My latest newsletter was about dealing with people you find hard, because you don't like or respect them. (If you haven't subscribed yet then click here to read it). One of the things I talked about was not bitching about them behind their back. Today, amidst all the talk of giving up things for Lent to make yourself a better person, I suddenly thought, "why don't we ever use this time for personal development, for changing our attitudes for the better". We only tend to talk about fasting and missing out food like chocolate but increasingly people are looking at a broader understanding of giving up things. Granted, the idea of giving something up is as a sacrifice, to prepare us for Easter and to mirror Jesus fasting in the desert so maybe developing ourselves by giving something up might not fit for some of you.

If you have no other plans for Lent though, consider sacrificing one of the habits that you are least proud of. Maybe it will be something related to how you deal with your colleagues and co-workers. What could you do differently that will make you easier to work with? How could you stop being annopying in return, to the person who constantly winds you up? What poor reactions do you want to stamp out when someone frustrates you at work?

Whilst this might be harder than giving up chocolate and may not have such a visible effect, it could be the start of new ways of behaving that ultimately make you a more attractive person to deal with. If you need help working out how to manage the change or make it stick then get in touch for a free chat

As I look out of the window this morning, I see hardly any snow at all. The overnight rain has thrown off the white blanket. Its over. For now.
Its a bit like Christmas - for the last few weeks the anticipation of the day has been vying with the snow for column inches but now they're both behind us, what will we talk about?
Last night I was talking to my mate about regrets - with every new day of icy-cold weather I had promised myself some time off to go climbing, particularly on a local gully that was looking good. Each week I was seeing him post new pictures on facebook of where he had been but I was roped only to my desk, or wherever I was working at the time. Now, as I look out, I can see that the local hills have lost their covering of snow and I suspect every last vestige of ice on the climb I was considering has flowed down to the loch.
I was preaching yesterday about regrets and disappointments surrounding Christmas. Did it live up to its own hype? Have your family gatherings fulfilled your dreams? Did Santa bring you everything you had hoped for? If the answer is no to any of these, then what are you going to do about it? Maybe there is a question over what is possible, but once you dig deeper what could you actually change? Often with repeated events we badly want it to be different to the unsuccessful previous occasion but yet we don't change anything or do it differently. Surprise, surprise, we get the same result. I don't subscribe to my friend's view that we should 'forget the past so that it doesn't screw up the present'. There is too much to learn from our past experiences to cast them out regardless - even the painful events have something to teach us. Regrets are not good but they can be useful if they drive us forwards to change something next time around.
As you look back over the recent past, whether it is the snowy spell, Christmas or even 2010, what regrets have you got? What will you change in the way you do things in 2010? Maybe you have no regrets, in which case I would ask what you are going to do to ensure that is the case again next year? What worked well this year that you want to continue with?
In this slack time between Christmas and New Year, take some time to reflect on what you could do differently, and better in 2011.

"Education is nothing but a diminishing lie"
Lindsay and I were chatting to a friend recently and the subject of education came up for discussion. In the last few weeks this has been a recurring topic, particularly the idea of teachers contradicting themselves as you go further through the system. They used to introduce a concept in the early years using such a simplified model that in later years they had to admit that they lied to you to help you understand; "Welcome to the new model" (but is that accurate either?)

That then made me think about becoming more self-aware. Is that also a diminishing lie? I think there are many people in this world who want to be something or someone that they are not. "But we can all pretend, can't we?". Pretending is not the end of the world so long as we are completely aware that it is a little piece of fantasy that we have introduced for a short space of time. In a healthy sense we can call it imagination and we encourage it in children and people in creative jobs - although its surely a good thing in anyone, but that's a story for another post.

However if we continually live in the fantasy world it becomes unhealthy and we call it delusion. This is one of the reasons it is so important to become more aware of who we really are and lessen the lies that we tell ourselves. Sometimes that will hurt - we don't want to hear the bad news. Or alternatively, we know inside what the issue is and how to rectify it and that is the bit that will be hard work. So we lie to ourselves to avoid dealing with the issue. But until we deal with it, like any conflict scenario, it will always be with us blocking our path.

But...there are some people whom we would generally describe as bashful who never really recognise the talents that they have. I watched some of Masterchef professional last night - down to the final three, making desserts for the famous pastry chef, Pierre Hermé. Afterwards, he commented to one finalist that her offering was so good he could have sold it in his own establishment. Her reaction to that, she said, was to gain confidence in her own abilities. To which I thought, if she is in the Masterchef Professional final she must have a wee bit of cookery talent. Presumably she knows it deep down otherwise she wouldn't have entered the competition, but I know of lots of other people who are completely blind to their skills. It frustrates me sometimes to see them willfully ignoring the potential that they have but are not using.

Self awareness is not just about seeing how we match up alongside the competition - that can make us proud or despondent. Instead it is about ignoring the lies and objectively looking at what our weaknesses and strengths are, working on the first but revelling in the other. Let's continue to 'diminish the lie'.