Has lockdown and all the confusing talk of tiers, travel bans and bubbles just been too difficult for you? Are you one of those people who lament the limitations we are all subject to and do you long for a return to some kind of ‘normal’?
 
No one at all can deny that 2020 has been a challenging year for many of us. Some people say that they have enjoyed being able to retreat from the world and have welcomed the chance to just be at home. For many of us however, the strangeness of not being able to do what we always do, to see friends and family and to be free to travel has been difficult to get used to not to mention the endless Zoom meetings. If someone had said at the end of 2019 that this would be how we would be living as we approached Christmas and the 2020 festive season, most of us would never have believed it.
 
But it can’t be denied that, in among the hard bits, this year has given many of us the chance to think again about how we live and the choices we can make about our future. 
 
Self-care has become a bit of a byword and many of us don’t really give it much thought beyond the odd bubble bath or early night. However, we can all choose to live differently as we go forward into 2021. Yes, we can make those resolutions and set those goals but, we are also being invited to prioritise our own self -care. If this year has taught us anything it must be the importance of looking after our own physical and mental health. Remember the last time you were on an aeroplane and the cabin crew told you to put on your own oxygen mask in the event of an emergency before helping others.  Consider this your emergency situation and invest some time and energy in looking after you. 

Here at Orrganise, circumstances this year have changed the way we work. We still offer face to face sessions but now work really effectively via Zoom or Facetime too.  This means that carving out some ‘you time’ has never been easier, all from the comfort of your own home.
 
If you want the gift of self care for you or for someone who you feel would really benefit from taking some time for themselves and building healthy new habits. Why not order a gift voucher now?

​Don't agonise, organise!
 

It’s already pretty clear that Christmas 2020 is going to be very different from anything we have ever experienced before. In previous years, those old familiar songs would already have started filling the air in every shop or café up and down the country and we’d all have been grumbling that Christmas starts earlier and earlier every year and that it’s just not what it used to be. There was a feeling that, in time gone by, everyone was less materialistic and there was some magical meaning to the festive period instead of this craving for the latest games and gadgets, the overfull supermarket trolleys and the annual scrum to stock up on stuff that we definitely don’t need. 

This year there will be no dashing around bustling city centres and most of us won’t be taking part in that annual shopping extravaganza.  There will be no office parties, no visits to winter markets and no extended family gatherings. Instead, we are being invited to decide exactly how we want to mark this annual event in a new, scaled-down way.

It’s interesting to note that the very people who complained every year about having to make all that effort are already worrying about how they are going to manage to see everyone and how they will replicate all the Christmases they knew before and lamenting that everything needs to be on a much smaller scale.

It’s not at all surprising that there is anxiety and concern about having to give up on all those rituals, even if they weighed heavily in previous years. We all love a tradition and a routine and, when we can’t imagine what something is going to look like, it’s no wonder that we can feel anxious and unsettled.

After all the turmoil, uncertainty and change we have experienced for most of this year, many of us are feeling anxious, flat and totally lacking in energy. A splash of glitter and sparkling lights could be just the thing to spread some much-needed cheer. While it can’t be denied that, for some people, 2020, will have brought such personal loss and sadness that Christmas is the very last thing they will want to think about. The chance to suspend reality for a few precious days gives us all the opportunity to just stop and appreciate the things in our lives that really matter to us.

This year, I think many of us will really want to focus on the joy of putting up our sparkle and decking those halls with familiar decorations that have been packed away since January. When we stashed them away early this year, we could have had no inkling of how different life was going to look when we retrieved those familiar boxes from their storage places. As we take time to remember those family members and friends who are no longer with us and look forward to finding new ways to see loved ones on what has the potential to be one of our most precious festive seasons ever. 

Christmas 2020 has the potential to be different from anything that most of us will ever have known. But, as always, there is a bright side. We all have the opportunity to create exactly what  and who we  want to have around us this year. After the experiences of recent months, this might just be the perfect time to take a moment to say a heartfelt thank you for family and friends and to make positive choices about how we spend the festive season in a new, calmer way. Who knows, this new way of celebrating might even be so enjoyable that future Christmases will be scaled down too as we really appreciate the true spirit of the festivities.

Don’t agonise… orrganise!

This December I decided to do something different. I wanted to wear something sparkly every day of the month in an effort to brighten up these dark winter days. My friends and family rolled their eyes in amusement. Not that they were at all surprised, accustomed as they are to my love for an excuse to dress up. I love glitz and sparkle, but when I started to hunt through cupboards and drawers to see what I had stashed away over the years, I couldn’t believe how much glitter was in there. Lovely shiny things that it never occurred to me to wear unless I was going out to dinner or visiting friends and I shudder to think how much I have spent over the years buying outfits for a life that’s simply not mine.
 
So far, I have loved this exercise and it has reminded me that the only day we are guaranteed is the one we are living today, so it makes sense to make the very best of it. The act of choosing something sparkly to wear in the morning has given me a little moment of mindfulness every day, a moment to shift my focus onto the day ahead instead of my usual habit of dressing without thinking, grabbing a coffee and diving out of the door. As an extra bonus, I have been reminded not to waste time keeping things for that special occasion which might come along every twelve months.   

At this time of year when we are all rushing around trying to prepare for and host the ‘perfect’ Christmas many of us judge ourselves so harshly. We don’t think we are achieving what we believe others are as we compare our own efforts with those glossy images we see on Facebook believing that what people post is an accurate reflection of their real lives.
 
We convince ourselves that the meal on our dinner table doesn’t look like the festive spread in that glossy magazine or that our family doesn’t resemble that well turned out, smiley family in those television adverts.
 
Wouldn’t it be great if we could just be kind to ourselves? Remember the last time you felt grumpy and put upon and cast your mind back to the impact those feelings had on all those around you. Now, picture an image of the ‘good enough’ Christmas when everyone gets the chance to relax and enjoy the company of friends and loved ones. When the Christmas dinner is delicious because it was a shared effort and all the pressure wasn’t heaped on just one person. 
 
In a perfect world, we’d all be going into Christmas having enjoyed listening to carols on the radio before popping out for a relaxed browse around the shops to soak up the festive atmosphere and ambling home to watch a seasonal film curled up on the sofa with a hot chocolate or a box of delicious treats.   However, here in the real world, the reality for most of us is that we are tired and stressed and just want to STOP!
 
So, start by taking a deep breath and letting go of the quest for perfection and embracing reality. Let’s all accept that none of us stepped out of a photo shoot and that Christmas dinner will be great if we are lucky enough to share it with people we love and who love us, it really doesn’t get more perfect than that.
 
For myself, I am taking the time to stop all the rushing around and reflect on the year we are just about to leave with all its bustle and upheaval.  I’m going to do my bit to brighten up my little corner of the world with a daily sparkle and, who knows, maybe I’ll carry this new habit on throughout 2019.
 
I would like to take this opportunity to thank my lovely family and friends for all their ongoing love and support. I also want to thank everyone I have had the honour of working with this year. As always, it has been an honour and I wish you all a happy and restful Christmas however you choose to spend it.
 
If you would like to give the gift of confidence, calm, weight loss or anything else to yourself or your loved ones, gift vouchers are available.

Don't agonise, orrganise!

Every year at this time people start to think about getting ready for Christmas. Shop windows and magazine covers are full of beautiful sparkly things and magazines and television adverts entice us to buy the latest party wear and invest in this year’s ‘must haves’ for our loved ones. If we were being observed from some distant planet, the onlooker could be forgiven for thinking that we are all obsessed with such important questions as; what should we wear? Who should we spend the festivities with? What should we eat? And what presents should we buy for family and friends? Sometimes, it feels like we have forgotten the real point of Christmas and how important it is to enjoy the festive period and really take the chance to relax with people we love.

Not content with beating ourselves up about our perceived failure to organise the perfect Christmas, many of us then look towards January and make those big promises to ourselves about what we are going to achieve after those midnight bells on the 31st of December. We tell ourselves that this coming year will be the one when we stop smoking, start going to the gym, give up chocolate, gin, crisps, cigarettes, grumbling or whatever habit we have wrestled with. On the surface, this all seems very positive and it’s clear that we could really transform our lives if we could only stop that habit or give up on whatever it is that we do to stop us from living our very best life. But, if the benefits are so obvious, why do we make the same commitments every December and why haven’t we reached those elusive goals?

This year, maybe we should try a new approach and one that would give us all a better chance of succeeding?  Wouldn’t it be great if, right now, at this very moment, we just decided that, this year, we were going to do things differently? if we could just decide that NOW is the best time to make the changes we’ve been promising ourselves for more years than we would probably want to remember? 

A year from now you’ll be glad you made a start, today is as good a day as any to get going, there are still several weeks before the festive season begins in earnest. 

Several weeks when we can really make a difference in a good way instead of writing off the rest of this year and deciding to get healthy next year. 
There is no more perfect time than right now to start eating healthily, moving more, or looking for that job or course which can open doors to a bright shiny future. 

How would it feel to put on that smart suit or beautiful party dress and see ourselves glowing with health because we made those changes today? Or what if we enrolled on that course or updated our cv in readiness for making the career move we have dreamt of for so long?

Making a start now could mean that we are well on our way to success long before those Hogmanay bells have even begun to chime.

We’ve all heard that old saying that a goal without a plan is just a dream and, while I think a dream is a great thing to have, if we want our lives to change then we need to think about how we’re going to make it happen.

If you would like to talk about how Hypnotherapy and coaching with NLP can help you reach those goals contact Francine@Orrganise

Don’t agonise… orrganise!

At this time of year, many of us are beginning to focus on the  summer holiday and any discontent we feel about our jobs and the workplace where we spend so much time begin to seem less important. For now…

But here we are in the middle of the year that was going to be the one when everything was going to be different. We were going to achieve those resolutions about transforming our lives, changing things that aren’t working for us and finally moving on to the job that we dream of.  We always have a good excuse not to act, we tell ourselves that it’s not the right time to upset the applecart and we should just enjoy the moment and the holiday we have looked forward to since the last one.  But what would it be like if we enjoyed our working life so much that we didn’t have to focus all our energies on holidays and time off?
 
I have many really fond memories of my local government job and it took me a long time to take the leap and leave to start my own business. There was always a good reason why the time wasn’t yet right. I had a good salary….I loved the people I worked with…I had been there for ages…I was scared…..It was however, the very best thing I ever did for myself.
 
At the time, I worked in that role for three days a week and the aim was to build up my business using the other days available to me. One day I met up with a freelance consultant I knew and traded her a lunch for some advice about getting my embryonic business to the next level. Her advice really shook me.  She told me that, in her view, I would never realise my dream if I stayed in my comfortable and safe job.

I was really shocked and didn’t immediately take on board what she was saying. I went back to the office that day inclined to disregard what she had said but somehow, it stayed with me and I kept replaying the conversation in my head over and over again.
 
Now I know that this was the best advice I ever received.
 
There are a whole lot of reasons why it’s easier to stay in a familiar working environment for far longer than we ever should;

• A lovely regular salary
• A good bunch of co-workers to hangout with at the water cooler, especially useful when you feel like a good moan.
• The safety of the familiar routine
• The comfort zone we inhabit

 
But how comfortable is that comfort zone? When was the last time you got up in the morning and really looked forward to the working day?
 
Sometimes those water cooler conversations focus on complaints and how miserable some people really are in the course of their working lives. It’s so easy to ‘join in’ and get carried away with grumbling and moaning until even the enjoyable parts of a job are overshadowed by negativity and pessimism. Precious time is frittered away longing for the weekend, annual leave, bank holidays, Christmas and ultimately, retirement.  It doesn’t have to be like that, most people spend more than forty hours a week at work and more than thirty years clocking on and off.   Isn’t it worth pushing forward towards that job of your dreams?

For advice, coaching and support why not contact Francine at Orrganise?
​Don't agonise, orrganise!