A friendly pelican in Cuba. I hope it makes you smile too.

I’ve nearly slipped up a couple of times in the last few weeks. Twice I’ve been listening to someone describing their biggest challenge, their most difficult situation. On both occasions, I nearly missed the nub of it all. The challenge wasn’t out there, it was inside the speaker. In both situations the central point and the key one to focus on was that in each situation they were in Just Surviving. I could have been seduced into exploring the circumstances, the history, the behaviour of others involved, the possible next steps and so on. But I caught myself, noticed how they were in the situation and brought the conversation to ‘so what can you do to be At Your Best in this situation?’

So please notice in situations that are most challenging to you, where is the first place to go to work? Is it first to make sure that you’re At Your Very Best?

If it is, here’s what you might want to do:
– first, connect strongly to you At Your Best. Feel how it feels, stand the way you do when you’re at your best, think of a time when you were at your very best.
– then imagine yourself at this very best in the ‘challenging’ situation. Imagine how you’d feel, what you’d say, how you’d handle the things that currently might trigger you.
– take that way of being into that and other situations.

Have a good week,

Steve