Open post

The Superman Syndrome

Have you ever watched a superhero movie where they show the origin story of the hero? It’s often a journey of going from ordinary and wanting so much more, to being extra-ordinary and not being able to cope with all of the responsibility.

A sense of overwhelming obligation can both distract and dilute the hero from being truly powerful in exacting the change they would like to see. And, although we’re not superheroes we can sometimes relate to this on a profound level.

There’s a quote by Robert Jordan that goes like this: “He was swimming in a sea of other people’s expectations. Men had drowned in seas like that.”

If you are feeling constantly overwhelmed, almost to the point of drowning, it could be because of the extent to which you’ve allowed other people’s expectations to rule your life. On the website, orgcoach.net, they have a blog that helps us understand and deal with The Superman Syndrome.

One of the helpful tips that they offer is this: Honour your priorities

We are creatures of habit, and old patterns are hard to change, even when they no longer serve us well. Health care professionals note that we are so addicted to our fast-paced lives that it often takes a life-threatening crisis such as a heart attack or cancer to slow us down enough to gain the work-life balance we desire.

If you struggle to live a life based on your priorities and values, here are some concrete action steps you can take, beginning TODAY!

Action Idea #1: Discover what you love to do.

  • If you had a terminal illness, what would you want to do with the time you had left? Write down your response.
  • What’s holding you back from doing this now? Do you choose to wait for a terminal illness to come along before you make time for what you love most?
  • Get your calendar out now, and schedule a time to do some of the things you wrote down.

Action Idea #2: Articulate your values.

  • Jot down the names of 10-20 people whom you admire. They don’t need to be living, and you may have never met them or known them personally.
  • After you’ve completed your list, write down the qualities that you admire in each person you listed. For example, if you listed Mother Teresa, you might describe these qualities: compassion, generosity, and unconditional love. The qualities that you admire in others are YOUR values.
  • How do you honour your values regularly? What’s getting in the way of you honouring them?
  • Pick at least one value that you choose to honour in the coming week. How will you honour it? If you will honour it in the form of an activity, be specific about what the activity is and schedule time on your calendar to make it happen.

Action Idea #3: Identify your priorities and passions.

  • Pretend that you are attending your 100th birthday party and your closest friends and relatives have gathered to honor you. What would you want them to say about you? What would represent a life well lived with no regrets?
  • What matters most to you? What are you most passionate about? Write it down.
  • What one thing could you do–that if you did it regularly–would make the biggest difference in your personal life? How about for your professional life?
  • Get out your calendar and begin planning to do these things regularly.

If you’d like a fresh perspective (and someone to help you design the life you want by aligning your vision, priorities, and actions), then let’s schedule a discovery call today.

Open post

Car insurance and your financial portfolio

When the effects of inflation are being felt more than ever, and global economies are stuck in a state of recovery, it’s common for us to sit down and review our monthly expenses in a fervent drive to reduce our expenses. As we scroll through our bank statements or budgeting apps, we will start to question every payment – and insurance will always catch our eye and have us asking if it’s really necessary.

The answer is not always “yes” or “no” to insurance. More often than not, it’s about how much cover we need and can still afford, and then attempting to find a comfortable balance between those two amounts

Each choice affects the whole of our portfolio; none can be taken in isolation. This is why these conversations and questions become more complex and overwhelming because we start out wanting to know the solution to one problem, and then find ourselves working through a host of other concerns.

Car insurance is no different and carries a myriad of budget-influencing factors. It doesn’t matter who you bought the insurance through, or are considering, it will impact your financial plan, and that’s why this conversation is relevant.

There are many blogs and articles written about car insurance. Still, this one aims to bring in some high-level considerations to help you understand and ask better questions about your insurance and how it impacts your overall financial portfolio.

First off, car insurance is not just about covering you in the event of an accident; it’s also designed to offer cover if your car is stolen. Whilst you may think that you drive well and avoid accidents (which is unfortunately impossible, no matter how carefully we drive), you need to think about the implications of having your car stolen, especially if you have taken finance to purchase your vehicle and/or have a balloon payment plan.

As Bertus Visser from PSG says, car insurance is not only about your driving abilities but also about safeguarding against everyday hazards outside your control.

Regarding the types of cover available, it’s always beneficial to work with an adviser or broker on this as the options are extensive, and they’re never as clear-cut as comparing apples with apples.

But it’s helpful, beyond your car payments and insurance premiums, to consider how excess will work, what roadside assistance is available, if you’ll need to hire a car whilst you’re without one (either from an accident or theft), and if a balloon payment is covered in your short-term insurance portfolio. Should you claim on your car insurance, the amount of money needed to clear your excess, or anything else not covered under your policy, will either eat into your savings or force you to incur more debt.

Viewing your vehicles and related insurances within the bigger picture of your financial future is essential. A car, for many, is not simply a luxury – it could be a vital means of generating an income, running a business and helping your family live the life you choose.

And that, is worth insuring.

Open post

Fight or flight – freeze or appease?

We all have reactionary instincts, which can be quite different in various situations. We won’t always run from certain challenges (flight) or panic when confronted with a problem (freeze). Sometimes we may stand our ground and represent our deep values (fight), but in other cases, we could simply go with the flow in order to keep the peace (appease).

In her article “Everything I Know About Fight or Flight, ” Aurora Eliam describes how these hormonal cascades work succinctly. As individuals, the emotions that accompany the confusion and helplessness we feel when we experience fear or trauma will vary.

That said, the response to the particular emotion tends to be similar:

  • If you feel anger or frustration when afraid, your likely reaction will be to fight
  • If you feel terror or alarm when afraid, you’ll probably respond by flight
  • If you feel anxiety or desperation when afraid, you’ll likely freeze
  • If you feel dismayed or foreboding, you’ll try to appease

Whilst these can be reactionary, if we can learn to take a breath before acting (or reacting), we can condition ourselves to respond better in volatile, uncomfortable or challenging situations. There are many ways to start to reflect on our triggers, whether healthy or unhealthy, and these four classic trauma/fear responses are helpful in enabling us to identify our motivations and how they direct us.

And the sooner we realise that all of these will impact our financial situation, the better.

How we behave and show up is crucial to getting and keeping a job. Our reactions impact how we save, spend and invest, and how we communicate about and around money with our family and friends. Every life decision we make impacts our money.

As we identify why we behave the way we do, and how we arrive at our choices, we can start to choose how we might change them. In a blog on medium.com, the author offers these four helpful tips:

  • learning about and developing healthy personal boundaries (a major concern for appeasers)
  • developing safer and healthier self-soothing techniques and strategies for self-care (a major concern for flighters)
  • controlling mood and managing emotional responses (a major concern for fighters)
  • improving self-esteem and learning grounding techniques to lower anxiety and dissociation (a major concern for freezers)

If you want to experience more freedom in your finances, it’s helpful to explore how you can experience more freedom in other areas of life where you may feel like you have lost control, and learn to become healthily unattached to experiences and situations that are outside of your control.

Open post

We can only change what we can observe

One of the frustrations that we often experience is the feeling of being stuck. We repeat the same patterns, day in and day out, forming habits that we seem unable to shake. From unhealthy eating, exercise and money choices to self-sabotaging social media, phone and relationship habits, it’s easy to find ourselves living a life that feels stuck in time. 

As most coaches will tell us, it’s because we have blindspots to the choices that keep us stuck. We can see that we’re stuck, and we can see some of the obvious bad choices that we’re making, but we can’t see the stepping stones, or triggers, that keeps us in the cycle of bad choices.

We all have blind spots, and by definition; we can’t see them. And because we can’t observe them, we can’t change them.

If we want those different results, we need to learn to observe our blindspots. In fact, before we can even observe them, we need to acknowledge that they exist. Otherwise, we will be totally uncoachable when it comes to dealing with them.

If we truly want to make changes in our lives, then, we need to stop doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different outcome. As Albert Einstein once said: insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

The solution is to be coachable. We need to find, and then listen to, other people who can see our blind spots.

So – if you’re feeling stuck in any area of your life, you need to ask someone you trust to help you look for your blindspots in that area. Then, when we identify them, and here’s where most of us get lazy, we need to write them down.

This helps us observe the patterns in our lives so that we can then choose to change the ones that we’re not happy with, or that we can trace to unhealthy outcomes. Keeping a journal also helps us track change, and this can be a significant motivator to keep on moving forward in a healthy direction.

This applies to every area of our life, it doesn’t just have to be a food journal or a financial budget. It can be an emotional journal or a memory journal; depending on the work we’re ready to do to bring about change in our lives, journaling helps us observe our blindspots and our habits so that we can regain our power to choose them or release them. Everything is connected and the moment we start to break down and rebuild one area of our lives, we’ll find it starts to open up more opportunities in other areas too. And, the more we can observe, the more we can control.

Open post

Doing everything yourself?

There are many reasons why we try to do everything ourselves, from satisfying our need to be in control to trying to save costs, or simply “wanting the job done right”, all of us find ourselves doing too much when we forget, or haven’t learned to delegate.

Taxes and financial planning are two areas that we often feel we can go it alone, but inevitably find ourselves turning to a professional down the line and realise that the mistakes we’ve made can be far more costly than hiring an expert earlier on. For small business owners, this is often seen in tasks like building a website and marketing strategy, or trying to manage our own accounting and bookkeeping. For homeowners we see this happening when we try to rewire the house, fix a plumbing leak or sort out the dishwasher that stopped working several weeks ago.

Whilst these examples may seem humorous and relatable, sometimes the problems we need to fix are not just tangible or superficial challenges, sometimes they’re related to our mental health or close relationships. Sometimes we desperately need someone else to help us spot our blindspots, our unhealthy habits and the red flags that we’re not able to spot ourselves.

If you try to do everything yourself, you could very well be headed for either burnout or a complete meltdown.

Kathy Paauw from orgcoach.net, says that each of us has our own strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes. Not every task required along the road to success will be enjoyable. New challenges often involve things that are outside of our own expertise. Attempting to do everything ourselves – succumbing to the Do-Everything-Myself syndrome — is not feasible, since it takes too much time for each of us to learn and do everything ourselves.

As Seth Godin says: “You don’t need more time in your day. You need to decide.”  You need to decide what you’re going to focus on, and what you’re going to delegate.

Delegation helps us share the load, and it helps us communicate with others in a way that draws them in and includes them in our journey, whilst making them feel valued and making us feel valuable.

There are three types of tasks that we should identify to delegate:

1 – Tasks we don’t enjoy

2 – Tasks we shouldn’t do (because our time is better used doing something else)

3 – Tasks we can’t do (because we don’t have the expertise)

Remember, you can’t help anyone else until you learn to help yourself first. Delegation is not a lazy strategy, it’s a success strategy. The sooner we can identify the tasks that we shouldn’t be doing, the sooner we can stop doing everything ourselves.

Open post

A bird’s eye-view of your financial plan

Most people don’t enjoy financial planning. It’s a practice filled with stigmas of confusing concepts, complicated products, and expensive choices. But the fact is that none of us can live without it costing us money. Even if we simply want to go for a walk, we need to buy the time to do that.

We need to earn enough money during our working hours to buy the freedom to choose what we want to do in our downtime. And to do this, we need to have a plan (however basic it might be) in place.

You don’t need to know everything, but you need to know some things. Here are some ideas from the team at 22seven to help us hold a bird’s eye-view of our financial plan.

  1. What are my financial goals? 

Save money, have enough money to live comfortably, make work optional… 

These are reasonable goals if you’re taking the broad-brush-stroke approach. Still, it’s vital to have smaller, more tangible goals along the way that will give you a sense of accomplishment and motivate you to continue on your personal financial journey. 

Your smaller goals can’t be vague – they have to be clear and concise so that you know exactly what you have to do to achieve them. For example, your goal might be: ‘I want to save 10% of my income each month’ or ‘I want to increase my net worth by 5% over the next five years.’ 

  1. How much debt do I have? 

Debt doesn’t have to be the millstone around your neck. If you know how much you owe and what the interest on the debt is, you can make a plan to reduce it and ultimately get rid of it.

Make a list of every loan and how much you need to repay each month. If you want to speed up your repayments, allocate extra money to the accounts you wish to pay off quicker – maybe the account you owe the most on or the one with the highest interest rate. From there, you just have to stick to your plan.

It’s not impossible – you can do it! 

  1. What is my net worth? 

‘Net worth’ sounds like a fancy term, but it’s just everything you own (your assets) minus everything you owe (your liabilities). An increasing net worth indicates that your assets grow faster than your debts. That’s what you want! 

Net worth is a valuable snapshot of your entire financial situation, so it’s worth checking every now and then.

  1. Am I covered when things go wrong?

What if something happens and you can no longer work and earn an income? As depressing as it is, you need to plan for the worst. Some examples are disability cover, dread disease cover and income protection cover. 

This bird’s-eye view is aimed to help you maintain a high-level grasp on your financial plan. Still, each point above has many deeper conversations that help us craft and leverage your financial plan to suit your personal needs and ever-changing circumstances. If you need specific help before our next meeting, please feel free to reach out and let’s keep you in the best position possible to thrive in life!

Open post

Make better powerpoints

Powerpoint presentations have become a vital tool in communication, whether it’s to source funding or support for new business ideas, presenting feedback to management or your team, sharing research findings or creating content for social media, knowing how to make powerpoints that attract, connect and engage with the audience has become a crucial skill for almost all of us.

But it’s more than just a skill, it’s also an art, and this is where most of us struggle. In an age where jobs come and go fast, and finding new work or building a social media presence is part of the lifeblood of our future opportunities, finding a few tricks to create better powerpoints is worth sharing. Chris Munn, who works at Fairfield Company, specialises in buying and selling businesses, and these are some of the tips that he recently shared on Twitter.

DESIGN MATTERS

For a compelling deck, your design matters. From the typography to the colours, using pre-made templates (or hiring a designer) is a great way to start. Canva.com is a super resource for creating presentations, and you’ll find them under the Design tab in the Office section.

USE POWERFUL IMAGES

Most people like to look at beautiful images, clever visuals or simple infographics. Don’t fight human nature. Stunning graphics and visuals are far more impactful than words on a page and can often communicate quicker and be remembered for longer.

FOLLOW THE 10/20/30 RULE

It’s really easy to get lost creating a presentation, especially if the template has 30-40 slides. But – keep it short!

The 10/20/30 rule is as follows…

-10 slides max

-20 mins total presentation time

-30 point font minimum

This helps you focus on the essential bits and keeps your slides easy to engage with, both in the presentation and as a PDF handout or resource (which you can easily share on LinkedIn carousel).

DON’T READ YOUR SLIDES

As Munn says, unless there are blind people in your audience, assume everyone can read. This is slightly easier when you’re using a minimum of size 30 for your font because you won’t be able to put lots of text or even full paragraphs into your slides. The slides are there to support the conversation you’re trying to spark, not to be the entire conversation.

TELL A STORY

This is probably the most fun when crafting a presentation that will be attractive and engaging. Don’t just lay out the facts and the numbers – tell the story of why this presentation journey is important. Try to understand your audience and find ways to make them feel like they’re part of this story – then you’ll not only grab their attention, you’ll keep it.

Being a success is not about keeping our jobs or maintaining a steady career path; it’s about living our truth and constantly exploring how we can add value to the world. We will have seasons where things run smoothly, and we’ll have seasons where we have to rediscover and reinvent ourselves, and hopefully, these skills will help!

Open post

Don’t under-inflate the effects of inflation

When life gets a little out of hand, we might say that things are blowing up! Sometimes it comes out of the blue, and other times we can see it coming, but generally, when we look back at how events unfolded, there were signs of a crisis looming. Inflation is much the same; it’s happening all the time, but every now and then, we suddenly feel the effects. Just like the aging process, it happens slowly and then all at once!

Inflation is a measure of how much more expensive things are getting. And, as we know, things just keep getting more expensive, which is why we cannot afford (literally) to under-inflate, or overlook, the effects of inflation on our financial planning.

As always, when it comes to money, we have two choices: earn more or learn to work with what we have. Whilst we can always explore ways to generate more income, it’s not always possible, which is why it’s so important to remain connected and engaged with our financial plan.

In a recent blog from the team at 22seven, they offered a few ways to address inflation head-on and adjust our financial planning as needed.

Planning

Planning is key to cutting costs and being budget-savvy. Let’s use fuel as an example. By planning ahead, you can save on fuel by driving when traffic isn’t as hectic, going to the grocery store closest to your home or office, or making sure you only make one or two trips a day by writing down all your errands and plotting a strategic route. Many people also realise the benefits of having groceries delivered, finding that they spend less on fuel, save time and spend less on unnecessary items.

Change the way you buy

The first step is to overcome brand loyalty. You might need to look for cheaper alternatives or buy in bulk to cut costs. As economies adjust to the war in Ukraine and inflation at a 40-year high in America, prices are likely to keep rising. 

Cut back on costs you don’t need

It’s sad but true – some expenses will have to leave the building. Rethink your streaming subscriptions and other non-essential expenses. Learning to live more frugally might be what gets you through. 

Keep on investing 

It might seem counterintuitive to put away some of your hard-earned money when you’re already anxious about cash flow, but investing will ultimately grow your wealth, even if it means that you have to sacrifice certain small pleasures right now. 

At the end of the day, keeping the ship afloat means keeping it balanced. Talk about your financial situation with your family and friends so that they can help and support you. Sometimes it’s as simple as knowing that you can’t eat out as often, or perhaps your regular holiday plans need to be pushed back or changed to something more cost-conscious.

Whatever you do, don’t underestimate the effects of inflation, especially when they’re higher than expected, and you see your monthly budget being worth considerably less.

Open post

Healthier uses for your phone

In recent years our cellphone and mobile device usage has increased significantly. In a recent Irish survey, it was found that the average smartphone user picks up their device more than 50 times per day; a third of people check their phone within five minutes of waking up and 70% within the first 30 minutes. So, if you feel like you’re on your phone a lot, you’re not alone!

One challenge with this 21st-century phenomenon is that many of us, when on our phones, fall prey to “doom scrolling”, the act of consuming a large amount of negative news. We flip through our notifications and then tap on our favourite news or social media app and start scrolling in search of a dopamine hit. This self-sabotaging behaviour can negatively affect our mental health if we are not careful with boundaries or healthier device practices.

Some experts recommend creating boundaries, like taking a break, turning off your device and going for a walk in nature, or deleting social media apps from your phone and replacing them with healthier apps. And these are great, but inevitably, we’re going to find ourselves late-night scrolling or playing one more round of Candy Crush. Perhaps the strategy needs a two-fold approach, one for boundaries and one for better uses.

YouTube is a fantastic platform that can either be an incredible time-waster or a free university. If used strategically, it could turn your phone into a virtual teacher. So, when you’re next sitting down to scroll (after taking a healthy break), here are some ideas of YouTube channels to follow that will make you smarter.

CrashCourse (@TheCrashCourse) – 13+ million subscribers

The Crash Course team has produced more than 42 courses on various subjects, including organic chemistry, literature, world history, biology, philosophy, theatre, ecology, and many more! 

Practical Engineering (@HillhouseGrady) – 2+ million subscribers

Practical Engineering is all about infrastructure and the human-made world around us. It is hosted, written, and produced by civil engineer, Grady Hillhouse.

Y Combinator (@ycombinator) – 450k + subscribers

Twice a year, the Y Combinator invests a small amount of money ($500k) in a large number of startups. This channel shares the lessons learnt from working intensively with startups for three months to get them into the best possible shape and refine their pitch to investors.

Skillshare (@skillshare) – 420k+ subscribers

If you’re looking for a random melange of creative inspiration, Skillshare is an online learning community for creatives.

Numberphile (@numberphile) – 4+ million subscribers

This channel is all about making numbers and maths fun, taking on unusual perspectives to help us see how shapes and numbers play an integral part in our daily lives.

Remember – it’s important to have downtime, so don’t be too hard on yourself if you want to spend some time mindlessly scrolling; just make sure it doesn’t become an unhealthy habit that you can’t break.

Open post

Articulate and action

We need to be strategic about growth and not just hope it will happen organically. Through a recent interaction with business coach Grant Newland, the importance of this was brought to the fore of our conversation. But it is not just about growing businesses; it’s about developing people, families, and communities.

It’s easy to think that growth will ‘just happen’ organically, but if we don’t have a growth mindset, it probably won’t happen at all. Change happens organically, but not growth, and change can mean many different things. Dave and Hester Vaughan, business and life coaches at Lifestyle Coach, often say that we need to go through a process of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction. This process helps create a high-level view of what a growth journey could look like.

But what does that look like on a practical level? How can we start ensuring that we’re on a growth path? 

Newland suggests that we simplify this process by looking at what’s holding us back and focusing on fixing those things. We articulate the problems, blindspots, biases or stumbling blocks, and then we take action to address them (construction, deconstruction and reconstruction). 

In short, we articulate and act.

 

Understanding this is the first step; putting it into action often requires guidance, help and accountability – which is why advisers, coaches and mentors play such a vital role in our growth journey. In reality, when it’s your life, family or business, you will probably find many things that need fixing.

In the journey of articulating what’s holding us back, we need to perform a sort of triage where we identify what we need to address and work with first. The whole point of deconstruction and reconstruction is so that we can build back better. We need to deep dive and do what many coaches call “the hard work”. But, if we try to fix multiple projects simultaneously, we can become overwhelmed and ineffective.

James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, said, “Choosing the priority is as important as working on it.”

Creating an effective, life-changing plan involves articulating what needs to be done and then putting it into action, whether it’s a business, life, financial, or any other plan. If we don’t, we will not see the growth we hoped for, and we will be in exactly the same place a year, two, three or five from now.

Posts navigation

1 2 3 … 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 … 30 31 32
Scroll to top