Get Over It! Overcoming Obstacles - She Says Brighton January 2012
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Cara Courage turns obstacles on their head and talks about how she is inspired by those around her.
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Get Over It! Overcoming Obstacles - She Says Brighton January 2012
- 1. overcoming obstacles Cara Courage at SheSays Jan 2012
- 3. @chrissy_kelly @cardigankate @ingridplum @feliskitty @ewokqueen @sonja_gaiaway @rifa @aforaorta
- 4. Kate's annual motto ‘don’t delay’ ‘Positive thinking, visualisation, positive friendships and trying something new’ ‘I don’t make all my money from what I set out to do; I have a portfolio career and that'sa success not a failure’ ‘Few important things come easy in life’ ‘Accept that your biggest success at the moment might be the middle goal, not the end one’ ‘...worry sheet...’ “The road to confidence is paved with vulnerability” ‘Stay well rested, take care of yourself’ ‘Obstacles help me look at the big picture, opens up my thinking’
- 5. friends and mentors resistance / reflexivity ‘I am self-employed, therefore I am’
Editor's Notes
- WhenRifa told me the topic, this was my first reaction – what did I know about overcoming obstacles? My way of overcoming this is to just get my head down and plough on through, what's enlightening about that? I then realised though that this presentation had itself become an obstacle...and I did what I always do in such situations and turned to my mates for help...
- And these are some of the lovely ladies that I turned too...where I have, I have used twitter avatars and added their names so that you can recognise and find them, all people that I would recommend for a follow...I asked them what they did to over come obstacles, do they think of obstacles as obstacles, what works for them, what doesn’t, ..and these are some of the responses that I got...
- Some of these are obvious and self-explanatory, but still worth the reiteration as its the obvious things that we can tend to forget...and some I want to give a bit of time to...Firstly, Kate’s annual motto: Rather than set herself arbitrary or useless new years resolutions, Kate has a yearly motto that she turns to when having to overcome things, this is a way for her to have a constant in her year and a simple one thing to act as an anchor...Past mottos have been ‘its all about the long game, ‘Less talk, more trousers’, ‘Fuck you, I'm creative!’ or on some days ‘Fuck me, I'm creative!’. 2011’s was ‘it'll happen when it happens’ and this years is ‘take it to the next level’Theportfolio career comment struck means as its something that some clients have struggled with and in interviews have effectively asked me if I am jack of all trades, master of none; my response is of course no, that this way of working means I have a massive suite of transferable skills, an extensive knowledge of my sector, of its very different ways of working, of different art forms, business models, huge net of contacts etc etc...Whilst I think the issue here is one for others to catch up with as its portfolio working is on the increase, its a case in point of flipping your thinking on somethingThinking about the bigger picture – this actually has real psychological grounding and there’s been a lot in the psy press about ‘big thinking’ – we associate obstacles with the goal they block, and to think around this, we need to think big The worry sheet – another psy trick that a friend has hit upon, the worry sheet; when we worry about something, we worry about it in the moment and this can variously stress us out more and to distract us, and we can get hooked on this worrying, our brains seem to like it...what my friend does is make an immediate note of the worry, telling herself that she will come back to it later, in doing this she is tricking her mind into thinking that its not given up on worrying and most usefully for her, means that she breaks the cycle of worrying in the present and is able to focus effectively on the issue and solve it, and more often than not, when she comes back to the worry later, she sees that it was either irrelevant or not worth the degree of worry which in the long run has helped retrain her thinking on stress
- Talking this through with people helped me uncover exactly what I do to overcome obstacles...Firstly I turn to my friends...and I had a life-changing mentor a few years back. A good mentor is rare indeed by if you manage to find one, grab them! My mentor asked me what benefits did I want to get from achieving my goals? Was this what I really wanted to be doing in my life? Am I afraid of commitment, of failure? These were very pertinent questions for me at the time and finding the answers out with him really propelled me forward in my career. Resistance Linking back to the worry sheet, worrying is a psychological state of resistance, and resistance comes from a very human fear of change. This is a very powerful innate human psychological state and was one of the things that I realised could paralyse me when faced with an obstacle. Resistance is an obstacle in itself, and an obstacle in overcoming other obstacles and we tend to treat resistance as an enemy ie if I am not succeeding at this thing then I must be doing something wrong. But its more complex than that – and I now see my resistance to something a helpful warning sign that all is not as it should be – I then take stock of what's really going on for me. For me its the realisation that that if I am not doing what I set out to do, then there is a reason for that. And its also a realisation of my subconscious reinforcement of wanting something; if I didn't want it, I wouldn't worry about it. Understanding your resistance frees you to overcome it – therapy, training, self-help...wherever you may find it. Groups like this I think can help, and I saw recently LikeMinded Brighton asked for its members to bring to a meet up an object they thought others would find useful; I thought this a great exercise in getting to know others and in this, uncover more about yourself. So for me, this really comes down to changing your mindset and being reflexive, we need to know ourselves and understand that how we interpret an event influences the way in which we see the event and thus our – resistant – action to it. The key to controlling thoughts is to be aware of thoughts rather than merely react to them. Re-evaluating the way we see and do things so that we can improveBeing self-employedI’ve been self-employed for 12 years now. Its a big part of my self-identity and I don’t necessarily separate the professional me from the work me as such – its all me. But I thought I’d include a couple of work-orientated bits of advice that I have learnt over the years...Want to learn what you are doing wrongDon’t focus too much on the same thing, don’t spend too much time working on the same taskMotivation for working must not be moneyKnowing what results you expect from your work will help you be satisfied with what you achieve, don’t set goals you can’t reachExperiment with new ways of doing thingsDon’t allow yourself to think that you can’t improve or that your skills are set in stoneBuild value in your work and your work offering by becoming constant in doing things that work – with this comes recognitionDon’t forget to take a break – every hour, take afternoons and days off – take a holidayBe solution, not problem, orientated ie focus on achieving a solution, not focusing on the problem, look at the opportunities, benefits, rewards that solving the problem offersBe persistent, disciplined and focusedDon’t compare yourself to others, but look at what they had to do to get them their success – you might like what you see, you might not...Remind yourself what it is about the obstacle that is out of your control – and see it for that, as being out of your control; you can’t control things out of your control