 Since the beginning of time story telling has predominately been the way mankind shared and passed down to generations life skills. The oldest civilisations used stories to share the past, present and predict the future. Scratching’s, etchings and paintings in caves, pyramids and on rocks share stories of a life long ago.
Why stories, because they evoke your imagination, they evoke emotion and just emotion alone lends itself to creating memories. I am sure you may even remember your first book that you read at school. Books full of stories never grow old, just the way we consume them. So what do books and etchings on a cave have to do with business? Just about everything! Human beings are natural story tellers and we also love to consume and listen to stories. You may have heard the saying “Stories sell, Facts tell”. When we listen to someone talk about their business in statistics, facts, figures and percentages our brain we just hear language. When someone shares a story our brain can’t make the distinction between reading about an experience, hearing it or doing it real life. Annie Murphy Paul from Articulate “When someone describes a singer as having a ‘velvety voice’ our sensory cortex lights up.” Imagine when sharing about your business and what you do you have the listeners sensory cortex light up as opposed as to ‘hearing language’. Sharing stories about successes with clients, painting the picture of how your business solved someone’s problem with a story will stay in the mind of the listener far beyond a percentage or fact. To create a good story and develop a succinct story there are three components to the story, the beginning, the middle and the end. The beginning is short, sharp and a quick intro, the middle makes up the bulk of the story, the meaty part to the story and finally the end is where you wrap up the story with the conclusion and how the problem or issue was solved. Thinking about your story, what can you create around your business, product or services.
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 Watching any sport you will notice the coach will call for a team member to move to the interchange bench. This is the time the team member comes off the field, catches their breath, re-hydrates and takes a moment to gather their thoughts. This may happen over an hour play four, five or even six times to the same player. The coach knows playing the player hard for the entire game will not get the best out of the player. By then end of half time their energy is spent and they are not as focused, their speed slows down and so do their reflexes.
Coaches, players and trainers know calling time out for rest, relaxation and focus is imperative to the success of the game. So too, with business we as business owners need to be aware when it is time to call time out and hit the interchange bench. Calling time out can be as simple as scheduling in a mid-morning break to take your cup of tea or coffee outside and sit in fresh air for ten minutes. Working from a home office it can be tempting to bring your lunch into the office and keep working as you eat. Taking time to sit and enjoy your food will allow it to digest more easily and gives your brain some time away from the morning’s work. Some business owners use the Pomodoro Technique which is setting a time for a certain period of time to work on a project. Time is a valuable resources that once spent can never be returned, yet taking time out can be an asset to your business productivity and creativity not to mention your mental health. Finally, taking time out can also be about finding the right tools, resources and people to work on projects that zap your energy and aren’t really part of your business ‘game plan’. Looking after yourself with healthy choices and a good vitamin regime can also assist in playing a good game. Utilising breathing exercises and meditation in times of stress can assist in refocusing the energy into a more productive energy flow. Taking time out to restore and reflect is beneficial to you, your business, your loved ones and all those you are connected with. It allows you time and space to reflect on past, present and future, gain clarity and change the energy flow. Have you ever contemplated who you really are? I mean now what you do but who you really are. How would your family members, best friend or colleagues describe you? When we are asked to say who we are generally the first words that come to mind are the roles that we play in life. I’m a business owner, wife, mother, sister, brother, aunt, coach, confidante, personal trainer, web site designer, image consultant, and the list goes on. These labels are the roles we play in life and most generally we describe ourselves as to the role we play or the position we hold. Have you thought more deeply about who you are?
When we know who we truly are and appreciate our strengths and our traits it allows us the freedom to embrace who we truly are and be who we truly want to be. A great exercise is to grab a pen and paper and on one side of the page at the top write the heading I am a………………… This is where you can write down all of the labels, those role or job descriptions. These roles don’t define who we are, the roles change as the seasons of our lives change, job changes and relationship changes. On the other side of the paper is where we really get to think about who we truly are, what makes us tick, who we truly are, our core essence, all of this enveloped in our values. I am kind, sincere, happy, generous, grateful, calm, ambitious, faithful, determined, courageous, optimistic….. Head this page up with I am ……… Now is your time to contemplate and think about who you truly are. For some people this is a difficult task to consider their true essence, what makes them tick. It may be helpful to think about how your best friend or a special family member would describe you. Maybe light a lovely candle, put on some soft music and diffuse an essential oil and take some time out for you to figure out who you are. This is the last part of the exercise and is a powerful moment. As you read through your list of I am, consider if you were to meet you in one of the roles on the other side of the page would you like you? Would you want to be friends with you? Would you want to sit down and share lunch or chat with you? If you’re not sure in some of the areas, this is a great place to start looking at how to be more of what you are happy with. This exercise is a powerful exercise to do 2 or 3 times a year as a little self-check in. Are you going to try this for yourself? Comment below with what you learnt from this exercise.  A new found fun 2020 has been are particularly challenging year to say the least. This year hubby and I couldn’t go holidaying in our caravan and take a break. Most of 2020 I threw myself into my Connect Her business, transitioning from live, face to face events to online, virtual events and expanding our location numbers. There was always the hope by the time November came and our birthday’s we would be able to take a break and have a nice holiday. Well, that didn’t quite work out. I decided if we couldn’t go to the fun, we better find the fun at home. Firstly, two second hand pushbikes were purchased and we started doing short rides through our local area to indulge in a nice coffee or my favourite green smoothie. Bike riding is fun but not on a hot and windy day I quickly found out. So, one shopping trip I came across two big canvases for painting on. I quickly snapped them up and took them home. I presented them to hubby and said, ok by the end of your holidays we have to paint our own masterpiece to hang on our office walls. This meant there was three weeks of practice. He then went on his own shopping trip and purchased an array of acrylic colour paints, brushes and gadgets. If we are going to paint we need paint! We started off with no clue and we each praised the other on what a great effort. Neither had painted or had done any arty or crafty projects since leaving school. We both decided without telling the other that maybe a few Youtube tutorials might be in order. With a few tips on techniques, brushes and colour blending both of us find joy in seeing each other improving. We did find our fun and what started out to be a three week project to replace our holiday has become a relaxing hobby for both of us. We now have a basket filled with acrylic paint, brushes, knives, sponges and all manner of tools. We both have a different style and colour palette, yet we both appreciate each other’s differences. We certainly won’t be at any art exhibition or selling paintings to the public, we both however, are enjoying the relaxing time. It is our bit of fun we found when our normal holiday time was not going to happen. I personally, have found the painting has helped me relax, has increased my creativity in my business and has given me a new hobby. Not normally a creative or arty person, this outlet is something I am really enjoying and finding so relaxing and fulfilling. Sometimes trying something new, something that is totally out of your realm of normal lifestyle can have a profound impact or change to how you approach your everyday. It can assist you in both your personal and professional life. You may decide to take up writing, the arts, learn a new skill or doing a training course in a new skill. Have you stepped out and found your fun? Have you been a late adopter and found pleasure in a new hobby or field? We would love to hear from you and what your experience has been  Have you ever woken up in a funk, angry, upset or frustrated and you don’t know why? Maybe, you woke up feeling on top of the world only to thrown into anger or irritation by a simple act. How about if you could turn your day back into a great day with 5 words?
I remember one day I woke up feeling great, I had a networking event to attend and I was looking forward to seeing the regular crew. After the meeting I had a scheduled meeting with one of my top clients, I was looking forward to lunch with them. Now this is where the ‘feeling’ started to turn south. Just before walking out the door I noticed a spot I had missed with my makeup. I grabbed the bottle and shook it, it then preceded to flick globs of makeup over my nice top. BOOM! Mood changed, it was one of my favourite tops and I needed to now go and get changed, this made me late. Running out the door so I wouldn’t be late I inadvertently left my planner behind with pertinent information in it for both meetings. This I was to find out until my first meeting. As I was running late, I seemed to catch every red light, had people cut me off and couldn’t find a parking spot and I was now super late for my first meeting. At this point I could have rushed out of my car and continued on to my meeting that I was already late for anyway. Instead I chose to sit in my car, calm down, message the host and let them know I am no far away and have been caught in traffic. Does this scenario sound like something you have experienced? The story may be different but the feelings and frustration, anger or anxiety may be similar to your situation. Those few minutes of gathering my thoughts and sitting in calmness was all I needed to turn my day around. Now I did mention you can turn your day around with 5 simple words. This is what I do if I am faced with a situation like the morning I described to bring back calm, peace and reduce anger and anxiety or frustration. Only do this when it safe to do so. Don’t even attempt this while you are driving.
Now, back to my morning, taking 5 – 10 minutes to do this “Calmness & Clarity” exercise put me back into a fabulous mood, I enjoyed my networking meeting and seeing everyone even though I was late. My client meeting went smooth and super fantastic. EFT can assist with creating positive outcomes, reduce frustration and clear blocks, have a chat with Lee to find out more.  I have to say I am just as guilty of this as the next person. That is, how I talk to myself. You know that chatter that goes on and on in your head. We can tend to use negative words or berating sentences in our thoughts. Why negative or berating, because it is easy. It is easier to look at the negative side than it is the positive, to think positively takes more effort so we tend not to. Imagine the thoughts and words that we say to ourselves saying them to our child, Mother, Father, Sister, Brother or Best friend, how would you feel, how would they feel? I am guessing pretty horrible, yet we let ourselves get caught up in negative self-talk through fear and ease.
Dr Masura Emoto was a Japanese businessman and scientist who claimed water could respond to positive thoughts and speech. Dr Emoto's water crystal experiments consisted of exposing water in glasses to different words, pictures, or music and then freezing and examining the properties of the crystals with microscopic photography. Water exposed to positive speech and thoughts would result in beautiful crystals being formed when that water was frozen and that negative music, words or pictures would show ugly crystal formations. He also used different water forms from mountain streams, springs along with polluted water sources. The results can be seen on the video in this article. Given the body is made up of approximately 70% water, would our thoughts and words have the same impact on us as Emoto’s experiment? This I think is a question we should all ponder when we start to spiral into negative thoughts and berating sentences. Catch yourself and remember the video images below.  :When the word doubt comes to mind for you what does it spark? Does the word doubt have a negative connotation to it for you? Maybe the word doubt has a neutral effect on you, you see it neither one way or another.
Doubt can have a positive side to it in many aspects of our life. Take an example, you want to cross the road and you know there is a cross walk 150 meters up the road, when you come to the road to step out you experience doubt as to whether this is the best option at this moment in time. As you hesitate a truck comes hurtling down the road at the same moment you would have been two steps out of safety. In this case doubt and hesitation was a good thing. It was your senses on overdrive determining the best course of action. We can doubt ourselves, our thoughts, our ability or our next step in life and in business. Doubt like any emotion or action can have a good and a bad side to it. In the case of the road scenario, doubt was a good thing, not taking that next step. Not taking the next step can be debilitating for some. Your senses go into overdrive and Doubt creeps in on making decisions, worthiness, ability, what others might think and so on and so on and so on. Doubt can stop a great idea being acted upon, it can put the brakes on happiness, it can create an invisible fence around us being the best version of ourselves. To overcome areas of doubt you can use the 5 “What if’ questions:
 Life and business as we knew it has changed considerably with what seems to be a nightmare you can't wake from. Yes, the dreaded "C"word COVID or Corona, take your pick. It has turned business upside down and inside out. Where do we go from here and what do we do? In my humble opinion an age old strategy is to stay connected and network, network, network!
As the creator and contagious connector of Connect Her, I have found there are 4 key ways you can network your way through a pandemic - yes, even in lock down!
How have you used this time?
This is true to with us as human beings, what you see on the surface is just that, sitting on the surface. Dig a little deeper and there is more to the human standing in front of you. Look into a mirror and really look at yourself, what do you see?
When we take the time to do some introspection we can discover successes, limiting beliefs and a plethora of opportunity for ourselves and our business success. So how do we dig deep what can we ask ourselves? Here a five questions to get you started on your journey of discovery:
#HASHTAG I remember someone explaining to me about hashtags sometime back in about 2007 or 2008. I just didn't quite get it, until someone ingeniously explained it's like a filing system for posts. Well, that makes sense! So when I started on Twitter all those moons ago I started to slowly use # hashtags. I didn't really understand the full purpose of them, but, hey, everyone else is using them, so maybe I should too.
Hashtags really made it big in the Periscope sphere, yes I was an early adopter of Periscope but soon waned when I realised I had to be posting videos almost hourly to get any traction. So I gently slipped out of the habit of adding hashtags, that was until Instagram came around. Now, this I was not an early adopter and not that great on it now either. For some reason I just didn't fall in love with using Instagram, I did realise however, hashtags rule on Insta! My BIG social media platform of time is Facebook and Facebook never really used hashtags, there was no compartmentalising of posts and no one used hashtags, that was really for Twitter and then Instagram. Well, times are a changing. With Facebook purchasing Instagram there has been a slow sweep of Instagram platform-centric tools and quirks showing up in Facebook and vica-versa. Although, hashtags have been floating around on Facebook since 2013, they haven't really been of any use. Facebook have spruced up their hashtag use and have introduced a dedicated # hashtag page similar to Instagram. Use the # hashtag within your post, best placement is generally the bottom of the post so as not to interfere with your message. Use it on your video descriptions and they are also traceable in comments. So, now, get some traction and exposure to your posts on your Facebook feed, Facebook page and in your groups and start those hashtag tags happening. You can't "own" a hashtag but boy you can make one your own. There are also some great hashtag generators which make creating hashtags so much easier. This one is one of my fav's: https://displaypurposes.com/ What's your hashtag? |
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