In the toughest of years we notice the little things that have a big impact on our wellness and our mindset. In this second January Podcast, focusing on Creating your own Timeline, I suggest there are things from 2020 that will be worth bringing into 2021.
I’m Dinah Liversidge and I’m a Coach and Trainer, a Celebrant and co-host of The Charcoal Hut, a woodland cabin in Myddfai, Carmarthenshire. I’m also a no-box-thinker. I believe when we stop trying to ‘think outside the box’ we take away labels and limitations that were always an illusion. There never was a box.
I love being a Coach, a Celebrant and a Host. All these aspects of my life help me achieve that illusive ‘work-life balance’ so many seem to be striving for. Join me in Myddfai in our woodland garden for a #MyddfaiMinute and listen to one minute of birdsong. I hope it brings you some peace.
If you’d like to explore Coaching, take a look at my Mindset Coaching here.
I hope you’re enjoying my Podcasts. I’d love you to share them with someone you think would get something positive from them.
Dinah
Speaker 1:
Hi there. I'm Diana Liversidge. Thanks for joining me on my podcast. And today it's day two of my focus in January on creating your own timeline today. I wanted to think about an exercise that I do at the start of every year, um, which somehow after 2020 felt more important than ever. And that is to decide, what am I going to bring with me from last year that was new and positive or a great learning experience, or has a wonderful impact as a new habit. It's really easy to think. I'm not going to carry forward anything from a horrible dreadful year like that, but, you know, even in a really, really tough year. And in fact, in my life, I've often found particularly during a tough year, we are more aware than ever of the good things. You know, when you have little to be grateful for you become more grateful for the little that you have. I've always found this to be true. And certainly the year that I had my heart surgery, which was 2013, 2014, it was well almost a two year process, really of, of being very ill. But after the surgery, every single day, I noticed things that I had always just taken for granted. And those things that were often the really small things became much more important to me. I valued people and conversations and cuddles far more than I had when I had been busy. Um, I think busy-ness is a mindset. It's another one that we buy into that can be very negative and so on. Uh, a positive focus when I look at 2020, one of the big things for me was that I rejoined a BNI group. BNI is business networking international, um, an organization founded by Dr. Ivan Meisner, and it is quite something, um, it's a, uh, a method, uh, it's a, well, it's more than that. It becomes almost a culture for you in how you think about the way you do business. Um, it's built on the idea that give us gain. If I do something nice for you. If I help you in your business to grow you're to pay that forward, you're going to do something nice for me or someone I know and care about. And it's a philosophy that I love and I had had had to step away from BNI because I had been so ill. Um, and once I had re-established my business and got back to a point of wellness enough to be working full time again, I went and found, um, online because of course we were all networking online instead of in-person in 2020, I found online this incredible group of business owners who are based really in Ammanford in West Wales. It's about just over half an hour's drive from where we live here. And they're very varied in age and profession and background, but they all have one thing in common. And that is that they believe in give us gain that they're there to support and nurture each other's businesses. And that by putting that effort in good things are gonna happen for everybody in that group. And so for me from 2020 that carries forward, and it also reminds me that one of the things that benefits my mindset is to be part of a network of people who support each other. And, you know, that impacted another thing I'm carrying forward from 2020. Um, and that is the group on Twitter in the mornings, um, hashtag the breakfast club based on, uh, one of my favorite films as a teenager, um, and something that gosh, almost 10 years ago, I did for a couple of years, uh, with Jane Cox and some other incredible people. Um, we started it, we ran it every morning and over the years as we got busy, there, it goes again. We stopped doing it. And last year I brought it back, um, to see, would people find it a positive way to start the day and they did. And in fact, towards the end of the year, when I had maybe slightly too many balls in your hair, that I was juggling, I stepped away again and realized very quickly. There's another thing that I need to pick back up for my mindset and for the mindset of the other people who were regularly taking part and carry that forward, because it is a positive thing that will impact me in a good way every day. You know, rather than sitting with my coffee, looking at the news and pulling myself down because it's out of my control. I sit with a positive group of people and we uplift and help each other have a better day. Okay. I wonder what happened for you in 2020 that deserves to be repeated in 2021, however, small a thing. Was it the walk with the dog? Was it the extra coffee with your partner before you both settled in to do work at desks at home? Was it taking time for yourself to have a lunch break, whatever it was that had that positive impact carry it forward. And one of the things I love to do is I have a jar. I have several jars for things, but in this jar, I put all the words and the supportive things that I am going to do, that I'm going to bring into the new year with me. I encourage you to write these things down, to put them in that jar and on a day where you're struggling a bit with your mindset, open it and remind yourself, Oh yeah. These things really helped me in a really tough year. I'm going to start doing it again because you do deserve those. Thank you, you for joining me today, I hope some ideas have come forward for you. That can be helpful. And I hope that you see that creating your own timeline, taking ownership of doing that can have a really positive impact on your mindset. I hope you'll join me again in the next, in this series. Thanks very much.