January 28th, 2012 |
Suzy Pool Coaching The Launch Event
Welcome A wonderful evening celebrating the launch of my coaching business, Suzy Pool Coaching. The business has been running for a while but we thought we would celebrate with a Launch Event. Joined by my children, associates, clients and friends, the evening started off with a fruit punch and a lovely spread of food. Whilst everyone mingled and we prepared for a fun and inter-active team exercise. The Work/Life theme for the evening was 'Life is short....so what's important? A discussion on what life/work balance is - and - how it affects us. There was so much value in what people shared on the topic! As we get older, we feel a sense of urgency, even panic to reach our full potential. It is all too easy to stay in our comfort zone and let life drift along in the same old direction for many years. As time goes by, we even begin to lose sight of our dreams and ambitions. However, this is often the catalyst for change. We begin to feel less and less comfortable in our comfort zone and begin to ask ourselves some important questions, "is this what I really want?" and "surely there's more to life than this?" The journey towards a more fulfilling and happy life does require change and that for most of us can be very scary. It is here that we need a good coach to support us through the difficult period. Our health, well-being and happiness depend on it! When we seriously start to look at work and life balance and what that means for us. We also need to start by looking at where we spend most of our valuable time. One of the best ways to measure this is to work out for yourself what is important and urgent in your life and more importantly, what is important and what is not urgent! Group Activity The team activity we proceeded to do was the Time Management Matrix or more accurately, the Work/Life Balance Matrix, as I prefer to call it. This involved identifying in our smaller groups, what activities came under the 4 Matrix quadrants. Most enlightening for everyone and got the whole group energised and lively. The matrix is divided up into 4 quadrants and the various activities that we carry out during the day are put into one of the quadrants:
Much time and energy was also wasted in the 3rd quadrant urgent. These activities involved doing things that were not actually important or urgent to you but to other people around you who repeatedly neglect to get certain jobs of their own done on time. It then gets to crisis point and the crisis then becomes everyone else's business! So what is the answer? Clearly identifying what is important to you and learning how to say no kindly and firmly to others and being more assertive. This frees up your time and conserves your energy to focus on yourself and your needs. Quadrant 2 where most of our time and energy needs to be spent, in fact 80% of our time. This is planning, preparation and pro-active behaviour. 80%. This means that we spend much less time in quadrant and 1, the constant fire-fighting quadrant 1. The last but not least quadrant, number 4 includes activities that are not urgent and not important.. We really need to identified these and and cut them out completely. These take away very valuable time from our lives and definitely keep us eventually in our most uncomfortable comfort zones. They are also easy to identify because they drain our energy. The exercise proved not only to be fun but thought provoking. It got everyone realising how much energy is often wasted in the first urgent and important quadrant, constantly stressed out, chasing our tails and forever meeting deadlines and also in quadrant 3, getting hooked into other people's crisis management. These are the best tools for managing stress at work or at home. Evening close At the end of the evening I was most delighted to receive some wonderful testimonials from my colleagues with whom I had worked previously and also I had helped in a coaching capacity. As a momento, I gave everyone a small gift to take away with them, a journal. I explained that it is very useful for us all to keep a journal, to write down our passions, dreams and greatest ambitions, to keep them alive and remind us of where we need to be going. It is also to record what we appreciate about ourselves each day of our lives and acknowledge how much we do achieve from one day to the next. Thank you all for making the occasion a truly wonderful experience for me and I look forward to your continued support and encouragement!
By: Suzy Pool | Posted in: Corporate , Work/Life Balance , Mental Wellbeing | 0 Comments |
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