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Tips and stories to add value to you and your organisation

What’s Your Stretch?

4 August 2019

I’m in the car a lot. Driving to clients and back. Driving to the shops. Dad taxi too. I don’t mind driving really, but I do mind getting a stiff neck, such is the way of a life spent driving and then sitting.

However, I’ve discovered yoga neck rolls. Less sugar than mini chocolate Swiss rolls (you know you want one now) and less fat than a roadside diner’s sausage roll, a neck roll is pretty much what you think it is.

I used to get a lot of headaches, caused no doubt, by the stress build up of driving and then sitting when with clients. Now though I’m constantly rolling my head from shoulder to shoulder (not when driving, officer) and I love the feeling of tiny crunches in my muscles as the tension is massaged away.

Now, I’m not suggesting you put your pen down and start to exercise, it may harm you, so perhaps watch some yoga videos online first, or seek professional guidance.

What I am saying, is that physical stretches are good for us. I have fewer headaches now and I’m all for that.

It’s also well worth considering career and skill stretches. I’m a firm believer in continuous development and love to keep learning. Honing a skill can lead to promotion. Developing a new skill can lead to a new career, or new clients.

With this in mind I began psychotherapy training last October and have just finished year two. Don’t worry about the maths there, my existing formal Transactional Analysis training meant I skipped jauntily past year one and started in the first clinical year.

It’s been so much fun to do, and what a lot of learning for me. The precursor to therapy is counselling, so I’ve had to learn to shift from a coaching mindset to a counselling one.

I still love business coaching and enjoy being with all my clients and that’s not going to change. However, taking on new counselling clients has meant changing the way I work in a therapeutic space. I’m loving that work too and it’s really enabled me to listen in a different way and develop my empathic resonance.

I’ll be honest here though, my first practice wasn’t great. I was still locked into coaching mode and was pushing for a quick solution to the client’s issue. At best, it was a practice and at worst, a failure.

That was last year and since then I’ve relaxed into the flow of counselling and am enjoying myself now. We often learn most from our failures and it’s good to fail in the classroom and then get it right in a live environment.

I’m looking forward to year three and more stretching after the Summer. Already this new learning has fed back into my business and opened up organisational well-being work that I may otherwise have not seen.

Maybe my business motto should be: Stretch for success!

So, I wonder what your stretch is?

Which part of your skillset has gone a bit rusty, or needs to be sharpened? Perhaps there’s a whole new skill you’d like to develop?

Leadership and communications skills are at a premium today in business and a manager who lacks them is going to be under stress. I love teaching these skills too and embed TA into my workshops for extra sticky learning. If you know a leader, or team, who need a boost then feel free to get in touch.

And a simple way to stretch ourselves is to read a book. Maybe there’s one on your wish list, so perhaps treat yourself today and give yourself a little stretch!

We can all have fun this week stretching ourselves!

Next week: Beach Time UK Style