Find Your Passion

Spring Clean Yourself
By Jo Parfitt

Three months into the new year and how many of you have done anything about those resolutions? With all the new books and courses out there to inspire you the excuses are starting to wear a little thin.

Did you notice that at the start of the year everyone was talking about 'making a new start'? There is nothing like a new year to get us all taking stock of our lives and motivations. But when there is a new millennium to navigate it is harder still to ignore the need for some re-evaluation.

For many of us, more balance in our lives is a common objective. More exercise, more me-time, more fun. We vow to make the rest of the family do their share and then, with all those resolutions out of the way we can no longer ignore the fact that our career may need a rethink too. Have you noticed the number of self-development books on the bookshelves? John Clark's The Money or Your Life is a great example of a book that gets us cracking on our next reinvention. Kogan Page have brought out a number of books on a similar topic too. Ros Taylor's Transform Yourself is a superb example of a book that can kick start that metamorphosis. While Brian Clegg's Instant Stress Management can help us to clear a space in our heads and our lives before we begin our biggest and best personal spring clean.

Sometimes our lives are so filled with domesticity, routine and other clutter that it can be hard to focus on what our hearts desire. Then, the moment we decide to make a change, it seems impossible to find ten seconds in which to cram that change.

In 2000 Maria Paviour and Kathryn Wallace ran an exciting day workshop, entitled 'Moving Into the New Millennium', which discusses many ways to transform ourselves into happier, more motivated, more contented and let's face it, nicer, human beings.

'Change can be hard to cope with,' says Ms Paviour. 'Imagine your life is rather like an infinite supply of similarly sized pebbles being dropped into a calm pond, one after the other. The ripples that move outward are constant and predictable, then, suddenly, a little further away, a new pebble is dropped into the pond. The water becomes really choppy for a while.'

When you realise that there can be, as Sarah Ban Breathnach says in her book Simple Abundance, 'no transformation without transition' it follows, then that change is not easy to make. Perhaps if we cleared that space in our lives first, and slowed down the pace with which those first pebbles are dropped into the pond, things would be easier?

Paviour and Wallace go onto explain how visualisation can really help to bring about change. Just picturing your ideal workspace, career or day out in your head can help to turn your dreams into reality. Drawing examples from quantam physics, Paviour provides the proof that thoughts turn into matter.

Brian Clegg, in Instant Stress Management, explains how today's sedentary lifestyles, with little exercise or sleep and poor diets, lead inevitably to excess stress. While it is not healthy to live with either no stress at all or too much, the stress levels experienced today are leading to more illness and more unproductivity than ever.

'A large degree of our response to stress is dependent on our emotional state and self-image,' writes Clegg. It is important to feel in control of our lives in order to reduce stress. Interestingly, company directors, surgeons and successful self-employed people are less stressed than, say, production line workers and cleaners, who have little control in their working lives.

Clegg provides 70 exercises, all taking between five and 20 minutes to complete that allow us to work on reducing our stress levels and achieve more balance in our lives. Exercises on matters such as how we react to pressure, crises, control, our physical and emotional health, exercise, use of technology, self-esteem, relaxation techniques and coping with anger are among the range of very practical ideas that can be put into practice straight away.

And once you have sorted out your stress you can move straight over to Ros Taylor's fun and practical book, Transform Yourself, that will lead you towards being a better, more likeable, person. Through a series of 'momentary insights' and exercises that require you to have a pencil at the ready, you will emerge at the end of this inspiring read a transformed person.

Divided up into sections on Impact, Thought, Emotion and Action, Taylor's accessible style will encourage you to change your labels, body language, self-esteem, the way you think, feel and act. Some of her exercises are highly original. At one point she asks the reader to describe themselves as a shape, claiming that something this simple can illustrate a personality better than any number of lengthy psychometric tests.

Sharing some of the techniques she has employed for many years in her work as a chartered psychologist and company trainer, she teaches how to make small talk that will not bore you or your acquaintances, how to motivate others and put more fun and integrity into your lives.

'Self-awareness, motivation, positive thinking, emotional intelligence, all come to naught unless we can act differently. The old adage about actions speaking louder than words is true,' she writes.

Action then, is key. Unless we 'walk the talk' and 'be the dream' we cannot hope to transform ourselves. It's rather like having our mobile phone constantly on charge yet never actually using it. There comes a time when we have to put the self-help books to one side and put them into practice.

Come on, it's time to throw a second pebble into the pond.

Transform Yourself by Ros Taylor is published by Kogan Page price £8.99

Instant Stress Management by Brian Clegg is published by Kogan Page price £9.99

Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach is published by Bantam Books price £9.99

For more information about Synergy Training contact 01825 83022.