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Sometimes we just need to be reminded that we need to put ourselves out there.  To be prepared to fall down and look stupid.  I had the priviledge of being at the 5th Adlerian Conference last week and participated in some AMAZING workshops.  One of them was with Roi and Raanana (I will get their full names and edit this blog).  Roi is a paralysed from the waist down.   A  with such courage and uses his disability to show others how you can turn a disadvantage into an advantage.

He showed us a balancing exercise he does in his wheelchair ….that takes practice.  The practice involves falling over backwards and hitting the floor.  He said that in order to succeed you need to be prepared to fall down.

Just today I received this exerpt from the book The More We Find In Each Other by Merle Fossum and Mavis Fossum in Todays Gift inspiration email.  I wanted to share this with you.  “Life is a risk. A committed relationship is a risk. Letting ourselves go, voicing opinions, telling our deepest feelings, playing frivolously at the park, setting aside our carefulness with each other and sometimes falling flat on our faces — all these things give us the pleasure of being alive. If we insist on playing it safe, then we never feel the thrill of the game. Our lives with each other become flat and empty if we do not take some risks. We have a right to be weak as well as strong; a right to be respected when we feel silly as much as when we appear dignified; a right to say what we believe even if it is half-baked. The greatest mistake is never to engage life.

Have a fantastic day,

with love

Sam

June 8th, 2010 | Tags: brave, carefulness, coaching, freedom, life, Personal Growth, risk | Category: Life Coaching, Personal Growth | Comments (1)

Life is a forever changing.  How set are you in your habits and ways?  How prepared are you for stepping out of your shoes?

What made me write this blog post tonight is that I not literally but physically stepped out of my shoes this afternoon when my shoe platform came away from my shoe whilst walking on the pavement.  So if you can imagine me hobbling along with one high platform and another flat shoe until I made the decision to get a bit dirty.  Now you have to understand that I have a fetish for clean feet!!!  I overcame this and decided to enjoy the freedom of walking barefoot.  I consciously chose to feel the warmth of the road beneath me from the baking sun and it was truly a weird feeling that I actually enjoyed this and my walk even changed into a slight swing.

We can feel liberated by unexpected occurrences that challenge us, when we go with the flow rather than clinging on to the old.  Embrace change!  Renew yourself.  Do something small that is different then what you would usually do.  It may even be driiving a different way to work, or choosing to by a new color shirt that you usually would not wear.  I know that I take calculated chances but do step out of my shoes pretty frequently and especially so out of curiosity to see what will be.    We can do this also when we feel fear gripping us.  We can hold on to that fear or try moving with it and you may be just walk a few more steps and leave that fear behind you.

By Sam Amit

May 26th, 2010 | Tags: challenge, change, changing, fear, freedom, habit, liberation, new, renewal | Category: Decision making, Life Coaching, Mindfulness, Personal Growth | Leave a comment

My 11 year old son, Barak, participated in the holocaust ceremony this morning, which included a play, at his school. In the play he together with other children hid in the basement of a home of people who risked their own lives to save others. The children had to keep silent when the German soldiers came looking for them, the Juden. I went to watch with Barak’s 8 month old sister, Mika. There was almost silence in the hall and while I was watching I was trying to make sure that Mika didn’t blurt anything out as baby’s tend to do. I kept putting her pacifier into her mouth and she kept taking it out. I can say that I felt a kind of a fear and as I felt this I thought – “Sam can you imagine what the parents must have felt when trying to keep their babies and little children quiet?”

We live in such easy times. I cannot imagine the horrors that holocaust survivors went through. My thoughts are with the survivors and their families.

April 12th, 2010 | Tags: Barak, children, Holocaust, Jude, thoughts | Category: Mindfulness, Personal Growth | Leave a comment

Have you ever felt that there just isn’t enough time in a day? That your task list is 10 miles too long? Then it may be time to start prioritizing. Focusing or prioritizing on what you want to move forward lowers stress and that helps you be more productive. If you had to choose 3-5 key to focus on, what would they be?

I have so many versatile activities that I am involved in and this together with a family life is quite a challenge. I can get lost when I don’t stop to focus and create some order. This is why I specialize in organization as its something that doesn’t come naturally to me.

Plan your week with realistic goals you want to achieve. When doing this think about the AREAS you want to focus on and give priority to. Name these areas. Each morning (or the evening before) plan each day and decide on what areas you will be focussing on that day. Then for each area define 1-2 activities or tasks from each of these areas that you want to say YES to. During the day be true to what you have selected and build in some flexibility for the unexpected. This is always certain to happen. As you are tempted to jump on to other things that are not on your agenda remember to be true and faithful to your plan. Saying No to this means keeping your promise of what you laid out to do. At the end of the day reflect on how things went and make changes for the next days ahead according to your progress and following your review.

March 31st, 2010 | Tags: activities, agenda, flexibility, focus, goals, Organization, plan, planning, prioritize, scheduling | Category: Life Coaching, Organization, Planning and Time Management, Personal Growth | Leave a comment

As an entrepreneurial Mom with three kids, I find that organizing your day goes a long way.

Here is an idea to break down your day and get some kind of structure into your life even if it only feels like it.

You can take this basic structure and play around with it. It’s important to find what’s right for you.

I suggest breaking your 24 hour day into categories and within these the time you would like to spend on each. Home Maintenance (3.5 hours) , Personal Care (2 hours) Work (7 hours) , Sleep (8 hours), Life & Family (3.5 hours) .

Home Maintenance is cleaning, decluttering, fixing things, running home errands like the shopping, gardening. Personal Care is your daily exercise, personal grooming like your hair, going for a mani or pedi. Life & Family is cooking, time with your partner and the kids, extramural activities, family or school meetings, life appointments like going to the dentist, buying clothes. Flexibility should be built into all these categories since the unexpected will always come up.

Define and continually review your goals.  Make weekly tasks. Daily to do lists often lead to stress. I know with myself that when I have too much to do it can be overwhelming. I take one step at a time, try and do as much as I can in my weekly list and focus at the end of the day at what I HAVE done instead of what I have not done!

March 23rd, 2010 | Tags: coaching, Entrepreneurial, family, goal, moms, Organization, planning, self-help, structure | Category: Decision making, Life Coaching, Organization, Planning and Time Management | Leave a comment

In my coaching session with Karen Alon I chose to be coached about my upcoming holiday where I am going to be visiting my parents in South Africa. I will be traveling together with my fourteen year old teenage daughter, my eleven year old son and seven month old baby. What came out of the coaching session is that I want to be conscious of each child’s needs, really listen to them, a chance to get closer to my children, know them even more and give each child some time with me alone.

At the start of the coaching session I myself did not know what I wanted exactly. I expressed the desire to plan more and not to let things be too spontaneous. Spontaneity comes naturally to me and this is my default way of behaving. This means planning very little. As you know everything in life his its benefits and disadvantages. The disadvantage of waking up each morning on vacation and then going with the flow is that you can land up doing very little and spend a tremendous amount of time in front of the television. Adults may read, many kids are really good at reading the subtitles on TV shows. Although I must admit my eleven year old does love reading books. I realized that I wanted to plan with each child and see what each wanted to do while we were away in addition to the usual going to restaurants, movies, shopping and of course seeing animals. What also came up was being aware especially of my teenage daughter who will be away from her friends and knowing that this would be a challenge for her.

I will use this time away to spend time with each child alone and communicate with them. My son wants to take some swimming lessons which he has not done in a while, my daughter wants to horse ride. We will do a bit of the usual and maybe some new things. What’s important for me is not so much the doing but the BEING. How will I be with each and everyone?

I encourage you to think about your Passover or Easter holidays and what’s important for you during this time.  Do you need to plan ahead for something to happen? Organize something? How do you want to BE?

March 13th, 2010 | Tags: children, choice, consiousness, Easter, holiday, kids, love, Organization, Passover, planning, relationships, vacation | Category: Decision making, Life Coaching, Mindfulness, Personal Growth | Comments (1)

What I know to be true is that we can ALL move forward and it doesn’t matter if the pace is a slow walk or a gallop ahead. Allowing ourselves space, encouragement and looking for what is right is SO important.

Its six in the morning and I am sitting with my 11 year old son at our dining room table. He is doing his Grammar homework. This is the boy that last week wouldn’t do this very same homework. He received a note from his teacher and still….no matter what I tried or said he was adamant that he was not doing it. This was really hard for me as no matter what I said or tried he was not budging. This morning he is finishing it after starting last night with his Dad’s support.

This makes me realize time and time again that sometimes we cannot push things. Sometimes we need to take a break or give some space. We need to see what’s lying underneath, understand the person in front of us, what drives them, what is meaningful for them? What is keeping them stuck? Once that is found, then finding a rhythm and moving ahead can be easy.

This is what gives me hope. Knowing and believing that anything is possible, when you believe and you invest in what is important.  And remembering that its not only the results (the homework done) that is important – but also the PATH chosen.

March 7th, 2010 | Tags: children, homework, relationships, self-help | Category: Life Coaching, Personal Growth | Leave a comment

Today there are so many distractions that it’s sometimes really hard to get stuck in and get work done. First of all an ideal setting is important. It may be in your office and it may be taking some time out to sit in a quiet coffee shop. If its in your office then ensure that your desk is clear. This helps to think and be more focused.

Imagine you are sitting with a client. If you were in a meeting right now with a client, you wouldn’t be checking your emails, you wouldn’t answer your phone, you wouldn’t use instant messaging. In order to get moving on a project or work assignment, sometimes we need to switch off our phones, close our email accounts and reminder messages that can pop up, exit from any instant messaging and if the Internet is a distraction then close this too.

Have a look at your task list or schedule and decide what you are going to be working on for the next hour solidly. Get everything you need out. Have some paper and a pen on hand incase you all of a sudden remember something you need to do. Write this down on the paper and continue with your task. So often we may be in the middle of something, remember something else and then leave what we are doing so that we don’t forget to do that.

When you have completed what you set out to do, Congratulate yourself. Also notice how focused you can be when your mind is not multi-tasking. Besides, jumping from one task to another can be stressful.

Now you can are probably ready fo some communication with the world again. You will no doubt be waiting for this. Decide in advance how long you want to communicate with others for. So you’ll switch your phone back on. Check your voice mail. Take a break and do some instant messaging. You will spend some time on your e-mail, and you may put some music on in the background.

When this time is over then its back to working without all the communication applications and gadgets that can distract one. Try this out and let me know how you are doing.

Read also How not to drown in your email

By Samantha Amit

February 21st, 2010 | Tags: business success, effectivity, Getting things done, Organization, Organization, Planning and Time Management, work | Category: Life Coaching, Organization, Planning and Time Management, Personal Growth | Leave a comment

Have had a lousy week - a number of difficult days.  We all have them sometimes.  There are certain things that get me down and when this happens I notice that its hard for me to be positive and creative.  I get almost stuck.  What I tell myself at these times is what Lau Tzu wrote: “This too shall pass”  or like the song from the movie Annie: “The sun will come out tomorrow”…and it sure does.

The art is to allow ourselves this time to be down or time to be upset.  Sometimes its anger, or frustration or simply feeling overwhelmed.  Whatever our negative feelings, feel them, see them, touch them - even FEAR!!!  I wish I could say - What’s that?  Behind negative feelings, especially anger sits fear.  Meeting fear in the face, acknowledging it, helps us to let go of this and move back to love.    Acceptance of what we are feeling is paramount to moving forward.  Allowing ourselves that space, providing it is nurturing and healing in itself.

What I have come to know is that when I practice this, mindfulness, I feel more alive.  I  notice that whatever my negative feeling is,  it passes much more quickly than when I used to fight it.  Letting things be as they are and being conscious in the moment, non- judgmentally, this is mindfulness.

Life is not about always being positive.  Balance is up and down.  I try to be conscious of this and then when the timing is right I can bring myself up again.  Sometimes with the help of others and sometimes alone.

A new week is about to begin….I look forward to it.

February 19th, 2010 | Tags: emotions, Lau Tzu, Personal Growth, sadness, self-help, stress | Category: Personal Growth | Comments (1)