Redbird Coaching

Posts Tagged ‘visualise’

Feel younger with this foolproof  r&r plan

Better than Botox, fresher than a facial, surer than surgery – the best way to look younger is to think younger! Here are 10 winning ways to revitalize your thinking and your life.

1. Get moving: factor a 15-minute walk into your normal day for the next two weeks. Walk to the station or go one bus stop further along the route, take the longer journey home from work. After two weeks of short sharp bursts, you will want to be more energetic, so review your exercise quotient and extend it so that you gradually build up to at least half an hour every day or one hour every two days.
2. Love to learn: Find a language school or revive your childhood interest in drawing and find an art class, do whatever you like just so long as you are actively engaged in something that interests you. While you are learning something new, you know you are alive!
3. Get dated: Whether your social life is full or empty, make a date with yourself to enjoy a special treat. Choose a walk through a particularly beautiful piece of countryside, treat yourself to a magnificent meal in your favourite restaurant, take yourself off to the museum or art gallery. Just enjoy your own company and make this a regular event.
4. Dream a little: Use the power of your mind to create the world you want; imagine your life the way you would really love it to be and develop this imagined scenario into a movie that you can play in your head whenever you choose to.  This kind of daydreaming – we coaches call it visualization – is fun, relaxing and hugely positive.
5. Worry less: Ask yourself “what is the worst that could happen?” Finding the answer will liberate you in ways you can only begin to understand. Facing your worst fear and imagining how you would cope – and yes, you definitely would cope, even if the worst did happen – will free you from it.
6. Simplify your style: take a leaf out of the book of the performance artist who wore the same brown dress for a year; make your wardrobe work for you and free up your time. Spend an afternoon throwing out anything from your wardrobe that doesn’t fit, flatter and inspire you. We all wear 20% of our clothes 80% of the time, so there will be plenty of room for manoeuvre.
7. Smile more: Research shows that children smile on average 400 times a day. By the time we have grown into adults our smile score dips down to a sad and sorry 15 times a day. Take charge by consciously smiling at everyone around you; smile when you pay your bus fare and when you collect your newspaper, when you have the car serviced and pick up your dry cleaning. See what a difference it makes to the way people greet you – it will work wonders for your confidence.
8. Try a different persona: If you are usually quiet and thoughtful, try being the talkative one. If you’ve spent your whole life being reserved and shy, just try being outgoing and friendly for one afternoon. See how it feels to be different – you may just find a new personality trait!
9. Let the world revolve around you: Putting too low a value on yourself and your time is guaranteed to encourage other people to undervalue you too. Regularly spend some of your time on yourself, doing exactly what you want to do; be a little selfish, think positive and put your needs first, without guilt or apology. You are, as the advertisers so frequently tell us, worth it!
10. Unclog your social scene: if you always meet up with Bill and Jenny on Friday night for a meal, invite Charlie to join you all on Saturday for brunch instead. If you dress down for dinner, plan a diamonds and caviar night; swap the cinema for an evening at the theatre now and then.

Good luck and happy rejuvenation!

Choose one or more of these tried and tested boosters and watch your confidence quotient soar!

1. Write yourself a winner’s script
If you go into a challenging situation with a little voice at the back of your mind saying “you KNOW you’re going to mess up; you’re USELESS at this; you ALWAYS get this sort of thing WRONG”, the chances are you will mess up, be useless and get it wrong. You can change this quite simply by writing yourself a winner’s script: it’s worth writing it down once you’ve clarified it for yourself. It might be something like this: “This may be difficult, but I KNOW I CAN COPE. I’ve dealt with this sort of thing before so I KNOW WHAT TO DO. I will be CALM. I will ENJOY turning this into A SUCCESS.” This is a “vanilla” version of a winner’s script, so change it to suit you and your circumstances. The most effective winner’s script is the one you write for yourself. You may need to create a different script for different situations; sometimes you’ll need to repeat it often, other times one or two run-throughs will be enough
2. See yourself successful
This is another version of writing yourself a winner’s script and it works really well for people who prefer to think in pictures, rather than words. Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths to relax, then start putting together a picture of yourself at your most successful. This might be a memory, or it might be a future projection, but either way, you will want to create the most vivid picture possible. Give your picture bright, clear colours; see the expression on your own face; check out your winner’s posture; give your winning self a superb setting; look at the accessories that you associate with winning – this varies so much from person to person, but might include a fabulous office, a big car, a personal assistant…it’s entirely up to you. Once you’ve created your mind picture, give it a caption: again, it’s up to you, but some suggestions are “The Winner!” “Well done me” “My success story” “Portrait of success”….you will come up with your own ideas, and they will be eminently memorable for you personally. Now practice conjuring up this vision: call it up using the caption you’ve given it, then examine the picture in deep detail, paying special attention to yourself, the winner.

3. Analyse a winner
Think of someone you know who always seems confident and self-assured. Think of that person dealing with your situation. How would they speak? How would they stand? What would they wear? What would they expect to happen? How would they prepare? Once you’ve analysed your winner’s methods, steal them! If they speak slowly and clearly, could you do the same? If they stand tall with good posture, could you do that; will you wear something that is comfortable and appropriate, have a positive expectation, be well prepared? Your particular winner may have different methods that better suit the situation you’re looking at, but the idea is the same, whoever you picture.

4. Remember you’re a winner
This is an incredibly powerful way of using your inner resources to help you through any difficulty. Think back to a time when you felt successful and completely confident: this might be in a work situation, or something related to your life outside work; it could be yesterday, last week, last year or two decades ago. The feeling may have lasted two minutes or two years. It doesn’t really matter when or where it was or how long it lasted, what matters is how you felt. Think back to that feeling; concentrate on the way you felt at that time. Spend a few minutes thinking about it, how you felt, how you carried yourself, how you looked, what you said or did while you felt so confident. Why were you so successful and confident? What had you achieved that gave you that feeling? What were you doing? How did other people respond to you? Really see yourself as you were then, when you felt successful and confident. Get a very clear picture in your mind. Now imagine that successful, confident you dealing with whatever is making you feel anxious or doubtful. How does the confident you look? How does the confident you speak? What does the confident you say?

5. Be kind to yourself
Imagine you are able to clone yourself. Picture a you2 standing right in front of you. Now tell that you2 how great you are; praise your you2’s achievements and efforts; tell your you2 you have faith in them; you believe in your you2 and you know they will succeed. Finally, give your you2 a big hug and concentrate on letting him or her know how much you care about them and believe in them. Some people find this works better for them if they picture themselves as a child; others find they respond better to an adult clone – it’s up to you. Give it a try.

6. Write a new CV
This is a very effective way of stocktaking your own skills and achievements and boosting your self-esteem on confidence. If you can share this with a friend, so much the better – you create your friend’s CV, then swap roles. We tend not to blow our own trumpets, so sometimes it’s useful to have another person describe your strengths! Imagine you are creating a CV to give to an employer from another planet: this employer is not only interested in your working skills and experience, he wants to know everything about you. Make five lists: i. work achievements ii. personal achievements iii. natural abilities iv. challenges I’ve met v. my strong points. Remember to include things you might take for granted, like driving, cooking, managing a household, diy, parenting skills… your friend may add achievements to your list you haven’t even considered. If it helps, compare what you were able to do when you were, say, 16, with what you can do now. You’ll be amazed at how long that list is! Look at your whole life in terms of the things you have achieved and how much you do well, and you’ll start to see how many skills and talents you really have – so give yourself a pat on the back and hold your head high.

The Golden Room

A perfect place of peace and tranquillity you can visit whenever you like

Visualisation is a truly powerful technique and this guided example is an excellent way of practising it.

When the shark bites, when the bee stings, when you’re feeling sad, simply transport yourself to a beautiful place where everything is exactly as you want it to be.
It’s all in the mind, of course, but this exercise in visualisation is great on two levels: it gets you into the swing of visualisation and, the bonus, it gives you a personal retreat to which you can retire if ever the world becomes just a bit to hard to bear.

There are many variations on this theme – I’ve heard a version that American Indians use, one that’s popular with hypnotherapists, and yet another that was passed on to me by a friend who’d heard it at her church.
This is my own version, and it works fantastically well for me. Give it a try, and if you find you need to add details or change the ambiance, fine – it will work better for you if you have created it for yourself.
Imagine a cube, about 10ftx10ftx10ft. This cube is made up of  bright, golden light which gives off a gentle warmth. This cube is the Golden Room.
Give yourself a minute or so to really picture this room: it’s bounded only by light, and everything you place in it is bathed in beautiful clear rays of energy.
Soft as thistledown
My Golden Room contains a sofa with comfortable cushions that are soft as thistledown; there is a lavender aroma; I can occasionally hear windchimes in the distance, and I often hear the shushing sound of the sea lapping against a sandy beach.
You will choose your own details: your Golden Room may contain only clouds or a simple table and chair; there may be no aroma, or it may be the delicious fragrance of an apple pie cooking in the oven in your mum’s kitchen; your Golden Room may have beautiful pictures or sculptures or loads of books…it’s entirely up to you.
Fill your Golden Room with things that bring you pleasure and comfort. Because this Golden Room is entirely yours, you can have fountains of liquid silver or baby deer, tame tigers or gleaming cars – there’s no limit to what you can have, except that whatever you choose must bring you pleasure and comfort.
Your Golden Room may be minimalist or you might go for Art Deco or Goth or something that only you could describe. Great! Enjoy the experience of creating this light-filled space exactly as you want it to be.
This Golden Room, once you’ve described it clearly and fully to yourself, is where you will go when you need to relax, or take time out, or move away from a stressful situation.
Calm and peace
The bright golden light in your Golden Room will fill you with a feeling of calm and peace; your energy reserves will be topped up by it; aches and pains will be relieved by it; tears that you take to the Golden Room evaporate in the gentle warmth of the light, leaving you feeling refreshed and revived. Sadness seeps away in the Golden Room; anger dissipates and tension simply disappears.
Now see yourself in the Golden Room. Notice how relaxed and calm you are. Notice how happy you feel; acknowledge that while you’re there, nothing troubles you. Realise how clearly you are able to think. Feel how much the light refreshes you, re-energises you and gives you a sense of comfort and security.
Once you have a Golden Room of your own, you can go there whenever you need a boost of energy or confidence, or respite from stress. It’s a great place to go when you’re getting ready to sleep, because you’ll relax straight away. It’s also a great place to go when you feel unhappy or sad, or when your temper’s getting the better of you. If you’re feeling nervous a few seconds in the Golden Room can calm you down; the train journey home can be a little piece of heaven if you concentrate on spending your time in the Golden Room.
You can visit as often as you like and stay as long as you like, and you can add or subtract from what’s inside it. The only thing that’s constant is the bright golden light and beyond that, the only limit is your own imagination.
Enjoy!