Sarah's Search for Success

Paying it forward

Well, once again it's been an embarrassingly long time since my last post. So much has happened over the last few months that I hardly know where to begin! The biggest change for me has been to move up to sunny Coventry to live with my gorgeous man, which is actually two massive changes in one. You see, not only have I been living in Abingdon for something like 15 years, which is twice as long as I've lived anywhere before, I've also never lived with a man before. Oh I've shared houses with loads, but never with a boyfriend before, if I can call him a boyfriend when he's in his 40s. It is quite a big change to be sharing your entire life with someone all of a sudden - it does make quite a difference from just seeing someone as and when.  I'm over the moon to say that I'm absolutely loving it!

So what else has happened? I added business coaching to my repertoire earlier this year after training with the fabulous Peter Thomson, so that and the move has prompted some changes to my businesses. The IT business is in the process of being gradually run down and my customers handed over to trusted colleagues, and I'm focussing on the coaching business full time. I'm working with small business owners to help them to grow their businesses, and to deal with any blocks that they hit along the way. I've always loved the "breakthrough" side of coaching and NLP more than anything - it is both challenging and hugely rewarding, as it can totally transform people's lives.  It has transformed mine, hence my total passion for working with others to acieve their own breakthroughs. I was discussing this with a colleague the other day, who summed it up nicely for me when she said, "I understand, you want to pay it forward!". That hits the nail on the head - I know from personal experience how frustrating it can be to know what you want to do, but for some reason just not manage to do it, through procrastination, displacement activities, and just generally getting in your own way. And then you get to beat yourself up because you haven't done what you'd planned and achieved your goals, so you feel doubly crap about it all!

Here's the thing - it doesn't have to be like that, and I'm living proof! With a great set of beliefs and values behind you, you really can achieve almost anything. The trick is to kit yourself out with that great set of beliefs and values - more on that in a future post.

Maximising Time

Following on from the wonderful success of my last workshop, I'm running my next one in a week and a half, all about Maximising Time.  Now I don't know about you, but I often get to the end of the day and wonder just where on earth it's gone.  There I am sitting at my laptop, I suddenly realise that it's 7pm, I feel like I've actually been quite busy all day, and yet when I look back on what I've actually achieved it seems like virtually nothing!  How did that happen?  Again?!

I'm on film!

It's been a busy few weeks - I've run my first workshop, which was a great success despite starting half an hour late due to the entire town being gridlocked (I'm using a different out-of-town venue for the next one!), been over to Tony & Nicki Vee's Happy House in Austria to write my Vision & Purpose, and in between a ton of work, have been getting myself filmed!
Here I am telling my story in a testimonial for the Money Gym that was filmed last week - take a look and find out how I got to where I am today, and a little about where I'm going.

Inspiring Service

I was sent this link the other day, and have just watched the short video there:
http://www.stservicemovie.com/

Now call me soppy, but it brought a tear to my eye to watch and I recommend you take a look.  It'll only take about 3 minutes of your time, and it's worth it I promise you.  It might even give you some ideas...

Procrastinate Later

Have you ever procrastinated?  I know I have, in fact I have in the past had it down to a fine art.  Just look at how long I managed to procrastinate about posting to my blog recently!  I've also been an expert at displacement activity, and have been amazed at the number of things that I've got done that I've been putting off, in favour of the one thing that I really don't want to do.  And of course there's the all time favourite time-waster, the telly.

Well they always say that you teach what you need to learn, so that's exactly what I'm doing: I've been procrastinating about running a series of workshops for months now, and I'm finally running my very first one, Procrastinate Later, on Friday 11th January.  I would invite you to join me except that I procrastinating about posting to my blog for long enough that the workshop's completely sold out via business networking and my local Business Link's event booking service.  To say that I'm chuffed to bits is the understatement of the year!  Now all I need to do is deliver an outstanding workshop...

Oh, and there's that other thing I've been procrastinating about - I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and wish you the most amazing 2008!

I'm Back & I'm Proud!

Have you ever not been in touch with someone for so long that you feel embarrassed to contact them?  Well, it's a bit like that in the blogging world, so I'm not going to waste a ton of time on embarrassed apologies, just say that I'm back and I'm proud.  I have been busy in my absence, continuing on my development to qualify as a Tony & Nicki Vee World Class Coach and as an Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) Practitioner.  I've manifested a gorgeous man into my life - yes, I managed to attract a fellow biker who has an interest in personal development - how cool is that?!  I've been very nearly flooded, but escaped the waters, just.  A little disconcerting to have a river running up your street, and I know I was one of the lucky ones.  I've detoxed in Austria and retoxed back home.  I had my first speaking gig at a seminar in the summer and thoroughly enjoyed myself.  I've managed to totally confuse myself with the sheer amount of new skills I've learned over the last couple of years, hit my own brick wall, and finally broken through - talk about physician heal thyself!  All the time, I've been working with clients and case studies, gaining much needed experience and getting great results.
And now I'm here, I've finally arrived, and worked out my new brand to fit all those diverse skills under...

Long Time No Post...

It's been a long, long time since my last post, just in case you hadn't noticed.  So what have I been up to and why the extended absence?  Well, where do I start...?  OK, first off, I was away for a couple of weeks learning how to be an NLP Trainer, which I have to say was the toughest course yet.  I am immensely proud to have passed the three days of evaluation, especially as so many others fell by the wayside - did I mention it was tough?  During the course I managed to fight off the lurgy that was attacking a number of the other attendees, including the two lovely ladies that I was sharing a house with and one of the trainers.  A week later, it finally caught up with me, and knocked me down both physically and mentally.  Now I rarely get ill, and when I do, it's invariably my body's way of telling me to slow down, so for once I decided to practice some radical self care and give myself the break that I obviously needed.  Boy did I sleep a lot!  Not a lot of work done, a lot of catching up on reading in between dozing, oh, and I did manage to pull my share of the work at my motorcycle club's rally, at which we raised well over £1,000 for charity.  And then I slept a lot more...

Bike Ride on a Sunny Day

I've just returned from a lovely ride on my motorcycle over to Oxford and back.  I haven't ridden since January, and now I'm wondering why!  Have you ever not done something that you enjoy for a while, for whatever reasons, and then when you do get around to it you wonder why on earth you haven't for so long as it's just such darned fun?  Well that's what today was like!  The sun's shining, the flowers are blooming, it's a beautiful, warm Spring day, and just to give me that extra impetus I needed to get the bike out, give it a quick once over, and get the gear on, there was a hold up on my route into Oxford that was causing big delays.  It always makes me laugh when non-bike riders ask me why bikes filter through traffic.  There's one really very simple reason why we do it: because we can!

Isn't that the best reason for doing anything?!

Christopher Howard Seminar

I spent last weekend at Christopher Howard's Breakthrough to Success, which was a great weekend.  Apart from meeting up with a lot of friends, which is always wonderful, I met a few new ones.  To me it's worth going to trainings and seminars on a regular basis just to spend time with like-minded people!  It always gives me a massive energy boost.

And now for the seminar itself...

I am a Social Butterfly!

I have to say that I absolutely love my friends, slightly warped senses of humour and all!  They organised the most amazing birthday party for me on Saturday, complete with balloons, banners and cakes.  What they also did was dress me up. It's been a long standing joke with my friends that I'm a bit of a social butterfly: I flit from group to group and chat to the world.  So on Saturday they made it official.  Here I am, all dressed up with somewhere to go *grin*.  What a wonderful bunch of people they are, and I can't think why they thought I'd kill them for it - I thought it was brilliant!  All I can say is that if everyone there had half as good a time as I did, we all had a ball.  I'd like to say a big huge thank you to all the friends and family that helped me to celebrate reaching fabulous 40 - you are magnificent and I love you all!

And I've just about finished vacuuming up all the glitter that made it back to my house for the party after the party!