What kind of week has it been?

sleepy-bear1

What kind of week has it been? Feel free to answer if you wish, the question was initially posed by myself to myself to figure out what I was going to write about today.

I woke up this morning at some ridiculous hour for a weekend morning. This is something I do every Saturday to witness my youngest wake up and stumble out of the door to go do his paper round. This is often a painful anxiety ridden routine that is repeated just by me on a Saturday, but is played out every weekday morning with Lisa, plus or minus my insightful albeit irritating (according to my youngest and Lisa) interjections. On a Saturday however the pleasure of this delightful early morning encounter is all mine. I say all mine, I know Jack is present, but his take on the whole episode is very different from mine. To give you a better idea of my angst ridden Saturday morning I will describe it to you in some detail.

The day starts at 5am with Lisa’s alarm going off (or is it 5:30, not sure but it is bloody early). This is to alert her that it is time for Ben (our eldest) to get up to go to work at the Newsagent. This is essentially a redundant exercise as Ben is always up (he is like his Dad, he has no problem getting up and getting ready). I then go back off to sleep. 10 minutes later Lisa’s alarm goes off again! This I assume (I know I shouldn’t assume, but it is ten past effing five in the effing morning) is to remind her that Ben is getting up, for the life of me I don’t know why she needs reminding, at this point he is either eating breakfast downstairs or brushing his teeth. Now I am awake feeling a little stressed and guilty. I am feeling guilty that I am feeling bad thoughts towards my family and how much nicer it was when I could just lay in bed until say 8 O’clock (as I write this it is approx. 8:20am, and Lisa is still in bed!).

By about 6am I start to drift off to sleep again, only to be startled by to wakefulness by my own alarm at 6:30am. Time to remind Jack of his contractual obligation with the local newsagent. Jack does have an alarm on his phone, but we have discouraged him from using it, as for some anatomical anomaly he is incapable of hearing it, and yet the rest of the effing house can hear LOUD AND CLEAR! I find normally that if you repeat his name 4 times starting with a normal tone raising to a near shout is effective in the short-term.

It is now 6:40am, now my understanding is that he is due to be at newsagent at 7am, however Jack assures me most Saturdays that he needs to be there after 7:15am due to the apparent tardiness of the weekend newspaper delivery driver, and the owner cannot face having spending more than necessary amount of time in the company several adolescents that early in the morning and in such a confined space. As I explained Jack gives me these assurances on a regular basis, I am sure he is telling the truth, however every week, I manage to ignore this and start to get anxious, about him being late and getting in to trouble or even sacked. In the cold light of day, for the life of me I cannot understand why that would be a bad thing,  but then that is just me being a grumpy old bastard. So at 6:43 after I have visualised him being summarily dismissed from his position as newspaper delivery boy, I venture out into the freezing cold garden in my pyjamas to prepare his bike, safety equipment (hi-vis and helmet) and paper boys bag.

6:45am I am back in the house shivering, there is no sign of any movement from Jack’s bedroom. I shout up the stairs.

“Jack are you awake?”

“What?”

“Are you awake!?”

No response

“Jack!!!!”

“What!?”

“Are you awa…… doesn’t matter.”

I then hear the door shut. I feel better, he is up, I can relax.

7:08am I have not heard any movement since the door shut.

“You do know it is ten past seven?” I shout upstairs.

“I’m getting ready!!!!” Is he incredulous reply.

7:10 he is down stairs putting his trainers on staring into space, something comes on the TV that grabs his attention. It is as if someone has pressed his pause button.

“Jack! You are going to be late!”

“Calm down Dad, I tell you every week we don’t need to be the until after 7:15.

He gets up and leaves, shouting see ya as he walks out the door.

I do need to take a leaf out of his book, and just chill. He still gets there when he needs to. I just cannot be like that, I need to be somewhere early just so I know I am not late.

So that was my Saturday morning and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

I started with the question, what kind of week has it been?

Well it has been a great week. I may tell you about it tomorrow.

 

The Confidence Factor

I am back on track with my goal, of running the Hull 10k in June.

Being on the cuddly side of large, having confidence is a considerable factor when it comes to running.

The confidence is 2 fold. There is the confidence of being out in public in sports wear, looking like you are about to collapse in a pool of sweat gasping for air. Then there is the confidence in my fitness and ability to run any kind of distance.

Now back in November I was running 5km 3 times a week. So I can do it, I can have the confidence to run a good distance in public in shorts. After all not 18 months ago myself and Lisa stumbled round the Great North Run in front of thousands of people. The problem with confidence is though that it can leave you. When you stop doing something, or when something happens, that changes your mood.

Because I had a break from running for December and now most of January my fitness level dropped, and my mood dropped. Then I felt guilty that I wasn’t keeping fit and running like I said I would. Then I tried to start back up, without much planning and thought. So when I did go for a run a few weeks ago it was hard work and that took me by surprise as it was harder than I thought it would be. That knocked my confidence and dropped my mood further.

So what is different this time? Well I have planned for the run to hurt and for me to feel like s fat blob running in treacle. You know both the run on Sunday and today were hard but not as bad as I expected. I did feel self conscious but not as bad as I thought, I also made sure I ran when there was less people. I have also set myself a slow conservative regime slowly building the distance I run, but with the permission to run further sooner if I feel confident enough. So yes it hurt yes I feel a twit in my running gear, but in my mind I have the image of me in June running 10k and feeling so proud of my achievement. In fact I am feeling all emotional writing it.

I know I will falter again, each time I will re-examine my goal and my plan and keep doing that until I achieve my goal.

How are you doing with your goals?

I don’t know about you……?

lack-of-motivation-tshirt

Since New Year my motivation has been seriously waning. As previously mentioned my main goal this year was to carry on running and improve my fitness.

Well I am ashamed to say my progress to continue this goal has been completely pants. My motivation has not gone completely but it is not what it should be. One reason is that keeping fit has dropped in my priority list, and getting in from work and lazing around on the sofa has gone up in my priority list. This no doubt is a symptom of putting a lot of effort into my work at the moment, with the change in my working patterns still new. However this is not the full picture. I have also neglected my goal and the reasons why I why want achieve my goal. It is vital to check in regularly with your goal and your motivation to achieve it. This then leads you to examine the action plans you have put in place and test their effectiveness. I also have to accept that my goal maybe is not specific enough and it is not completely clear when I will achieve and what my level of commitment is. In a nutshell I have lost my way and let my goals drift.

I am certain if I had used a coach or even coaching conversations I would no doubt still be working successfully towards my goal. As I am a coach maybe I subconsciously decided to coach myself, or just fell into the trap of coaching myself. Self coaching though rarely works. As mentioned before coaching is about raising your awareness, shining a light on previously unnoticed potential, and noticing and testing assumptions. It is very difficult to see examine yourself objectively and not collude with your emotional self. A good coach can do that by asking high quality but really quite simple and obvious questions, that do what I described above.

Now I thought I would get us all started on defining our goal, testing our desire to achieve, exploring what actions we need to take, identifying the potential difficulties and so on. By asking a series of questions in a blind coaching style. So if you are up for it and would like to define your goal better and ultimately achieve your goal answer the questions below. This will get you started, however you will need to check in with a coach or someone you know that will not try to hijack you by giving you advice. Someone that will help you keep motivated. I am going to do it and check in with a coach at work I will then let you know how I am doing periodically.

Get a pen and paper, open your mind and be honest.

  • Do have something you want to achieve?
  • Can you write it down in a sentence?
  • When do you want to achieve this by? (Give an actual date such as 27th July 2018 instead of 6 months)
  • How will you know you have achieved it? (How will you measure your progress and achievement)
  • Using a scale of your own devising (1-10 if you like), how much do want to achieve this? (If your score is 5 or below have another look at your goal)
  • What can you possibly do to achieve your goal? (Possibly is the important word, use your imagination)
  • Is there anything else?
  • What resources could you possibly use to achieve your goal?
  • Is there anything else?
  • Who could you possibly involve to help you achieve your goal? (again be imaginative, don’t just think of people you know and speak to, think about who you admire, who has an impact on you)
  • Is there anybody else?
  • For those people you have contact with, how are you going to persuade people to buy-in to your goal?
  • Is there anybody else that could possibly help you?
  • What are the possible barriers to you achieving your goal?
  • What are the possible pitfalls you may encounter on the way to achieving your goal?
  • What are the possible risks to you achieving your goal?
  • How can you possibly overcome those barriers, avoid those pitfalls and reduce those possible risks?
  • What are the possible implications of you achieving your goal? (Both positive and negative)
  • What possible assumptions are you making about achieving your goal? (can be about you, other people, the goal itself or the result of achieving your goal)
  • When are you going to start achieving your goal? (again write down a specific date)
  • How much time will you need to set aside to achieve your goal?
  • Do you have space in your routine to accommodate this time?
  • If not what are you prepared to sacrifice to achieve your goal?
  • Can you write down in your diary, planner or calendar the time you have allocated to achieve your goal?
  • Using the scale you established earlier how likely is it that you will achieve your goal in the time scale you have set? (Be honest with yourself, your score is on or below the halfway point on your scale, then go back and examine your goal, your actions and timescales)
  • Now close your eyes and imagine you have achieved your goal. Imagine the feelings that evokes. What are your friends and family are saying? Spend some time creating a clear mental picture of your success to help you motivate yourself when you start to struggle.
  • Last of all what are you going to do to celebrate when you achieve your goal?

 

Now this will get you started, but if you are serious in making this change a permanent change then find a coach, to help you stay focussed on what you want to achieve. It does not have to cost a fortune, find someone you trust and who will not be tempted to offer you advice.

 

An Exciting Week of Coaching

Last weekend I wrote about the prospect of mixing my 2 roles this week.

Well so far so good. It has been a challenging but exciting week. Monday and Tuesday I suppose were standard kind of days. Monday was a nurse educator day, with a mixture of time in my office and an afternoon of auditing on a ward and then a lovely discussion with a teenage patient her Mum and their nurse. We spent about an hour in total talking about the teenagers experience on the ward and her treatment. It was a really informative chat getting a 3 way perspective of inpatient treatment on a Children’s Ward. To keep track of the impact our care has on the young person, their parents and the nurses delivering the care is so important, but manage to do that in one go with all three parties there is a first for me and quite brilliant, I hope the parent, young person and nurse found it useful too.

Tuesday was a coaching lead day. A large part of this day was spent preparing for the launch of the coaching network, the rest of the day was taken up with a team meeting and preparing for the next day’s Human Resources time-out.

So Wednesday was the HR time-out day. I was there to introduce so coaching skills and techniques to the HR Advisors. I had developed a bespoke training session (well I took an existing training day for managers and adapted it for HR Advisors). This was the first time I had trained anyone in coaching techniques singlehanded. To say I was nervous was an understatement. I was a complete needy wreck all morning. Once we were into the second half of the session and into the practice coaching session I started to relax and enjoy it. I can honestly say for large parts of the morning I was out of my comfort zone, and only in hindsight can I appreciate the session as a success. It was certainly a training day where we all learned.

Today I was back in my comfort zone with fellow nurse educators, holding the second day of the new starters catch up day, hosted by our Practice Development Matron. I facilitated the feedback session after the nurses had worked in small groups to analyse their first few months in our Trust. This is so important that both the Nurses themselves and the organisation take responsibility to learn from what worked and what didn’t work to improve our induction programs and to help us all to respond to the changing demands of delivering healthcare in 21st Century UK. Despite the challenges that are definitely evident it is heartening how positive the morning was with the emphasis being on solutions rather than problems. There are truly some talented future health leaders amongst these nurses. I certainly feel positive about our future healthcare.

Following the feedback I gave them a chance to form their own personal goals using blind coaching. I asked them a series of high quality questions designed to formulate a smart goal, examine how they are going to achieve it, what difficulties they may encounter and create a commitment to achieve it. Time will tell if any of them turn that goal into a reality.

One day left and another coaching conversation due tomorrow. A good week in all. I feel I am starting to make a difference, and influencing people’s relationship with coaching.

Blurring of roles and blind coaching

Multi-Cultural Office Staff Sitting Having Meeting Together

As you will remember from Being The New Boy Again blog that I am now doing two jobs in the hospital. Now some days it can be difficult to distinguish between the two. Monday was one of those days. It was a day designated to my role as Nurse Educator, but not exclusively for my home department (Children and Young People).

Now to explain to you what I was doing I will give you a little bit of background. Back in October the Hospital I work for recruited over a 100 nurses in one go, and the vast majority of them had just graduated from University. As a result all of us Nurse Educators came together to provide an extensive month long induction programme devised by the surgical nurse educator team and their inspirational manager. They came up with the programme as the team had done a similar smaller scale induction the previous year. This year required a mass mobilisation of nurse educators and specialists. It was a daunting and often frustrating undertaking but we achieved it. To be fair it was more they achieved it, as I was more on the periphery, having to plan a parallel bespoke programme for the children’s nurses. I did however contribute to the adult nurse programme by holding teaching sessions on error management and human factors.  So that was back in October, and at the time we committed to providing follow days to track the new nurses progress, provide clinical supervision and receive feedback about the induction and the subsequent preceptorship on the wards. And that was what I was doing on Monday.

The first part of the morning was spent with the nurses undertaking a personal SWOT analysis and then small group SWOT analysis. The idea was to generate personal and collective actions. This is where the 2 roles for me start to blur, as the facilitator of the feedback session for the group SWOT and for the individual SWOT coaching came to the fore. This is not unusual as a nurse educator is a coach and mentor and teacher at any point during the day. However as the feedback from the group analysis was being discussed, I was starting to see opportunities for the coaching network to address some of the issues that were being discussed. How a wider network of coaches and leaders taking a coaching approach would enable new nurses to better manage their transition from student to registered nurse, and how experienced teams integrate large numbers of new nurses in to their teams. This is all the more important at the moment where the NHS as a whole is finding it challenging to reduce the current turnover of nurses. The answer has to be to enable the nurses and other healthcare workers to manage positively how they approach working in a challenging environment. But that is the subject of another blog so I will not dwell on that.

I took a mental note of all these potential opportunities, with a personal goal of discussing them when back in my coaching role. Then I rushed headlong into another coaching role. To help the nurses think about the results of their personal SWOT analysis as a real tangible thing, rather than just an academic exercise, I held a blind coaching exercise. I asked them to identify what they wanted to achieve and then write it down in a sentence. Next I asked them to think when they wanted to achieve that by and asked them to write down the exact date, not just 6 months but what date is 6 months from today. I then asked a series of questions that explored how they would achieve, what they could use, who could help, what might stop the progress, how will they know they achieved it and many more. This blind coaching approach helps a group of people clearly identify their role, tests how committed they are to achieving it, and creates a personal accountability. Now not everyone in the room will be committed to changing something about themselves, but it exposes them to coaching and for those that commit to it will see the value of coaching when they achieve their goal.

My two roles will always bleed into each other , but they more often than not compliment each other as the aim of both roles is to increase knowledge and self-awareness for all the staff working in the hospital. On top of that both roles provide so much job satisfaction. I have felt a little overwhelmed at times doing both jobs, but at the same time I am having so much fun and their are more exciting times to come.

Do we put ourselves in pigeon holes?

I was reading a blog this morning that what prevents us from making lasting changes to our lives is the assumptions we make about ourselves and how we should think and behaved. These assumptions are based on our identity, whether that be professional or social. For instance as a nurse I am supposed to be giving, patient and self less among other things.

So we end up living up to our persona and what is expected, instead of what really drives us.

So I asked myself what assumptions do I make about myself that may limit what changes I perceive I can make.

Well I assume that I am less important than people in positions of authority, professionals and those that wear expensive clothes. This is quite clearly ludicrous but is definitely there. I will often position myself to be subservient to those I assume are better than me. I recognise that this prevents me from being successful in certain situations. Now coaching challenges these assumptions, creating an alternative narrative to these meetings where equality is the dominant thought.

Now that is a crude example but hopefully gets the point across.

So what assumptions do you make about yourself?

One I hear a lot is, I can’t run I am not the right shape. Now I’m not being funny but have you seen me. I have a round belly and little legs. You may not be built to break a world record but you can still run.

So once you have examined your assumptions then ask yourself if these assumptions are helpful and positive and which assumptions are starting to get in the way of you making changes.

Once you have identified these assumptions, look at what you value in life and live your life to your values not the pigeon hole you are currently in.

Don’t expect an overnight change you have had these assumptions a long time, so you will have to stop and ask yourself am I assuming this about myself or does it reflect who I really am.

If you live in Hull and want to discuss how coaching could challenge my assumptions. Send me an email or message me

Delving into my childhood whilst writing my story

As you will remember I have been writing my story, to help me make sense of myself as I get older and leave a legacy for my children.

Regular readers will also remember that over recent weeks I have been struggling with January blues. In fact according to the media this week is the week where people feel their lowest, and Monday was labelled Blue Monday. As you will remember exercise has helped chase away those blues, but this week those blues have been harder to chase away, so I decided to jump back into my story.

I have been delving into my memory banks, bank to when I was a toddler, like my memories of making Christmas decorations, going cockle picking with dad and my uncle George and auntie Sheila. That made me smile, in fact it gave me warm feeling. A feeling of love and happiness. Now my childhood was by no means perfect but there was a lot of love. That love has helped me chase those blues a little further away.

Restorative powers of exercise

Since completing the 50km challenge in Movember I have done very little exercise.

I have noticed that this has had a detrimental effect on my mental health. My resilience had been much reduced. Foggy has become a regular companion on my commute to work and he has hung about filling my heads with negative thoughts.

Now couple that with the self imposed need to appear positive and happy to everyone. This had been exacerbated during December with starting a new role and it being Christmas. To me that meant that I must be positive at all costs and not show any frailty. Trying to be unerringly optimistic when you actually think you are a useless piece of shit is quite exhausting. I had a couple brief runs but never really sustained it.

Trying to break the viscous cycle is not always easy, and it is all too easy to find reasons why you can’t break that cycle of self pity and feeling so low. The thing is when you find the right excuse, you start to feel guilty which confirms your self-loathing.

This weekend I decided to give it a go again. I went for a short 1 mile run on Saturday. The feeling it produced was quite profound. As I started to plan how I was going to return to running up to 5km again. I could now see that the feelings I was experiencing are transient. I went for another 1 mile run today with a plan to run a further 5 miles over the next week, then slowly increase the distance I run in one go. I started giving myself the opportunity to succeed rather than fail. I feel so much more positive.

Now during the runs I felt like my lungs were going to explode, and Christmas really had taken its toll. But very soon after the runs I felt incredible. The feelings exercise evoke are quite amazing. I feel so much more positive, the anxiety in the pit of my stomach is going and so is the tension in my jaw. I feel happy again.

If you are feeling blue, or useless, or cannot see anything positive in your life, then consider exercise, it is remarkable. I know that all I have to do to pick up my mood is go for a run. It makes me feel safe again.

Unashamedly Proud Dad and fan

On 2nd January 2018 saw me and Lisa at the Sesh in The Polar Bear, Hull watching our eldest son play bass with Vialetters.

Now this is the third gig we have seen them and only the 4th they have played.

What a triumph it was. Easily the best gig they have played. They grabbed the attention of the crowd with their new indie pop anthems Dopamine and We Found a Dog. It was as if they had been gigging for years.

They played 7 songs in total and had the crowd buzzing throughout. The host of the evening was rightfully gushing about their performance. Look out for Vialetters in 2018, definitely a band to watch. I know I’m biased but all those in the crowd cannot be wrong.

Check out their new song on sound cloud.

Dopamine- Vialetters

My story is starting to take shape again!

After a few stuttering starts I am finally back on track writing my story.

I have wanted to write a book for years, but never really had the confidence. Then last year you may remember that I started with a mind map or several on paper. Then it sort of got stuck there as I got bogged down with detail of the mind map and lost my confidence.

Then just before Christmas I decided to give it a go again. I transferred the work I did onto an electronic mind map with much less detail.

I finished this map yesterday. This time I decided to write an overview of my story using the map as a reference point to develop the story.

I started writing up the overview this evening using google docs. As it gives me the flexibility to write when the feeling grabs me, and I can then go back to the map to remind me of any details I may forget.

Now I know I may falter again, I also know that I can adapt my approach and go again if it becomes a struggle again. My reason to write is stronger than my reason not to.