Clear the clutter and clear your head!

This weekend I got a new coffee table and I needed to move a few things round to make room for it.  As I was doing this,  I gathered together a few things to recyle and throw away. When I had finished,  I felt strangely pleased with life!  It got me to thinking that there are so many benefits to de-cluttering.   Here are just a few:

…. You save time as you can find things more easily – especially important as you are rushing out of the front door!   … Cleaning becomes quicker and easier…  You don’t get stressed when you cannot find something…  You have more space to move and everything looks better…. You no longer need to be embarrassed by your clutter and won’t end up on a documentary!… When you open up a cupboard you’re not hit on the head by a deluge of junk ….. And perhaps most importantly, it frees up head space to think more clearly.   It is so much easier to focus on what you are doing if your physical space is clean and clutter free.

Here are some of my favourite tried and tested de-clutter tips …. if you have any more, then please, drop me a line.

3 quick ways to de-clutter that make a real difference

 1. Allocate one place for incoming papers. Papers create a lot of clutter and we can waste a lot of time looking for something.  Post, receipts, bank statements, any paper that comes into the house (or office) goes in that one place. Gather together all papers in your house and put them in that one place.

2. Allocate a starting zone. Clear one small area, your kitchen table, hall cupboard, coffee table, top of book case – anywhere. De-clutter it and then don’t allow any clutter to enter that zone.  Each day slowly expand that zone until you’ve done the whole house! (A notorious ‘horder’ friend of mine started with the telephone table in her hallway – which she told me felt manageable – and she ended up with a clutter free home!)

3. When you’re making tea, clean up the kitchen. If the kitchen is tidy, move onto the next room. It’s amazing what you can do in 3 minutes!

More of my favourite decluttering tips:

Schedule a de-cluttering blitz. Perhaps a day or weekend. Put it in your diary. Tell the family and get ready all the boxes and bags that you will need.

Clear out your medicine cabinet. Gather together all the medicines found across your house. Go through everything for the outdated stuff and throw it away. Keep everything left in one place.  It saves time in an emergency or just when you have a bad headache.

De-clutter for 5 minutes every day. You’ll be surprised how much you can get done tackling it in small chunks.

De-clutter one room (including all drawers, cupboards etc.) before starting on the next one.  You will enjoy being in that room, it will be much easier to keep clean and it will motivate you to do more.

Get some help. Ask a friend you trust to help you. They won’t have the same emotional attachment to stuff that you do.

Clear your desk. I can personally attest to the amazing feeling that a clean desk can give you. It’s such a simple thing to do, and yet it does so much for you.

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How to create the year you want

Hello and Happy New Year!   Each year many of us make New Year’s Resolutions and within a few weeks we have let them slide and perhaps even forgotten about them completely. Does this sound familiar?

So how can you make this year different?   When you start by knowing what really matters to you and what you want to achieve in the year, this will greatly increase your chances of success.

If you are serious about making changes in your life this year, use the 3 simple steps below to give yourself a head start.

Wishing you all the very best for a fabulous 2012.

Jo

P.S. See also my Top Tips for Success below!

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Three simple steps to being clear about what YOU want this year

STEP 1: Your life now, what works/doesn’t work?

Make a list of each area of life that is important to you (e.g. friends, family, love, health, finances, career, fun, travel, spiritual, community, personal development). Then for each area write down everything you like, what works well for you.  Next for each area make a list of what you don’t like/what doesn’t work.

When you have done this, decide in which areas you want to make changes and where you want to start.

STEP 2:  What do you want in 2012?
Use these questions to prompt you:
What do you want to achieve this year?
What do you want to look back on at the end of the year?
What would you regret not doing?
What would make a real difference to your life?
How do you want your life to be by the end of 2012?

STEP 3: Be specific
The more specific you are about what you want the better. For example, if you want to get fit, instead of saying “I want to get fit” (how do you judge this?); you may say: “It is 30 June and I am really pleased as I have just run 5km in 25 minutes.”  This gives you something very specific to aim for, you can work out how you are going to achieve it, you will know you have done it and you have a deadline. Perfect!

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Top Tips for Success whilst carrying out STEPS 1 – 3

Focus on what you want, not what others want for you.

What will make YOU happy?

Stop seeking approval from others. It’s your life.

Big goals or small goals?  Choose what works for you.

Take some quiet time to think about this.

You deserve to have the life you want.

You are not being ungrateful by wanting to make changes.

Eliminate should, ought, need to ….

Take responsibility. If you don’t do this, no one else is going to do it for you!

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5 common food myths uncovered

By guest author: Barbara Grimwade of Dynamic-Healing
In my practice I meet many clients who still believe old health myths. It’s perhaps not surprising as there is so much conflicting information out there.   Here 5 common food myths are revealed.

Food Myth 1: Milk and dairy are good sources of calcium
Although milk is typically promoted as healthy, there are many problems with dairy. Pasteurisation makes milk so much less absorbable and recognisable by your body, hence so many milk allergies. Processed milk also produces mucus in your body, which can exacerbate asthma, colds or respiratory, sinus, catarrh or ear problems.
The solution: Excellent sources of calcium are sesame seeds, leafy green veggies, canned fish with bones, and nuts.

Food Myth 2: Olive oil is healthy for cooking
Olive oil is great as a salad dressing. However, it is not the best oil to cook with. Cooking any vegetable oil at high temperatures destroys its antioxidants, creating free radicals (not good for your body) and changes the structure of the oil. The resultant molecules cause even more damage than dangerous trans-fats.
The solution: Pure coconut oil is one of the best oils for cooking with as it is highly stable at high temperatures. If you can’t get coconut oil, use butter or ghee for cooking instead.

Food Myth 3: Artificial sweeteners help you lose weight
Contrary to popular belief these can make you gain weight!! Although they save you calories, increasing research shows that aspartame and other artificial sweeteners stimulate insulin production in a similar way to sugar. When insulin is released without food, it causes you to crave sugars and carbohydrates. Elevated insulin levels also promote fat storage, so whatever you eat tends to be deposited as fat.
The solution: cut out all artificial sweeteners and minimise sugar intake. If you must use sweetening use a small amount of honey, maple syrup or stevia.

Food Myth 4: Drink orange juice to fight off a cold
A 12 oz glass of natural orange juice provides 125mg vitamin C and contains 8 teaspoons of sugar (similar to a soda)! You need between 1-4g of vitamin C (the equivalent of 8-32 oranges) when you are fighting a cold. Drinking juice in these amounts provides huge amounts of sugar which depresses your immune system.
The solution: It is better to use a good quality Vitamin C supplement such as calcium or magnesium ascorbate. 

Food Myth 5: Probiotic yoghurts are good for you
These claim to enhance your gut flora with good bacteria. However most of these products do not provide the minimum effective dose of 10 billion live bacteria to maintain healthy intestinal flora. Most contain 13-17 grams of sugar or worse, artificial sweeteners; and there is no protective delivery system to assure that probiotic bacteria survive stomach acid.
The solution: It’s best to buy a good quality probiotic in capsule form especially after you have had a stomach bug or have been on a course of antibiotics.

Author: Barbara Grimwade of Dynamic Healing.   Barbara has many years experience helping people to better health, often where traditional/Western medicine has failed.  To contact Barbara:

Barbara Grimwade
Dynamic Healing
T: (0034) 600 544 204
E: info@dynamic-healing.com
W: www.dynamic-healing.com

Thank you …. I’m feeling very grateful today

This weekend, I spent a few days with my brother and his girlfriend in London.   I had such a lovely time, they both look after me so well and my brother has to be a contender for the brother of the year award,  he really is a fabulous brother and person.   

This has got me thinking how much I have to be grateful for in life and I’ve been putting it on paper as a “gratitude list”.  So often we focus on what we don’t have and what we’re striving for and we miss out on appreciating and enjoying what we do have.   Those things can be the “big stuff” e.g. your friends and family and the “small stuff”  e.g. the smell of the jasmine trees as you walked back from the bus stop last night (that’s on my list).

My challenge to you today (if you choose to accept it) is to write your very own Gratitude List, a list of everything in your life for which you are grateful…. It will make you smile, I promise.

Yours, gratefully, Jo

Maintain that motivation

Motivation and how to maintain it is a subject that comes up frequently, in my own personal life, with clients, colleagues and friends.  Noone seems immune from the occassional (or not so occassional) visit of the procrastination monster.  It seems to be something that we can ALL benefit from some help with. 

These ideas to maintain motivation are all ones I have collected on my travels. I would LOVE  to hear what works for  you – please, please share them and I will pass them on.  Thank you.

 

Make a commitment to yourself & tell someone else – saying it out loud brings your goals to life and motivates you to take action.

Look at photos, pictures of what you want to achieve (or avoid).

Create a vision board (dream board, visual representation) of your goals.

Remind yourself of your goals every day and the benefits they will bring.

Be kind to yourself: don’t berate yourself when you don’t make as much progress as you want.

Reward yourself frequently, it maintains your energy levels and makes you feel good.

Celebrate success.

Keep a success diary.

Tick off your plan.

Finish what you start: get into the habit of completing tasks 100%.

Mix with motivated people.

Don’t procrastinate – action begets action.

Tell yourself to “just do it”.

Tell yourself “I can do this”.

Research the subjects of your interest. Keep your enthusiasm and ambition alive.

Stay healthy: eat well, drink lots of water and sleep well.

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Simple ways to deal with a confidence crisis

Coaching for women in their 30's & 40's

We have all experienced the awful feeling we get when a lack of confidence gets in the way and prevents us from doing what we want. We feel that we have short changed ourselves; that we are missing out on the fun, success, responsibility, romance etc that we would love to have.

Some of us experience this on a regular basis, others will be confident in certain areas, but less so in others. In work gatherings I rarely experience a lack of confidence, yet in large social gatherings (parties, weddings etc), I can feel such a lack of confidence that I appear (at least to myself) like a different person.

I used to tell myself that “some people are just so much more confident than me”, until I discovered a secret.  Many of those so called “confident” people are just like you and me, with all the same hang-ups and moments of lack of confidence.  The difference is that they choose not to let it get in the way of what they want and they find a way to go for what they want.  There is a lot we can learn from them including the techniques (or tricks) they use to increase their confidence. 

The confidence boosting tips suggested below are ones I have collected from friends and colleagues and I have road tested all of them. They are incredibly simple to use and amazingly effective.

Tip 1: Worried about what might happen?
Imagine the absolute worst thing that could happen if you make the leap. Very often it’s something that’s not too terrible and it’s worth taking the risk.

Tip 2: Suffering from “analysis paralysis”?
Do you procrastinate? Is it getting in the way of you taking action? If so, stop thinking and just do it.  I know that as soon as I stop coming up with reasons I cannot do something and say to myself “just do it”, then I do it!

Tip 3: Worried that someone may say “no” to you?
So what?  As my Dad always says, “if you don’t ask, you don’t get”.  If someone declines to give you what you want, thank them graciously. Learn from the experience and consider how you might approach it differently another time?

Tip 4: Ask yourself: What exactly is it you lack the confidence to do?
Sometimes what we want to do can seem like the equivalent of climbing Everest. By breaking the challenge down into small, individual, successive steps, you will realise that you are capable of all of them.

Tip 5: Going into unchartered territory?
For many, venturing into the unknown can be scary. Role play the situation with someone you trust; talk through what you need to do, the conversation you need to have.   Practise will give you the confidence to go into the situation and handle it well.

Tip 6: Do you have a voice in your head telling you that you cannot do something?
If you do, then shut it up! When you hear a little voice inside your head saying “you cannot do this, you’re….”, stop the thought and replace it with a positive one e.g. “you can do this, you are great at it”.

Tip 7: Who do you know/admire who is confident?
Watch and learn from others. Observe them, what can you learn from them?

Tip 8: Suffering from a general lack of confidence?
Give yourself a challenge; something that you wouldn’t do normally e.g. talk to 3 strangers at a party.  When you achieve this, I assure you that your confidence will increase and spill over into other areas.

Pick one or two of these tips that resonate with you and give them a try. They really do work.

Jo Orgill
Coaching  for Clarity, Focus, Motivation and Confidence
For women in their 30’s and 40’s

10 reasons to de-clutter

So why would you want to de-clutter your house, car, garage, office?

1. Feel BETTER!
2. Be able to think more clearly
3. Find things easily.
4. Save time.
5. Be less stressed.
6. Have more space to move.
7. Stop being embarrassed by your clutter.
8. Be more relaxed.
9. Increase your self-esteem
10. Save time cleaning.

See the recent post for 7 tips to get your de-cluttering started.

7 quick de-cluttering tips to get you started

Hi.  Many of my friends have been de-cluttering recently and telling me how good it has made them feel, so I wanted to share with you their and my top tips to get you started.

1. Allocate one place for papers.  Papers create clutter and we can waste a lot of time looking for something.   All paper that comes into the house (or office) goes in that one place.

2. Collect all papers in your house and put them in that one place. 

3. Allocate a starting zone. Clear one small area, your kitchen table, hall cupboard, coffee table, top of book case – anywhere.  Each day slowly expand that zone until you’ve done the whole house! 

4. Pick up 3 things and find homes for them.  Choose things you use that don’t have their own place.  If you’re not sure where they should go, pick a spot and then always use it. 

5. Create a ’maybe’ box for the things that you’re not sure whether to keep or not.  Put these items in a box and store it away out of sight (date the box).  Put a note in your diary six or 12 months from now. If you haven’t used anything in that box, throw or give away the whole box (without opening it). 

6. Clear out your medicine cabinet. Gather together all the medicines across your house.  Throw away all the out of date items.  Having everything in one place saves time in an emergency or just when you have a bad headache. 

7. When you’re making tea, clean up the kitchen. If the kitchen is tidy, move onto the next room. It’s amazing what you can do in 3 minutes!

Enjoy and please share your de-cluttering stories with me.

All the best

Jo Orgill

Time with your girlfriends is good for your health

Thanks to my good friend Fiona for sharing this with me.

In an evening class  at Stanford the last lecture was on the mind-body connection – the relationship between stress and disease. The speaker (head  of  psychiatry at Stanford) said, among other things, that one of the best  things that a man could do for his health is to be married to a woman  whereas for a  woman, one of the best things she could do for her health was to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends.  At first everyone laughed,  but he was serious.

Women  connect with each other differently and  provide support systems that help each other to deal with stress and difficult  life  experiences.  Physically this quality “girlfriend time” helps us to create more serotonin – a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression  and can  create a general feeling of well being.  Women share  feelings whereas men  often form relationships around activities. They  rarely sit down with a buddy and talk about how they feel about certain  things or how their personal lives are going. Jobs? Yes. Sports? Yes.  Cars? Yes. Fishing, hunting, golf?  Yes.  But their feelings?  Rarely.

Women do  it all of the time. We share from our souls with our sisters/mothers,  and evidently that is very good for our health.  He said that  spending time with a friend is just as important to our general health  as jogging or working out at a gym.

There’s a tendency to think that when we are “exercising” we  are doing something good for our bodies, but when we are hanging out with friends, we are wasting our time and should be more productively engaged—not  true.  In fact, he said that failure to create and maintain quality  personal relationships with other humans is as dangerous to our physical  health as smoking!

So every time you hang out to schmooze with a  gal pal, just pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for  doing something good for your health! We are indeed very, very lucky.

So let’s toast to our friendships with our girlfriends.  Evidently  it’s very good for our health.

Forward this to all your girlfriends – and  stay in touch!

The first steps to gaining respect from others…

…. respect them

… respest yourself

And learn to say  “no” without excuses or reasons. Just say “NO” !