself is different to that of trusting others.

Trusting others is a choice based on your perspective of them, and sure enough trusting yourself is a choice based on your perspective of yourself. The difference between trusting others and trusting yourself, is that in trusting others, you have an external reference point signifying a difference between your values and the values of the person who you placed trust in. Trusting yourself, there is no external reference point, and often you're the only witness to your broken trust.

The process of placing trust in someone comes from your sense of their reliability, proven in various instances over a period of time. Placing trust in yourself stems from this same process, however becoming aware of your own reliability is a much more complicated task. Often we set our goals so high, and so many, that we don't meet our own expectations more often than we do. In reality we may be highly functional, but with our brains being more active than our bodies, we perceive things faster than we can carry them out. Thus the potential we perceive isn't realistically achievable.

Trusting yourself comes from a keen sense of awareness of your limitations, so that you can practically count on yourself in ways that you can prove your trustworthiness to yourself. Banking on impractical methods of building self trust will naturally lead to disappointment and frustration. Knowing what you can't do, will allow you the freedom to discover all your strengths.

The benefit of building self trust is that you have the resource of strength to draw on, as well as a structure from which to construct any framework you need for personal development.

The Value of Time

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 20:15:14 +0100

One beautiful lesson I am learning now is the way in which time unfolds. Although patience has always been on my side, there is another aspect to time which is challenging me now. That aspect is space, atmosphere, experience. Patience allows me to wait, to watch and to observe. This new aspect is endurance - surviving and then thriving throughout the process of change. My patience is being taken to a new level where I am engaging and questioning, testing and experimenting with the changes happening around me.

I am presented with the opportunity to alter the change that is occurring...by creating the flow I want instead of the flow I observe. Like all opportunities, there are challenges, resources and strengths to draw on. In this case, I have set myself up in such a way that the outcome of my current situation is entirely dependent upon my attitude of positivity and proactivity.

The one important lesson of endurance I'm faced with is allowing elements over which I have no control into my equation. Time is such an element. Although well skilled in patience, my endurance is still pushed with every challenge. Enduring the things I have no control over is particularly tricky. Frustration is regular, confusion too, and every so often there's anger. Now is the time for me to learn that sometimes the only way to maintain control is to accept the things I cannot control.

There's so much to accepting this that it runs very deep and changes many things for me. I've learnt that the act of letting go is not passive but quite deliberate. The power of acceptance is not simply embracing something and tolerating it, but truly seeing the essence of the thing in itself, it's purpose and drive. This has shown me the meaning of challenges and the importance positivity plays in shaping your footsteps forward. It really comes down to how open you are to opportunities to learn, and opportunities to remain true enough to yourself to not accept just any change.

I recommend giving time, and using it for your own purposes, not just the ones you easily observe.

Stand your ground

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:16:02 +0100

As we all know, change takes work. It is full of tough challenges and difficult emotions. It is truly a test of character, of endurance and determination. Personal development doesn't come easily. Many of us give up before we get there, each of us gives up on something along the way. There are costs involved in gaining ground, and these costs are up to you to choose.

If you want to gain financial success, you give up on frivolous spending. This may mean giving up on the belief that spending money on others is good. You may need to keep it for yourself in the short term so that in the long term you can spend money on more people, with longer and better consequences for all of you.

Often when we're looking to gain something of value, we believe that we have to give up something that is just as valuable and necessary to us. What we forget is that the change we want requires us to give up on what we don't want anymore. You want a respectful, healthy relationship, so you give up on things like self-disrespect and unhealthy thoughts. You must respect yourself to be respected by others.

However you've ended up not needing certain things in your life that no longer work for you, the knowledge you gain from accepting this change carries you forward. All things good come from a place of lack. You fill those needs in your life with things that you hope will carry you to where you want to be.

The real question is what are you filling yourself with? Are you stocking up on temporary, momentary pleasures and rewards, or are you building the foundation for something great to come along? Have you focused on drawing in success or have you focused on drawing in lasting fulfillment?

The quality of your life speaks about the quality of the care you give, to yourself and others. When you give up, you give away your chance at moving forward closer to your goal. There is no such thing as failure, there are only numerous paths. The choices you make about who you are along that path, shape who you will end up being when you reach the end. Think about what you're choosing now, that is creating and reinforcing your current situation. Then ask yourself, "Is this helping me or is this holding me back?" Then see the lesson you are learning and use it to construct your current self that will carry you forward.