Stressful situations are part of life.  Think of three situations in your life that you’ve experienced as stressful.  Just list them to yourself.

Chances are, you didn’t say ‘Landing an aircraft when both engines had failed’ or ‘Keeping a patient alive in surgery when her airway became blocked’.  For most of us, stressful doesn’t mean ‘life or death’.

But for some people it does.  Recently I watched a TV documentary about surgical procedures.  The presenter was looking at innovations in medicine and other professions that could be applied to surgery to make it safer, especially when things don’t go as planned.

So he interviewed top trainers leading the world in training fire-fighters to deal with complex scenarios.  He spoke to Formula One teams who have seconds to repair cars and refit tyres in the pit before the car goes out again into tremendous high-pressure situations.  He spoke to Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot who landed his passenger plane on the Hudson River in 2009 after losing both engines when birds flew into them and they stopped working.  And he spoke to surgical teams at international centres of excellence like Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital (just around the corner from me here), who are developing safer ways to remove all the anesthetic and life support equipment from patients immediately after surgery, and deliver them safely to intensive care.

It was a fascinating programme.  Across all these diverse, dangerous and stressful situations, all the teams had just one tool they all used to help them stay safe.  They know it works because they’ve studied things like incident rates before and after using this tool.

So what is this amazing tool? Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve suddenly developed a problem with Outlook, the software I use for all my emails.  It used to work quickly and be very responsive.  Then I went on holiday and when I came back, it went on a ‘go slow’.

This isn’t a blog post where I just moan about my email software.  There’s something valuable here for you.  It will just take you a while to find it.  It took me a while to find it, too.  Keep going. Read the rest of this entry »

This is an invitation to you to join me on an adventure.  It’s an adventure of change.  The path of transformation.  The first step is very simple and easy to do.  It’s this. Read the rest of this entry »

‘He’s just SO annoying’

‘I can’t believe she just said that’

‘If I have to look at his stupid face again I’ll punch it’

‘I just can’t be in the same room as her any more’

Sometimes in life you meet a person who just rubs you up the wrong way.  They wind you up, push your buttons, irritate, annoy and sometimes enrage you.  They aren’t so awful that everyone around you shuns them, but they drive you nuts.

Often, we can organize our lives so we don’t have to be around people like that much.

But sometimes, that isn’t possible.  Maybe that annoying person is a new colleague at work or perhaps a friend’s new partner.  You can’t get away or avoid them.  You have to deal with them.

So what can you do?

Here’s a three-step strategy for dealing with difficult people. Read the rest of this entry »

First, catch your elephant.

OK, this isn’t really about eating elephants. Because of all the things elephants need right now, being eaten probably isn’t one of them.

But if you did have to eat an elephant, it would probably feel like a mammoth task. (I know. Listen, I wanted to write ‘mammoth tusk’, so you’ve got off lightly here).

Sometimes life can feel as though we are faced with an avalanche of insurmountable challenges.

When it does, we feel overwhelmed. Overwhelm is horrible. It’s a tightness in the throat, a shallowness of breath, a twitch of anxiety in the stomach. And when we feel overwhelmed, we stop. Either stop being effective, or just stop dong anything at all.

So here are twenty seven things you can do when you feel overwhelmed. Now wouldn’t that be horrible? You’ve got too much on your plate then someone adds twenty seven more things that you have to think about.

Nope, not twenty seven. Just two. Count ‘em. One. Two.

Two simple, effective, manageable ideas that help me, whenever I notice a sense of overwhelm is slowing me down. Try ‘em out for yourself. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, the Alexander Technique was featured in the UK edition of OK magazine.  It’s a celebrity gossip magazine, and the piece mentioned the benefits of the work for improving posture as well as many of the celebs who have studied the Technique: Hilary Swank, William Hurt, Joanna Lumley, Sir Paul McCartney, Pierce Brosnan, Sting, Julia Sawalha, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jennifer Saunders and Ruby Wax.

In fact, there are tons of famous people who have taken Alexander Technique lessons.  It really is the A-listers secret weapon.

But why?  What makes this work so valuable to this particular group of people?  And just because it works for them, will it work for you? Read the rest of this entry »

We all have difficult days. Days when we need a quick fix to feel better and lift our mood.

Sometimes tasks are challenging and push us out of our comfort zone.

Other times, people push our buttons and we get a big emotional reaction that flares up.

Or we didn’t get enough sleep, or eat properly yesterday, or we’re dehydrated – it doesn’t take much to knock us off course.

There’s one simple fix that will always help you to feel better instantly.  It’s this: Read the rest of this entry »