Toxic Friends, You Can't Live With Them, But You CAN Live Without Them!

All true friendships survive with one key element…balance. Without a healthy balance of give and take, trust, commitment, honesty, loyalty and understanding, friendships can be doomed to either fail or just be unhealthy and dysfunctional.

We’ve all in some shape or form, had a toxic friendship or relationship. But what exactly is a toxic friend and how do you recognise when a friendship becomes toxic?

Friendships starting on an equal footing can become dysfunctional when one of you perhaps widens their circle of friends through a new job, a new relationship or maybe just a change in circumstances. The common ground has shifted.

In a healthy friendship or relationship, this should be ok, real friends are happy for you to expand your social life or watch and share the news of the growing success in your career. However, when the other person is threatened by your new situation, they can become resentful and determined to try and keep things static. They may try to jeopardise your new found success and happiness with skilful, yet destructive undertones, anything from subtle criticism to try knocking your confidence, to more obvious ways like out right lying, or creating dramas so they can be the centre of attention.

The following are a useful checklist when assessing whether you have a toxic friendship.

• Do they regularly break their promises or arrangements with little or no notice, giving woefully weak or clearly untrue excuses?
• Are they take, take take, offering nothing or very little in return?
• Are they a drama queen, regularly trying to make you part of their dramas?
• Do they regularly lie about people and situations?
• Have you found out they are talking negatively about you behind your back and betraying your confidences.
• Do they judge you rather than accepting and loving you for who you are?
• Do they try and exert control over your life without taking into consideration what you want?
• Are they generally miserable, trying to take you down with them?
• Do they constantly try to get one up on you?
• Do they try and guilt you for feeling happy?
• Do they see any other friends you have as competition, rather than part of your circle?
• Do you feel worse after spending time with them?

 How do you break free of a toxic friendship?

Toxic friends usually hang on to you like there is no tomorrow, especially when they know the game is up. However, it’s important to stand your ground and not be pulled into old habits as they try and manipulate you further.

Boundaries are a big part of creating and maintaining healthy friendships. When trying to disengage yourself from a toxic friendship, if you don’t feel able to completely walk away, negotiate with yourself what behaviours you are willing to accept by creating a mental or written list of what you are no longer willing to put up with.

Breaking free is of course harder, but when you have made the decision to break free from a dysfunctional friendship or relationship, don’t be manipulated back into it. Expand your social circle by joining groups, clubs and going out with work colleagues, to meet like minded people who make you feel good about yourself.

Be honest and tell them you don’t feel you have anything further in common. Give examples of why you feel this, be specific. Toxic friends usually have deep rooted insecurities that make them behave in the way they do. By giving reasons you are giving them an opportunity to change the way they behave, with view to them making new and healthier friendships with other people.

Reflect on why you were in this friendship, do you yourself have low self esteem, or insecurities that were holding you back on building healthy and functioning friendships. Do these issues make you feel you only have the capacity of being down trodden, rather than existing as a valued and loved individual of equal standing.

Finally, remember we only get from life and those around us, what WE think we deserve, so remind yourself regularly that you deserve only the best.

 Copyright Elizabeth Bacchus

Who Do You Think You're Talking To!

A great quote by Carla Gordan goes… “lf someone talked to you the way you talk to yourself , you would have kicked them out of your life a long time ago”.

Its one of my favourite quotes and one that I think everyone should be aware of.

It’s amazing the disrespect we can show ourselves as a matter of habit, if we don’t keep a check on our self talk.

Depending on how we were spoken to by those who influenced us the most as we were growing up, we can carry bad habits throughout our adult lives.

How do you respond when you get something wrong?

Do you admonish yourself automatically, or do you accept your mistake with the grace it deserves and move on?

Are you aware of how you speak to yourself, is it negative or positive?

These are important questions to be aware of in our daily lives. The way you treat yourself, will have an impact on the way other people treat you. How can you expect others to respect you if you don’t respect yourself? Its simple… you can’t!

Changing your language

Imagine if you woke up everyday and sitting at the end of your bed was a person who welcomed you each morning with a positive statement, who made you feel loved, cherished and wanted, wouldn’t that be wonderful! Well that is what you are going to create for yourself everyday, your own champion, your own cheerleader who makes you feel good about yourself and everything you do.

Congratulate yourself on every achievement, it can be anything you do, but from now on you are going to banish every negative thought. In everything you do, give yourself encouraging praise, Sometimes you might find a negative thought creeping in, that’s ok but just replace it with something positive.

Do any of the following sound familiar?

1. I’m fat
2. I hate my job
3. I’m stupid
4. Everyone hates me
5. I’m so unhappy

You are going to STOP speaking negatively about yourself because that’s just plain rude!

We are going to change those negative statements and replace them with postive ones. We are going to change your self talk.

1. I’m learning to love the way I look
2. I’m going to look at ways of improving my career prospects
3. I love learning new things and building my knowledge
4. I am a loved and valued person
5. I deserve to be happy, and I am going to create my own happiness

These statements sound very different don’t they, but this is all you deserve. You don’t deserve to have anyone speaking to you disrespectfully or bringing you down, whether it is yourself or someone else.

From now on when you are about to say something to yourself, remember, STOP

Think about how it sounds, is it negative or postive and then if needed, adapt the message you are giving yourself.

“I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside”. Wayne Dyer

Copyright Elizabeth Bacchus

Are You Making 2009 A Great Year? You Still Can!

I love the autumn; it is my absolute favourite time. For me it represents the beginning of the closing months of the year; a time to reflect on what has been achieved over the previous year, and settling in for the winter.

January resolutions are all very well and good, I though have always thought they represent unnecessary pressure at the beginning of a fresh new year. Why be so demanding of yourself?

The months of October, November and December are a great time for reviewing how your year has gone so far. Did you fit in everything you wanted to do? Did you achieve everything you had planned to, if not why not?

It’s not a time to admonish yourself but more of a time to create clear pathways for the new road ahead, and get excited with all the possibilities in front of you.

The biggest mistake a lot of people can make with goal planning is having too many goals and not creating the resources needed to achieve them. This in turn generates a sense of failure when the tasks become impossible, and results in de-motivating you.

By reviewing your past year and looking at what you wanted to achieve, did accomplish and were not able to make happen; you can create a clear vision of the areas that had obstacles in them.

I help my clients create an effective way to review their achievements of the past year:-

• List the goals they had set for themselves
• Highlight the ones that were achieved
• Note the steps they took that helped them achieve these goals and what resources they used
• Review the goals that were not achieved
• Detail why they feel they didn’t reach these goals
• What resources did they need that were not available to them, (time, money, motivation etc)
• What steps would they need to take to create those resources?
• Do they want to aim for those goals again and if so, what changes are they going to put in place?

By reviewing your goals, you give yourself a helicopter view of your progress. You are breaking down the steps you made and the obstacles that you met with. This enables you to see clearly what internal and external resources need to be in place to make achieving your goals easier.

Top tips for reviewing your goals

• Don’t be too hard on yourself
• Be realistic on why your goals were not met
• Congratulate yourself on ALL your achievements however large or small
• Stay positive, focussed and motivated – remember, you have the power to make anything happen!

Copyright Elizabeth Bacchus

Get Your Dream Job!

It’s a difficult market out there right now and competition is tough, so it’s paramount to set yourself apart from the rest.

I’m seeing more and more coaching clients who because of the downturn in the market, are seeking alternative careers.

Any career change has a risk element, but is also an opportunity to reinvent yourself, and focus on skill sets you may not have used, or don’t realise you actually have.

One key advantage the market now has, is that companies are being more adventurous in looking at the transferrable skills prospective employees possess. For example, they know they have a bigger pool of candidates, but in tough economic times there is an indication that they want much more for their money, and are looking at people with a wider skill set, who can work across a number of areas.

This is a key advantage for the job seekers who are looking at changing careers. Everyone has transferrable skills of great use to employers in different industry sectors.

A recent client of mine Alex, had worked in the competitive and highly pressured arena of corporate consulting, for blue chip multinationals. She was feeling pretty burnt out after 25 years focussing on for-profit companies, and wanted to do more in the direction of ‘giving something back’.

Together we focussed on her areas of personal interest, the life/work balance she was now aiming for, and fulfilling her need of doing something for the greater good. We then packaged together her transferrable skills, which included:-

Professional & Personal skill set

• Her ability to meet ever changing needs
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• A well honed resilience working within time- critical environments
• Proven team player
• Having a persuasive and confident nature
• Extensive knowledge and business contacts within blue chip organisations
• A can do attitude, with an ability to communicate at all levels
• Solution focussed, adept at problem solving
• Energetic and enthusiastic.

Whilst there were many other facets to Alex’s skills set, we focussed on common denominators which would package well to prospective employers, in particular the charity sector which Alex was now sure she wanted to move into.

In Alex’s case, these key skills were perfect in marketing herself to charities for corporate fundraising roles. Through assignments I gave her, she was able to target the charities she most wanted to work for, and cold prospected her wish list. Within 9 weeks Alex had had 2 face to face interviews, 3 telephone conversations with senior individuals within 3 different charities, and then last week was offered what she describes as her dream job for one of the UK’s leading charities.

An important aspect of Alex's experience is that these were job opportunities not even advertised. A great example of someone creating their own desired outcome!

Alex made a decision to change, planned a step-by-step route to that change – incorporating specific goals and a time plan, and then executed all of these to reach a successful outcome.

She illustrated the need for making and sticking to a decision, having a well thought out plan and committing to making it happen. It’s interesting to note that Alex fed back to me that initially she thought that it was going to be really hard, but as the plan was forming she realised that it was entirely possible, which only added to her enthusiasm and excitement to her future.

If you are now at a place ready to create change; a simple way to start, is to list items in key areas:

1. The things you love to do
2. The aspects you are good at
3. Your personal qualities
4. Your specific work experience
5. The dream organisations you would want to work for

Then write down how 1+ 2 + 3 + 4 are transferrable to 5.

If you are having difficulties in identifying what you think you are good at and what you think your personal qualities are, then a great exercise is to ask 3-5 friends to write down their opinions of (2) and (3). It’s really interesting the feedback friends can give, and they of course can sometimes know you better than you know yourself. 

Remember, everything just starts as an idea; but only you have the power to nurture it into your own reality.

Copyright Elizabeth Bacchus

The Little Ankle Biters Are Leaving Home...Now What?

Its September, the bags are packed, you’ve given them recipes to all your favourite meals, you’ve bought them every student survival book you could get your hands on, and your heart is heavy. How on earth do you survive either your only child or your youngest child going off to university?

We took our son to University today, and whilst he’s going into his second year, I still have a lump in my throat as I write this post.

The house creaks with emptiness, and I wander into his room noticing the empty space where the eagerly used X box used to be...

It’s with such a mixture of pride and sadness that we wave our children off to University, hard to believe that this day has finally come. Unfortunately, gone are the days when we can exert control over their every move and decision. I have it slightly easier though than my sister, whose daughter my bright, talented and beautiful niece, (possibly a biased aunt!) Starts her first year at university this month.

In the midst of the empty spaces that our children leave behind though, are a new world of opportunities for the parents left behind. This doesn’t have to be the end, but the beginning of so much more. We now have the time (and possibly more money!) to start and concentrate on ourselves again; after years of being parents we can now begin to remember what it was like being individuals.

For me, it means I can explore hobbies and pursuits I’ve had my eye on for years, photography, horse riding again, learning to paint, writing a blog and catching up with friends, who admittedly I’ve probably been a bit lax in keeping in touch with. The world is so very different from when before I had a child, for a start, the Internet didn’t exist. Now so much more is accessible, and I fully intend to grasp every possibility out there.

It’s a transition though; our children leaving home, but it should hopefully be a transition process for you with the excitement of ‘what now’? It’s important to remember that it isn’t the first time you’ve let them go. You’ve already done that when they went to nursery, started secondary school and with their inevitable requests for more space and independence as they were growing up.

Remember, you’ve given your children the 2 most important elements for a healthy start in life, roots and wings. It’s now up to them, with your continuing love and support for them to go out into the world and use those gifts.

A few tips for surviving the empty nest:

• Think about the things you perhaps wanted to do over the years but were not able to pursue because of parental commitments.
• Keep busy – there are probably loads of things around the house you’ve been planning to do but never had the time for.
• Spend time with friends and like mind people who are perhaps going through the same transition.
• It’s easy to want to bombard your child with emails and phone calls, but they will undoubtedly be enjoying their new sense of freedom. Find out when is the best time to have a catch up chat and don’t take it personally when they are perhaps too busy to talk sometimes – remember they are having fun exploring their new life!

And finally, find time to sit back and swell with pride, thinking about the amazing young person you have raised and give yourself a big pat on the back!

Copyright Elizabeth Bacchus

How Coaching Can Make AND Break Your Business

Yes, too much coaching can actually harm your business massively. But some businesses do make this mistake.

Like personal coaching, goals should be agreed on at the beginning of the coach/client relationship, along with a time frame to meet these goals. Nothing should be left open-ended. I’m amazed at how many businesses become dependent on a coach – this should never happen, and a professional and ethical coach would not allow things to develop in this way.

The common mistakes with over-coaching in business stem from developing a dependency on the coach and the coach enabling the business owner/director to do this.

Key tips for maximising successful outcomes from your business coach relationship.

• Ensure there are agreed SMART goals at the outset of your coaching relationship.
• When you present your business to your coach, ensure they fully understand your business needs and the key areas you want to focus on.
• Ask you coach to work with you on a Beginning, Middle and End coaching strategy with specific reviews for the agreed areas in progress.
• Never forget that you are in control, the coach is there to assist, NOT tell you want to do.
• Make sure the coaching relationship is solution focussed rather than problem based.
• Decide early on, (if you have staff) is the coach mentoring you to coach your staff, or are they going to be working directly with your team – we all know that too many cooks spoil the broth.
• Ensure your staff have a route to you, to feed back how they feel the coach is adding value to the business’ performance.
• Ideally a business coaching relationship should last no more than 6 months but with room for informal or formal reviews as you move forward, depending on individual needs.

 Some great reading resources for building successful businesses include:-

1. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Steven R Covey)
2. Built To Last (James C Collins)
3. In Search Of Excellence (Thomas J Peters)
4. Wikinomics (Don Tapscott & Anthony D Williams)
5. Now Discover Your Strengths (Marcus Buckingam & Donald O’Clifton

Choose your business coach wisely and it could be the best investment you ever make.

Copyright Elizabeth Bacchus

What Exactly Is A Life Coach, You Ask?

I am often asked what does a Life Coach do?

What a Life Coach definitely isn't, is a counsellor. Counsellors historically work from the past, deal with a core issue; or issues related to specific symptoms and help their clients work through that area of concern.

Life Coaching is very much about working on the 'now' with a client and looking at obstacles that may be restricting them from achieving their full potential. On a personal level, these obstacles can be anything from low self esteem, self-limiting beliefs, a lacking of confidence, feeling stuck and a general sense of life passing you by without any real meaning. The following questions can help identify whether Life Coaching could be something you might benefit from:-

• Is your life predominantly run by things you have to do, as opposed to things you choose to do?
• Do you often feel like there is something holding you back from a much more successful life?
• Do you often know what you should be doing, but have a hard time actually doing it?
• Do you regularly run out of time, energy or patience by the end of the day?
• Is your career more of a job than a calling?
• Is there less meaning in your life, career, relationship, or business, than you would like?
• Do you ever get a sense that you are not living the life you were meant to live, and that there is much more to life than you are now experiencing?
• Do you have a difficult time balancing your career, family, friends, health, etc.?
• Has it been a while since you really enjoyed yourself?
• Do you routinely find yourself worrying, stressed out or concerned about the future?
• Do you often find yourself living automatically, or simply going through the motions?
• Would you benefit from establishing great habits that keep you moving ahead in all parts of your life?
• Would you like to learn how to create a life that directly reflects your greatest gifts, talents and interests?
• Do you want more success, peace, intimate relationships, or a sense that your life is making a difference?
• Would you benefit from having clear goals that reflect what is truly important to you?

Many of us have asked ourselves some of these questions, and at the time probably lacked the direction to do anything about it. What a good Life Coach should do is help empower you with new skills to maximise your potential. This will be through identifying your negative triggers and replacing them with positve ones, helping plan realistic and agreed goals and providing a supportive and encouraging environment for you to succeed in.

How long should life coaching last and what does it entail?

Life Coaching should never be an open ended arrangement. The Life Coach and the client will agree on the areas to be worked on, how many sessions they feel will be appropriate and what method is to be used, for example; I mentor my personal Life Coaching clients face-to-face, over the phone and by email. The choice is the client's as to how they wish to work with their coach.

After an initial session, and after establishing what it is they want to achieve, I create SMART Goals, and various assignments - customised to the client's personal needs.

Progress is regularly reviewed to ensure the right pace and structure is in place. Four to six sessions is the norm, and my clients regularly email me afterwards with updates and sometimes queries on maintaining their progress.

The most important and rewarding aspect for me is my client's success is MY success, and I work hard to help my clients reach their goals and live their dreams.

Copyright Elizabeth Bacchus

Don't Worry Be Happy!

Years ago I used to be an expert worrier, I could have worried for England if there was a category in the Olympics, and probably would have won!

One day after being totally exhausted with worrying, I sat down and thought, what exactly was I gaining from worrying.  In short, nothing.  Not only was I making myself feel worse, I was making it much more difficult to find ways to create solutions to the issues I was actually worrying about.  I realised that I was using up so much energy worrying, that it made me wonder, how I could channel that energy more effectively. 

The result?  I now never worry.  It doesn't mean I'm nochalant about everything, it means I put things into perspective, work things through and come up with realistic and workable solutions. 

I want to share with you my fail safe way to stop the worry habit.

I realised that if I wrote down what I was worried about, I could break things down more easily seeing it in front of me, and then start to tackle things properly. I created a worry log that I found extremely useful.

I drew a table with six columns with the following headings:-

1. My worry
2. What's the worst that can happen?
3. What's the best that can happen?
4. What's the most likely outcome?
5. What do I have to do to achieve the best outcome?
6. What actually happened?

Everytime I was worried about a particular situation, I would fill in the table in with the relevant information.  It really made me start to think about things specifically, enabled me to break it down and most of all, helped me find solutions to my worries. 

The best part of the worry log I think is column 6.  This bit is the real winner, not only are you recording the outcome for you to look back on and learn from it, but it is a key feature in helping you to realise that the worst very rarely happens and if it does, there is always an upside.

The next time you find yourself worrying about something, use your own worry log to help you work through your worry, and I guarantee that you will have new perspective, a clearer head and will at the very least have reduced the amount you are worrying!

Copyright Elizabeth Bacchus

Treat Yourself To A Confidence Boost!

How often have you wished for more money, more success or for a better life.  They are common thoughts for most people, but you don't have to sit there and hope for it, why not make it happen.  It doesn't matter what has happened in your past, your past is not your destiny.

Confidence is the main issue that holds many people back but it doesn't have to. Start by thinking of your past success.  List your favourite five successes, they can be anything; maybe getting a promotion, passing an exam, learning how to cook or finishing a planned decorating project.

Its good to see them in black and white and you can probably easily think of more than five when you start, but for the moment, just stick with five so you already feel a sense of achievement.

Choose one of your five successes to concentrate on.

Now start to think how you achieved this success.  What was your plan of action? On a sheet of paper write down the stages that you went through to achieve this success.  How did you plan ahead? What did you put in place to reach your goal?

By seeing your original successes and tracking how you achieved them, it helps to recall what you know deep down; that you are a capable and successful person, able to create a plan, follow it through and reach your chosen goal successfully.

Sitting quietly, without any distractions, start to recall how you felt when you achieved  this past success.  Think about the feelings that were stirred within you upon reaching your goal.

• How did it make you feel emotionally?
• How did it make you feel physically?
• What did you body language look like?
• What was the expression on your face?
• How did the tone of your voice change?

By recalling those specific feelings we had in past successes, we train our brains into recreating those feelings again, which in turn creates all the feelings associated with these positive experiences, including a big confidence boost.

Try and do this exercise every day to get your mind recalling positive experiences, so you begin to get used to feeling like a successful, confident person regularly, until it becomes a natural mindset for you.

Good luck and enjoy your successes!

Copyright Elizabeth Bacchus