January Report

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

WELCOME to the first newsletter 2019 connecting us to you with industry updates, news and regulations.

This is a fresh, new year so let’s commit to making it an exceptional one – we are here to help you achieve this.

It’s always a good practice when making room for the new to look at what no longer serves you that you need to let go, or dispose of.  You cannot continue adding new items, thoughts and ideas without also removing those that have bypassed their use-by date and are no longer contributing positively to your life and your purpose. 

Spring cleaning is not just about sorting through things and getting rid of clutter.  It’s also about taking stock of who you are and how others see you. It’s a wonderful chance to redefine yourself, to change expectations, and to remember that it’s never too late to aim for who you want to be.

Getting that perfect balance of removing and adding will make all the difference in helping you gain FOCUS and CLARITY on who you are and who you want to continue becoming. 

On a professional level, it will help you identify how best you can finetune your brand and what you stand for – getting this right is powerful.  It will allow you to attract the right clients that can appreciate who you are and what you can offer them and that is key to business growth.

Looking at my own professional goals I started by examining what we want to achieve this year and weighed each goal against what will best serve the industry in making it stronger and more professional. 

“The benefits of owning less are far greater than just cleaning, they also include focus, freedom, peace and more passion for life.”

We looked into our “Pandora’s Box” of options and opportunities to decide what is truly important to achieve this year – what goals can we set and what activities would that entail? 

Our next step is to determine how I can remain focused on our goals.  For this I realised the importance of creating good habits that will best support me in achieving these goals, both personally and professionally.   Good habits are stepping stones that keep you moving forward, but they don’t happen by chance – they need to be identified and they need to be intentional pursued.  For example, one of my habits is having two glasses of water as soon as I wake up.  When I first understood the benefit of doing this it took a little discipline to put it into practice – however, now it is an automatic habit, I do it each morning without thinking about it.

Habits begin when we behave in a certain way to reach a specific goal. Here are the three R’s that will help you effectively create lifelong habits: REMINDER – ROUTINE – REWARD.

• Reminder:  identify the benefits of establishing a habit and establish a cue to remind yourself to do the task.  My cue when I started drinking water was to leave a glass near the sink.  As soon as I woke up and went to the kitchen the glass reminded me of my commitment.
• Routine:  Because I was doing this daily, as the days progressed the routine started to become very familiar.  I automatically responded to doing it.
• Reward: I printed out an interesting article that outlined the benefits of drinking two glasses of water on waking up.  Until the routine became a habit, I regularly read this article which reinforce why I was doing this and the rewards of developing this habit.

Today, this habit is so part of me that I automatically do it whether I am home, or at a hotel away from home. I don’t even think of it – I just do it.

Studies confirm that when we are building this cue-response relationship, we are using parts of our (pre-frontal cortex) of the brain that helps us make conscious decisions. But as we repeat the behaviour, the information that connects the goal, cue, and response moves to a different part of your brain – a sort of behavioural “autopilot” that no longer remembers the original goal or outcome. It just remembers the cue and the response.

To put it another way, two parts of your mind are involved. Our “intentional” mind helps us act in ways that meet a desired outcome that we’re aware of. However, when the “habitual” mind (the “autopilot”) is engaged, we’re much less aware of what we’re doing, or even why. Intentionally, focusing on developing good habits is a wonderful way to helping us stay on track with our goals. What good habits do you want to develop this year?  Identify them and set a plan to get them to autopilot and they will become effortless.