Note: This is a guest post by Hilary Jeanes of Purple Line Consulting.

How important to you is your career?

It is surprising how many people leave their careers to chance.  They seem to think that their career will just happen or that the organisation they work for will not only decide when their next step on the career ladder is but also what it will be.  If it doesn’t happen, then the organisation is perceived to be useless or not caring or not recognising/rewarding effort or hard work.  We spend a lot of time at work, so doing something we enjoy and find rewarding (both personally and financially) makes good sense.

From my own experience, both as an employee of large organisations and as an HR professional, here are 10 tips which make it much more likely that you will achieve the career you want.

1. What do you love doing?  Think about any type of work you have done – while you were at school or college, in your vacations or in your past or current jobs.  What is it that gave you a buzz?  What activities have you done where time passed without you even noticing?  This is likely to be where your natural strengths lie.  Ask your friends and colleagues what they think you are good at.  There are probably no surprises, but it’s good to find out what others think are your skills and attributes.
2. What did you dream about doing when you were a child?  If you are not doing that now, what aspects of being an astronaut, professional footballer, model, teacher or doctor etc etc appealed to you?
3. Think about what you’d like to be doing in 5 and 10 years’ time.  Working on your own or as part of a team? What sort of organisation (and which specific companies/organisations) do you want to work for? What type of work would you like to be doing?  At home or abroad?  At a desk or not?  What do you like about what you do now?  What would you like to be different?
4. Let’s go to the end of your working life now… Imagine you are at your own retirement party.  People are talking about what you achieved in your career and what they admired and will miss you for.  What would you like them to be saying?
5. What skills do you have that you are not using and would like to?  They may be writing skills that you used on your college magazine or being captain of the school hockey team.  Seek out opportunities to put them into practice now.
6. Look at job ads – in newspapers, journals and on websites.  Cut out or print off job ads that interest you, that you aspire to or that you are curious about.  Which organisations appeal and why?  Highlight the words that are most appealing.  Keep them in a special folder and every month or so, take them out, review them and write a list of the highlighted words.   What are the common themes?  What of the common themes you identify are you doing now?  What do you need to do to be able to fulfil the requirements of those ads in the future?
7. Who do you know?  Who can help you get to where you want to be?  Talk to as many people as possible about what they do and what they love about it.  Ask them how they got the career development they wanted or if you could shadow them for a day to find out how they do what they do.  Most people are flattered to be asked and are only too happy to help.  Find someone who is doing the job you aspire to or working in an organisation you’d like to work for and ask them if they would mentor you.  If you don’t know someone, ask your family, friends and contacts if they do – remember the 6 degrees of separation.
8. Grasp opportunities with both hands.  My big breaks in corporate life came at times when I was facing big challenges in my personal life – a new parent returning to work and separating from my partner.  I really doubted whether I could manage the jobs that were on offer given the other life challenges I was facing, but what I realised was that if I passed up those opportunities, they might not be there again.  It was tough at first, but they were two of the best career decisions I took.
9. What does your boss do that you could do for them?  Observe your boss in action.  What does he or she spend their time doing?  Are there regular activities that they engage in that you would like to try and that would save them time and energy?  If so, suggest that you do it for them.
10. Finding the right job takes time and effort.  Put the time and effort in and it will pay off.  Write down the answers to these questions and keep referring to them.  Find a coach and explore your future career aspirations with them.  One thing is certain – if you know where you are going you are much more likely to get there.  If you set off from home without knowing where you were headed you would drive around aimlessly. So it is with your career. Be clear about what you want and you will get it.

Hilary Jeanes is a coach, facilitator and HR consultant.  She is fascinated by people and loves supporting them to reach their potential. Visit her website at Purple Line Consulting.  You can read another article of hers here.

“Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out.”
Karl Augustus Menninger

“The enemy is fear. We think it is hate; but, it is fear.”
Mahatma Gandhi

What is holding you back?

Whatever you answer, it will in many cases boil down to fear in some form.

Now, fear can be useful to keep yourself alive. But many times, especially if you live a life where you have the possibility to reading these words, fear is just a big obstacle in your path.

But what can you do about fear? How can you overcome it?

In this article I’d like to explore a handful of the timeless things that people have learned about that throughout the last few thousands of years.

1. Face your fear to become stronger.

“I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.”
Frank Herbert

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

Every time you face a fear you gain the 3 important qualities that Eleanor Roosevelt mentions above. And the next thing that comes along will be easier to handle.

And if you have to handle a big fear, whatever it may be, and later realize you actually survived it, many things in life you may have feared previously seems to shrink. Those fears become smaller. They might even disappear.

You might think to yourself that what you thought was a fear before wasn’t that much to be afraid of at all. Everything is relative. And every triumph, problem, fear and experience becomes bigger or smaller depending to what you compare it to.

But to gain a wider perspective of human experience and grow you really have to step up and face your fear.

2. Facing your fear can be surprisingly anticlimactic.

“When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is perhaps my favorite quote about fear. From a distance and in you mind things may seem very difficult and frightening. But when you actually step up and take action I think many of us have been surprised of how the beard of that bully just comes off.

Why? Let’s move on to the next tip…

3. Take action and get busy.

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”
Dale Carnegie

“Worry gives a small thing a big shadow.”
Swedish proverb

You can’t sit around think and waiting for courage and confidence to come knocking on the door. If you do, you may just experience the opposite effect. The more you think, the more fear you build within.

We often build scary monsters in our heads.

Maybe because of things we have learned from the news, the TV or the movies. Or we just think so much about something that our minds start to create totally unlikely horror scenarios of what may happen.

As you may have noticed in your own life, 80-90 percent of what we worry about never really comes into reality. Instead things can become anticlimactic when we take action. The beard of the bully comes off surprisingly easy if we just step up and take action.

And many times we get the courage we need after we have done what we feared. Not the other way around.

4. Fear is often based on unhelpful interpretation.

“Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real.”
Unknown

As humans we like to look for patterns. The problem is just that we often find negative and not so helpful patterns in our lives based on just one or two experiences. Or by misjudging situations. Or through some silly miscommunication.

When you get too identified with your thoughts you’ll believe anything they tell you. A more helpful practice may be to not take your thoughts too seriously. A lot of the time they and your memory are pretty inaccurate.

But this is a good thing too.

Because it opens you up to re-examining old beliefs you have based on experiences you may have interpreted in not the most helpful way. It opens you up to try again and see what happens this time instead of staying stuck in thought, inaction and fear.

5. Don’t cling to your illusion of safety.

“Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
Helen Keller

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
Helen Keller

Why do people sit on their hands? Is it just because they become paralyzed with fear?

I’d say no.

Another big reason why people don’t face their fears is because they think they are safe where they are right now. But the truth is what Keller says; safety is mostly a superstition.

It is created in your mind to make you feel safe. But there is no safety out there really. It is all uncertain and unknown.

• You may get laid off.
• Someone may break up with you and leave.
• Illness will probably strike.
• Death will certainly strike in your surroundings and at some point come to visit you too.
• Who knows what else will happen?

This superstition of safety is not just something negative. It’s also created by your mind so you can function in life. No point in going all paranoid about what could happen a minute from now day in and day out.

But there is also not that much point in clinging to an illusion of safety. So you need to find balance where you don’t obsessed by the uncertainty but also recognize that it is there and live accordingly.

As you stop clinging to your safety life also becomes a whole lot more exciting and interesting.

You are no longer as confined by an illusion and realize that you set your limits for what you can do and to a large extent create your own freedom in the world. You are no longer building walls to keep yourself safe as those walls wouldn’t protect you anyway.

6. Be curious.

“Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.”
James Stephens

When you are stuck in fear you are closed up. You tend to create division in your world and mind. You create barriers between you and other things or people.

Curiosity on the other hand is filled with anticipation and enthusiasm. It opens you up. And when you are open and enthusiastic then you have more fun things to think about than focusing on your fear.

Curiousness also opens you up to gain understanding of something. And with understanding vague, fog-like fears disappears.

The emotions you experience are often as a result of what you focus your mind on. Change what you focus on about something and you can change your emotions about that thing.

How do you become more curious?

One way is to remember how life has become more fun in the past thanks to your curiosity and to remember all the cool things it helped to discover and experience. And then to work at it.

Curiosity is a habit. The more curious you are the more curious you become. And over time it becomes more of a natural part of you.

7. Remove separation. Remove fear.

“Who sees all beings in his own self, and his own self in all beings, loses all fear.”
Isa Upanishad, Hindu Scripture

The ego wants to divide your world. It wants to create barriers, separation and loves to play the comparison game. The game where people are different compare to you, the game where you are better than someone and worse than someone else. All of that creates fear. Doing the opposite removes fear.

That there is no real separation between beings, that we are one and the same, might sound a bit corny.

But one thought you may want to try for a day is that everyone you meet is your friend.

Another one is to see what parts of yourself you can see in someone you meet. And what parts of yourself you can see in him or her.

There is often an underlying frame of mind in interactions. Either it asks us how we are different to this person. Or how we are the same as this person.

The first frame is based in how the ego likes to judge people and create separation to strengthen itself (either through feeling better or more like a victim).

The second one creates warmth, an openness and curiosity within. There is no place to focus on fear or judgement anymore.

This is of course not easy, especially if you have held the first frame of mind for many years. But you can get insight into this by doing the rest of the things above. As you face your fears the barriers and separation you have built in your mind decreases.

You come closer and feel more of a connection to other people.

With action, curiousness and understanding we come closer to each other. We gain a greater understanding of ourselves and others. And so it becomes easier to see them in you. And you in them.

Note: This is a guest post by Ari Koinuma of OurBestVersion.com.

I often take my kids to play in a sand-pit near our home.  Both my 4-year-old girl and 19-month-old boy love playing in sand.

And sometimes I join them.

It’s such a bliss.  I highly recommend it if you haven’t done it recently. Simple acts like digging a hole in sand has a very soothing, relaxing effect.

Like going back to a time when I didn’t have responsibilities.  No need to perform, please or prove.

Scarcity of Unconditional Love

Childhood bliss is, unfortunately, something many of us don’t experience — and even if we do, don’t experience it fully enough.  Imagine a baby cuddled in mother’s arms. You just exist, and your parents love you.  You may not understand their words, but you get the message from their touches, their smiles, the tone in their voice. They tell you: we are glad you were born.

Unconditional love is a birthright. It’s the builder of our foundation, the ground on which the rest of our psyche is built.  But many (or most?) of us are given the gift of compromised foundation.  You may not recognize it as such in your day-to-day struggles.  But consider these common symptoms:

• Chronic, mysterious and/or incurable health conditions (migraine, skin rashes, perpetual history of getting sick or injured one way or another)
• Difficulty trusting other people
• Insecurity/inadequacy
• Scarcity mentality
• Dependency (substance, food, approval of peer/parent/boss)

Virtually all big and deep personal problems can be traced back to your foundation: your right to exist.  And unconditional love is the only true cure for the problem.  There are many fixes for any and all of the problems listed above, individually.  But since all the problems stem from your lack of trust in your existence, fixing your foundation will solve or cure all the other symptoms that come from it.

Where Can We Find Unconditional Love?

But unconditional love is an elusive commodity.  If parents weren’t available or able to give it to you abundantly, who can?  Religious institutions claim to, though they are full of moral codes you have to fit into. Spouses, maybe, but romantic love isn’t the same as unconditional/parental love.  You may believe that a god or a “higher being” can provide it, but on the condition that you have to believe in such thing and have your spiritual antenna developed enough to really experience that love.  It’s not available to atheists, is it?

Is there any place in this world that everyone can turn to, a reliable source for our deep crave for unconditional love?

Yes. You.

You can love yourself unconditionally.  Even if you didn’t experience enough of it the first time around, you can always do so today.

How? You may ask.  I’ve never, ever really received it — how can I give myself which I didn’t receive?

It’s simple.  You re-live your babyhood.  Except this time, you play both roles — the baby and the parent.

5 Practical Ways to Self-Produce Unconditional Love

I put the list more or less in the order of potency.

1. Visualization. In your mind, imagine your mother (or father or a caregiver) holding the baby you. With a big smile, she holds you gently and tell you over and over, “I’m so glad you were born.” You can write it down or verbally describe it, for aiding your visualization and for greater impact.  This is the easiest method, though least potent and impossible to do if you can’t remember experiencing unconditional love, ever.
2. Drawing. You can use any material, but I recommend you at least invest in a sketch book and a decent set of oil pastels. You can draw the above scene literally, or you can draw more abstractly by intuitively splashing, lines, shapes and colors.  If your hurt is coming out, you may draw ugly, painful pictures — allow yourself to do so.  Just keep drawing until you get to a point where you can start drawing what your heart desires.  You’ll get there once you spill out enough of your hurt.
3. Playing. This is where the sand pit comes in — once in my therapy session, my therapist had me play in the sand. Another time, she had me use a pile of dolls and figures to describe how I was feeling.  I remember picking one figure for myself and placing everything else in a big circle facing me, surrounding — to express that I felt like the whole world was against me.  Again, after pouring out your hurt, you’ll get to a point where you start expressing your unconditional love for yourself.
4. Role-playing. You can get a doll (there are ones that specifically designed for therapeutic purposes, though anything will do) and you hold it in your arms, and physically carry out the acts described in #1.  Be sure to call it your name and tell him/her “I’m glad you were born.”  Alternatively, if you have a willing spouse or a trusted friend, you can enact this where you really get to be on the receiving end.
5. Caring a child. I obviously don’t recommend becoming a parent for the sole purpose of healing yourself, but this is actually what takes place among parents: a chance to re-do their own life.  We parents all project ourselves to our children to some extent.  Raise your baby and shower him/her with abundant unconditional love.  Alternatively, you can baby sit someone else’s baby and do this, if you don’t want your own child but want to try out this most powerful method.

As you try out these exercise, you’ll experience a powerful sensation of relief and relaxation.  If your scar is deep, you may feel the hurt coming out first — and you need to allow it.  But be sure to incorporate the central message:  you are telling the baby — yourself — that you are glad you were born.  This the most fundamental message of unconditional love.

For most of us, this is not a one-time healing session.  It’s an on-going process. When you have a need to heal, life tends to create opportunities for you to do so — by creating situations where you encounter your brokenness. Each time you feel anxious, worried, or scared, take the time to engage in these exercises. Over time, you’ll notice that your inner peace becomes less and less affected by life events.

An effective psychotherapist can mentor and guide you in this process, especially if your hurt is deep. But don’t underestimate, don’t misunderstand that you are healing yourself. Therapists and other healing arts are simply helping you use your own healing power.

My Personal Healing

I have personally used all 5 methods at one time or another in my healing process.  I used to have this paralyzing fear of people getting mad at me, or being blamed for my mistakes.  When such a situation occurred, my head would “blank out” with fear — I was so overwhelmed by sheer terror that I couldn’t think.  I had an unnatural drive to be blameless, or at least appear to be infallible.  Whenever I was under stress, my defence mechanism was to cover my tracks so I had no visible failures.

After years of living with my fear, I finally submitted myself to therapy. I enjoyed my therapy sessions.  I had two sketchbooks full of my pastel drawings, and piles of journals.

But my catalyst was when my daughter was born.  At that very moment, I felt my capacity for unconditional love truly awaken.  It has been the most transformational healing experience.  As I poured my heart into taking care of her, and now my toddler son, I observed my own foundation become more solid.

Nowadays, those panic attacks are a thing of past.  Sure, my heart would still pound faster when people get mad at me (which doesn’t happen as often as it used to) or if I make a mistake and other people notice it. But nothing out of ordinary. I don’t feel threatened, nor live in fear of such situations.

Concluding Thoughts

If you experience abundance of unconditional love, your life will be peaceful.  By that, I don’t mean quiet, slow or serene — it’s just that you’ll spend little time feeling threatened, afraid, and insecure.  There’s nothing to prove, no need to argue.  Wars will end and crimes will diminish.  Sounds idealistic?  Yes, it can certainly appear so, until you actually experience this healing and transformation. The security becomes so strong and stable that you just simply lose room in your heart for things like desperation and aggression.

Regardless of your childhood experience or your relationship with your parents, don’t begrudge them.  It may be hard to feel grateful for getting hurt, but once you experience the healing, you’ll realize what an amazing transformation it is.  People who were uncompromised may not realize what they have.  But you won’t take it for granted.  You’ll be grateful and will feel excited to tell other hurt souls that healing is possible.

The above 5 methods are the ones that worked for me.  What other methods can produce unconditional love to you?  When have you experienced unconditional love’s healing power?  Please share your stories, so that we can tell the world that it is possible to heal and that opportunity is available to everyone.

Ari Koinuma writes on the theme of “Bic Picture of Healing and Growth: from Depression to Self Actualization” at his site, OurBestVersion.com. If you enjoyed this entry, check out his thorough analysis of self-esteem and his personal story of how he used the method described above to heal himself.

“I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.”
Mahatma Gandhi

Many people have heroes in their lives. Heroes can be helpful to get inspiration and they can provide you with valuable information if they have already walked the path you are on.

But there are also a few downsides with having heroes. Or at least with putting them on too high of a pedestal. Something I think is pretty common and can be helpful at first. But, as you move forward it can become an obstacle for you.

Here are four reasons to be careful with your heroes. 

1. They might not live up to your image of them.

It can be very hard to really see a person. This is probably especially true with someone you hold up as a hero. But people aren’t an idealized images in your head. No one is Superman or Wonder Woman.

This can lead to disappointment. You may feel betrayed. Your unreal expectations might damage that relationship, no matter what kind of relationship it is. You may even abandon people when they don’t act as you wanted them to. When they don’t live to the image in your head.

I think it’s important to remember that we are all human and prone to make mistakes. Holding people to unreasonable standards will only create more unnecessary conflicts in your world and negativity within you.

2. It can make you feel like you are not worthy.

When you start to make myths out of people – even though they may have produced extraordinary results – you run the risk of becoming disconnected from them. You can start to feel like you could never achieve similar things that they did because they are so very different.

You won’t feel worthy to do so. And so you’ll hinder or self-sabotage to keep yourself in line with your own expectations and self-image. Understanding that everyone is human can open you up to your own potential.

3. It can make it harder to connect to people.

When you have some heroes you are likely to think more about the opposite too. And place people into neat and tidy folders. You may create villain-like images of people in your world.

But in truth, things can be kinda messy. Putting someone on a pedestal or making a villain out of them create barriers in your head and life. It may give you a sense of being right. But it can hold you back from positive experiences too.

Openness is more fun than judgement.

4. You may develop tunnel vision.

If you get too attached to one hero, you may believe all s/he says. Everyone has flaws and blindspots though. What your hero tells you might not be the best fit for you, even though it may be for him/her. So take inspiration and knowledge from many sources and people. Go out and experiment and see what you like.

I’m not saying that any of this is easy. But to keep these pointers in mind, remembering to relax and that people are mostly just people can be very useful.

Note: This is a guestpost by Claire Askew of One Night Stanzas.

The space you work in is important.

It doesn’t matter if it’s your living room, a six-foot-square cubicle, or a corner office-suite; the space you work in makes a massive difference to the work you’re doing. It can affect the creativity and quality of your work, and it can even affect the time it takes you to do it. We’ve all had days where we can’t string two thoughts together coherently, and can’t figure out why.

Well, it’s highly possible that the workspace you’ve carved out for yourself is a contributing factor. Check out this list and see if you can’t turn your place of work into a more productive environment…

1: Tidy up.

There’s an old saying – which you’ve doubtless seen on fridge-magnets the world over – that dull people have tidy houses. Maybe that’s true, but tidy people get the last laugh here. If you’re a naturally messy person, you’re probably less productive than your tidy colleagues.

Think of the times you’ve searched frantically through a totally un-ordered pile of papers looking for a particular document. Think of the times you’ve needed to email something out, only to find that it’s lost somewhere in the depths of your hard drive. Had you been a natural tidy-freak, you’d have found what you needed within seconds, and your task would have been completed much faster.

Tidiness doesn’t just add speed. It also removes some of the small stresses that come with having a job to do. You may not realise it, but the mess all over your desk is distracting the heck out of you every time you look away from your computer screen.

Thoughts like “I should rinse out that coffee cup” or “that’s where my stapler went” can totally de-rail you from the task in hand. If you have a massive pile of papers teetering on the edge of your desk, it’s only a matter of time before you knock them over – and mark my words, it’ll happen in the middle of a crucial phone-call, or while you’re video-conferencing with a client. And of course, a messy workspace is never going to endear you to your boss or a new customer, so knuckle down and tidy up.

Block out a day in your planner and spend it sorting, restocking, filing, binning and recycling. Get your workspace in good order, and then invest five or ten minutes per day keeping it that way. I promise it’s worth it.

2: Change the furniture.

Now, you may not be a believer in feng shui, but sometimes the arrangement of your workspace furniture can make a massive difference to your productivity. Maybe the sun shines onto your computer screen at certain times, making it hard for you to read. Maybe your desk chair is too high for your legs to sit comfortably under the desk. Maybe you’re close to the water-cooler and always have people coming and going right next to you.

Chances are, these things have never fully registered with you, but they’re potentially impacting on your work. Something as simple as adjusting the height of your chair, or having a word with your boss about shifting your desk, can make a huge difference.

Sit in your workspace and look around you. Pay attention to anything you think might be distracting. Are you facing a door? If people are coming into the office all the time, chances are you’re subconsciously looking up every few moments to see who’s there. Is your desk littered with snapshots? If so, your mind may not be 100% on the job.

Being next to a window overlooking the car park is problematic – seeing your colleagues going home early on a Friday afternoon is guaranteed to put you off your work for the rest of the day. Think – are you physically comfortable, even at the end of the day? If not, what’s the problem – your chair, the height of your desk, an unruly keyboard? 

If you find that there are issues you can’t change yourself – e.g., having the water-cooler at your elbow – then voice your concerns to your boss. If you explain that you think the situation is affecting your ability to work, chances are they’ll act quickly to change it.

3: Surround yourself with inspiration, not distraction.

You don’t have to get rid of every surplus or scrap of decoration, however. What you really need to do is turn distraction into inspiration – to surround yourself with things that gear you up to being creative.

Everyone likes to brighten up their workspace, but having eye-catching photographs and images in front of you 24/7 is asking for trouble. Rather than lining up family photos or holiday snaps next to your computer, grab yourself a photo album and spend an evening sticking your pictures inside. Keep the album in a desk drawer, and when you’re feeling burned out, take five minutes to flick through the pages. This can provide a welcome break and stops you from just staring into space when a creative block strikes.

Another thing you can do is always keep your pin-board in the present. Many people still have things hanging on the wall that have been there since they started their job.

Post-its are great things, but if you have a million stuck all over your desk and covered in scribbles, I’m guessing you’re not using them to their full potential! Look around your office and remove anything that’s in your line of sight that you know you won’t need or look at anymore. Anything you don’t need now but might need in the future, file.

Only keep the things you use right now on display. Think about how to display them. Got a heap of post-its hanging around, each reminding you of a task you need to complete?  Compile them into an easy-to-read to-do’ list instead.

4: Change colour.

We’ve all read about colour being an important factor when it comes to creating mood. And of course, you’d carefully consider any colour for a room in your house – so why not for your workspace?

Most offices like to keep colours neutral, with white, beige and grey as sure-fire favourites. Grey is not a good colour for anyone – it’s boring, depressing and it’s perhaps the least creative shade in the spectrum, with beige not far behind. White can be relaxing, but not very stimulating, so if your workspace has been sapped of colour, it’s time to make some changes.

If you have a great boss, sit down with them and discuss the colour issue. You may feel nuts doing it, but if your boss values productivity and creative output, they should be willing to listen. Do some research on colour psychology, and find out what colours stimulate and inspire.Produce your findings and make some suggestions for changes to your space.

Look around for the blank spaces in your office and suggest putting simple, vibrant art pieces into these gaps, or put forward the possibility of painting one wall with a vibrant hue – whatever you think works in the space. If you work from home or don’t think you can approach your boss, customise your corner with a colourful painting, or pin coloured paper onto your pin-board to make a brighter background. Pick up some coloured post-its and trade in your cardboard-cover notebook for something a bit more snazzy. Brighten up your space, and it may well benefit your work.

5: Beat the clock.

Watching the clock is guaranteed to kill your creativity, particularly when you feel like you’re at a low ebb to start with.  The old saying “a watched pot never boils” rings true here – the more often you glance up at the clock, the slower time will seem to go.  So take action. Get rid of your wall-clock or desk-clock. 

If you sit in a position where you can see the office wall-clock, or the personal clock of a co-worker, ask about getting it moved, or move yourself.  Yes, people may think you’re weird, but yet again, if you’re going to be working better for it, it’s worth it. Leave your watch at home, and put a screensaver on your mobile phone.

Don’t let yourself even think about how many hours, minutes and seconds you have left before you can stop working. Instead, set yourself other deadlines. Look at the letter you need to write, or the pile of files you need to sort. Tell yourself “when I’ve written 300 words, I can take a break,” or “once I’ve sorted A – G, I’ll go grab a coffee.”

That way, you’re not constantly looking at the clock thinking “only ten more minutes, only nine and a half more minutes, only eight and a quarter more minutes,” etc.  Instead, you’re doing something productive. And chances are, you’re doing it quickly and efficiently, because you know that when you’re done, you can reward yourself with a little downtime!

Claire Askew blogs at One Night Stanzas, a creative writing/personal development blog for young and emerging writers. She is also editor-in-chief of Read This, a monthly arts magazine currently on its tenth issue. Claire is a semi-professional poet and her work has won four major Scottish literary awards to date, and been published in numerous literary journals in the UK and elsewhere. She works part-time as a tutor for 11 – 18 year olds, teaching English, Creative Writing and Drama. Claire currently lives in Edinburgh, Scotland with her partner, artist and web-developer Leon Crosby.

You can also check out these articles by Claire:

– 10 Commandments: What to avoid when sending your work to magazines
– The Importance of the Cover-Letter