I was in a training today teaching about the 4 main personality types, and their impact on your ability to lead a team. One of the participants asked a question – “How do I stop being so demanding of my team and pushing them way too hard – because it ends up in them losing morale and tension in the team”.

The answer to this question is so simple, yet it is one of the greatest lessons in life, and one of the hardest things we could ever do (when you don’t know how and have never been taught).

It all comes down to your relationship with yourself. Here is how. 

Every single relationship in your life, and how you treat others, is a direct reflection of how you treat yourself. This leader is only exceptionally hard on others because they are hard on themselves. And at no point in time, now, or in the future – will they ever be able to lead others with more compassion and empathy, until those things can be displayed to themselves. Hence, an easy...

We’ve all met them. We’ve all worked with them. The people who are completely oblivious to anyone else’s projects, time commitments and priorities apart from their own. 

The people who will happily hold you up and talk to you incessantly about their earth-shattering problem or issue, all the while ignoring the impatient look on your face, or the glancing at your phone or watch or your polite attempts to remove yourself from the interaction and get back to your priorities. 

The reality is that they are probably a really nice person with genuine concerns or problems. But they just don’t get it so they? 

You’re here to make sh!t happen. You have a vision for your life, a vision for your career and a vision for your team - and you know that your time is precious.

You don’t want to spend precious minutes or hours getting dragged into small-time drama and victim mentality. You have no desire to waste your energy and your attention units...

“Your life is the sum result of all the choices you make,

Both consciously and unconsciously.

If you can control the process of choosing,

You can take control of all aspects of your life.

You can find the freedom that comes from being in charge of yourself”.

• Robert F. Bennett 

One of the biggest hypes in the coaching and training world and one that does not sit very well with me is that you use coaching, training or personal development to be “happier, fuller, filled with love and light”. Whilst this can be true, to a degree, the truth is that this work is much more than that. 

The problem is that what this work truly offers is much less commercial, not very exciting and requires hard work and commitment. Hardly something you are going to be able to readily sell to a world that is looking for a ‘magic bullet’ to cure all their sadness, pain and confusion.

What inner work is REALLY all about is your ability to make moment to moment...

I was talking to a client this week who was struggling big time with his energy. He was constantly getting to the end of his work day completely exhausted - leaving nothing in the tank for him to spend time with and connect deeply with his family when he got home. 

It was becoming an issue because his children were growing up and he was worried that he was missing out on important quality time with them because he simply didn’t have the energy when he got home to be completely present - and family is one of his highest values. 

His career path, his role and the company he works for isn’t the issue that needs to be addressed here - he feels incredibly rewarded and fulfilled in the work that he does. 

This is an issue of self-awareness, self-worth and an inability to set boundaries with his team.

I’ll address self-awareness first. The reality is that no two people in this world are the same. Everyone has different needs, different wants, different...

How often do you come into a conversation and it frustrates the life out of you? Or you make decisions with another person and it isn’t what you wanted? Or the simple fact that you cannot stand the person talking to you.

Now, what if I was to tell you there was a way to overcome all of these problems? It is the missing ingredient in the boardroom. 

I want to start this with what happens in OUR boardroom, as a contrast to what happens in every business I have ever worked with. 

We have a business strategy session every Wednesday morning. And before we even begin to make decisions about the business, we start the conversation with what patterns we both have that are going to impact the decisions we make and how successful the business is. 

Our conversations go something like this: 

“I make decisions too quickly without considering all of the facts and all elements, and it can cause the business to have to pick up the pieces and change direction too...

We all say we want the higher and loftier status, positions and roles. We all say we want to take on more responsibility and pressure because with bigger roles and more responsibility comes more career satisfaction and success - right? 

And to an extent that’s correct - when we love what we do and we love the career path we have chosen for ourselves - rising up and taking on a higher role or position and taking on more responsibility brings us more opportunities, more exposure, more success and more money. 

What most people aren’t prepared for when they achieve the promotion or the new role they have been pushing hard for or saying yes to taking their career to that next level - is just how much their self-worth plummets and their unconscious sabotaging patterns take over. 

Let me explain. As you move through each stage of your career, you get really good technically and professionally at that phase. And this makes total sense right. You can’t...

If there is one thing I know about parenthood, it is that we kill ourselves to be the perfect parent to our children. I cannot even begin to count the number of times I have agonised over what a shit job that I am doing at parenting, and how scared I have been of how my kids are going to grow up. I am absolutely petrified of how they will ‘turn out’. And I feel like just about every other parent is too.

But there is something very profound that I have learned over my years of cultivating awareness and understanding human behaviour.

We are never going to get it right. Ever. We can try and fight all we like. We can hold ourselves accountable for every bit of dirt that we can find on ourselves not being the perfect parent.

The absolute, unequivocal truth of parenting and human behaviour is – no matter how hard we try to be perfect; we are going to give our children some level of patterning that is going to hinder them in the future. It is unavoidable.

Is it better...

We say we want a good life. A life of fun, happiness, joy and fulfilment. An inspired life where we feel deeply rewarded in our careers, where we lead and are part of an inspired team, have meaningful and connected relationships and make a difference in the lives of those around us.

Unfortunately, we are in fact the opposite. We are actually addicted to the problems, the issues and the drama in our lives that cause us unhappiness and stress. 

And when I say addicted, I literally mean addicted. When we experience a stressful event in our lives - which might be a tight deadline that we need to hit, a team member performance issue that we need to deal with, a personal crisis or a make-or-break career-defining moment - our body actually releases a cascade of chemicals into our system that gives us the energy, additional cognitive ability and stamina required to help us deal with the stressful event. 

I know you’ve all been there. The heart beating faster when...

There are points in your life when you will come to a crossroads, and you can either go back into safety, or you can bravely venture into the unknown.

The problem with this is, many people do not know how to venture into the unknown with a warrior spirit. Most people will habitually choose the safe road because that is the only way they know how. Except, that crossroads won’t ever fully go away (it will keep knocking on your door), and for these people that choose safety, a lot of the time a crisis will come crashing down on them and they will be forced to make a change.

So, what then does it mean to bravely venture into the unknown?

Bravely venturing into the unknown is when you do the following.

1) Something in life starts to become uncomfortable, it starts to annoy you, bug you, get on your nerves, you don’t like living that way anymore. It creeps up on you over time, and you start to recognise it and become aware that something is different =.

For example, I had a...

One of the things I am fascinated about is brain science. I literally read book after book on the latest studies that are proving the link between our mind, the thoughts that we have every day and our ability to harness this power to create any outcome we want for ourselves in life. 

To explain what happens at a very simplified level - the thoughts we have in our mind release chemicals into our system that create an emotional response in our body. As our body releases hormones to continue to create the feelings in our body that match our thoughts, our brain is constantly monitoring the way our body is feeling and will then generate more thoughts that correspond to the way the body is feeling. 

More thoughts generate more feelings and more feelings generate more thoughts - this is the thinking and feeling loop. 

This thinking and feeling loop creates our state of being - our reality.

Have a go for yourself right now. Practice thinking about something that is quite...