Have you always wanted to do something meaningful? Are you longing to lead a life that will really make you feel truly fulfilled? Want to build your business, or make a real change in the world? Do you know deep inside what you really wish for, and yet sense that something is holding you back? Here are seven lessons I’ve learned from the first year of being a solo entrepreneur.
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1.There will never be the perfect moment for it
You will never be earning enough money to give you complete financial security. You will never be qualified or knowledgeable enough to start your own thing or make that next step. You will never have just the right level of support. Even if you pay thousands of pounds to your coach, counsellor, business advisor etc, they won’t do the job for you – you will still have to take the risk and do YOUR part of the work. Your 100%. There’ll be no one to blame apart from yourself if you fail. But tomorrow will never be better than today, unless you start doing something today. One day pain of not changing will become bigger than the pain of changing, and you will have to make this step.

2.You will sabotage yourself every day, and will still make progress
Most of us know exactly what kind of life they’d love to live, but there are always voices that are holding us back. Once you step on the path of change, these voices get loud. Really loud. Every day you’ll be asking yourself whether you’re doing the right thing, and who are you to do what you do. After every mistake you’ll make (and be sure you’ll make every possible mistake you can make) they’ll be telling you that you’re a failure and shouldn’t have ever tried. You may discover that you’re not returning important calls and ignoring life-changing messages. You may discover you’re spending hours sitting pointlessly online. It’s part of the game, and don’t believe anyone who says they never had self-doubt or never sabotaged themselves. Learn to deal with it (or get a coach to help you overcome it, it’s all manageable).

3.You will run out of money much faster than you think
Yes, it will happen, and likely not only once. You will constantly need to be thinking about ways to refill your wallet, and it will make you very distracted from focusing on your business. You will have to learn to juggle your insecurity and your business growth. That’s the only way.

4.You won’t figure out how things work. It will stop bothering you though.
You will try doing a thousand things, and will fail a thousand times, and all of a sudden some of these things will work (and most will never work). You probably will never understand why, but with experience you will stop trying to understand it and focus on what works. Remember the old game of hot and cold, when an object was hidden and if you were getting close to it, your playmate said “hot”? You’ll learn to get into your “hot” spot without rationalizing why it’s hot.

5.You’ll be constantly torn between feeling very happy and extremely unsatisfied
Every night will consist of thinking of everything you could and should have done today for your business, and beating up yourself for the fact that you didn’t. And yet, you’ll be very happy for everything you’ve managed to do, if you did at least something, and for the lifestyle you’ll be leading. At this stage, it’s very important to let go of the notion that you can do everything, and remind yourself about your victories, not just failures.

6.Relationships and social life will lose its appeal
You will find yourself more willing to spend the evening on the sofa with your laptop, rather than going out or meeting new people (or developing existing relationships). Making a first sale will make you more excited than a best date. You will become an obsessed self-centered maniac who only is interested in talking to people as long as they listen to him talking about his new product. Friends on Facebook will start unfriending you because you will constantly be trying to sell something to them without even realizing that.
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7.Making the future non-negotiable is the best thing you can do to support yourself
There’s a reason so many entrepreneurs talk about Vision (and pay a lot of money to coaches and consultants to get one). When you are immersed in your daily routine, it’s very easy to forget about the big Why – Why you are doing all that, and what would it be like to live your dream. This is what gives you energy.
Getting in touch with my imaginary future and sticking to this vision as something that’s non-negotiable was by far the biggest thing that helped me stay on track and build resilience. Clients often want to talk about practical steps they can’t figure out, but the moment they get connected to their Vision, they get all the steps in front of them automatically. Sticking to the vision IS the most difficult part of being an entrepreneur, figuring out the ways to get there is the easiest one.

So here I was again, crying on the floor of my tiny rented studio from an unbearable migraine and fatigue, weak and desperate after a day in the office. I seemed to have finally landed in a decent digital marketing role I’ve always wanted – a great brand, professional and ambitious colleagues, a decent salary – and yet I was at the edge of a severe depression. I was looking forward to getting to the office on Monday morning, but by the second half of Tuesday I was already feeling tired, and from Wednesday onwards would end up in tears every evening. I didn’t feel like talking to my colleagues, nor like going out anywhere. The weekend was just enough to recover. What’s wrong with me? Click to read the whole article

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In September, the world will see for the first time a very special movie. “Sensitive” as it’s called is not your average Hollywood film - this documentary raised $85,184 by 1,360 backers on Kickstarter, and managed to get the singer Alanis Morissette on board without paying her a cent. The reason? It’s addressing a question that Alanis and other people supporting the film have been asking themselves for ages – why is it they always felt themselves different? What’s wrong with them?

It turns out, nothing was or is wrong. Alanis Morissette and many other people belong to the so-called highly sensitive people (about 20% of population have this high sensitivity trait). It has been scientifically proven that sensitive people experience the surrounding environment stronger than others, noticing more subtleties and details in it than “normal” people. Noise is noisier and colors are brighter for HSPs. They are aware of the feelings and moods of other people and are often affected by them. HSPs are often very intuitive and can almost know what’s going on without asking you.

Dr Elaine Aron who co-authored the film has been studying high sensitivity for nearly two decades, and shares in it her latest findings. High sensitivity is not a disease, but rather a genetic modification that allegedly allowed the humans survive as species as sensitive people were able to notice the subtlest change in the environment and urge the rest of the population about them. Sensitivity comes with a price though, because a sensitive person can easily get overwhelmed when the environment is too stimulating. They are people who can easily get emotional, and can be seen crying, or getting upset with no obvious reason. Again, for somebody who’s not highly sensitive this behaviour might seem unexplainable or childish.

This leads to probably one of the most difficult part of being an HSP in the modern society e fact that this trait isn’t widely recognized or accepted. As any tool, sensitivity is only useful to us when we know how to use it, and this is not something that has been strongly encouraged. For instance, intuition – a typical ability of a highly sensitive person, is often disregarded as a secondary tool to analytical abilities. Men especially are discouraged to use it or rely on intuition, and it requires enormous courage for a men to start using their intuition. Whereas high sensitivity is equally spread between men and women, only a few men choose to cultivate it or aren’t ashamed to accept it – or even more, make use of it. At the same time, most entrepreneurs are very intuitive (and often highly sensitive) – if you ask any truly great entrepreneur, they will always talk about the vision and gut feeling, and seldom about rigorous analysis.

A society where sensitivity is seen as a drawback (“Don’t be too sensitive!” - mothers often tell their children) and an obstacle to the career (“You’re always asking for a special attitude, why can’t you be like everyone else?”) isn’t designed to explore or support sensitivity. Indeed, if you look at today’s typical lifestyle, most of the time our nervous system and brain are stimulated and we are never in silence. Just think about how many hundreds of advertising messages you come across on your way to work. Or how many times a day to get a notification on your phone or laptop and are encouraged to check them (the latest stats is that an average person checks their phone 221 times per day). Under such circumstances, a highly sensitive person is left with two choices – they either shut down altogether and stop recognizing or demonstrating their sensitivity, or they withdraw from the surrounding environment.

This is why the appearance of the movie “Sensitive” is important not only for sensitive people. It hopefully signifies a landmark that will get us to openly talk about people who are more sensitive than the rest, to stop trying to correct them and actually start taking advantage of their sensitivity – as our ancestors did. Perhaps if we recognize that certain people can perceive the world stronger and more intensely we will also start looking at what kind of world we’re building, and whether there are adjustments that need to be made.

Stress, overwhelm and misunderstanding with colleagues are the most common problems that a highly sensitive person encounters at work. If you are a highly sensitive person, you need to learn to manage yourself when you are asked to play by other people’s rules. The good news is that there are thousands of HSPs who managed to build successful careers, and so you can, too – following these five tips (make sure you also check Part I for extra tips).

1.       Do your stuff first

Problem: a highly sensitive person tends to pick up easily other people’s emotions, agenda and energy, and get locked in them.

Solution: Start you mornings pro-actively. First do what YOU need to do, and not what other people suggest that you do. Avoid morning meetings at all costs. Do not open your mailbox or answer phone calls until you have accomplished all the major things on your to-do list. Try to postpone any gossiping and/or socializing until after lunch time.
If you don’t do your thing when you still have a fresh mind, you will find it very difficult to accomplish to it later, as you will already be overloaded with other people’s problems.

2.       Work is just work (as long as you repeat it to yourself)
Problem: highly sensitive people often find it difficult to separate professional and personal lives. HSPs end up working extra hours and over the weekend, because they either prefer not to say directly no, or can’t stop thinking about all the commitments they have or keep digesting whatever happened in the office.

Solution: You, and only you, need to establish boundaries. Decide where and when work starts and finishes, and tell others about it explaining briefly the reasons. Don’t make a big deal out of it, rather make it practical. For example, if you decide you will not read emails after working hours unless there’s an absolute emergency, in which case you can be reached on your phone. You may want to switch on an email autoreply after working hours that specifies how you can be reached and what a genuine emergency is. If you are not senior enough, make sure you run it past your boss first.
If you happen to work over the weekend, talk about it the next couple of days with your boss and clearly state it as an exception that should not repeat. If you regularly have to work over the weekend, it can mean two things. First, you might not be very good at time management, and you need some training. It’s perfectly normal to ask your boss or HR for it, and it’s probably a good idea to do that. Second option is that you are just not in the right environment. Sorry to say that, dear HSP, but the industries where you cannot manage your time and should be “always on” are not for you, as you will burn out really fast.
It will get better when you become more senior, because with seniority you get more flexibility to regulate your working hours. But if you are still in the early stages of your career, you need to be very careful selecting the type of work culture you are in.
As an HSP, you also need more than anyone else to learn the phrase “It’s just work”. It helps to have a circle of friends outside of your work environment, with whom you don’t talk about work-related subjects and who will repeat this phrase for you whenever you feel overwhelmed – it’s just work, dude, breath out.

3.       Create your own job description
Problem: A highly sensitive person might often feel that her strengths are not used in her current job, and don’t feel fulfilled doing what they do. 

Solution: The best career for a highly sensitive person is something related to helping other people and being able to manage their own time, so many of us end up freelancing or having their own business. Of course, it might seem more simple just to change the job, but you can also create a perfect job for yourself from a less perfect one by learning to sell your HSP qualities. 
To do that, make a list of 10 things you are good at thanks to your sensitivity, and think how you can use them to change your job description. For example, are you good at establishing contacts with other people in person, because you understand what they really want? Make sure your boss understands the value for the business of personally contacting customers as opposed to sending them emails. Make a little business case, showing him how many people you managed to convert thanks to meeting them in person. 
Be proactive, suggesting to do things that help you leverage your HSP qualities, such as compassion, attention to detail or vision.

4.       Be socially aware
Problem: a highly sensitive person often prefers to have a close circle of friends and usually hates office politics. As a result, they are often left out of the promotion. Paradoxically, HSPs who are the most empathetic people and know more about others often end up having conflicts and being bullied.

Solution: As much as you hate it, just doing your job well is not enough. Because you are different from most people, they likely don’t understand what you are about, and our natural reaction to everything we don’t understand is to reject, or at least be cautious. You need to be aware of that effect, and minimize it. To do that, you need to have two steps for your communication strategy at work, both of which are equally important.
First, find people in the office who are similar to you and with whom you can have long meaningful conversations for hours. You will probably get naturally drawn to them anyways. They are your foundation, and you can seek out their moral support when you are feeling down.
However, you should not neglect the rest. There is a natural tendency to spend more time interacting with those who really understand you, especially when things get difficult. This is where most HSPs make a mistake, as they only choose a couple of people they are really close to, and ignore everyone else.
If you want to have a successful career, you need to create a wider support circle. You need to consciously set up some time every day to go out there and establish human contacts with your colleagues. You don’t have to get into politics, but you do want to make sure that people know a few things about you and they understand you BEFORE things get difficult not to create unnecessary speculations when they do.

5.       Get daily routine in place
Problem: highly sensitive people get easily stressed and overwhelmed when they have to deal with multiple priorities at the same time. Change also makes them go off balance.
Solution: If you work in a rapidly changing environment, you need to have some stable elements you can hold to. This is especially valid for entrepreneurs, since many HSPs chose to become one not to play according to other people’s rules. Entrepreneurship is all about change and flexibility, but as an HSP, you crave for stability. Having routine and rituals is a perfect way to stabilize your nervous system in the most unstable circumstances.
Try to wake up, have a meal and go to bed at a particular time. Make certain things and timing in your daily calendar non-negotiable. For instance, I would assume that even if you are running late, cleaning your teeth in the morning is probably non-negotiable, and you will squeeze in 30 seconds to do that. You need to have more “teeth cleaning moments” throughout your day – predictable and reoccurring things that will happen to you no matter what. Sticking to the routine creates a sense of control over your life, and this is the most important thing that you need to build a successful career, dear HSP.

Read more tips from Part I - just click the link!

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If you are a highly sensitive person, chances are you are quite different from your colleagues. You may find a typical office background noise more distracting than they do. You are likely to get more easily overwhelmed when you’ve got much going on. You may feel more tired after a whole day of staring at computer screen, or need extra time to withdraw somewhere quiet and dark after an intense meeting with many people.

Does it sound like you?

If so - don’t worry, there is nothing wrong with you - this is a typical “side effect” of being highly sensitive. Highly Sensitive People (or HSPs) is a scientific term. It refers to people who are believed to have a genetic ability to notice more subtleties in their environment than most people, and process more sensory input from it, including sounds, lights, temperature etc. They are not sick and don’t need any treatment – it’s just that their nervous system and mind are more “fine-tuned”.

Think about sensitivity as a super-expensive medical knife that can be used for the most delicate surgery thanks to its sophistication and sharpness. However, if the same knife is used to cut bread, chances are it will break down or become dull, and so can no longer be used for a surgery. Same way, highly sensitive people will flourish in the right conditions, or shut down and/or experience stress-related issues if they are continually overwhelmed.

Because highly sensitive people are in the minority (it is believed that only about 20% of all humans belong to HSPs), most companies are not structured to support them. So a highly sensitive person might struggle to have a successful career, especially at an early stage. However, being highly sensitive does not mean you cannot be successful - it's just a question of learning to manage and "sell" your sensitivity. The following five tips will help you with that:

1.       Understand that people see the world differently
Most problems a highly sensitive person gets at work arise because people don’t get them. As previously said, 80-85% of people are not highly sensitive, and so they genuinely don’t understand why you are bothered about food smell at the desk, loud music or an air conditioner. They might even not notice something that will seem to you like a major thing impacting your well-being and productivity. They even may enjoy this little stimulation, otherwise their nervous system is dormant, and will think you are too demanding when you ask them to turn the music volume down.
Explaining what sensitivity is to a non-sensitive person is a bit like trying to explain to a blind person what colors are. You need to “sell” your sensitivity in the language they can understand. For instance, if you need time to withdraw after a meeting, don't say you are overwhelmed, but mention you are going somewhere to write down the thoughts that came to your mind after the meeting. Or make a joke that you need a cup of tea to warm yourself up after a chilly conversation with a client. People are afraid of what they don't understand, so use humor and keep things really simple.

2.       Incorporate regular breaks throughout the day
If you are a highly sensitive person, you need more rest than most people to recharge your nervous system. I remember this made me really upset in my younger age, as most of my colleagues were able to carry on working. Having built a successful career in several fields, I can assure you now it's not the question of working harder, but working smarter with fewer distractions.
It may sound counterintuitive, but the most efficient thing to do for a highly sensitive person at work is to incorporate breaks every hour or so for a few minutes not to accumulate stress. Because if you don' rest, it will take you much longer to recover after you break down. Taking rest for a highly sensitive person means doing something that involves as little stimulation as possible – so no computer, possibly no chatting to colleagues, but taking a few moment to be somewhere quite, or even better having a little walk outside. 
Ideally, you want to manage your schedule yourself and this should be your priority at work. If you do, do not put several meetings one after another. Switch between meetings and personal activities. As a highly sensitive person, you need time to recharge after one intense experience.

3.       Know what triggers you
We all are stimulated by different things – some of us are more sensitive to noise, some to smells, some to information overload. You can take this little test to see what stimulates you compared to other highly sensitive people. Notice what triggers your sensitivity, and start consciously managing it. For instance, if your trigger is noise, make sure you have a pair of earplugs when you work (earplugs are way better than earphones for an HSP, as music adds stimulation). In my experience, wax earplugs are the best ones, as they don't let any noise in and are also not irritating to the ear.
If you absolutely cannot avoid the trigger, try minimizing it. For instance, if you know you get tired after the flight and being in the airport among crowds of people, do not set up important meetings for that day. Go on a business trip a night before to have proper rest.
A typical trigger for all HSPs is multitasking. People aren’t generally good at multitasking as has been proven by multiple researchers, but as an HSP you need to be even more careful because any distraction has a bigger impact on you than on your non-sensitive colleagues. You need to organize your work so that you have enough time to dedicate to one particular task and aren’t disturbed in between. This means you may need to book a closed room, ask everyone not to approach you for two hours, and switch off all notifications, all sound signals on your communication devices and put them face down. If you’re waiting for an important call, you should not be working on something that requires your concentration. Similarly, do not open more than one tab when browsing online. Multitasking isn’t good for your brain.

4.       Watch your diet
As a highly sensitive person, you have to be extremely careful about how you eat, as you are more sensitive to sugar than most people (your nervous system literally gets exploded every time you consume sugar). This means that a regular office chocolate/biscuit snacking is out of question. When tired, we are not able to tell what’s good and what’s bad for us, so make sure to have something healthy (and yet yummy) in your desk instead of sugary stuff. 
As an HSP, you are very likely to be more affected by caffeine than most people, so it’s best not to consume it altogether, or if you do, not to drink coffee on the days when you’ve got a lot going.

5.       Talk about your work, not sensitivity
The last thing you want to do after you’ve read this text is to go to your boss or colleagues and tell them you’re highly sensitive, and therefore they should start treating you in a different way. If you did that, you’d be seen either as difficult, or sick. 
What you really want to do is to show them how your work might be impacted if a certain problem causing you extra stimulation (i.e. sitting next to a noisy scanner) will not be resolved.  Focus on the extra value you’ll be able to provide. For instance, if you are negotiating flexible working hours, tell them how you’ll be able to better concentrate and call more customers when it’s less noisy around. 
It obviously helps if you are doing well in your job, and your boss is happy (make sure that they are by giving them the highlights of your key achievements on a weekly basis – it’s not bragging, it’s PR). If this is not the case, you may want to work a little harder (or rather, smarter) before you negotiate anything. The good news is that your bargain power will improve dramatically the more senior you become, so it’s the question of surviving through the early stages of your career.

Bonus track
Most importantly, start being nice to yourself and appreciate your sensitivity. Many highly sensitive people feel they are different and have been punished for that at work or at home, and so try to downgrade their sensitivity to “fit in”. 
Instead of punishing yourself for not being able to cope as most people, think about all the great things you are able to do thanks to being sensitive. You probably know what other people want or expect, are able to build great relationships, forecast trends and make conclusions without having all necessary information thanks to your intuition. Start appreciating your sensitivity, and your colleagues and bosses will do so, too.


See more tips at Part II of the article

George, a 48-year old partner in a reputable consulting firm, has always praised himself for his analytical abilities. He’s great at structuring the most complicated projects, and selling his solution to the most demanding client. It has happened on a several occasions that George saved a big project by understanding what the client really wanted (and not what he was saying he wanted) and suggesting that before anyone else. 

In fact, this ability has allowed George to build some wonderful client relationships and become a partner in his firm, in spite of being generally seen as a reserved and even shy person.

When his colleagues ask him how he does that, George doesn’t know what to answer, since it seems so natural to him just to know what people want. Because he needs to say something, he starts pointing out various analytical tools he uses, but it doesn’t help his colleagues much, because all employees in his firm are aware of these tools – and yet somehow George is always the one who knows more about the client. The company finds him so valuable that it’s happy to overlook his constant need to withdraw and stay at home during busy days, and even recently allowed him to work part-time.

What George is not aware of is that his main strength is not his analytical abilities, but a laser-sharp intuition, which often comes together with difficulties to manage stress.

George is a classic example of a Highly Sensitive Person, or HSP (you can take this quick test to check if you are one of them, too). Although he doesn’t know anything about HSPs, he has probably noticed the good and bad sides of this trait all the time. 

What's High Sensitivity?
High sensitivity is not an illness, but rather a genetic modification that occurs in about 20% of humans (and some higher animals), who process information deeper and notice more subtleties in their environment. HSPs have a larger number of mirror neurons – brain cells responsible for fast learning and imitation. These people are highly intuitive and empathetic, and can easily guess what the other feels or needs, often without asking specific questions. This quality makes them great at any job that requires helping other people or client relationship, or trend watching, and HSPs can build a great career if they get into these fields.

Unfortunately, the gift of sensitivity can also become the biggest burden, since Highly Sensitive People get overwhelmed more than other people when things get busy. Their nervous system gets easily overloaded with excessive noise, bright light or other sensory stimuli. When they do, they become quite unsociable or can even fall sick. Because they process more information and do it deeper than most people, they need more time to recover – quite a luxury in the modern corporate environment. 

In his company George has earned a reputation of a hardworking introvert, because in busy days he closes down in his office and doesn’t talk to anyone. The truth is although George likes people, he just needs to take time off during and after busy projects. George’s best way of having the rest is being in the nature, and he spends weekends walking in the English countryside with his phone off.

Being Sensitive in a Corporate World
There are quite a few Georges out there in the corporate world, but it’s difficult to recognize them at first. Statistically, the same proportion of men and women are born with a high sensitivity trait. Yet, because in our society mostly women are allowed to be intuitive and empathetic, a highly sensitive George needs to mask to be just like any other guy. 

A George can choose quite an analytical and brainy profession that require a lot of research and data processing, but also some interaction with other people – like project manager, consultant, or scientist. He is also very drawn to “helping” professions like therapists, coaches, or HR/recruitment, or can make a very talented artist. Many successful leaders are HSPs because they are quite capable to understand other people and inspire them - Abraham Lincoln is believe to be one. But most often, male HSPs who want to have a career in the corporate environment prefer to shut down and hide their “craziness” from others, blaming themselves for not being able to be up to the competition all the time.

It has taken George many years to recognize his intuitive ability, and it only happened because a woman he adored told him he had a great intuition, which he found pleasurable. When he started reading more about it and discovered he was an HSP, a lot of things started falling into place for him. George was able to accept his sensitivity and understand how it has helped him to build a successful career, also sometimes intervening with it and keeping him away from people.

HSP's success factors
When we talk, George admits that had he known about his trait earlier, he might have been as successful, but would have paid a lower price for that. He wouldn’t force himself to work or be in the meetings when he really felt he needed time to rest and think. He might have chosen to structure his day in a different way, so that he has more time for reflection and having more meaningful conversations with fewer people. 

He also understands now why he has always avoided large social gatherings and how somehow he never got the clients from these events, although it’s a common belief that you need to socialize to build your network. The truth is that HSPs hate chit-chat, and are far better in building deep and long-lasting relationships than doing small talks.

If you are a Highly Sensitive Person, it’s not uncommon to worry about being overwhelmed at work or feeling that you react to certain things stronger than most people. Yet, this is not an obstacle for a successful career (and again, not an illness or something that needs to be cured). Simply being aware of this trait and knowing how to structure your life around it and “sell” its advantages to your employer will help. 

Also quite a lot of Highly Sensitive People end up working as independent contractors or building their own business because they can’t adapt to the corporate environment (Steve Jobs is a perfect example of an extremely successful visionary HSP). The good news is that you can learn to manage your trait very efficiently, and make it your competitive advantage. If you want to learn how to have a successful career or business being an HSP – sign up for my newsletters below. In these newsletters, I am discussing suitable career and business strategies for HSPs and how they can become successful while remaining who they really are – intuitive and sensitive human beings.

I have never come across a client who felt enthusiastic about working on their CV. Of course, they know that a well-written resume is a must and not having it stands in the way of getting a dream job. And yet, they can spend weeks caught up between blame and procrastination, complaining of not being able to choose the right words, not knowing how to describe their responsibilities or unsure of what their dream job is.
If you recognize yourself in this description and want to create a great CV at long last, you may find the following three tips useful:

1. Tell your story in your own words
When a client brings her resume to our meeting, I don’t look at it. Instead, I ask her to tell me a story about the person from this CV. I ask the following questions to make the storytelling easier:

• What did this person enjoy doing? What did she hate?
  
• What is she proud of having accomplished (if nothing in any of the jobs, what was she proud of having accomplished at school/university/in extra-curricular activities)?
  
• What were some of the things that worked well for this person in her previous jobs and what things didn’t work so well?
  

When a client starts telling a story about themselves, all of a sudden she feels more alive and engaged, and stops using bureacratic language to describe her work experience, replacing it with vivid and lively wording.
If you’ve spent a lot of time on editing your CV and haven’t made much progress, it’s often a good idea to close the old version altogether and write a completely new one from the scratch as answers to the questions above. Your story will come much more fluid and natural, and you’ll enjoy working on it.

2. Focus on the future, don’t dwell on the past
If you want to be inspired, your resume should look into the future, and not reflect your past.
Often people who want to progress in their career get caught up in labels. For instance, if their last job was called “personal assistant” or “marketing manager”, in their resume they may still use terminology of a “personal assistant” to describe their responsibilities and achievements, like “scheduling meetings”, or “booking flights”. However, if they don’t want to be a personal assistant anymore, they need to change the language!
Because they feel uninspired about what they did, they often choose uninspiring words to describe this experience. No wonder they get really bored working on their CV!
If you want to progress from “marketing manager” to “marketing director”, you need to start thinking as a marketing director, and choose the words and experiences accordingly.
Start with inspiration. Imagine that you’re already doing something that you have always wanted to do. Think about your daily life, how you get to your office and what it looks like, what you are wearing, what people you sit next to etc. Imagine this in every possible detail.
Now think about what in your previous job helped you be successful in your new role? Very important - think about it as if you were already in the desired position. Perhaps, as a “personal assistant” you learned to organize well the work process for your boss - how can you reframe this skill in your new, more senior role? Perhaps, something like “operational management”? Write it down and repeat for every major responsibility.
Do you instantly feel yourself more accomplished and inspired?

3. Unsure about the dream job? Be curious and follow the heat
People often get blocked working on a resume because they don’t know what their dream job is, and so see no sense in improving it. The good thing is that you don’t need to have a clear picture in mind to get inspired if you use the following trick.
Remember a child’s play “hot and cold”? A person hides an object and others go searching for it. If they get close to the hidden object, the person says “warm” or “hot”, if they get further away from it, he says “cold” or “freezing”.
Use the same principle in your job search. Open an empty Word doc, then go to a job search website and browse through every possible vacancy on it.  Go through a job description of a dentist, driver, CFO, geologist, and copy-paste to your doc all phrases or words that catch your attention and make you feel "warm" or "hot". It can be a name of a brand, industry, location or responsibilities that make you ignite - keep copying them in the same document.

Don't limit yourself to a particular sector or job you think you might be suitable for. Instead, go totally crazy!
You’ll soon start seeing a pattern, and your “ideal” job will emerge. Maybe you’ll discover it’s all about travel, or helping others, or being in a luxury environment - you’ll notice what really makes you tick and feel inspired.
With that information in mind, you can now think about the industries or companies where these qualities are represented. Check their websites to see how they formulate their job descriptions, and use some of the words from them to tailor your resume for your dream job.

Allow yourself to have fun, and working on your resume will be really easy!

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Have you ever been told that you are too sensitive or overreacting, especially as a kid? If so, chances are that you belong to approximately 20% of the population, who researchers call Highly Sensitive People (HSPs). They aren't by any mean neurotics or introverts - HSPs are perfectly normal mentally and enjoy being around others, but are much more sensitive to various stimuli in their environment - whether it’s noise, smell, or the mood of people around them.

Some people are born with blue eyes, and some are with brown. HSPs are born with high sensitivity. They always know how you are feeling, or sense that something has happened without asking, and pay a lot of attention to the smallest details. For this reason they often end up working as helping professionals, such as psychologists, social or charity workers. They are deeply moved by arts and music, and so many of them can be found in artistic circles, too.

Their brain is believe to react differently to various stimuli, trying to process more information at once than "normal" people". HSPs are believed to have a very important evolutionary role in the society - using their intuition, they can sense any upcoming changes or danger in the environment much faster than others, and alert them, helping the human species to survive. 

It's interesting to note that other animals, including monkeys, also have Highly Sensitive species among them, and so they clearly serve some great evolutionary purpose.

Drawbacks of being highly sensitive

High Sensitivity, though, comes with a big price. HSPs get easily overwhelmed by excessive stimulation - for instance, when the music is too loud, or when they have too many things going on at the same time. Highly sensitive children can fall sick if they have been communicating for too long with their counterparts just because they got too many impressions. These people are most often exposed to psychosomatic illnesses and need considerable amount of time to withdraw from social life to recharge their batteries. HSPs are not necessarily introverts though - it has been calculated that about 30% of highly sensitive people are in fact extraverted, and many introverts are not highly sensitive, either.

No wonder that to those who aren’t highly senstivie, HSPs might seem too demanding, difficult or fragile, and might be tricky to understand, especially in an office space. If put in the right environment, HSPs would thrive, but in a wrong environment they completely shut down, or become antisocial and difficult to deal with.

Although high sensitivity is equally distributed between men and women, it is largely believed in most societies that it's more natural for a woman, and not for a man, to be sensitive, and so it takes enormous courage to a highly sensitive man to stick to his true nature and not shut down. 

Often because people who are born highly sensitive aren’t encouraged enough to cultivate that in their early childhood (Oh, sweetheart, you are too sensitive - you shouldn’t be that way! is a common way to shut your sensitivity down), they develop layers and layers of protection. To an outsider, a well-adapted HSP can appear hypermasculine or extremely practical and cynical. But behind that shell, there’s a very delicate nature that can be a big advantage - if properly used.

Another survival strategy an HSP can adopt is to avoid difficult or challenging situations that might potentially overwhelm him. They are likely to try to avoid a conflict or drama at all costs, often at the expense of their own boundaries.

How to live as a highly sensitive person?

So how do you thrive if you are a highly sensitive person? Chances are, you have already developed some strategy throughout your childhood and it has been more or less successful since you are alive and reading this post. However, instead of survival mechanism, you may want to look at other strategies to adapt that will allow yourself to thrive and use your gift and not just bear it.

First of all, please, know that there’s nothing wrong with you. Yes, you are in the minority and most people are not like you, but this does not mean that you are crazy or need to be fixed in any way. Quite the opposite - because only a few people have this gift, what you might for years have been thinking is your great weakness can actually be your greatest strength. Some of the most successful business people are highly sensitive, because they can sense opportunities before anyone else does. They are able to become great leaders because they feel the mood and desires of people around them. 
If you are a men, being highly sensitive does not mean that you're not masculine - but your partners might find it much easier to connect with you!

Give yourself a permission to be highly sensitive - because a lot of people may benefit from your gift in professional and personal life. As a highly sensitive person, you need to be aware of the fact that it’s perfectly normal to want to withdraw from time to time, and so need to organize your life accordingly and let people around you know about it. Even if you are working in an office, it’s perfectly fine to want to hide in a closed room with your cup of coffee for some time and yet afterwards want to talk to people again.

As an HSP, you need to watch very carefully how much time you are spending online and connected. If you are on your phone/laptop 24/7, chances are that you are overstimulating yourself and getting exhausted. You more than anyone else need to be able to consciously unplug.

How to deal with a highly sensitive person

When dealing with a highly sensitive person, please, take into account that they might overreact to many things, and easily get exhausted if they get too much information at once. If you are a boss and one of your employees is constantly spending time in the bathroom or asks to work from home, there’s a chance that they are not simply trying to skive off work, but are a self-adjusting HSP. One highly sensitive person I talked complained that she absolutely could not stay in the shop she was working in because it had music in the background, and she was strongly disturbed by it. Her bosses could not believe that until she showed them the research on HSPs.

A highly sensitive child needs very strong discipline and boundaries to enable him to function well in the society. Because they have a stronger need to withdraw, make sure that they don’t have their communication devices on and with them all the time - they need some rest time, even though they might not yet recognize it. They are also more influenced by anything around them, so you need to watch them very carefully for any negative influence.

Highly sensitive people who experienced problems in their childhood are more at risk to suffer from different kinds of disorders, including depression, anxiety or various dependancies. However, those whose childhoods have been normal, are no different to others (perhaps, as the researchers point out, are even slightly happier). So nurture your highly sensitive child (or your inner child if you are highly sensitive yourself), and you're likely to feel happier than most of others.

If you are curious whether you are a highly sensitive person, you may want to take this test to determine it (takes only a couple of minutes), or come back to it after you're finished reading.

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Have you left the job you really hated to look for something more fulfilling, or planning to do so in the nearest future? There are three key things you need to aware of if you want to transition through this period painlessly.

1. Frustration is inevitable.
   

Let’s face it - job search is not the most exciting way to pass one’s time. Even if you completely hated your previous job, after the first few weeks euphoria will pass and you may discover that freedom is not as attractive as you had depicted it to be.

Your real challenge will start after you’re done with “enjoying the beautiful weather” and have caught up with all the friends you planned at least twice. Life may start feeling meaningless, especially if you aren’t quite sure about what you want, and just know what you don’t want to (stay in the job you hate!).

Be prepared that your days will consist of endless follow up emails and calls accompanied by a blunt mixture of fear and frustration. You may stop picking up your friends’ calls because you’ll dread the question that will be asked - so, how is the job search?

What to do about it:

Create some structure and routine for yourself throughout the day you can stick to no matter what. The fact that you aren’t working does not automatically mean you should wonder half-naked around the house.

Looking for a job will become your full-time job, but it should be structured just as any other job. Set yourself some goals for the day, so that you continue feeling that you have accomplished something - i.e. send out 10 resumes per day. Make sure you have goals outside your job search as well - you can sign up to volunteer, start learning something new online, reading 10 pages of a book, doing 50 squats etc.

A famous psychologist Viktor Frankl who spent years in nacist camps concluded that people who survived genocide had one thing in common - their lives had some meaning and they had a goal (like helping others, or thinking about a scientific problem they’ll be able to explore once they are out of the camp). Set goals up for yourself.

2. You’ll eat yourself alive with self-criticism

The worst thing that can happen is no that you don’t get an interview or job offer, but that you start asking yourself questions when things don’t work out for some time.

What if this is forever? What if I don’t find anything more meaningful and am just a dreamer? What if I am not good for anything else and should have just stayed where I was?

We really excel at creating a hell for ourselves with our own hands. People who are especially good at that are those who have been more successful, as they tend to have many more expectations about what they should do and what the world should look like.

What to do about it

Give yourself time and space. Figuring out what you really want can take some time, and it’s a matter of trying, not thinking. If you are really limited with your funds, you may want to have a temporary solution in place not to get into survival mode.

You are not doing yourself any service by demanding results right now and not giving yourself permission to recover (honestly, does it really help that you are torturing yourself again and again and again)?

Be kind to yourself. Your situation is not easy by itself. The frustration you are experiencing can be tremendously reduced if you stop demanding from yourself immediate results and give yourself time.

Please, know that there’s nothing wrong with you. Start re-building your confidence - if you’ve spent time in an unsuitable role or environment, chances are that it is strongly undermined. Ask your friends to mention your great qualities to you, or write down all the experiences when you felt like a winner and re-read them on a daily basis.


3. You’ll start postponing your life until you find a job

You might start running out of money, and so decide that you should not be entertaining yourself until you’ve found something.

Even when they have enough funds, people in such situations often get into the “scarcity” mentality and stop denying themselves every single pleasure that costs money (and any other, too), not because they really can’t but because they are essentially postponing their lives until they find a job. This is what makes the job search situation so unbearable for most of them.

What to do about it.

Your life might be frustrating at times, but it can also be fun - and fun does not necessarily cost you money. Please, know that your feeling of happiness and fulfillment does NOT depend on whether you find a job tomorrow or not, and you can choose to be happy any time of your life.

Do something on a daily basis to help yourself maintain the positive mode. It’s especially important because when you are trying to achieve something, you need to make sure that you have enough energy to keep yourself going. Negative thoughts and experiences deplete your energy, and positive ones build it up.

So treat it as a marathon preparation - it can be hard at times and you may need to limit yourself for some things. It’s up to you how to remember this period of your life - as something that you were hoping that will pass ASAP, or something that was quite challenging, but also full of new great experiences.

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Why would I give it up though in the first place and why is this story worth sharing? I strongly believe that giving up your smartphone is the single best thing you can do to restore your energy, relationships and interest in life without hours of expensive coaching and psychotherapy.

I don’t remember myself being more productive and focused ever since I gave up my android. I started talking to people around, both those I know and I don’t, I am not jigging at the sound of a new incoming email and I am not constantly worried about being left out of touch because my phone is discharged (again).

The irony of this story is that my background is in digital marketing. I am the person who for over than ten years has been selling online goods and services and promoting digital technologies to millions of people on behalf of largest international companies, such as Google. 

Now I’m going to share with you a dirty little secret that you might or might not know. Some of the most influential people in the technology world don’t have smartphones and use the most basic phone models. One of them is Eugene Kaspersky, the founder of Kaspersky lab, the most prominent antivirus software company. I also know a few regional business leaders in telco and tech finance, who for security reasons prefer an old very basic Nokia (this post isn’t sponsored, but Nokia tends to be the leading brand among those). 

There is surely a reason they don’t.

An addicted brain

Fast backward three years ago, when I was getting my first smartphone (because all of my friends had it, and OMG I could get it for free from a network operator!), I suspected that it might have a negative impact on myself, but I thought I would be really careful and not let it suck me in. 

I thought I would only use useful applications (such as a player), and will limit Facebook usage or checking my email. I first got concerned when the productivity app I had installed across my accounts showed me that I was spending between 6-8 hours a day online on my phone. I became a bit more concerned when I suddenly realized that when I was not looking at my phone for more than 15 minutes, I started feeling physically uncomfortable, as if something bad was about to happen. I got truly preoccupied when I realized couldn’t move my right thumb as I could move the left one, and my right hand was feeling tense most of the time. 

I found later that whatever I was experiencing, was confirmed by neuroscienceresearch that says that using smartphone apart from having other negative effects changes your somatosensory cortex. This is a part of your brain that is associated with thumbs, and smartphone users tend to have this area shaped differently compared to the users of regular phones. Scientists think that these changes happen with more usage of a smartphone and might have negative consequences, including chronic pain and movement problems. There's also extensive research into how smartphones negatively impact our relationship.

I must admit that I tried to consciously limit my phone usage, installing different blocking apps, switching on and off the sync function, switching the device altogether for periods of time - nothing really worked for more than a few hours. I felt my calmest when on holidays I would get to a place with no internet connectivity and so wasn't able to use my phone. Every time I went back to London, I promised myself I will keep this feeling of clarity and focus in my head without my phone. I never managed to do that for more than a few days, because the old habit kicked back in.

The last straw was reading a report about how your smartphone collects data about you on a daily basis. When I saw my personal archive in one place online, it was a call to action. 

Hello, I am Anastasia, I am a smartphone addict and I spend my days feeding my personal info for free to whoever wants to see it.

The plan

At long last, I made a plan how to outsmart myself.

I went to a shop and purchased the most basic phone. It cost me something around 20 pounds, and they would give me the same amount of phone calls credit on top, so I basically got it free of charge. The phone was not sexy, it could only call and send text messages and, in fact, it was extremely uncomfortable to type them in. This was exactly what I was looking for.

I got it as a second line and started using it in parallel. It didn’t quite work out initially, because the smartphone was so much more comfortable to use, but I persisted and started leaving the smartphone at home once in a while, or wait until it gets fully discharged and not charge it for some time, using the other phone instead.

This stage took me about three months.

Then I forced myself into the next stage - I decided to get rid of it altogether. I tried storing it in my room - it didn’t work, I kept switching it on even when I was at home. It felt so safe having it in my hand (I swear, this was precisely the emotion I was experiencing).

I couldn’t make the final step until I had a chance to give it away. Because my mother wanted a navigator, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to get her one, and so my phone is now sitting in her car, and doesn’t use it in any other way rather than getting directions (she finds it way too complicated for anything else).

This was in fact the most painful stage, because I had no idea how I will be finding my way, listening to music, staying in touch - I thought I would be completely lost and dependent! However, I still remember the feeling of huge relief and energy uplift the moment I cleaned out all my data on the phone and gave it to my mom. 

It turned out, I would experience far fewer problems that I anticipated. I suddenly discovered that London had city maps every 100 meters, that people in bus stops very willingly would tell me when the next bus is coming, and I wasn’t worried about losing touch with any of my friends because my new phone’s battery lasts for 14 (fourteen!) days without a recharge. I am also not irritating people anymore by putting my phone on the dinner table (although I am sometimes irritated myself because I have nothing to do while they are staring in their screens!)

In summary, what helped me get rid of this habit and make more space in my life and head:

1. Clearly seeing the impact that the phone was having on my nervous system and productivity
   
   
2. Understanding who really benefited from me using it
   
   
3. Getting some authoritative figures as inspiration and example that this is possible (this really made a big difference)
   
   
4. Making gradual change and understanding that limitations don’t work
   
   
5. Getting the device out of the way altogether with a good cause

My next challenge is to limit my overall online activity, and I will be creating a log of my progress and what I feel works and what doesn’t.

PS Is your finger glued to your iPhone and you live in your mailbox? It might be the time to declutter. I am running a 6-weeks digital detox course as part of Consciously Digital™, my second coaching business. It gives you practical tools to manage your online life if you want to be more productive and less stressed, and have more time for things that matter. The next 6-weeks course is starting shortly, so check it out!

Positive interactions is what makes a big difference in team performance, according to positive psychologists. Having studied records of 60 team meetings, researchers Barbara Fredrickson and Marcial Losada discovered that top performing teams had more positive than negative interactions among their members.

Negativity included criticism, not listening to others, and only concentrating on what issues important to oneself, whereas positive interactions meant participants openly appreciated others' ideas, gave feedback and were oriented towards solutions, and not criticism.

Researchers thought there was a specific tipping point when a number of positive interactions produced quality changes in team dynamics, making a team look for out-of-the-box solutions, be more creative and perform better. Although the precise ratio they suggested (1 negative to 3 positive) has been criticized by the scientific community because of the mathematical model used, their discovery is in line with the research on successful marriages, which says that happy spouses experience 5 positive interactions over 1 negative. So it's likely that the "ideal ratio" lies somewhere between these numbers.

How much positivity is healthy though?Again, you will have to find yourself the magic formula that works for your team, but there’s scientific evidence that team performance starts to decrease after a certain level of positive interactions is reached. In other words, be positive, but also stay authentic. Nothing can be perfect all the time, and you need to find constructive ways to express that, too.

Ok - but how do I do it? To make your team flourish, you need to reduce negativity and increase positivity. The following four tools might help:

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1. Yes, and... tool to increase positivity
This tools allows you to make sure that in team meeting or brainstorming session everyone listens to everyone else. After a participant shares his idea, the next person to speak should say “yes, and…” and link their idea to what has just been said. For example, Participant A says: We should make sure that there's somebody in the office during lunch break to take urgent calls. Participant B might say: Yes, those who go out for lunch can get them a free lunch!

Instead of "Yes, and..." you can also say “What I like about this idea is…” and express whatever you like about what was just said, and add your idea on top. For example, Participant C could say about B's idea: What I like about this idea is that it creates a sense of community and taking care of each other. We could also do the same by organizing buddying experience, so that each team member gets their own buddy from the team for a month.

2. What have we learned to reformulate negative as positive

Allow mistakes to happen and be discussed, but make sure that you don’t spend time on dwelling on how bad things are, but concentrate on what you and your team can do different next time. The following questions might help (you may want to ask them aloud or build the discussion around it):

Is there anything to appreciate about this situation?

Is there any learning for everyone in what happened?

What can we do next time to make sure it doesn’t happen?

3. Reducing negativity: don’t allow these team toxins to spread

There are four major toxic behaviours that are poisonous to any team – blame, defensiveness, withdrawal/stonewalling and contempt (that includes sarcasm and irony). These are extremely contagious and the moment they show up, you need to act fast if you don't want the disease to spread.

The first thing you need to do to fight them is to simply name them: “Bill, it sounds like you are blaming X for Y”.

Second, explain why this type of behaviour might be dangerous and how it can impact the team performance. Do not blame the person - they might not know what their impact is!

Third, suggest alternative ways to express the same idea and be really patient – many people are not used to expressing their needs and ideas in a positive way, so help them do that! Say: I hear you are unhappy with what your colleague did. What you could you ask them to do in the future to avoid such situations?

Last but not least, make sure that everyone holds themselves responsible for sticking to the rules and notices toxic behaviours not only in others, but in themselves, too.

4. Creating a consistent result: no talking behind one's back!

This is absolutely crucial - if you want your team to stay positive (and therefore productive), you should not allow any negative talks behind people's backs. Lead by example: tell your people that you would not discuss anything about a third person that you would not be able to repeat in front of them.

This is the most important thing you can do to make sure your team is consistently positive, because when people interact behind one's back, they create a subgroup within a given group, so even if you make an effort to change the dynamics of a large group, the smaller ones will sabotage it over and over again without you being able to control that. So no discussions or complaints behind the backs if they cannot be repeated in public.

Stay positive and find your balance!

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Have you ever experienced a situation when things just didn't work out no matter how hard you tried? The more you do, the worse it seems to get, so that you end up feeling frustrated and lost, as if you were drowning in a muddy swamp. If this sounds familiar and you want to get out of your swamp straight away, you will find the following tip very useful.

Most people who face a situation of "drowning in a swamp" at work or in business try to ignore this feeling as long as they can. Their way to ignore the swamp is to try to get even more stuff done. Because this is what we are taught when young, isn't it – if you keep doing something, something will shift. Wrong answer!

Remember the first rule of walking in a swamp – the more you move, the faster it sucks you in? It works exactly the same way with a metaphorical bog.

If you want to get out of your swamp, first of all you need to stop. Just stop doing anything. Stopping does not mean standing still and watching yourself slowly sinking into the bog. All you have to do is give yourself a little time to take a breath and look around.

We attract what we carry inside. If we are stressed and lost, we only attract more stress. When we are relaxed and happy, we are able to get more of that into our lives, too. Think for a moment about the best things you've got in your life. Have they happened to you when you were incredibly stressed and running around, or were feeling still and whole?

Positivity psychologists say that negative emotions have a tendency to form a downward spiral, i.e. one negative sensation provokes another and so on. It has been scientifically proven that when we are immersed in the swamp of negative feelings, our perception narrows down, and we only can concentrate on 1-2 things, usually negative, too, and ignore other options available around. In order to break a downward spiral of negative feelings, you need to stop and consciously create some positive emotions in your life.

Again, I am not telling you to ignore problems you have (you won’t be able to do that anyways as negative feelings are by definition much louder than positive ones!). What you need to do is to make an effort and pull yourself out of your current state to be able to see things from a different perspective. You need to shift your energy from negative to positive (and by energy I mean how you feel in your body).

My personal recipe when things get really stuck is to go to the seaside for a few days. I just buy a ticket and go. I had this overwhelming period last summer and decided to book a ticket. Guess what happened ten minutes after I did it -- I got two calls from big corporate clients asking me for appointments for next week! They had been silent for the previous three months! I said I had to postpone it, and they were happy to wait! They always are when you're positive.

Surely, not everyone can afford themselves the luxury of changing the scenery instantly. However, anyone can do something to experience a positive emotion - joy, gratitude, love, interest etc. Unless you consciously do it yourself when you are stressed and running around, nobody else would be able to help you. This is the key, so I will repeat it again:

Unless you start shifting your own energy from negative into positive, no one will be able to help you. There’s no point in waiting for things to change if you are not changing yourself.

Here’s a check list for getting out of the swamp. Remember, it's up to you to change your situation any time just by taking a different perspective.

1. Recognize you are in a swamp. Be honest with yourself. This is the most difficult part because it involves a lot of negative feelings associated with it - frustration, anger, fear. Just allow them to be. They will pass if you name them.

2. Stop doing anything. Take a breath. Ask yourself what’s really important right now and what you’d really like to do if everything were sorted out.

3. Listen to yourself. LISTEN. TO. YOURSELF. You have no idea how many people know what they would love to do, but don’t allow themselves to trust their guts because they think it’s irrelevant. Don’t start doing anything until you’ve clearly heard your inner voice. 

4. Dedicate some time to doing what you’ve told yourself you'd like to do, no matter how silly and unrelated to the current situation it sounds. Be reasonable, but aspiring.

If you are in debt and feel like going on a 5-star cruise, it's probably not a very good idea. But is there anything more immediate and less expensive you could do? Perhaps staying with your book at home or sitting on the bank of the river watching the water?

Doing something positive for yourself is the best thing you can do right now to improve your situation, because when you are happy, your thinking expands and you are able to see the solutions you wouldn't have thought of before. Again, it has been scientifically proven.

5. When you’re in your happy and still state of mind (and only then!), look at your swamp. Imagine as if you were standing next to it. Watch it carefully. What is to appreciate about it? What is it teaching you? If you were 80 years old and were telling your grandchildren a fairy tale about this swamp and its inhabitants, what would it be about?

6. What do you notice now about this swamp?

Are there any tree branches you can pull? Is your swamp more shallow then you thought? Or is there perhaps a talking frog sitting somewhere around whom you can ask for directions? You’ll be surprised with what you discover when you look at it from a different perspective.

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I am a business coach, not a health practitioner. However, I notice a strong correlation between how my clients treat their bodies, their state of mind and their business and career success. One thing that always strikes me is that people who try to do a lot of things simultaneously tend to be the least resilient to stress, suffer from low levels of energy and put more effort to achieve less. This is especially true for avid users of new technologies.

What science tells us

I like to base my work on solid scientific evidence and not just personal experience, so want to share with you some brilliant pieces of research about the negative impact of multitasking I’ve discovered. Scientists became concerned about media multitasking after a few fatal incidents with doctors who multitasked while treating their patients and made serious mistakes causing harm to their patients.

A research from Stanford University suggests that people constantly exposed to electronic information flow suffer from worsened memory and a lack of attention. They also have hard time switching from one job to another, even though they claim they are great at multitasking. Harvard scientists confirm that multitaskers are more likely to make mistakes, ignore important information or keep it in their working memory. As a result, their problem solving abilities and creativity can be diminished.

Yeah, but what can go wrong if I check my smartphone for a second? Everyone does that – and they are no dumb zombies!

True, nothing happens if you do it once in a while (unless you are a doctor working with a patient or in a similar responsible position). Problems arise when you keep doing this over and over again. Thing is, when you get distracted, your brain needs time to go back to what it was doing. The more often you distract it, the more time it needs to recover, and the worse your working memory gets. As a result, your mind doesn’t work anymore as good as it could be and you process relevant information at a slower pace.

Ok, but how does it impact my weight?

When you regularly multitask, you basically undermine your ability to filter information and pick what’s relevant for you right now. As a multitasker, you have harder time identifying when and what you need to eat, and whether you need to change your body posture or go do some exercise. If you have lunch in front of your computer, chances are you eat waaaaay more then you need (and chew worse, too!). If you want to control your craving, stick to your diet and keep exercising regularly, you need to have a well-organized and focused mind that is your ally and tells you what’s worthy of your attention.

I keep repeating it over and over again to all of my clients – you are a whole person, and if you want to be successful, you cannot separate your body from your mind or your actions. The way you behave impacts how you eat, the way you eat impacts the way you think, the way you think impacts how you behave! It’s all looped! (By the way, a perfect phrase to tweet, isn’t it? ;))

How to stop multitasking

So, how can one stop multitasking and make sure they are productive and healthy?

The authors of Organize your mind, organize your life suggest a whole series of steps, but the key one is to work in shifts. Concentrate only on one thing at a time, whether it is eating your lunch or reading your emails, and be fully immersed into what you do. When you switch to the next task, you need to abandon any thought about the previous task, until you get back to it, if you need to. What tends to happen is that we still process something that’s not related to what we are doing right now (i.e. in a meeting I keep on thinking of whether I’ve parked my car in a right place), therefore not making any of the two well! To be present, either go outside and re-park your car, or forget about it altogether.

Those who are part of a strong office culture might find it challenging to stop multitasking altogether, as in spite of strong evidence against multitasking many companies still expect their employees to do so, for example keep their email boxes opened all the time. It is also challenging not to multitask in an open office environment, where distractions are in abundance.

You don’t need though to openly fight against your employer or blame them for making you unproductive – instead of that, consider things you can control in your work vs things you cannot. If you are in control of organizing your communication most of the time, tell your boss and colleagues that you want to run a little experiment, and so will check your email at specific times. Make people feel curious and fun about your experiment, rather than guilty. If you are the boss, you can set up a specific hour when people can come and ask you questions, and agree that they don’t do it at other times (and if they do, they have to pay a symbolic fine that is used for the Friday pub crawl). Your whole day might not become instantly productive, but at least you can make the first steps to become less stressed and more efficient! And fit on top of that, too!

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By Anastasia Dedyukhina

This is the second part of my tips for those of you who would like to become professional coaches, but are not sure where to start. In Part I, we discussed how to pick your coaching courses, choose a supervisor, find your first coaching clients, and start charging them. Today we will talk more about marketing your services and building your business.

Congratulations, you are now a certified coach – what do you do to make your coaching a business, and not an expensive hobby?

Tip 6. Fall in love with sales.

Do not get into coaching if you don’t like selling. As simple as that. If you are determined to become a life coach or a career coach, selling has to become your second nature. I am primarily talking about ‘solo’ coaches, but even if you get a permanent position with a big organization, you will still have to “sell” your services internally and convince people that they can trust you their deepest concerns and aspirations. In this profession, it’s not enough to be a good coach; you also need to become a top notch sales person.

The good news is that when you love what you do (most coaches do!), selling feels not like selling, but rather like a pleasant talk. Selling coaching services is about explaining very clearly to your conversation partner how you help them or their friends/colleagues. If you have an offer compelling enough, they will finish the selling pitch themselves.

Remember from Part I, coaching is never about you, it’s always about your client. You therefore need to be very clear in your head about how you can add value to your potential clients or contacts. A very typical mistake most aspiring coaches make is telling their clients about coaching or themselves. No one is interested in you, coach! People only want to know how you can help them – so talk about it!

Coaching services sales is not something you can easily forecast. A sales cycle can take months from the moment you first meet a person and build trust with them until they decide to purchase something from you. They might not actually ever purchase anything, but refer you to someone who will. Sometimes you will close the deal straight away, sometimes it will take weeks and months.

So start getting comfortable with an idea of constantly telling the world about how you can help. Talk about your potential clients and their interests and concerns, and not yourself, and you dramatically increase your chances to succeed.

 
Tip 7. Build your network BEFORE you leave your current job.

Your sales start with your network. Before you launch your business, make sure that your network is abundant and supportive. If it’s not, do NOT leave your current job until you’ve got your supportive network in place. It will take you anything from 3 to 12 months to build a powerful network, depending on how good a communicator you are and where you are based.

One of the coaches I know used to schedule 15 to 20 informational interviews with prospective clients and leads per week at the early stages of her transition into coaching. Another friend of mine, also a coach, got challenged by her supervisor to schedule 50 sample sessions within a month. Sample session is a free taster that allows your client to experience your coaching style and is normally offered by most coaches. Whereas 50 sample sessions in one month sounds like a bit of an extreme number to me, think whether your network can realistically deliver you that amount of leads. If not – do your homework, circulate, network, share your knowledge.

How exactly do you network? You shouldn’t be constantly thinking about closing sales when networking, people hate sleazy salesmen. Quality networking is about providing real value to others – making introductions, giving tips when you are asked for them, and generally being a nice and pleasant person to be around. If you do something for people in your network, they will give you something back in return. Obvious as it may sound, aspiring coaches often forget about this simple rule and overuse their network in the first few months of building their practice without giving it anything back. Do not make this mistake and make sure you’ve got enough credit with your network – if you ask your contacts for favors (i.e. introduce you to their mailing list), make sure you offer something in return (a free coaching session, perhaps? Or something not related to coaching).

Tip 8. Pick a niche. PICK A NICHE NOW!!!!!!!

This is the ABC of marketing, but even marketing people miraculously forget about it once they get into coaching. As a coach, you cannot be of service to everyone. Some people will like you and some will not. Some people will understand you and some will not. Some will want to work with you and others will not. You need to understand from the very start who your customers are and what’s unique about your value proposition to them.

If you try to target everyone and please everyone, you will not sell anything. The narrower your niche is, the better sales you can expect. 

There are a number of ways to determine your coaching niche and I will cover them in a separate blog post. One little tip for now – think why clients come to you and what they would say about you as a person, and professional if I asked them about you. For example, clients often come to me because I have been through multiple transitions in my life, changing jobs and countries, and am not afraid of change in most forms. Therefore, my primary target audience is people who are going through major transitions, but are unsure how to handle them and need some encouragement and guidance. This is a very broad definition, but you can start with it and then narrow it down.

If you are an ex-lawyer, chances are many of your clients will be lawyers – not because you’ll be able to give them some law advice (it’s actually a very bad idea to do so if you are a coach!), but because they will find you credible.

Life coaching is not a niche. Career coaching is not a niche. Helping ex-bankers find a fulfilling career elsewhere is a niche. Helping divorced middle-aged women get into a new long-term relationship is a niche. My favorite life coach Marie Forleo has a very timely niche of helping aspiring female entrepreneurs build and promote their business online.

Tip 9. Do NOT get into coaching full-time if you need money

There is nothing worse than a desperate coach. I remember the time when I badly needed at least one client to be able to pay my rent, and guess what – of course I couldn’t close any deal. Clients do not like coaches desperately chasing them to close a sale, so if you feel under financial pressure, you are likely to fail in your sales. You should make an impression of a happy and fulfilled person to be able to coach somebody – and you cannot really imitate that.

So please make sure you have some supporting revenue while you are building your coaching practice. Only after you gained the momentum and a constant flow of clients, I would advise that you get into it full-time.

Tip 10. You are your ultimate barrier. 

All coaches have moments of self-doubt and low self-esteem, especially if something isn’t working out with a client. However, good coaches do not get stuck in these moments and are able to move on. Most people I got to know during my coaching studies are amazingly talented coaches who made a big difference in my life during our training, however only a few of them really went for it and started building their practice. Others kept finding pretests why they could not launch their practice now, signing up for more coaching courses to become even more qualified and regretfully never made this step to building their own professional coaching practice, something the world will hugely benefit from.

You will eventually face a moment in your coaching career when you are done with all your studies and all your existing client leads are gone, and you cannot think of new marketing strategies. This is your biggest opportunity – if you get through this moment, you will become an amazing coach and will be able to motivate others to become their bigger selves.

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By Anastasia Dedyukhina

So you want to become a coach.

Maybe you got inspired by Tony Robbins or Marie Forleo (she’s my favorite, I must admit). Maybe you got ‘high’ during one of the self-development seminars you attended and would love to keep this feeling of freedom and creativity in your daily life. Maybe you’ve become an expert in your field and think coaching will be a logical (and less stressful) continuation of your career. Or, perhaps, you just want to give to others all that love and care inside you.

Anyways, you want to start earning a living through coaching and are looking for entry points.

I've been in your shoes a few years ago. Coaching is my sixth career. I’ve worked as a professional pianist, a business journalist, a political PR person, a digital marketer and consultant and an international entrepreneur. I’ve also changed five countries, so I know a thing or two about transitions. Yet, my transition to coaching has been far from linear and, let's face it, somewhat bumpy.

This is why I would love to share with you today some tips on becoming a coach that will hopefully save you time and effort and help avoid typical pitfalls of an early coaching career. 

Tip 1. Talk to as many people as possible

Coaching is the least standardized of all highly paid businesses. You’ve got hundreds of good coaches and thousands of those who think they are good coaches. Find good coaches and talk to them (hint – they are likely to have worked with reputable Fortune-100 organizations, and not only once). Ask them about what they do, how they got into coaching, which coaching courses they would recommend to attend, how they got their first clients etc. Be curious and open-minded, you never know where useful information will come from.

I’ve got my first coaching apprenticeship before I knew precisely what coaching was because I met somebody who was running a multimillion coaching business – and we simply happened to be going to the same dancing group!


Ask people who are already working with coaches and have worked with them in the past about their opinion and referrals.

Try visiting coaching community groups in your city (you can usually find them on Meetup, Eventbrite or similar sites). In London, the London Coaching Group is opened to all people interested in coaching and sometimes have interesting events at the charge of around 10 pounds. I prefer to attend monthly events of ORSC and The CTI Hub, which attract a great community, but they are more for people who have had some training.

Do you research and find people you like. I have visited a lot of different coaching groups before I stumbled upon those that seemed professional and valuable to me, so if you are not lucky from the first attempt, do not exclude coaching as a whole from your radar. Just keep on looking for more relevant communities. Again, coaching is the least standardized of all businesses, so you are likely to encounter a great deal of unprofessional people and organizations before you find your gems (but you will find them).

What NOT to do: coaches you’ll be talking to are very likely to try selling you their services. Good coaches will do it the way that you won’t notice you’re being sold anything. Bad coaches will simply be annoying. Do NOT buy anything from any of them yet – you need to have a clear picture of what’s out there first and see with whom you resonate the most.


Tip 2. Find a reputable school and visit it for a trial session (Hint: it won’t be cheap).

It's easy to get lost in the abundance of coaching schools offering all sorts of coaching courses. If you want a good school, you need to take into account the following:
- Accreditation the school has (the industry standard is ICF – International Coach Federation -  accreditation, and I would be very careful with programs that do not have it or another recognized body accreditation).
- How long it has been running (the longer, the better - they have been out for a long time for a reason)
- Whether it has offices internationally (chances are, if it’s big and more established, the quality of teaching and community is better)
- How many alumni it has (again, the more the better) and what support the school offers after you’ve graduated. This is very important – I have personally discovered that staying in touch with your coaching community after the graduation is at least as valuable as the course itself! This is especially relevant if you live somewhere where there are no big coaching communities - make sure you pick a school that has a huge online community you can get in touch with at any time.
- What value you will get from your taster course (most schools offer one for free or at a lower price than a regular course). A reputable school will deliver some value during the taster course (and they are likely charge for it). A junk school will mostly use the course to sell you other trainings.
- How interactive your course is (you don’t want a lot of theory, coaching is all about practicing your skills).

I found my school (CTI, which turned out to be the biggest and oldest coaching school in the world) by pure chance through one of the coaches I talked to during my ‘research’ phase. Funny enough, at that time I stopped looking for a coaching school after a few months of continuous disappointment over the quality of other schools. CTI was charging even for the sample two-day course (which other schools didn't), provided a ‘moneyback guarantee’ in case you didn’t like the course (I obviously did). I got to my second school, CRR Global, having seen their presentation at one of the coaching group events. 


The duration of the course should be less of an issue for you, although a standard coaching course will likely be something between 4 and 6 months (allow the same amount of time for accreditation). It also matters less whether the school is focusing on ‘life coaching’ or ‘career coaching’ or coaching for business, the basics are likely to be the same. You'll be able to customize the tools you'll learn to create your own coaching and marketing program.



To sum up, look less at the marketing and more at the substance. Unfortunately, some really good coaching schools in the UK considerably fail at self-marketing, at least online, whereas those selling aggressively offer less value.


What NOT to do: Watch out for schools that aggressively oversell and try to manipulate potential students (there are a few of them out there!). Signs of manipulation are as follows:
- Loud music/flashing lights/other room setup you cannot change or avoid
- They make you do things that an adult person normally wouldn’t do (i.e. cheer the course leader, repeat phrases after him) that regress you into a child
- You are not allowed to leave the room at any time (run away fast if this happens!)
- You are asked about intimate or painful episodes of your life at the first few hours of the course without a special setup or permission (in coaching training, these topics might come up at some point, but a professional course leader will always set up a safe environment to open and close such conversations)
- You are promised quick and powerful results instantly if you buy the course (no professional coach will ever guarantee you success and try to sell it to you)
- The course leader is making fun of or making humiliating remarks about one or more of the audience members
- If you resist doing something, you are told that you are just defending yourself (you are a coward etc) and pushed to do the exercise you don’t want to do
- You don’t feel well or comfortable at any point, although not sure why (our body is very wise and knows something is wrong before our brain gets it).
If the coaching course you attend shows one or more of these features, make sure you leave it as fast as you can, as it can be harmful for your mental and physical well-being. Again, I happened to visit a few of  such courses and events, but luckily I had considerable psychological experience and was able to get out with no damage to myself. Such events have nothing to do with quality coaching and are often run by unprofessional people who never overcame their own traumas and try to compensate for them in the public space by offering such 'trainings'.

I personally would not recommend coaching courses that are built around the personality of one person as opposed to an organization, unless this person is very famous. In my experience, a one-man workshop substantially (although not always) increases the risk of a non-professional communication and abuse. However, this last one is a personal observation and might not be true for everyone.

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Tip 3. Get yourself a coach (and a supervisor). 

If you want to be a coach, you have to experience what it’s like to be coached. Unless you do so, you will have no idea about what it feels like to be a client, and how (s)he sees the dynamics of the coaching relationship (very different from the coach!). Walking your talk is crucial for a coach. If you believe that coaching works, you want to be your own example of its power. If you don’t think that coaching works, why do you want to be a coach in the first place?

So get yourself a coach (ideally the one your really like and who makes you inspired). I would also recommend getting the supervisor from the moment you get your first client (even if they are unpaid). The fewer mistakes you make at the beginning, the fewer ‘bad coaching habits’ you will get. I wish somebody told me from the very start not to be writing down every word my client is saying during the session as this only helps me lose the connection with the client. 

You can also combine a coach and a supervisor at the early stages of your career. A coach is somebody who will look at all aspects of your life, whereas a supervisor will only look at you as a coach and how you work with your clients.

Your supervisor or coach can work with you either by skype, phone or in person (it doesn’t generally matter, although I prefer starting to work in person and when I know people better, move to Skype or phone).

How do you know someone is a good coach/supervisor for you or not:

1.       You like them. You like how they talk and behave, how they make you feel, and you find them credible and respectful. There’s a chemistry between you two (this is by far the most important of all – you need to like your coach and supervisor and trust them). 
2.       They are very clear and transparent about what you can expect and not expect from working with them. Everything is well defined from the very start and nothing is left for ‘let’s get back to this conversation later’
3.      They spend a considerable amount of time at the first meeting discussing what you are trying to achieve 
4.      They have a well-written contract (written in good English, no typos, everything is formulated in a concise and clear way understandable by a simple person)
5.      They probably have a good website (good doesn’t mean complex, but they have clearly invested some time into building it)
6.      They have a social position, and not just their own practice (i.e. a leadership role in the coaching community, teach somewhere etc) - not mandatory, but usually is a sing of a highly professional coach.
7.      They continue their own self-development and regularly attend different courses
8.      They are certified by at least one international professional body (i.e. ICF)
9.      They are not over-promising or creating false expectations
10.   They give you practical tasks and exercises and not simply talk during your meetings. You also get work between the sessions

They might be part of a bigger company or very likely running their own small practice (in the UK over 60% of coaching companies are one-man/woman shops). The ‘watch for’ signs for individual coaches are the same as for coaching courses and coaching schools – make sure you get a professional one!

What NOT to do: don’t try to get great service for free. Coaching and supervision is expensive, and good coaches know that and set their rates accordingly. They all have different pricing tiers though, so if you cannot afford a top one, you can still try to negotiate a lower one. Another option is to offer to the coach of your choice a barter agreement (which worked in my case). This is likely to work if you have a unique skillset or connections valuable for your coach. Do not let the price stop you, there’s always a way around. Just remember that what you pay is what you get and if someone is offering their service at a very cheap price, they are likely not a good coach for you. At the same time, just a high price does not guarantee that the person is a good coach - make sure you take into account all written above.


Tip 4. Practice makes perfect (especially when you charge for it).

Don’t think that having a coaching diploma (or two, or three) will make you a coach. What makes a real difference is hours (weeks, months and years) of practice. Like in journalism, you can graduate with a top-tier diploma, but you only become a journalist once you actually have your articles published. So make sure you get as much as practice as early as you possibly can. Some ideas where to take your clients from: friends of friends, colleagues and ex-colleagues, families and friends of your colleagues, local bartenders, community groups incl. online groups, charities. Offer them sample sessions. Schedule at least a couple of new ones every week.

Do NOT coach your close friends or relatives. Just don't.

I’ve got my first free clients posting among my contacts on Facebook and Linkedin and would have never thought that my first clients would be those who eventually signed up. I also had a chance to do some volunteer work for Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, which gave me confidence as a coach and mentor. Next clients came from the word of mouth, blog and networking events (it’s usually a combination of a few and can take some time - do not give up!). Getting your first non-monetary and then a first monetary client are by far the biggest milestones, which you want to pass as early as you can. After you've got the first person paying to you, everything becomes much much easier - so don't think too much and just go out there and do it. You already know more than any of them, even if you are not 100% professional yet - share it with the world!

What NOT to do: Do not offer your service for free even at the very beginning of your career. People tend not to value what they get for free and as a result, their progress (and discipline) will be lower. If you don’t feel like charging any money for your effort (why not though?), ask them for recommendations, or a box of chocolate, or anything symbolic in exchange for your time, if not your experience.

How do you set up the price? One of the best pieces of advice I’ve been given was to increase your fee by 5 pounds every time you pitch to a new client. So you start with something quite low (typically a price of a dinner in a good restaurant) and add 5 pounds to the price the next time you pitch to a client. You only increase the price next time once a client has accepted the previous price.


Tip 5. Forget about yourself. Forget about fixing your client, too.

Coaching is not about your ego, background or wisdom. It’s also not about how coaching someone makes you feel (although you have probably been attracted to the profession by this wonderful ‘state of the flow’, as many of us). Coaching is only done in service of your client and it’s only and always about your client, not you. This is by far the most important thing any decent coaching school or individual coach will teach you (and if they didn't, they are not a professional coaching school or coach, go away asap).

So if you think that as a coach you will get to teach people how to live, you’d better review your career plans. A milder version of self-centrism is thinking that there’s something wrong with your client and you can help him/her ‘fix’ it. Fixing is a very typical (and a very toxic) mistake that ex-consultants, ex-lawyers and other 'fixing' professions make when they first switch to coaching. If you try to 'fix' your client, you take all the responsibility for their progress on yourself, so don’t be surprised if your clients starts sabotaging their work.

At CTI, we’ve been taught to deal with it by repeating the mantra ‘People are creative, resourceful and whole’, which I find very useful. You will still make these mistakes as I do as it's a matter of habit, but at least become conscious of it.

What NOT to do: do not think that you are the smartest guy/girl in the room and can ‘fix’ your client. Remind yourself that people are creative, resourceful and whole. They don’t need to be fixed. They are perfectly fine just as they are. You are simply a mirror that helps them see their true self – make sure not to become a false one!

This is it for Part 1. In the next blog post, I look forward to sharing with you more tips on how to become a successful coach and avoid typical traps. 

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I have two questions for you.

First, what are you passionate about?

Second, what does it make you feel when I ask you this question?

The 'passion' question is one of the most commonly asked questions during job interviews and social events, yet a great deal of people struggle to honestly answer it. They might be ok with their current job, they might be even happy about it – but passionate?.. That’s too strong of a word. Let’s face it: there are those lucky chaps who knew what they wanted to do before they learned to walk and just went for it. Most of us are not like this.

Take an example of Kate, a friend of mine (no, it's not Kate in the picture although she's cute, too). She graduated with honors from a top-tier university, and now in her early thirties works as a lawyer for a large City finance firm. She does a good job and keeps her boss and clients happy. However, Kate is getting increasingly tired of an intense work style and wants to change it. She isn’t sure how she should do it though.

Kate has already had a few conversations with people who managed to change their careers, went through a couple of career-related blogs, and even bought a self-help book promising to help her find a fulfilling career. They all suggested to ‘find her passion’. This statement doesn't mean anything to Kate though and makes her feel confused, so she decides to make a list of things she likes. She lists dancing, hiking, cooking, and meeting friends, but doesn't know what to do after the list is built. She can’t pick one hobby and isn’t sure how what she likes can translate into a new meaningful career, let alone help her earn a comparable living. She adds more things to the list, but feels stuck, and eventually starts thinking that something is wrong with her, because she doesn’t seem to find her passion as easily as others do.

The good news is that there’s nothing wrong with Kate or with hundreds of other people who face the same challenge. However, Kate makes a typical mistake as she assumes that finding a passion is a rational linear process and therefore approaches it as she would approach reviewing a legal contract. It’s actually quite the opposite:

Finding one’s passion is a non-linear and an irrational process. One cannot predict where and how it ends up and how long it will take you to get there. It’s also a matter of trying and doing, and not thinking.

Let me explain. What would you do, if I told you that you could do anything and didn't have to worry about your income, house, or family? Probably, something that seems irrational and childish to you – I would love to be a writer, I would like to take a course in photography etc. Notice that tiny moment of an energy burst, of joy, of warmth inside that you experience when you say it before ‘but this is stupid’ kicks in. This is precisely the feeling that ‘passionate’ people experience every day doing what they love to do. This is the feeling that you may want to follow if you want to unfold your passion. By following I mean actually going and doing what you think you might like to do. Notice that this ‘passion’ might not yet have any business idea behind it and you should not have a clear plan of how you can earn cash, it just makes you feel childlike and full of energy.

So don't leave your boring job (yet) if you don't have an alternative guaranteed source of income, just go out there and explore 'ridiculous' and 'stupid' things you might want to do as step one.

Finding your passion is an exploration, a trip into the unknown that might not bring immediate results. You need to simply allow yourself to experience this warm joyful feeling first and follow it. If it disappears, you need to find another thing that triggers it. There is no inconsistency here, we are merely working on making you feel alive first.

I’ve recently been to a presentation at The Escape School, (a place opened by founders of escapethecity.org, where busy City professionals are taught to ‘get unstuck’ and find to do something different for their career. One of the presenters shared a great metaphor: finding your passion is like throwing a tennis ball to a dog, he said. You just throw it and see what happens. Sometimes you might throw too many tennis balls simultaneously and the dog gets confused - it's ok, too.

It’s a difficult idea to digest if you are used to behaving only rationally and always having a clear plan of action, but give it a try. You may also discover that a lot of things that make you feel ‘passionate’ will be very different from your idea of who you are and what you should be. It’s ok, just follow the bursts of energy inside you, the joy – or as Master Yoda would say, feel the force.

So what should my friend Kate do if she wants to find her passion? She needs to stop rationalizing and making lists. She needs to ask herself (or better, ask someone else to ask her) this exact question: what would I do right now, if I could do anything? Then she needs to go and try doing it for a few weeks! Then she might discover she doesn't like it and try something else. Or that she likes it but wouldn't want to spend all her life doing it. Things she will do probably won't bring her money (just yet), but the more alive she feels, the higher her energy level is, and the easier it becomes for her to pick the right people and circumstances to help her make this transition.

Sounds simple? Most people end up only thinking about what they might have liked, but never doing it. Simply trying out stuff is the most difficult thing in finding your passion – and the only one that really works.

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I bet you’ve met them many times – difficult co-workers and clients who seem to have mastered being a pain in you-know-where. They misinterpret every single phrase you say, undermine your work and status in front of the others, keep asking irrelevant questions, withhold necessary information when you need it most, or are simply rude with you for no obvious reason.


It can be particularly frustrating when you can’t avoid dealing with such people in your daily job. You may try to be professional and pleasant with them with (no result), or choose to complain to your boss, who probably says that you need to learn to deal with different people. You get reactive and start telling whoever wants to listen how frustrated you are, and how great it would be if they finally disappeared from the company and your life. It only provokes more rudeness and isolation. You end up either completely withdrawing yourself from the situation by looking for a new job, or becoming bitchy and unpleasant to everyone around you.

Can you relate to this experience in some way? If so, there’s one fundamental mistake you make dealing with such people: you think about them as a problem.  

Difficult people are never a problem, they are just a symptom.

People in groups or organizations are part of a system. If you've ever heard of the systems theory, you know that systems function according to their own laws. A system is smarter than its single member and is really good at self-regulation. 


A system largely dictates how people behave towards each other. Each person within the system has a particular role. Think about a system as a living entity, something or someone who’s not visible but actually directs who does what in the group. Every role a system creates serves some purpose. For example, a system may require an ‘inspirator’, someone who will inspire other members to reach for the stars. This is not an official position, so the ‘inspirator’ will not necessarily have an official leadership title. However, he will be the person everyone goes to for inspiration. 


A system often also needs an internal ‘critic’ who will articulate any inefficiencies within that system and a member with more suitable background (maybe someone who was criticized a lot in the past) will pick up this role. This is likely to be your ‘difficult’ guy or girl from the first paragraph. The role of a systems critic is to articulate things that go wrong. The role of a rude and screaming person is to draw attention to emotional tension inside the system that needs to be released. 


Because it's never about a particular person, but about the need for a particular role within the system, if you remove one person from the role assigned by the system, in a few weeks he will be replaced by another group member who suddenly starts behaving exactly the same way! He will even probably not realize that himself!

You might guess by now why I insist that the worst managerial mistake you can make is to get rid of or simply ignore a difficult person. Someone who voices a concern is simply articulating information that’s already in the system. If he disappears, the problem persists but will find a different way to express itself.

So what can you do if you come across a difficult collaborator?

First of all, change your attitude and acknowledge that this particular person is not the cause of the conflict, he merely articulates what's going on inside the system, he is a symptom of some inefficiency and the system is trying to self-adjust through him. Changing your attitude will immediately create a shift in the whole situation, because you will stop being emotionally triggered. Remember, you are also part of the system and the way you feel and behave impacts its other parts. If you want your colleagues or clients to be more positive, start behaving positively yourself.

After you unplugged yourself emotionally from the situation, ask yourself – what’s this difficult person trying to achieve for the system (probably, not in a very inefficient way)?

Third, consider other ways to achieve the same thing. When a system doesn’t need a particular role anymore, the person who was playing it disappears – they either move to a different job or change their behaviour.


I have personally witnessed dramatic changes in the behaviour of one very senior client of a large advertising company I was working with that happened within one month. All that the company did was to accept the idea I have just shared with you. After a month, this senior client who used to yell at people came to the agency and said how he really appreciated their work and that they were bearing with him.
When relationship between two groups of people improve, people who were symbols of a conflict step back and get replaced by the others, more peaceful and collaborative individuals. 


As they say, you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.

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You might have noticed that I wasn't posting much lately. I suddenly got wiped away by a few unexpected events. A big and very demanding change management project came out of the blue, a closest family member got very sick so I was in the hospital 24/7, I've got a gas leak in one flat and a nonpaying tenant in the other… Not sure there was a single area of my life that wasn't affected in the last couple of months. 
 
There’s wisdom in every disaster though, and I'd like to share with you what I've learnt from going through this hurricane.
 
We all have these periods of our lives when things go wrong, and the universe just seems to be adding more and more things to the plate. How do you behave in these situations?
 
I found myself trying to control more and more as events were getting less and less predictable. Did it improve anything? Nope. Instead, it led me to a 3-hour sleep at night and total inability to say anything on top of ‘go do it now’ to people around. Not great communication skills, I’m telling you. Trying to control things is precisely what you DON’T want to do when life starts throwing stuff at you.
 
A perfectionist inside us keeps telling us that we haven’t done enough and haven’t been good enough – and this is why it all shit is happening. The truth is, in every single moment each of us does everything we can, but in some situations we simply can't do more, we are not enough. This is by far the most difficult truth to recognize.
 
So, if you want to survive through a period of massive change, stop pretending you can control things you cannot, and concentrate on what you can control.
 
I’ll give you a metaphor that helped me. My tennis coach keeps repeating that the major difference between good and bad players is that good players know that they cannot control the ball. They can only control the position of the racket and their own posture, and this hopefully creates the desired outcome. Same with skiing - can you control how much snow is on the slope or people around you? The only thing that’s within your control is your own body and reaction, and hopefully speed.
 
Your internal self-manager knows what you can control – so if you are overwhelmed, start talking to him. Imagine you’re getting a lesson from a ski instructor or a tennis coach: what would they tell you about your life? What’s in your posture (attitude) that you need to change? What can you really control right now? What are you trying to control instead?
 
Don't try to be planning anything when things go crazy. Instead, create basic daily rituals that will help you throughout the day. Like, no matter what, I’m having 15 minutes every day in the morning drinking my coffee. No matter what, every night I go out for 15 minutes before the bed to have some fresh air. These little things will give you a sense of control of some parts of your life, and help focus on yourself rather than the outside world, no matter how crazy it gets.

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DWYL, or Do What you Love, has become the mantra of our generation. Young and not-so young office workers inspired by Steve Jobs and alikes are prepared to throw away their predictable corporate careers to get into something ‘life-changing’.

In most cases they don’t know what exactly they want to change and even what they love, but are convinced they are born to do something bigger. That’s at least what they are told by the media and social networks. The Career Man has been thrown off from its pedestal and replaced by The Loving Entrepreneur.

The DWYL boom has made the lives of all those still working (or choosing to work) in the corporate sector miserable. You don’t want to create the new Facebook? Loser. You are pretty happy with knowing what you’ll be earning 3 years from now? Triple loser. You’ve turned 30 and haven’t created yet a multi-billion business, or at least a blog visited by a few hundred thousand readers a day? Your life is wasted.

There’s a clear reason why this is happening. Corporates failed at large to recognize and utilize multiple aspects of one’s personality. An ideal employee is a ‘function’, not a living human being. In the corporate viewpoint, he should only have a couple of qualities that help him do his routine job. Everything else is a distraction and is strongly discouraged by most corporate cultures, consciously or subconsciously.

People, however, don’t like to be put into boxes and seen as machines, even if they can act as such. They might not understand what is happening, but when they are underutilized and not encouraged to be their bigger selves, when they are not appreciated for who they are as humans, they get disengaged. They start intuitively looking for something that will make them feel whole and happy. And in this moment they get fed the tale of The Loving Entrepreneur.

I’m almost risking to become a social pariah to say that, but not everyone is fit to become an entrepreneur. It may sound weird to say that given that most of the work I do is with entrepreneurs and people who want to change their careers to something more fulfilling. But this is exactly the reason I’m saying this. Not everyone can be a Steve Jobs. And not everyone needs to, by the way.

A recent article in The Guardian mentions that ‘doing what you love’ essentially is a privilege for the rich. In my opinion, it’s not simply about your income, but about managing your expectations and, mostly importantly, your ego.

Society is putting the pressure on us not only to do what you we love (which is nothing wrong in itself), but also get instantly successful with it, sell our product to the millions and be featured at least in Forbes, if not Techcrunch. And this is what makes the whole thing very dangerous. Entrepreneurship is not about success. It’s about trying and making mistakes, failing and starting again. If you are getting into it with an idea that you must succeed, you are putting yourself under an enormous pressure. Instead of being flexible and curious, you become rigid and attached to the success. Guess what: success never comes when you are demanding for it.

I worked with many clients who were very optimistic when they first got into doing what they loved, and a few months later came to me totally burned out. They litigated with their friends, because they didn’t find the support they were looking for. They lost some of their social connections because they kept spamming them on Facebook and Twitter telling everyone about their new venture. The clients were not signing up, or they were stupid. They were constantly frustrated because the world was not making everything ready for them. They stopped believing in themselves and in doing what they loved. This was the power of false expectations.

The truth is, nobody owes you anything. Entrepreneurship is about other people, and not yourself. It’s about making other people happy and fulfilled, not yourself. Doing what you love is YOUR own reward, and it might or might not be rewarded by other people. It will, if they share your passion, but they don’t have to. You do.

The Loving Entrepreneur doesn’t love himself. He loves other people.
Yes, you should follow your heart. But you should also use your head, and many other parts of your body.

The first step to doing something you really love and perhaps being successful in it is to ask yourself – apart from myself, who else can I make happy by doing what I love?

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Ever wondered how long it can take to change someone's life? Years of transactional analysis spent on the psychologists' sofa, numerous self-developmnet trainings, shelves full of self-help books (been there, done that). 
Surely one conversation can't make a change... Or can it?
How about making a transformation in 10 minutes? 

This is the aim of Our People's Coach, an annual London flash-mob of professional Co-Active coaches who approach strangers offering them a 10-minute free coaching session.

The lovely video below is a snapshot of what they did last year - and I'm so looking forward to signing up for it this year! Obviously, I find the idea of approaching a total stranger in the street and asking them to share with me the most intimate and important concerns somewhat scary. But hey, coaching is about going out of your comfort zone to help your client do the same - so I'll do that. 

And who knows, maybe one of you we'll be the lucky one to come across myself in the streets of London!

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Welcome to anastasia.tips – a place where you learn to become successful in what you truly love to do!

Apart from being a coach, I am a passionate semi-professional tango dancer, and I use elements of this beautiful dance in my coaching, both with individuals and companies. So what does tango have to do with business?

As a coach (and a passionate tango dancer), I like to use elements of tango when I work with teams and groups of different individuals who have to learn to collaborate. It is an especially powerful tool to work with people or companies coming from a different culture. What do tango and business have in common?


Business is about relationships, and tango is about relationships, too. Tango dancers know like no other what a true partnership means. Here are four key principles of a successful tango partnership that will help you improve both your personal and business relationships.

1.       You are totally responsible for yourself and your role
In tango, staying balanced is your task, and not your partner’s. If you can’t keep your weight off your partner and try 'hanging' on him/her giving your ‘full self’, if your partner has to pull you across the dance floor, there’s no dance. If anything your partner does puts you off balance, there’s be no dance. To be able to dance together, both of you need first to stay stable on your feet and be connected to your core – and only then listen to where your partner is proposing to go.

Sounds obvious when we’re talking about a dance, doesn’t it? How about we apply the same principle to business?

Think about your difficult business relationship(s): where in your career or business do you go off your balance and give all your ‘weight’ to one particular business relationship? 

Another example of the same issue: how often do you go off balance when your business partner or client does something that you didn’t expect? Does it take minutes, hours or days for you to adjust?

An example from my life: in early days of setting up my coaching business I was making a classic mistake. Whenever I would get a potential client who promised to 'think about' working with me, I then would relax and wait for them to follow up without making extra moves in other directions. Of course, I were very disappointed if the client decided not to come on board eventually and it took me a while to get back into my confident self - because I had spent so many hours thinking about how it could work out and was counting so much! Do not make this mistake and make sure that you keep your balance in the relationship no matter what.

Think about where in your business relationship you become disconnected from your ‘core’. Do you perhaps accept a job or task that you don't really want to do? Do you agree to things that don't appeal to you just keep the client relationship going? Does it really improve your relationship? Usually, when you don't build the partnership and relationship from who you really are, from your core, remaining well-balanced, it's not long before you start experiencing problems.

2.       Leaning in means giving to each other as much as they give you

In a perfect tango alliance, both partners give each other an equal amount of weight. They lean towards each other while standing firmly on their feet (and staying connected to their core). If you do it right, you will almost fall forward on the floor if your partner moves out of your way. 

The same principle applies to any successful partnership: I am here for my partners' success and he is here for mine, and we both contribute evenly towards it. If each of us only thinks only about his/her personal performance, there will be no partnership (or dance). If one party gives less (or more) to the partnership, there's no dance (and the relationship isn't productive either).

Leaning in means that when one of you makes one step forward, your partner has to take one step backwards, and vice versa. If he decides to move forward instead, he’d land on your feet, not the most exciting experience (although somewhat unavoidable at the early stages of learning to dance or building a business relationship).

Unbalanced power frequently shows up in the relationships between investors and companies they finance. When something is going wrong, often investors overexercise their power and 'step' on the feet of an entrepreneur, instead of leading them to the desired direction.

It’s also happens often in service industries (my experience is with media and advertising agencies). When they don’t want to lose a powerful client, they often accept everything a client throws at them, instead of setting up some boundaries and giving their ‘weight’ back to the client and challenging his viewpoint and decisions.

3.       
3.       A good tango dancer knows both how to lead and to follow (and knows when to do both!)

In a classic tango, a man takes the role of a leader, a woman that of a follower. However, if you are an advanced dancer, you are likely to be able to do both roles. Also, in the dance sometimes a leader gives a follower an opportunity to lead, just to make it more fun. He also leaves some space to the follower to make her own embellishments. 

Same in business. Very often one wants to take a leadership role in a business alliance, and have everything done as and when they think is right. However, this approach doesn't leave our partner any opportunity to be creative and experiment, and makes the whole ‘dance’ far less spectacular.

Yet, sometimes one needs to focus only on the ‘core’ movement and leave any embellishment aside not to lose our partner or client. Question is, how can you find a balance between the two? How will you know you’ve found one?

4.       Don’t try to make complex steps with a beginner

When leaders first learn to tango, they get excited about being able to do fancy volcadas and boleos, and practice them with every single girl they invite to dance. Needless to say, not all girls know how to do fancy elements properly (and not all of them enjoy learning them under pressure). 

A good tango dancer matches his level with the level of his partner and tries to make even a basic dance can be pleasurable. A poor tango dancer keeps insisting or accusing the partner of not being able to make certain steps. As a result, instead of having a great dancing experience, both partners end up frustrated about each other and are likely not to dance together again anytime soon.

Someone who’s been a leader in their team or tried to delegate certain things to other people and failed will recognize this pattern immediately. You are all excited about things you know and want to do and think it’s really simple. However, when you ask others to do something that seems so simple to you, they mess everything up, because they don’t have your level of knowledge and experience. You get angry and start explaining them what needs to be done, and they mess up again (or ask you for a confirmation every five minutes). They get frustrated and make even more mistakes. Sounds familiar?

Having read what you've just read, what could you do differently if you were a tango dancer?

In the ideal world, you want to dance with somebody who is a little better than you are to learn something new. However, if that’s not always possible, so get people to do things they can do to make the experience pleasurable for both.

I will be delighted to hear about your business experience and how you think knowing the key principles of tango could help you improve it. Please, write about it in comments!

Best of luck - and venture into doing what you really love to do!
Anastasia

PS Want to know more about tango and business? I run workshops on tango for business for individual and corporate clients in London. If you want to know more, please get in touch and I’ll send you all information.

Photo source: Flickr

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Hello and welcome to anastasia.tips - a place where you learn to become successful in what you truly love to do!
Here you can get tips on how to build your career and business, and get some inspiration from how other women around the world do that, too! I will start by publishing a letter from a female entrepreneur from Namibia I received a few weeks ago:

"I own a preschool and day care that I started last year and grew it from 7 kids to 45. I want to resign from my full time job and rely on my business full time but I am just having fears of the unknown. Deep down in myself I believe that that being a full time business woman is my destiny, and I believe that being at my business full time it will grow rapidly. Please help me maybe I am having low self- esteem/ confidence?" E.

Here's my answer to her:

Dear E.!
We all have fear of the unknown, and there are no superhumans who don't, unless you are watching and action movie. Although it's a usual practice for an entrepreneur to be slightly more optimistic and confident that a 'normal' human being, all of us feel some tension thinking about the possibility of a failure, or just making a radical move. 

I've been in this situation myself (in fact, I've been in similar situations many many times), and here's what I would like to advise you:

1. Imagine you're 80 years old now, and you are looking at your present self from this 80-year-old lady perspective. What do you see? What kind of advice would you give to this girl/woman?

2. Think about a worst-case scenario: what would happen if everything goes wrong? I mean, seriously wrong. You get zero clients in one year, all your employees run away, you have to leave your office because you can't pay for it, you sell your house to cover the debt etc. Imagine what it will make you feel like. Exaggerate as much as you can, make it absurd, until you start laughing. Sometimes it's helpful to imagine that the worst has already happened, because it helps us to know that no matter what, we can handle it.

3. Set yourself a realistic time frame: let's say, if within 1 year you don't get to support fully yourself from what you do, you will be ready to go back to employment. 

4. Make sure you have arranged your 'safety network' both in terms of moral and financial support. Get some funding for the first few months (savings, friends & family, clients etc.), or at least some guarantee of it. Tell a few trusted people you might feel very stressed in the next weeks and months and ask them for permission to call and whine uncontrollably whenever you feel like.

5. Last but not least, have fun with it! You already know what you need to do to make your business grow rapidly and that people need what you do - this is the most important thing!

Best of luck - and venture into doing what you really love to do!
Anastasia

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