Building Unshakable Confidence: Unveiling the Power of Confidence Karma

Confidence – that elusive quality we all strive to possess. It empowers us, propels us forward, and enables us to conquer our most significant challenges. Yet, at times, confidence seems to evade us, leaving us feeling uncertain and hesitant. This blog post delves into the root causes of a lack of confidence. It explores practical strategies to reclaim and nurture our self-assurance. But first, let’s introduce a unique approach: Confidence Karma. This approach recognizes that we boost our own confidence as we seek to uplift others, creating a positive cycle of growth and empowerment.

What causes of a lack of confidence?

• Unfortunate comparisons: In the age of social media, it’s easy to fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to others. Measuring our achievements against other people’s ‘highlight reels’ can erode our self-esteem and lead to a lack of confidence.
• Past failures: Negative experiences and setbacks can linger in our minds, creating self-doubt. ‘Reliving’ past failures without acknowledging the lessons learned hinders our ability to move forward with confidence.
• Fear of judgment: The fear of being judged or criticized by others can paralyze us. Worrying about what others might think stifles our authenticity and it prevents us from fully embracing our unique abilities.
• Self-limiting beliefs (SLBs): Deep-seated beliefs about our worthiness and capabilities can hold us back. These SLBs, often formed during childhood, create a fixed mindset that impedes our growth and stifles our confidence.

How Do You Fix a Lack of Confidence?

• Self-reflection: Awareness is the first step towards positive change. Start by examining the root causes of your lack of confidence. Be honest about the negative thoughts and beliefs hindering your self-assurance. 
• Embrace imperfection: Shift your perspective on failure. Understand that setbacks and mistakes are stepping stones to growth and success. Embrace the idea that perfection is unattainable, and that progress is more important than flawlessness.
• Cultivate self-compassion: Treat yourself with kindness and understanding. Replace self-criticism with self-compassion. Recognize that everyone makes mistakes and that it is okay to be imperfect. Nurture a loving relationship with yourself.
• Surround yourself with positive influences: Gaining support from encouraging people can positively affect your confidence. Seek out mentors, friends, or communities that uplift and inspire you. Their positivity will fuel your self-belief.

The Power of Confidence Karma

Now, let’s explore the innovative Confidence Karma approach. By focusing on building our own confidence, we become catalysts for confidence in others. Here are keyways to embrace Confidence Karma:

• Encourage and uplift: Offer genuine compliments and words of encouragement to those around you. By lifting others up, you create a positive and supportive environment that fosters growth and confidence.
• Share experiences: Open up about your struggles and triumphs. By sharing your journey, you inspire others to embrace their own challenges and build resilience. Remember, we’re all in this together.
• Mentor and support: By sharing your wisdom, you empower others to believe in their own abilities. It can start small. By offer guidance and mentorship to people who may benefit from your knowledge and experience your confidence will grow too.

In conclusion, confidence is not an unattainable trait reserved for a select few; it’s a journey and a skill that anyone can learn. By understanding the causes of a lack of confidence and implementing practical strategies, we can reclaim our self-assurance and embark on a journey of personal growth. So, let’s embrace the power of Confidence Karma. Let’s challenge the comparison trap and replace it with self-acceptance and self-love. Let’s acknowledge our past failures as valuable lessons and stepping stones toward success. Let’s release the fear of judgment and embrace our authentic selves unapologetically. Let’s shatter self-limiting beliefs and adopt a growth mindset that propels us forward. Remember that by the Confidence Karma approach, we not only build our own confidence but also become beacons of empowerment for those around us. As we uplift and support others, we create a ripple effect of confidence that reverberates through our communities.

Get in touch with Gary to discuss you goals, or just to ask a question about the book.

Check out:

• Gary Wood’s TikTok account
• Gary’s book Confidence Karma

About the author: Dr Gary Wood specialises in translating in evidence-based psychology and coaching principles into practical solutions. Having taught psychology and learning skills at UK universities, he is a frequent guest on radio and television, offering expert analysis and coaching tips. As a trusted agony uncle for numerous magazines and websites, Gary Wood’s insights are widely quoted in the press, establishing him as a go-to resource for personal growth.

How do we define wellbeing? And what does it mean to you? Are you well?

One way we can bridge the gap between ‘common sense’ or everyday ideas, pop psychology and academic knowledge is to look at working (operational) definitions of key concepts – in this case, ‘wellbeing’ – to put us on the same page.

In the following short video, I discuss how we define wellbeing and how the psychological approach differs from everyday chats about wellness. And a transcript of the video follows.

Buy ‘The Psychology of Wellbeing’ at Amazon UK or Amazon US

Transcript of the video How do we define wellbeing? And what does it mean to you?

Some years ago, I had a comical stay at a bed-and-breakfast guesthouse. And on greeting the owner with ‘Good morning. How are you today?’ he replied, ‘Do you really care?’
And, at first, I was taken aback. But it is a valid point. In our routine chats about wellness, how DO we tell genuine interest from social ritual?

As more of us now spend more time thinking and talking about wellbeing, it’s crucial to ask what it is. Because if we can’t define it, then how can we understand it to improve it?

I’m Gary Wood, author of The Psychology of Wellbeing, which uses self-reflection and storytelling to explore what makes a ‘good life’.
It begins by looking at our everyday exchanges on wellness, to reveal a complex process at play. Each time, we tap into OUR definition of wellness and edit pre-existing scripts to tell our life stories as we go. And these accounts vary by our mood, by setting, by time, and with different people, as we choose to give the full story, the headline news or a just stock reply.

Now this vague approach might not matter in everyday chats, but in academic research, clarity is vital. Our goal is to study wellbeing in a systematic way to isolate the personal view from the general principles, if we can. So, a working definition puts us all on the same page.

At its most basic, wellbeing is just ‘feeling well’. It’s your experience of ‘health, happiness and prosperity’. And it includes your mental health, life satisfaction, meaning in life and how you cope with stress.

It is useful to think of wellbeing as a state of balance. That is, how well your personal resources meet your life challenges.
Also, at the centre, we need to define the thing that’s being well – the self. It’s that constant and predictable sense of you as a ‘separate, experiencing being’. Because in psychology, our sense of ‘who we are’ plays a crucial role in social interactions, motivation and our decisions around wellbeing.

Now as you unpack YOUR personal definition of wellness, it describes a widening circle from self to others. You might start with health, wealth, leisure, work-status, and relationships. Then extend your view to where you live, and community. And then wider still to the economy, the state of the environment, and the trust you put in governments.

Now, we’ll all have varying degrees of control on these aspects of wellbeing – from a lot to almost none. And much of our experience is shaped or framed by various intersecting factors, such as age, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.

The Psychology of Wellbeing offers a subtle nod to a self-help book and uses mindfulness in a more critical way. It invites you to reflect on what wellbeing means to you? What factors confer a wellbeing-advantage for you, the knock-on effects for others, and what impedes your wellness story? And crucially, it helps you to explore what to do with these insights.

Buy ‘The Psychology of Wellbeing’ at Amazon UK or Amazon US

About the author
Dr Gary Wood is a Chartered psychologist, solution-focused life coach, advice columnist and broadcaster. He is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has more than 20 years’ experience teaching and applying psychology, in universities, in corporate settings and in the media for magazines, radio and television. He is based in Birmingham and Edinburgh, UK.

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The Psychology of Wellbeing – An Introduction

The Psychology of Wellbeing is the third book in my ‘Routledge triptych’. The first was The Psychology of Gender, and in the final chapter, I began to explore the idea of storytelling in psychology. And in the third book, I develop this idea and team it with the self-reflection. This gives the book a subtle nod to self-help books. It also connects it to the second book in the trio is Letters to a New Student. It’s a strong study skills book with a strong emphasis on wellbeing. And, after writing it, I developed the idea of study skills as life skills, for a workshop.

In the following short video, I introduce the main themes in The Psychology of Wellbeing and pose the questions it attempts to answer. And a transcript of the video follows.

Buy: Amazon UK  /  Buy: Amazon USA 

Transcript for The Psychology of Wellbeing introductory video:

Questions of how to ‘live the good life’ & to ‘live long and prosper’ have occupied us for thousands of years. But in recent times there’s been a massive boom in wellbeing. It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry, that shows no signs of slowing.

More of us now spend more time talking about wellbeing, reading about it, researching it, and writing about it. From magazines to self-help books, from workplace reports to government papers. And with so much on offer, it grows ever tougher to sift the science from the ‘snake oil’.

So how do you decide what works, what doesn’t, and what’s just hype? How do we spot the breakthroughs from the fake news? And crucially, what does wellness mean to you?

Is it financial security or good relationships? Is it having a purpose in life and setting goals? Is it being mindful or grateful? Is it all down to positive thinking or simply good luck? And fundamentally, does it really count as wellbeing if it comes at the expense of another?

I’m Gary Wood author of The Psychology of Wellbeing. It’s a short, accessible book to bridge the gaps between ‘everyday’ ideas, pop-psychology, and academic knowledge. But instead of trying to supply all the answers, the book uses self-reflection and storytelling to build critical skills to ask better questions.

Written in the middle of a pandemic, and with a few health challenges of my own, the book asks you to look at where you get your knowledge and how you know you can trust it?

Who’s got your ear? Is it scientists, academics & doctors, self-help gurus, journalists or those politicians who tell us not to listen to the experts or trust the evidence of your senses but to take their word for it? Or maybe it’s ‘friend of a friend’ who ‘knows someone who heard something’.

The book looks at definitions of wellbeing, the self and normality, the impact of inequality, the effects of stress and how trends such as mindfulness and positive psychology can shape our happiness, and our view of the world. It also offers a critical review of the self-help industry and a plan to help you choose & use self-help books to best support your wellness goals.

But most of all, The Psychology of Wellbeing helps us to understand the wellbeing stories of others and tell better wellbeing stories of our own.

About the author
Dr Gary Wood is a Chartered psychologist, solution-focused life coach, advice columnist and broadcaster. He is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has more than 20 years’ experience teaching and applying psychology, in universities, in corporate settings and in the media for magazines, radio and television. He is based in Birmingham and Edinburgh, UK.

Buy ‘The Psychology of Wellbeing’ at Amazon UK or Amazon US

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Buy ‘The Psychology of Wellbeing’ at Amazon UK or Amazon US

Reflections on Writing ‘The Psychology of Wellbeing’ – based on the preface to the book

During the first UK lockdown in the Coronavirus pandemic, I was putting the finishing touches to my book ‘The Psychology of Wellbeing’. The writing process was beset with a number of health and wellness concerns of my own. I’ve discussed these in the preface to the book, and in this short promotional video. And I also ponder the relationship between readers and writers of a book. 

Buy: Amazon UK  /  Buy: Amazon USA 

Transcript of ‘Reflections on Writing the Psychology of Wellbeing’:

Sociologist William Simon writes that ‘All attempts at theorizing social life are, at the same time, works of autobiography’. And I’ve joked more than once that writing this ‘wellbeing book will be the death of me’. Because it wasn’t so very far from the truth. A major depressive episode didn’t help the writing process. Neither did another attack of sciatica and lower-back pain, a tooth broken beyond repair, and finding a lump in my armpit. And all this at the start of a pandemic.

It caused me to question if psychology had anything to say about improving wellbeing. And even if it did, was I fit and ready to write it? It certainly didn’t seem so. Also, this book is part of a bigger story – a series called ‘The Psychology of Everything’. And, I realized I’ve never stopped to ask if psychology does have something to say about everything. And yet, somehow,  here we are.

Before starting this book, I thought it was lexicographer, Dr Samuel Johnson who wrote, ‘a writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it’. But we can’t pinpoint where Johnson wrote that. We just find traces of others telling us he did. And this is a reminder to check our sources of information. But whoever said it, the sentiment holds true. Books are paths crossed in the autobiographies of writers and readers – even if we share just a page or a few lines, or a quote for an essay.

I’m GaryWood, and in this book, I tell you A story of the psychology of wellbeing. And within reason, I’ve tried to let my voice come through, albeit with fewer expletives. Because as you reflect and take the story forward, it’s vital for you to know where it came from. It’s shaped by my personal and professional experience, just as your story is shaped by yours.

Sociologist Stanislav Andreski contends that ‘anybody who searches for the truth about human affairs and then reveals it cannot avoid treading upon some toes .’And, if I’ve done my job right, it might burst a few bubbles, pull some rugs or even cause the odd existential shrug. But hopefully, it will empower too. It isn’t a ‘because I say so’ kind of book. I view writing as an act of rebellion. My approach to life coaching is the same. I encourage and challenge people to be themselves, or transcend themselves, despite themselves.

The book aims to answer frequently asked questions and offers you a critical framework to ask better ones. These are your paths of continuation for reading, writing, and researching wellness. You take up where I left off.

So here it is. Over to you.

About the author
Dr Gary Wood is a Chartered psychologist, solution-focused life coach, advice columnist and broadcaster. He is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has more than 20 years’ experience teaching and applying psychology, in universities, in corporate settings and in the media for magazines, radio and television. He is based in Birmingham and Edinburgh, UK.

Buy ‘The Psychology of Wellbeing’ at Amazon UK or Amazon US

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Buy ‘The Psychology of Wellbeing’ at Amazon UK or Amazon US

Self-Help Information Overload? Time to Stop Reading and Start Applying It?

Buying a self-help book can be a useful and low-cost way to work on our development. Of course, not all books are created equal, but I’m bound to say that. Working as a problem-page columnist for many years one of the strategies to cope with the limitation of only have 100 words to reply, was to suggest a book. So, it made sense that eventually, I wrote some self-help books. My idea is that you should approach my books like complete personal development courses, do all the exercises, apply the insights, and take action. And for many (including me), that’s the sticking point. What do we do with the knowledge once we have it? The same applies to workshops, courses, counselling, therapy, physiotherapy, and so on. Sometimes, with too much information at our fingertips, it’s difficult to know where to begin. This blog discusses how coaching can help offers a few pointers with the overall strategy of ‘start small and be consistent and persistent’.

Little by little, a little becomes a lot

In a previous post, I offered three tips to get the most out of a self-help book and the essence of this is to approach these books with a more academic, more structured approach. Taking a step back ask yourself what do you want from the book. Is it just a little reassurance and comfort that everything will be all right in the end, or do you want to take action to help out that outcome? The same applies to workshops and blocks of counselling sessions. What is the future desired outcome for these? There’s an assumption that if we talk about things and put the time in then things will eventually fall in to place. Instead what we find is that we amass a wealth of knowledge that we don’t quite know what to do with. And, I include myself in that. The secret is to pick something, a tiny action or change, carry it out consistently and review its impact. Taking action is the quickest way to change perception.

The viewing influences the doing and vice versa

In solution-focused coaching (and therapy), we work with the idea that ‘how we view the world affects what we do in the world’. So, collecting an overwhelming amount of information only leads to feelings of overwhelm. Perhaps, the best advice I ever got as a writer is that we don’t finish books, we abandon them. If that sounds a little harsh, it means that there is always another tweak, another rewrite, and another piece of information we could add. But with that approach, there would be on books just unfinished manuscripts. It helps to break the stranglehold of procrastination if we see a goal as the next chapter, instead of absolute and ultimate truth.

How coaching helps with self-help overload

The never-ending quest for information is the quest for a certainty that does not exist! Most of our decisions in life and made with incomplete information. Mostly we work with educated guesses. In coaching, you as the client bring agenda. It’s my job as the coach to shoulder some of the burdens of organizing and planning the strategy. This approach includes making use of your knowledge, resources, strengths, and skills. My job, as the coach, is to ask questions that keep you accountable to your goals. We put our heads together and come out with solutions and steps forward. Often, the steps are quite small, but the effects can be quite profound. A small step is often all it needs to break the stranglehold of procrastination and get things moving forward. Coaching helps to get you out of the ‘spin-cycle’ of thinking-for-thinking-sake. Clients often come to me thinking they have gone round in circles, and that they have wasted time on books, workshops and therapeutic interventions. The truth is that coaching works with whatever. It’s all groundwork, and we’ll start first with whatever resonates with you the most. And, we work with the basic principle that it only takes a small step to tame the whirlwind. Once you’ve set your goals, coaching will help and support you to channel your efforts into reaching them.

So there you have it:

• Approach self-help books in a more formal, structured way with a view to applying what you’ve read
• Work with a coach to channel your knowledge, skills and strengths to take you towards your goals.
• There’s no such thing as a step too small in the right direction. Just make a start and be persistent and consistent, and review the impact of the actions as you go.

Further reading

The blog posts mentioned in this post are:

• 3 Top Tips: How to Get the Most from a Self Help Book
• What Does “Don’t wait for your ship to come in, swim out to meet it.” Mean?
• What is Solution-Focused coaching?
• Why You Shouldn’t Ask ‘Why?’ And What Open Questions You Should Use Instead
• Self-help books by Gary Wood

About Gary Wood

Gary is a Chartered Psychologist, Solution-Focused Life Coach and author, based in Birmingham and Edinburgh UK. He helps clients achieve their goals, working face-to-face, on the telephone and via Skype.

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When that brick wall is a mental block – how coaching can help you to grasp the goals you reach for

Often our goals are in sight but seem out of reach. It might feel that you take one step towards your goals, and they seem to take a step back. I get many queries from potential clients saying just that. They talk of brick walls and mental blocks and self-sabotage. Sometimes there’s a post-mortem of what they should’ve done. In this blog post, I challenge that goals being ‘out of reach’ is a bad thing. It’s not. It’s how things should be. It’s how coaching works. 

Accepting Things the Way They Are

A few years ago, I took a course in pranayama (breathing yoga) as part of the research for a book. One phrase, from the course, stuck with me: the present moment is inevitable.  As a personal and professional development coach, my first job is to challenge clients to consider that things are as they should be and that this moment is a starting point. The alternative is to indulge in ‘why’ questions, which are abstract, philosophical questions. You can a different answer every time you ask why? And every time, they cause you to look back. Instead, in coaching, I ask lots of concrete ‘how’ questions. They will take you forward. In coaching, the first step is to accept that whatever you’ve done up until now has got you here. It’s just that you now need a different plan to take you further. And that’s what we’ll work on, together.

Our goals ARE out of reach –  at the moment

As the Robert Browing line goes ‘One’s reach should exceed one’s grasp, or what’s a heaven for?’ It’s the purpose of coaching to reduce or eliminate the gap between reach and grasp. Goals are supposed to stretch us. The secret is not to set them so far out of reach that we lose hope and motivation. Conversely, if we make them too easy, we’ll tire easily, become bored and give up. Coaching aims to tread that fine line between resolution and resignation. So, if the goal is very grand, we simply break it down into a series of milestone goals that stretch you. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is just to take some action, any action, in the direction of the goal. It doesn’t matter how small that step is. I’ve pretty out the Tanzanian proverb ‘Little by Little, a little becomes a lot‘. The quickest way to change perceptions and attitudes is to take action. By the time you’ve reached the first milestone, your perspective will have changed, and you’ll be better equipped to tackle the next one.

Brick Walls and Mental Blocks

Some people talk of ‘mental blocks’ as if they are physical barriers. They aren’t. Coaching is about working with you to remove attitudes that get in the way of moving forward. It involves challenging negative thoughts and self-talk and looking at alternative metaphors, scripts and ways of describing situations. But it’s also about taking stock of skills and strengths to create a method of working and an action plan that’s tailor-made for you. In coaching, it helps to ‘suspend your disbelief’ and enter into it with an attitude of positive anticipation. Instead of asking will it work’, ask ‘how will it work?’ It’s also about trying things out like personal experiments – testing the water to assess the impact of a small step forward. Ultimately, with any attitude, it’s important to ask ‘How is this taking you forward?’ If it’s not, what attitudes will? Then, try them out and see how they work for you.

Up for a challenge?

In coaching, the aim is to help you to reach your goals or get as close to them as is practically possible. I’m Gary Wood. I’ve been coaching students since the mid-90s and private clients since the early-noughties. My coaching training and practices are grounded in evidence-based psychology. My specialism is attitude change – the cornerstone of coaching. I’ve written five books on various aspects of psychology, the most recent is Letters to a New Student on study skills, but has a lot to say about life skills. And as I coach, I love a challenge.

So, get in touch for a chat. 

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The Confidence Paradox – the Courage to Act

Sometimes there’s a time lag between recognizing we need help and support and, taking action to get that help and support. As a coach, it’s not unusual for potential new clients to tell me that they have been thinking about getting in touch ‘for ages’. Others describe it as ‘trying to pluck up the courage’ to get in touch, or ‘psyching themselves up’. So, the challenge for me as a coach is how I can make it easier for people to take that step. This blog post is an attempt to address that question.

The Confidence-Courage Paradox

It seems a paradox that some people might need to gain the confidence to seek coaching to build confidence. But it happens, and the first step is to recognize that it happens. When your confidence takes a hit, it’s tempting to see the hesitation to take action as further evidence of low confidence. This becomes another reason to ‘beat yourself up’ which in turn pushes you further away from taking action. But this is not something specific to you. It’s something common to stress. I’ve had clients show me tattered business cards of mine that they’ve carried around for months, even years. So how can we break this cycle?

Who can benefit from coaching?

Often, in the initial email, potential clients ask ‘Is this something you can help with?’ And it’s written from a very personal perspective, as though these kinds of issues wouldn’t or haven’t happened to anyone else. There’s a sense of isolation and ‘aloneness’ in the questions. And it’s reassuring that yes, such issues can be overcome. Of course, the coaching is unique to the individual, but often the problems are universal themes. Recognizing this is the first step in overcoming the ‘aloneness’. You aren’t alone. It’s not just you. That’s why I’ve written this post.

Anyone can benefit from coaching. In fact, the main thing that my clients have in common is that they want to achieve their goals. Their backgrounds and goals vary enormously, but the principles of coaching are the same. It aims to get you from where you are to where you want to be. Previous clients have included people between jobs, people looking for a promotion, homemakers, students, business people, and entrepreneurs. Sometimes it’s people who just have a vague sense that things could be better. As a coach, I’ll work with whatever you bring. So bring it on.

Not knowing where to start

Another delay in getting in touch is the idea that all goals and action plans have to be perfectly formed. No, that’s the coaching process is for. It’s not easy to make decisions and problem-solve when feeling overwhelmed or stressed. In fact, the first aim of coaching is to shoulder some of that burden. So, if you approached me, we’d first have a chat (via Skype or telephone), and typically it takes about 20 minutes. You get to ask any questions, and I explain the process. Then if you decide to go ahead, I send you a pre-coaching questionnaire. This forms the basis of the first session and offers signposts and milestones for future sessions. There’s nothing off-the-peg. As I coach, I meet you where you’re at. Then we’ll work together to get you to where you want to be.

How long does it take?

Another sticking point can be how many sessions to go for? Some clients come with a long list of goals and are concerned that they won’t be able to fit everything in. Obviously, the cost of coaching is an important factor. I offer to coach in blocks of four to ten sessions because the research indicates that this is the optimal range. In the consultation chat, I’mn often asked two questions:

1. How many sessions will be enough so that we can cover all the issues I have?
2. What happens of cover all the issues before the block ends, what then?

To answer both of the questions, it’s crucial first to emphasize the purpose of coaching. It’s not just about sorting out problems. It’s more about empowerment. The take-away value of coaching is that it aims to empower. Through the process of coaching, we create an action plan tailor-made to your skills, strengths, circumstances and goals. So, if we don’t cover every single issue in the block of coaching, you’ll still have a set of skills to put into practice for the remainder. If we cover all the issues before the end of the block, it means you can then look at consolidating the skills and also looking to longer-term goals.

The solution-focused approach tends to work quicker than some of the more ‘inspirational’ approaches to coaching. My background is in psychology and teaching, so everything I do as a coach is based on evidence. So we can cover a lot in relatively few sessions. Many clients express surprise as to how quickly they move forward. As a rule of thumb, if you’re at crossroads, need to refocus and a looking for a life audit, then go for four to six sessions. If you’re dealing with more significant life changes or looking to deal with more deep-seated attitudes and habits, then go for eight to ten. If in doubt, go down the middle. I’ve done a lot of work to make sure that every session counts. Even one session can move your forward. 

What’s more effective, face-to-face, telephone or Skype?

When I started coaching, I was sceptical that Skype or telephone would work as well as face-to-face. As part of my training, I had coaching. However, the coach I wanted to work with was in America, so I didn’t have the option of face-to-face. All the sessions were by telephone, and it changed my opinion. Now I work with clients up and down the UK and across the world. Lots of clients are from the US. They read my profile or have read my books and want to work with me. And, if you look at the outcome research for coaching (and counselling), one of the main factors for success is the relationship with the coach. Don’t let Skype or telephone coaching put you off.

Moving Forward

So those are some of the practical issues when stress gets in the way of making a decision. You don’t have to be confident to work on confidence, you don’t have to have a masterplan, you don’t have to agonize over the number of sessions. Just go with what you can afford and make the most of every session. The same applies to how coaching is delivered. 

Coaching can be a significant investment. It’s not cheap. I’m not a budget coach. And you might achieve the changes on your own with any intervention. It might take a little longer, but you’ll probably get there. The value of coaching is the value you place on getting there sooner, with a new set of skills that will take you further still. For further information see my posts:

• What is solution-focused coaching?
• FAQs Frequently asked questions about coaching with me
• How Do You Know You Are Ready For Life Coaching? (and is it right for you?)
• How to Find a Life Coach (and the questions you need to ask before hiring one)

Get in touch for a chat

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How I came to write a study skills book problem-page style

I returned to education pre-Internet. Yes! That long ago! I’d always battled with the ‘no-pain-no-gain’ approach to learning and revising for exams. As I was about to study psychology, I figured that psychology had to have tips on studying itself. I wasn’t aware of any study skills books and had to make do with an Introductory textbook. Sure enough, I found a few ideas on attitudes, attention span, the context of learning, and how to take a more holistic approach to studying. This modest find inspired me to look for more hints and to apply what I found.  And, I continued to do this throughout my time as a student and then as a lecturer. Over the years I gained and honed key principles on how to learn how to learn – and how to work smarter not harder.

As a psychology lecturer, I quickly realised that no one processes information as efficiently when stressed. And, when faced with a daunting reading list, the last thing we need is a study-skills book ‘thick enough to stun an ox’! We need the signposts, the quick fixes, and the short-cuts. The challenge in writing in a book on study skills is as much as what you leave out as what you put in. A book needs get across the framework of understanding without giving exhaustive tips, techniques and examples. It needs to cut-to-the-chase. The Internet is a wonderful thing, but often we start out looking for an answer and end up looking at totally irrelevant stuff with no idea how we got there. Sometimes we need to contain and focus our curiosity.

Letters to a New Student ( Buy: Amazon UK /  Buy: Amazon USA ) is a brief book and you the reader choose how to read it. It can be read from cover-to-cover or as a troubleshooting guide. It also mimics this ‘stream of consciousness’ style of the Internet so you can follow your own path or hop around at random. The also book taps into my experience as agony uncle and advice columnist. It’s based on a series of short, informal, problem page letters. This idea came about from reading Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, and The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis. There’s also a bit of ‘dice-living’, from Luke Rhinehart’s The Dice Man thrown in to create a similar experience as the old Dungeons and Dragons books. You can read the letters in any order. You can even use dice! You’ll still get the same blueprint to make the information stick with less effort. The book offers an easy-to-use ‘survive and thrive’ guide of how to work with human psychology rather than fight it.

There’s also a strong theme of getting support and managing relations, and one aim is to get students and parents on the same page. I don’t know of any other study skills book aimed at parents too. The book also offers great principles to live by, so can be enjoyed by lifelong learners and self-help readers.

Letters to a New Student hasn’t taken nearly as long to write it as it has to live it. It’s been honed over 20 years. It’s the book I wished I’d had when I started out.

May it give you a shortcut to success.

Gary Wood

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Based on material from the book Letters to a New Student. Tips to Study Smarter from a Psychologist by Gary Wood. Published by Routledge. Buy: Amazon UK /  Buy: Amazon USA 

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3 Questions to Help You Set Deadlines for Your Personal Goals (and how to remain accountable to them)

Many clients tell me that they find it easier to work to an externally set deadline. Personal projects seem to drift along without end, especially when life gets in the way. So what can be done about it? The short answer is to set your own deadline and build in accountability to the process. In this brief post I offer three simple questions that I ask clients. These questions will help you to overcome procrastination, set your own deadlines and increase your motivation.

When would it be too late, to achieve your goal?

• 1. By what date will you be disappointed that you have not completed this project or reached this goal? In other words ‘what date’s too late?’

This gives a possible end date by which procrastination has gone too far. A goal is really only a goal if it does have a target date. Until then it’s just wishful thinking. An end-point allows you to move out of the ‘intention phase’ and to begin making concrete plans.

Now that you have a latest possible date, it helps to review the reasons. How come this feels too late? If you pass this date, how do you imagine you feel? What are the other negative associations with passing this date? What are the negative consequences of dragging things out until the last-minute? It helps to get something in black and white, so make a list. This becomes something that you can add to and review from time to time. Sticking to your goal will help you to avoid all of this down the line.

What’s your delighted date?

• 2. For you to be absolutely delighted and elated, by what would you have to meet this goal?

Together with the first question, you now have range for the target date for your goal. the nest change is to inject a little realism.

What date is most realistic to complete your project?

There’s a phrase I use in coaching that I use to preface questions: ‘Knowing yourself as you do’. Coaching should be from a position of realism and self-knowledge. In the ubiquitous SMART goals, the A and the R represent Achievable and Realistic.

• 3. So, knowing yourself as you do, what would be the most realistic date, between your ‘disappointed’ and ‘delighted’ deadlines for you to complete this goal/project?

This allows you to take into account obstacles, or just aspects of everyday life. The example I often use is starting a healthy eating plan on 23rd December when you also want to enjoy Christmas.

Goal completion: Delighted to Satisfied to Disappointed

Not only do these three questions give you a range of dates to use, they also have an emotional value attached, which helps to address some of the impetus that comes with external goals. This may be enough for you to pick a date, put it in to your diary, program the count down on to your phone or stick a note to the front of the fridge. The question then becomes, how do you maintain the momentum? Aside from engaging the services of a life coach will keep you accountable to your goals, there are techniques you can use by yourself.

The first step is to acknowledge the importance of this target date. If you nurture the attitude that it can move if something else comes along, then it will keep moving. Think about what you do if you are no likely to meet an externally set goal? What’s your process? As soon as you know your are not able to meet the original deadline, you estimate how much longer you would need and then contact the outside person to renegotiate a new deadline. However, the odds are that there will be some room for manoeuvre but not much. It’s important that you use the same criteria to re-set your own goals. If you don’t the over-arching message is ‘this is not important enough’. If you make a habit of reinforcing the ‘not important enough’ message it’s unlikely that you will meet the goal.

Using a formalised procedure for goal-setting

Some people find acronyms useful, others loathe them. There are a lot of them about, with SMART and GROW being the most famous. My own addition to the goal-setting acronyms is GO-FLOW. It’s a development of the GROW acronym. I came up with to fit in with the water-based theme of my book Don’t Wait For Your Ship to Come In. . . Swim Out to Meet It!  GO-FLOW stands for: Goal, Observation, Feelings, Limitations, Options, Will. For more information see: Going For Your Goals or Going with the Flow.

There are many goal setting tips on this site (See: Goal-setting Posts ). The important thing is to find a formalised system to help you keep track of the goals. One development of the SMART goals formula I use is SMARTER: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Enthusiastically Phrased and Reviewable. Goals evolve as we progress, especially with regard to achievability and realism.  However if you need to readjust target dates it shouldn’t be done with a shrug of the shoulders. it should go through a formal process, even the act of putting the new date on a calendar or in your diary. ‘Whenever I can fit it’ means the goal is unlikely to be met.

Rewards as accountability

The most powerful of tools for shaping and changing behaviour is simple rewards. Working on goals should be a thankless task, so it’s important to break down bigger goals into smaller steps and build in a series of rewards as you complete the steps. When you are rewarded it makes it more likely that a behaviour will be repeated. So give yourself something to look forward to as you progress with your goals, obviously keep the reward proportionate to the achievement. You should save the bigger celebration for the end.

It can be more difficult to meet goals that do not have external deadlines. The main difference is that we often approach external deadlines more seriously. This post has offered a process and ideas for creating more compelling personal deadlines to make sure that  perpetual postponing is not inevitable.

If you enjoyed this post and/or found it useful then please use the ‘like’ and share ‘buttons’. Your comments are also welcome.  

Links:

• More goal setting posts from Gary Wood

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 About Gary Wood

Dr Gary Wood is a chartered psychologist, life coach and broadcaster specializing in applied social psychology, personal development and life coaching. He is the author of Unlock Your Confidence: Find the Keys to Lasting Change Through The Confidence-Karma Method (Buy: Amazon UK  /  Buy: Amazon USA ) Gary is based in Birmingham and Edinburgh where he runs his coaching and training practice and research consultancy.

To find out more about coaching for your goals, with Gary Wood, please get in touch using the form below:

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Living with Freedom, Living a Better Life, and Coaching

It’s often said that life coaching is all about goals – usually goals to a better life. Recently I read an interesting booklet called Getting All Emotive Online by Phil Byrne & Neil Henry. It’s about on-line marketing and something they wrote about ‘freedom’ really resonated with what I aim to offer in my  (life) coaching practice. I realized that maybe that message didn’t always come through clear enough in my web presence and in consultations with potential clients. So in this post, I aim to address that and consider how coaching should be all about helping people to live a life of freedom. Let’s start with a definition of freedom.

What is freedom?

Dictionary definitions state that freedom is:

• The power or right to act, speak, or think as you want
• Absence of subjection to foreign domination or despotic government
• The state of not being imprisoned or enslaved
• The state of being unrestricted and able to move easily

The implication with all of these definitions is that threats to freedom are external. However, as a psychologist I’m more interested in the interpretations of threat and how we internalize threats in the form of attitudes.

What are attitudes?

Attitudes structure the human experience – they are the way we feel and think about things. At their simplest form, they are likes and dislikes. We are drawn to the things for which we have a positive attitude and repelled by things for which we hold negative attitudes. The literal meaning of attitude is ‘fit and ready for action’. So attitudes prime us for action. Although attitudes don’t necessarily lead us to behaviour they do help to create the mind-set to make it more likely. It’s easy to see how an attitude of ‘If I don’t try then I can’t fail‘ is likely to inhibit action. These are the kinds of self-defeating attitudes that we address in coaching.

Coaching as attitude liberation

Byrne & Henry suggest that there two types of freedom: ‘Freedom to‘ and ‘freedom from‘. Although they discuss these in the context of marking, these two types of freedom are also relevant to coaching. In my coaching practice, I draw heaving on my research expertise in social psychology – particularly attitude change. Crucially this involves moving clients towards ‘freedom to’. This is freedom to seize opportunities, freedom to make the most of your abilities and freedom to pursue you goals and ambitions.

Often the path to ‘freedom to’ means addressing some ‘freedom froms’. This might be freedom from low self-esteem, freedom from self-doubt, freedom from putting yourself down with negative self-talk, and so on. Coaching can empower you to act, speak and think as you want. It can remove psychological restrictions and the feelings of being trapped by the past or the expectations of others. Coaching offers a means to weaken the hold of the ‘freedom froms’ and make, more likely, the freedom to meet your goals, the freedom to make more of your strengths, skills and inner resources . Goals are the means to an end. Ultimately coaching is about securing the freedom to have a better life.

Links (other posts about coaching and personal development):

• How Do You Know Your Are Ready for Life Coaching
• What is Solution Focused Coaching?
• How to Find a Life Coach (and the questions you need to ask before hiring one)
• How to Get the Most from a Self Help Book
• Are you ‘fit and ready’ for goal-setting?

If you enjoyed this post and/or found it useful then please use the ‘like’ and share ‘buttons’. Your comments are also welcome.  

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 About Gary Wood

Dr Gary Wood is a chartered psychologist, life coach and broadcaster specializing in applied social psychology, personal development and life coaching. He is the author of Unlock Your Confidence: Find the Keys to Lasting Change Through The Confidence-Karma Method (Buy: Amazon UK  /  Buy: Amazon USA ) Gary is based in Birmingham and Edinburgh where he runs his coaching and training practice and research consultancy.

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Type of Coaching Life Coaching Confidence Building Personal Development Work-Life Balance Career Development Business Development Presentation Skills Other

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