by Janelle Legge | Jan 8, 2016 | Mindfulness for Success |
Are you refreshed and ready to embrace the New Year with a positive success mindset and the self-belief that whatever it is that you truly want, you’ll be able to make it happen?
January is the perfect month to detox and realign your thinking. Make the decision right now that you will let go of faulty thinking patterns that try and convince you that you can’t get what you want in your life, relationships, career, or business. Send these thoughts packing.
I believe in you and you need to believe in you too! You have all of the resources you need to achieve whatever it is that you want. It’s about adopting and sustaining a positive, optimistic, and proactive mindset to keep you moving towards your goals.
Why It’s Important To Master A Positive Success Mindset
People who make the most money and have the most success in life, have mastered the ability to structure their mind and thinking. They are vigilant about only investing in thoughts that 100% support where they want to go in life, what they want to attract, and what they want to achieve. A structured mind leads to organised, strategic and structured action. So if it’s more love and prosperity you’re wanting, then this needs to be the daily focus of your thinking. Right.
Your mind IS powerful. Whether you like it or not, your mind magnetizes your results. Being constantly mindful of this universal law is a total game changer.
Image by Greg Rakozy
by Janelle Legge | Dec 11, 2015 | Wild Woman Archetype Series |
“There is no greater blessing a mother can give her daughter than a reliable sense of the veracity of her own intuition. Intuition is handed from parent to child in the simplest ways: “You have good judgment. What do you think lies hidden behind all this?” Rather than defining intuition as some unreasoned faulty quirk, it is defined as truly the soul-voice speaking.
Intuition senses the directions to go in for most benefit, it is self-preserving, has a grasp of underlying motive and intention, it chooses what will cause the least amount of fragmentation in the psyche.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
The Power of Intuition
It’s easy to get tripped up and ignore the power of intuition when someone who you think knows more than you suggests something that just doesn’t feel right. For whatever reason. When this occurs press PAUSE and give yourself some time to make a decision that feels in total alignment with you.
Don’t just override that little voice inside that instantly responded “No, I’m not too sure about this” and let someone else make a decision that impacts you. Ask yourself “Are they in autopilot and not taking all of me into view? Is this more for their benefit or convenience than what’s best for me?”
Always pay attention to that powerful little voice and check in with yourself first. Then ask more questions until you’re satisfied you’re heading in the right direction.
Intuition is powerful. It’s often underestimated. Yet that powerful, quiet little voice inside that is so easy to ignore or override is 9 times out of 10 ALWAYS right. The more you pay attention to it the stronger it gets. Understanding the power of your intuitive guidance keeps you in the correct flow of decision making for you and your life.
Janelle Legge is a Psychotherapist, Leadership, Mindfulness and Wellbeing Consultant and Coach who specialises in Relationships, Career Success, Work-Life Integration and Wellbeing. Janelle sees clients in person in Sydney and works with clients around the world via Skype. To book a skype session with Janelle click here.
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by Janelle Legge | Dec 6, 2015 | Relationships |
If you’re a single woman in your late 30s or beyond and have just about every area of your life sorted, except for being able to find the right guy, then it’s time to sort this out. Here’s how I helped Emma turn around her less than inspiring track record in the dating stakes and finally meet Mr Right. These tips are useful for any woman who’s struggling in the dating and relationship space. Because finding the right guy shouldn’t have to be like running the gauntlet, right.
‘Emma’ – Successful, Single And Ready To Change Her Dating Game Plan
Emma* (not her real name) came to see me to help her sort out why she was 39 and still single. Like many of the women I’ve helped, Emma was intelligent, attractive and successful in her career. Every area of her life was sorted, except being able to find a guy who wanted to commit and have a family. According to Emma, there had been a steady trail of guys in her life who just didn’t want to commit. Frustrated and upset over her most recent break up, Emma had reached a point where things had to change. She was fed up with the cycle of dating, breaking up, and being single all over again. Feeling increasingly on the outer socially because just about all her friends were married with kids, Emma felt like a third wheel around the couples she knew who, in her view, felt threatened having an attractive, intelligent, single woman around.
Emma’s self esteem and confidence had hit an all time low. She was finally ready to take a deeper look at what was really going on. Emma’s version of events was a story I’ve heard many times before. On the outside Emma appeared together, confident, and successful. Yet on the inside she felt like Cinderella still waiting to be taken to the ball. In her mind it was as if someone had cast a bad spell on her that was stopping her from having the fairy tale ending she was secretly longing for.
The Real Issues At Play
The reason many women stay single longer than they would like is because they have been focusing on all the external factors, and not on what’s actually going on in their inner life. This makes the problem remain invisible, unsolvable and elusive because it’s seen to be solely ‘out there’. When you view problems in this way, you lose confidence in your ability to do something about it and feel powerless in that area of your life. It then becomes your reality.
Over the years I’ve helped a lot of women sort through relationship problems, including why they can’t seem to find the right guy. Every single time it’s had little to do with there not being enough good men around and all the other stories and scripts they had convinced themselves to be true, like:
“Every guy I date just doesn’t want to commit to me”, “There just aren’t any good single guys left [in Sydney/Melbourne/insert City…], they’re all already taken”, and “He was a lovely guy, BUT there was just no chemistry or fireworks, so I told him I just wanted to be friends.”
Yet when you look more closely at what’s going on, the problem is not ‘out there’ at all.
7 Common Reasons Why Successful Women Can’t Find The Right Guy
1. Faulty internal model for resolving relationship conflicts.
When home is like a battlefield growing up, children often interpret this as it’s not safe to disagree with anyone who means a lot to you, because it will create unbearable conflict and potentially drive them away. For women, this means learning to be the good-girl and ignoring their own needs. They try and avoid conflict by defaulting to passive-aggressive vibing, expecting their partner to be adept at mind reading, which doesn’t get them where they want to go in their intimate relationships. They don’t speak up when they need to, or set clear personal boundaries. Relationships that matter should be able to withstand constructive arguments from time to time. It’s what brings more intimacy and authenticity to the relationship, making it stronger, not weaker.
2. Being labelled the smart girl.
For some women, they were viewed as the ‘smart girl’ and constantly labelled this growing up. Particularly when they grew up around siblings or cousins whom the family decided were more attractive. When this is constantly discussed it sends powerful subliminal messages to the ‘smart girl’ that her best asset is her intelligence, and that maybe she’s just not in the marriage league. That she’s not good enough for that. Everyone in the family buys into these stories. They are powerful and limiting because children subconsciously comply with the roles parents prescribe for them. Young children don’t have the maturity level to critically evaluate what they are being told by their family and why. This leads into my next point.
3. Subconsciously living out a parent’s unfulfilled dreams.
Parents sometimes attempt to shape you into who they think you should become. Often the driven, independent, career oriented women I’ve seen have subconsciously set out to fulfil a parent’s unrealized goals and aspirations. To the extent that this has been their sole driving force and focus until they hit their late 30s and then step back to reassess. They start to find that success on its own can be hollow and an anticlimax if there’s no one to share it with, and when there’s a huge intimacy void happening in their life as a result. Guys that they date often can’t see where they would fit into their lives, because on the outside they come across as highly independent, accomplished and not needing anyone else in their life.
4. Disinterested or emotionally disengaged Dad.
Not having an emotionally engaged and available father or father figure growing up can have big impacts on girls. Particularly if there’s a messy and bitter divorce involved, making things worse. That’s because your father is the first significant male figure in your life. It sets a powerful internal blueprint around men, how they should treat you, and a whole range of other things. Not having a meaningful and emotionally close relationship with your father is one of the biggest reasons why women pick disinterested, emotionally distant, and unavailable men.
5. The parent who was impossible to please.
This is yet another powerful influence on how you learn to do relationships in adult life. Growing up around a parent where regardless of what you said or did, it was never good enough, or enough, has negative impacts on a child’s feelings of self-worth and self-esteem. As frustrating, annoying and hurtful as this is for children growing up, women often keep dating guys of the same ilk. They find themselves mysteriously only attracted to guys who are controlling, self-centred and yes, impossible to please. Which leads into point number 6.
6. Narcissistic parent.
When children are raised by a parent with a blinding inability to see anyone other than themselves, they usually develop finely tuned radars around everyone else’s needs except their own. To survive a self-absorbed narcissistically damaged parent, kids become adept at reading the emotional landscape at home and learn to comply with the parent’s wants and needs. There is no space for their own needs, wants, desires, likes, and dislikes. They numb this all out and don’t even know what they want. This arrests the natural development of a healthy sense of self, self-worth, and self-esteem. When this is the case for women, they can totally flounder in intimate relationships. Because they don’t know what they want. They aim to please, are too agreeable and don’t express their own opinions and preferences. Their relationships eventually flatline and fizzle out because the guy they are dating or living with has no clear sense of who they really are, and what they actually want from them and the relationship.
Points 1 to 6 are not about blaming your parents. Most parents do the best that they can with the level of awareness that they have at that time. It’s about becoming aware of the forces that have shaped you, knowing that you can release the patterns and beliefs that belong to the past. You are free to make different choices based on your OWN beliefs.
7. Hollywood seduction and romance scripts.
As a culture we’re constantly spoon fed unrealistic notions around love and romance. It’s powerfully embedded in our psyches. The Bachelor and Bachelorette TV show formulas are perfect examples of the kinds of emotional highs and cliché scripts we’re told lead to true and lasting love. When actually they’re selling chemical endorphin hits packaged as tantalizing fairy tale romance scripts that are supposed to lead to true and lasting love. So for women who totally buy into this myth, unless a guy makes them feel special, adored and like a princess, they don’t get a second or third date. There’s nothing wrong with romance, flowers and being spoilt on a date, but when this is your main dating criteria and expectation around partner selection, you’re bound to end up disappointed as real life just doesn’t work like a movie script. Let’s be honest here for a moment ladies. Do you really believe the 2 final contenders in the Bachelorette series could genuinely tell Sam Frost that they loved her after such a short period of dating time? Yet this was the whole finale build up and angle of the show. Because the show’s producers know that deep within our collective psyches we are all still wanting the fairy tale ending. It’s these fictitious constructs of adult love that set so many women up to fail and look for love in all the wrong places.
Behind-The-Scenes Of A Breakthrough
Eligible guys had actually turned up several times throughout Emma’s dating life. But because she hadn’t experienced fireworks and was holding onto a Hollywood version of romance, she found them to be boring and not worth dating. They were put in the ‘let’s just be friends’ category. Emma wasn’t used to being around guys who were emotionally available and genuinely interested in her. They didn’t fit with her internal blueprint on men and romance.
The turning point for Emma came when we sorted through her confusion around men and what she wanted in a guy, and shifted the focus to loving herself and her life – exactly as it was. Not expecting a guy to fill the void she had been feeling in her personal life. Things changed significantly when Emma started being the person she was wanting to attract. None of this happened magically overnight. To fix this stuff you need to do the inner work. Which is exactly what Emma did. Not long after her attitude and mindset shift, Emma started dating a different style of guy who has since become her Mr Right.
5 Things You Can Do To Have Your Relationship Breakthrough
If you’re still single and wanting to find the right guy, here’s what you can do to turn things around, starting today:
- Own the choices you’ve made to date. Most women who can’t find the right guy have passed up relationship opportunities because they wanted to travel, pursue their career goals, or just didn’t see the guy who was interested in them as cool enough, sexy enough, or enough in some way. That’s a choice, right. For whatever reason you weren’t ready, or didn’t know what you wanted, or what a good guy looked like in real life.
- Change your story and scripts. Negative, self-limiting stories and scripts give you tunnel vision. You just don’t see anything beyond what you’re telling yourself 24 hours a day. You become so totally fused with your story it shapes your beliefs and limits your options.
- Create a life that you love, instead of seeing a gaping big hole. Be what you’re wanting to attract. Be open to doing something different.
- Let go of the Hollywood scripts and fairy tale myths around falling in love and romance. They are not based on real life.
- Don’t buy into the stereotype cliche that all men like the thrill of the chase when it comes to women. It’s a myth. Guys who chase the hardest and are the most persistent at the start, are usually the ones who are addicted to the highs and excitement of the courtship and honeymoon phases of relationships. As soon as they know they have ‘got you’ they turn cold and focus on someone else. Leaving you feeling confused, angry and rejected. Reality check – men like women who know what they want. This needs to become your new mantra. A large percentage of men in committed long term heterosexual relationships are in them because the woman was crystal clear on how she felt and what she wanted.
Take Aways:
If you keep buying into the same old stories and scripts, your life won’t change. That’s just how it works.
Life changes when you take a chance.
“What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.” – Plutarch
*All identifying features, including names, have been changed in this case study to protect the privacy of my client.
A version of this article was featured in the December Issue of The Sydney Standard.
Janelle Legge is a Psychotherapist, Leadership, Mindfulness and Wellbeing Consultant and Coach who specialises in Relationships, Career Success, Work-Life Integration and Wellbeing. Janelle has a limited number of spaces available each month for in person consults in Sydney. For enquiries including fees and scheduling, click here and Janelle will be happy to answer all your questions. You do not need a referral from your Doctor to book an appointment with Janelle.
Janelle also works with clients around the world via Skype. To book a skype session with Janelle click here.
by Janelle Legge | Nov 6, 2015 | Relationships and Facebook |
What’s happened to the right to say “No” and set your own personal boundaries in life? Lately there have been some articles in the media on the negative cognitive and emotional responses to being unfriended on Facebook. But sometimes being told “No” is exactly what you need to hear to snap out of an addictive trance, or those toxic relationships or obsessions that just aren’t good for you.
Okay, so people don’t like being unfriended on Facebook by people they know and like. It’s bound to bring up old hurts and wounds around being excluded from the cool group at school, or being dumped by your best friend growing up. It’s not a great feeling being cyber dumped by someone you thought was your ‘friend’. It can trigger all those negative self-defeating thoughts like “I’m not good enough, cool enough, interesting enough, beautiful enough”, you know the ones. Leaving you feeling rejected and snubbed.
It’s astounding the amount of toxic self talk and feelings of low self esteem that can get triggered when someone says “No” to you – when you’re basing your self worth on external sources of validation.
Which is what’s going on if you’re being negatively impacted by someone unfriending you on Facebook. For children and teenagers, being excluded from groups is a bigger deal. Particularly if they’re shy or more reserved in nature and don’t have loads of friends. For younger people being unfriended on Facebook and other social media can really hurt.
There’s a lot of financial gain tied up in Facebook. So we’re all being constantly told how important our Facebook ‘identity’ is, and how integral it is to our personal identity. Of course that’s what the people who are making vast amounts of money from Facebook want everyone to believe. And if you’ve grown up using an iPad since you were 6 years old then your experience of Facebook is clearly going to be different to people who didn’t grow up with social media.
But at the end of the day, switch off your laptop or mobile device and Facebook no longer exists.
If you’re being negatively impacted when someone you know unfriends you on Facebook, here’s what you can do to detox from social media overkill, see things from a different perspective and get on with your life:
Image by Tim Gouw
5 Ways To Get Over Being Unfriended On Facebook
- If you’re upset over being unfriended on Facebook the first thing you need to do is step away from all of your devices and give yourself a 24 hour social media cooling off period. Go and talk about it with a friend – in person – to get some empathy for the parts of you that are feeling rejected and hurt. If you have children or teenagers, you need to give them emotional and constructive support if they’re being cyber bullied or excluded from groups on social media, or unfriended by someone they felt close to.
- Give other people permission to say “No” to you. Giving other people permission to choose who they hang out with on Facebook and in real life gives you the same rights. It makes it an even playing field. You too have the right to unfriend or block anyone, for whatever reason. Unfriending on Facebook often comes down to someone posting content that’s repetitive, inappropriate, or because of something that’s happened outside of Facebook. These days lots of people annually cull the number of friends they have on Facebook to keep their connections personally relevant. Most adults are now over the whole ‘numbers to impress’ game when it comes to their personal Facebook account.
- Take a look at how much time you’re spending on Facebook each day. Are you being sucked down cyber rabbit holes for hours and days on end? If you are, then it’s time to take a break from virtual cyberspace and get back into the real physical world and spend quality face-to-face time with your other friends.
- If someone’s unfriended you because you’ve developed an unhealthy obsession with them, this is a red flag alert. You need to switch off your computer and mobile devices and let go of the fantasy and addictive patterns you’ve developed around this person and Facebook. It’s high time you put your energy and imagination into building healthier relationships that are real and mutual.
- Seek validation from more trustworthy, less fickle sources. Facebook and other forms of social media rely on the fact that most people adopt a herd mentality in groups and unconsciously follow the rest of the pack. There’s a lot of copycat, “me too” group dynamics going on. Yet Hollywood shows us again and again that relying heavily on external, fickle sources for validation to feel worthy as a person and good about yourself can be dangerous and fleeting. Go for substance and credible, trusted sources for validation and honest feedback.
Rejection or “No” gets your attention. It stops you in your tracks and forces you to re-evaluate a whole range of things. Your beliefs, behaviours and expectations around what you want out of life and your friendships. If being told “No” totally devastates you, then there are issues around self esteem that need to be healed. Disappointment and pain are valuable opportunities to learn about yourself and grow.
Don’t get me wrong, Facebook is a fantastic social networking and friendship building tool. But when you lose all perspective and see it as an extension of your self worth and likeability for who you really are, then you’re bound to get disappointed and tripped up by the aspects of Facebook that are just not that credible or real.
When one door closes, other doors open. That’s how life works. Nature abhors a vacuum. Rejection when taken on board with self-awareness is a powerful catalyst for personal growth and positive change.
Being unfriended on Facebook can be a good opportunity to declutter your friend space and create room for friendships of more substance to enter into your life. It can also get you to view Facebook from a more balanced and objective perspective and not let it dominate your life.
Title image by Luis Llerena
by Janelle Legge | Nov 4, 2015 | Narcissism |
There’s a lot that’s been written about narcissistic business leaders – including how driven, focused and successful they can be – up to a point. But recently I’ve noticed a trend of narcissistic-styled approaches at the Customer Service level in smaller sized businesses. By narcissistic-styled, what I’m referring to here is a lack of interpersonal awareness and skills when dealing with customers, in particular, around empathy.
While a narcissistic CEO or chief “rain-maker” of a large corporation may be able to pull this off, narcissistic-styled, “me-centric” behaviour at the customer service level in a small to medium sized business is a total liability.
When it comes to the customer service area of business, hire for attitude first, then skills is key.
Here is what I experienced the other week when I travelled interstate and encountered a stuff-up that had occurred within a car hire company’s processes:
1. Rigid, fixed thinking and views about ‘how things should be done’.
2. Focusing on problems, not solutions – no attempt to solve the issue.
3. Black and white, concrete thinking. No mental flexibility or agility.
4. Dumping the problem back onto the customer.
5. A lack of empathy and recognition of normal human emotions in other people, such as frustration and exasperation, over the stuff-up. There wasn’t even a glimmer of trying to imagine themselves in the customer’s shoes. Active Listening Skills 101: listen, understand, clarify, and then move forward – were nowhere to be seen.
The overarching fundamental theme to all this seemed to be a lack of understanding around what makes people tick. It was a “me-centric”, narcissistic-styled “I don’t have to listen to you” approach.
This style of approach is customer relationship kryptonite and guarantees no repeat business.
Successful multinationals, like Virgin, totally get how important customer relationship management is for their business and brand. Yet smaller to medium sized companies sometimes skimp on investing in core customer relationship skills training, focusing instead on processes and systems above everything else which is a big oversight. Because when stuff-ups occur within business systems or processes that aren’t quickly resolved, the solution from the customer’s perspective is quite straight forward. There’s no repeat business. Simple. And then there’s the viral word of mouth. When negative customer experiences occur, most people tell just about everyone they know.
So What Can You Do About It?
How do you appreciate the nature and scale of the problem? In the situation that occurred the other week, when it was clear I was being blocked, I spoke with the manager who immediately got things sorted. Management were in fact great, they were solution focused, friendly and switched on. So the gap and brand-disconnect was occurring at the customer service level of the business. Had I dealt with the manager in the first place, the issue would have never even arose.
Customers won’t always take the time to give you feedback, they’ll just walk away when stuff-ups occur that don’t get sorted at the customer service level, or higher up.
Here are 3 things you can do to avoid this problem jeopardizing your business and brand:
1. Provide Active Listening, Interpersonal Skills and Customer Relationship Training. It’s a must.
2. Be clear around your company’s expectations on Customer Relationship Management so that everyone delivers a consistent brand experience.
3. Invest in on-going people development to help your people succeed and grow, including support for new staff to ensure they are on the right track. Don’t just focus on systems and processes, as important as they are, and leave out the people side of things.
Sometimes, all of this is still not enough. All the amount of training in the world would not have shifted this person’s attitude and lack of interpersonal skills. It can take enormous amounts of time and effort, with little progress to show, trying to change someone’s behaviour who’s simply not suited for a particular kind of role, for a whole range of reasons. If that’s the case, then it’s knowing when to recognize this, find them a more suitable role, or look at other options. Some personality types are simply just not suited to customer service roles and if you don’t identify this from the get-go it will cost you.
Because business is about people. And how well, or not, you respond to your customers has a huge impact on the success of your business and brand. This is true for all businesses, whether they are small or large.
Image by Rayi Christian Wicaksono
