Tag: #personaldevelopment

How much is your word worth when you commit?

I am attending a three-day intensive in London. This will go deep into our Being – how we can choose to be in our lives. We’ll spend time looking at how we can shift our mindset to live life in a more fulfilling and graceful way.

Life has a way of testing us, and this week has been the test of my commitment to commitments.
I had committed to attending this intensive. On Wednesday I learnt my Eurostar to travel to London was cancelled due to strikes in France, and I couldn’t change it until next week.

But maybe these are the challenges we’re meant to face. I could have chosen to cry woe into the world, or I could choose to figure out a way to deal with it.

‘Being’​ and the power of coming from the heart rather than the mind

Last week, I attended the Ultimate Experience in India. The event was a gathering around ‘Being’, the way in which we choose to ‘be’ in our lives.
The idea is very simple. Our Being sets the foundation of how we show up in the world. We can choose to be loving and kind. We can choose to be the best mother, father, actor or production manager.

What I learnt in Mumbai is that our wisdom starts from our heart. When we recognise that our deeper knowing comes from there, it changes things dramatically. Now, I start from a place of love. The heart gives the framework for the mind to operate in. Coming from love and being in service is a central principle of what I do, rather than an after-thought.

I am a far more emotional and sensitive human than I ever really thought. Now when I look back on it, I was rather sensitive when I was younger, but somewhere along the way I had learnt to push that behaviour away.

Who are you Being in your life?

A tale of three cities – my travels through India

I’m currently in Mumbai, on the third and final leg of my tour of India.
My choice of places to visit was quite haphazard in some senses. Yet these three cities actually have given a really vivid and different set of experiences.
My most poignant moment was going into the slums. Through a chance interaction I spoke to a tuk-tuk driver who ended up taking me into his home. He was a music teacher, and so spent his time teaching kids how to play music. He did this along with his father.

Are you travelling to escape the reality of your life?

We often spend a lot of time fantasising about our next great escape. But what does that say about how we are feeling right now?
I’m travelling to India for ten days. In fact, I’m writing this on my layover in Istanbul Airport. I’ll arrive in Delhi in about 9 hours
A few days ago I started wondering whether I ‘should’ be feeling more excited about my trip. After all, isn’t the excitement part of the fun part. In the midst of my active life, was I missing something?
Ironically, by being more present to my day-to-day experience, I am strengthening the muscle which will allow me to enjoy my travels more fully.
What are you escaping from?

The tale of overdoing it (on personal development)

This week I’ve experienced a haze of uncertainty in my own sense of self. This has had knock-on effects in how assured I’ve been in how I operate.
A beautiful thing about self-development is that it questions what we think we know. This allows us to shift from old, outdated beliefs that no longer serve us, and sometimes gives us the challenge we need. It’s a healthy way to keep on evolving.

But the last few weeks I’ve been pushing myself *a lot*.

The great thing about overcommitment is that we can choose to slow down and reassess. Very few things are genuinely urgent. So when we choose to prioritise and focus, we actually learn far more about ourselves than we would do by ploughing through without stopping to reflect.

Why I returned back to my hometown after five years

Last weekend I traveled to Bath. This was the first time I had visited since the pandemic. Although I did come in 2018, it was a fairly fleeting visit as a tourist. This time, I made a point to revisit the places that had shaped me as I grew up.

Fast forward to January 2023, there wasn’t any particular reason for me to go to Bath. Nonetheless, I felt there was something important for me to explore about my own upbringing.

Before this weekend, I had a relatively negative view of Bath. I would often describe it as a boring place to grow up, and that it was difficult to fit in considering the majority-white background of the people here. Whilst this was not untrue, what I was also missing was the great things that I did get from growing up in an international, humble, historic-yet-modern city.

How to be truly consistent in your life

Early in my career, I worried about being a ‘streaky’ character. I would often ask myself – can I really be consistent over longer periods of time in the workplace? After all, I had done several internships of shorter timeframes ranging from 2 to 6 months.
In fact, this article is actually a particular achievement for me. It marks a year since I last missed writing an article for a week in this newsletter. In other words, I’m on a 53 week streak. It’s crazy to think that I’ve managed to keep up this level of consistency for such a long time.
The consistency worked because it worked for me. It is a personal thing after all. But equally, the way that I am being has shifted to naturally be more consistent.
The way I see and act in the world is very different to when I first started publishing articles.

Feeling ‘very busy’​ is a changeable state – no matter our workload

Over the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time working with people with increasing workloads. I can probably hear the word ‘busy’ being used at least 10 times each week.
This week I read something that really struck me this week – that being busy isn’t actually linked to how much work you are doing. Instead, it’s a state of mind.
Now I’ll be honest – such statements can get people’s backs up – ‘how dare you say I’m not busy, after all look how many tasks I have to do over the next 3 days?!’

Our anxiety is stopping us from making positive change

Through my professional and personal life, I’ve come across many extraordinary, driven individuals who want to make a positive impact in the world.
Unfortunately, what I also see is a lot of stress, anxiety and overwhelm. There is an increase in the amount of burnout which is negatively affecting people’s personal sense of wellbeing. This is sad in of itself – everyone deserves to live a happy, fulfilling life.
But also, when we are stressed or burnt out, we are also becoming far less effective in making the change we want to see in the world. This means the positive change is severely limited.
But the great news is that we can change our outlook. One of the big revelations for me was recognising that the barrier to my own performance was the way I treated myself.

The Life and Times of an ‘Author’​

One of life’s great achievements is to write a book. But what happens when you achieve it?
I started my book, Make Diversity Matter to You in 2020. After the events of Black Lives Matter, I wanted to do more to make a positive change in the world. I had previously worked in Diversity and Inclusion in the UK government. My experience demonstrated that the way in which diversity was polarised made it inaccessible to many people who would care.
So writing a book, what an amazing achievement right!? In fact, when I told people they frequently told me how I should be extremely proud.
Except, I wasn’t.