One of the exercises in our free eCourse http://www.aquariuscoaching.co.uk/eCourse.html is to take a good hard look in the mirror. It is amazing the power of such a simple thing (you can sign up for details).

Today I’ll be talking about another tip using a mirror. If you are having a conversation with yourself (which is OK by the way!) then conducting the conversation in front of the mirror can really help. It has many benefits:

1. It is much easier to be truthful to yourself when you can see the person in the mirror.
2. You can more easily motivate yourself or give a pep talk.
3. If you have to make a decision, if there is two of you, you feel more supported.
4. Because there are two of you, you will find you have more ideas.
5. It feels like you are connecting with a deeper part of yourself, the part that knows everything and knows no fear, only love.

There is much more, the best way to find out is do it yourself!

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It is becoming increasingly clear to me that people looking for a life coach or executive coach in their particular locality are struggling. It’s very easy to find a life coaching course to undertake, in order that you can become a life coach, however the person trying to find a life coach is having a hard time.

I’m looking into things that can be done here to assist this process. There are a few life coaching directories, however they don’t list very highly in the search engine rankings whereas the training companies have top spots.

The main one in the uk seems to be Find a Life Coach however it’s not broken down into areas so finding your local life coach in Derby or Birmingham for example is pretty tricky. Our site Aquarius Coaching currently features in the top ten for Derby, Nottingham and a few others, however not for all search terms.

One of my current projects is to start an area based coaching directory website in order to put potential clients in touch with their local coaches. When it is complete, I’ll add the link in here. If you are interested in being on the site, my current proposal is that it will be free for coaches and prospective clients to use with running costs generated by donation and advertising. Please contact me or leave comments in the blog.

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A high percentage of my clients have challenges with self-confidence. In fact, it is perhaps amongst the commonest of complaints and normally comes bundled with low self-esteem and self-worth.

To become more confident can be a daunting and challenging task. Many people seek help because by default, they do not have the confidence to do it alone. There are many things that can be done to improve self-confidence and the first is to examine the reasons that self-confidence is low.

A quick exercise is to think back to a time when you felt confident. Ask yourself what were you like, what were you doing, who were you with that made you feel confident. Was this self-confidence something you took for granted at that time? If so, what was it that made you feel less confident?

For some people this will be one or two events that triggered the loss of confidence. For other people, it may be that a steady stream of events, or circumstances over time affected their confidence.

Whatever the reasons, most people in this position can remember a time in their past when they felt more confident than they currently do. If you have always felt lacking in confidence, esteem or worth and wish to make changes, then I suggest hiring a life coach or other practitioner to help you.

In order to change to a more self-confident, worthy person with high self esteem, you first of all need to “fake it ’til you make it”. There is perhaps no simpler way of beginning the task than this. Once you can think more confidently and then convince yourself you feel more confident, you will begin to act with more confidence.

There are, of course, supplemental techniques - such as NLP that can help with this process too, so read some books or hire a life coach or NLP practitioner if you want to ensure good quality improvements.

It can be very hard to move out of a place of low self-confidence and it definitely takes a serious conscious effort, however for most people the rewards that confidence brings are worth all the time and work.

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There are some events and circumstances that occur in your life that really seem totally outside of your control and responsibility. At these times, it is important to realise that you still have control and responsibility, not over the event itself, but over your choice of response and any actions you may subsequently take.

This is how some people seem to effortlessly glide through life, whereas others seem to be at life’s mercy in some way, a victim of life’s challenges. Of course, even if you can take responsibility and seize control of these situations, they can still be very uncomfortable. The pain is much less if you deal with it than if you allow it to plod along unchecked.

People in the victim category often get muddled into thinking that everything is out of their control, that they have no responsibility for anything that happens to them. This is really a way to live a very unhappy, unfulfilled life and it takes an extraordinary fighting spirit (which I believe we all have within us) to lift free of this place.

There is a school of thought that says that everything happens for a reason, and to a degree this is true, however often this is misused and becomes an excuse for lack of responsibility. The things that happen to us are a direct result of our thoughts, feelings and actions - in other words we made them happen. They didn’t happen because the universe decided it for us, we create our own experience.

Taking responsibility is a delicate art: some people take responsibility for almost everything and are burdened with loads that they really do not need; others take responsibility for very little and live their lives on a default setting having very little input over where their lives go, accepting their rough deals as their lot in life.

Somewhere in between is good - a happy balance of accepting responsibility for your actions and thoughts and understanding that you have no responsibility for the actions and thoughts of others, but remembering that you do have responsibility for your response to their thoughts and actions.

If you are someone who wants more control in your life, then taking responsibility for yourself is a great step in the right direction.

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I enjoyed a wonderful conversation recently regarding the raising of children. We were discussing the fact that there are times when it is very difficult to be positive in your interactions with children, usually when the child will damage something or will create a mess.

Our autopilot often takes over and we find ourselves telling a child not to do something, which of course as any parent knows, actually serves to encourage the child to do the thing more.

In general, parents are focused to teach a child to avoid things and therefore will normally tell the child what not to do, rather than telling them what they can do.

For example, a child is playing in the bath with a pouring jug which they are happily filling up and pouring out into the bath. Then they decide to pour the water out of the bath and the parent says, “Don’t pour the water onto the floor”. This normally prompts them to continue, at which point the parent escalates the situation and either takes the jug of them, or takes them out of the bath. Of course, the parent is focused on the pouring of water onto the floor (it doesn’t matter that they are saying don’t).

To focus on the positive takes time and a change of habit - in the example, the parent could have said “Keep the water in the bath” which is focusing on what the parent wants the child to do, not on what they do not want them to do. This way of speaking to the child is much more likely to result in the bath water staying in the bath and not going on the floor. The other alternative is to say “Play nicely” or similar, though this is a little vague and will not always help, it is much more effective to actually state what you do want.

This focus on the positive is important in all aspects of life, not just in parenting. Someone who focuses mainly on what they want, or want to do, is much more likely to achieve these things than someone who focuses mainly on what they do not want to do, or what they want to avoid.

This is really just very simple goal setting: As a parent of a young child, by phrasing in the positive and focusing on what you want the child to do (not on what you do not want them to do), you are encouraging them to learn to set very good, positively focused goals; As an adult, thinking and speaking of what you do want, rather than in terms of what you don’t want, will help you set and achieve positive, effective goals.

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