New BFP column: Lifestyle coach (From Bucks Free Press)

New BFP column: Lifestyle coach

12:11pm Friday 9th September 2011 in Cookham

Martin Sadler is a qualified coach, NLP Master Practitioner and Trainer and TFT Practitioner based in Wooburn Moor.

He works with individuals and businesses to help them to expand their potential, which is the name of his company.

He runs workshops on a range of subjects from NLP, to customer service, confidence building to team leading.

He also works with people on a one to one basis where he helps them to create a future they want, by letting go of their past, eliminating fears and phobias and creating a plan to help them to achieve their personal goals in life.

Martin will now write a monthly column for the Bucks Free Press website.

The other day I was sitting in my new allotment looking at all of the digging, weeding, setting out and feeding the earth I needed to do before I could start to plant a single seed.

The task looked daunting as I imagined all of the work to do and the time it would take to do it even before I could plant one seed. So I thought the best thing to do would be to sit down with a cup of tea and think about how to tackle this big task.

The job just seemed to immense and was very daunting and I could not think where to start first and so just sat drinking my tea and doing nothing. However my allotment neighbour came to see me for a chat and asked me what I was doing, so I explained about all the jobs I would need to do.

He stood for a bit and looked at the allotment thoughtfully and said “Why don’t you break the allotment down into beds and then do one at a time and plant before as you go”.

I looked at him and looked at my allotment and realised he was right I had just been too close to the issue to see an easier way to carry out the task.

The job then did not appear so daunting and I started straight away setting out the beds and I had dug my first area for planting by the end of the day and it felt great.

Just the idea of taking that first step was a lot easier and when I had done one bed the rest seemed easy. How many times have you set a goal for yourself that seemed just too daunting, the best way to make any goal more achievable is to break the task down into smaller manageable tasks that can then be prirotised on what is needed to be done first, second and so on.

These tasks being smaller then become more manageable and possible to do and when you start one the rest just fall into place. What tasks are you not starting because they appear to big, how about using this approach and seeing what happens.

Or you could talk to someone about it, it as not until I talked to my neighbour that I realised what I needed to do as he helped me take a step back and look at my task from a different perspective.