Happy New Year...

I want to wish you all a Happy New Year. I hope this year is healthy for you and brings you a wonderful, balanced life.

I don't know what New Year resolutions, goals, decisions etc you made for yourself, but last week's Life Club workshop (our first of the New Year) was all about you and what's important to you. What relaxes you? What sustains you? What gives you pleasure?

This picture used to be me (only with grey hair)! I love my work and you could often (well, slight exaggeration, occasionally) find me slumped over my desk in exhaustion. Last week I decided to change all that and go to bed as early as I could every night without my laptop but with a good book or even (serious treat) a film. Sleep before midnight is, I've been told, the best.

The week has been wonderful. I've been in bed most nights before 10.30 and, most of them, I've even been asleep by then. I watched 'Toast' one night (thoroughly enjoyable)'Bleak House' another (riveting), read an old diary another night and the others I just dropped off nice and early. I feel great.

I'm not a great believer in resolutions, but this week's workshop brought home to me how important it is to treat yourself well. I make sure my children get enough sleep, so what about me? Why don't I look after myself as well as I do them?

What would you do differently if you were looking after yourself as well as you look after others?

Next week's Life Club is all about finding out what you want in your life over the next two years. It's about discovering what's important to you from the past and present and weaving those things into the future - just by drawing circles. I've already done my circles and am feeling inspired.

See you there.

Hope you're having a great weekend,
Nina
Founder Life Clubs
Author: The Big Book of Me, The Life Book, How To Get What You Want

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So... what do you want to do with your life?

You know those films that come out and you miss them and, although you pine for a while about having missed them, you ultimately forget about them and get on with your life.

Good Will Hunting was one of those films. I'd forgotten all about it until this week when my daughter bought it from the fete and we watched it together and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The most powerful bit, for me, came when the hero was being forced to think about his future and what he wanted from life. He found it difficult and I find it difficult. Especially in this current climate where, as an entrepreneur, I am being forced to keep changing my direction to go where the money is.

I've had a week of thinking about my future courtesy of Life Clubs. At the club we discovered our future just by drawing circles and trusting our intuition and this, coupled with Good Will Hunting, got me focusing on my goals for the next six years, although I know that they might have to change at any time should they fail to work.

My new book How To Get What You Want starts by helping you find out what you want. Although it's aimed at young people, I know a few adults who might find it useful... Me for one.

Good luck with discovering what you want to do with your life. Let me know how you get on...

Next week at Life Clubs we'll be energising our bodies. Now that can help you decide lots of things.

All best,
Nina
Founder Life Clubs

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Getting it together...

Whenever I see people poring over their time management matrixes I either panic and instantly feel disorganised or I get overwhelming feelings of jealousy and wish I was as organised as them (or, more likely, I get both feelings simultaneously).

I'd love to be organised and, up to a point, am, but something always lets me down at the last minute. I can tidy up the bathroom cupboard and make wonderful shoe boxes entitled 'tummy', 'colds', 'skin' - you get the idea - but somehow I always end up with three things that just haven't got a home. There's definitely something about finishing a task that I don't like - there's always that bit of spillage afterwards.

So this week at Life Clubs we worked on organisation and how to have three goals a day you're going to do. It's a simple technique and enormously useful and all it takes it you knowing what your day is going to consist of (or what you want it to consist of) and making those three things your goals - let's face it... you'll always find time to check your emails.

Yesterday, my three goals were to get home from Spain intact, to run my club and to spend a bit of quality time with each member of my family as I hadn't seem them for 10 days. I think I more or less got there.

Today my three goals are to move my team at Basecamp forward (haven't seem them for 3 weeks!), to let you all know about my wonderful workshop on Saturday (all about 'Work' and all profits from the workshop go to Marie Curie charity) and to have a nice lunch with a mum I used to know who has just started working round the corner at Burberry.

What kind of a lovely day is that?

What are your three goals of the day?

See you soon,
Nina
Founder Life Clubs

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Focus first, then aim

Someone at my Life Club this week said her goal was to have 'a more enjoyable life'. Now, which of us can honestly hold up our hand and say we haven't felt the same thing at one time or another? I can't.

I knew exactly what she meant - and it's a great goal to have - but it's just too big. What is enjoyable? And, come to that, what will an enjoyable life be like? There are so many variations. By the end of the club she'd decided to focus on one element of her life first and improve that and (I'm prepared to bet on it) the rest will follow on.

I know a lot about goals and focusing in theory, but can find the practice of them difficult. I can visualise the 'enjoyable life' and I can break things down into tiny, achievable parts, like 'phone a friend tonight' but it's that middle bit that always seems so daunting. I mean, how can I move home and get a new job and find a new group of friends (or whatever will make my life more enjoyable)???

This week I'm going to practice what I preach. I'm going to focus first on what I really want, then break it down into achievable steps and then I'm going to aim.

Just watch out. Enjoyable life... here we come.

See you next week,
Nina
Founder Life Clubs, author of The Life Book

Do check out our new website - click on labels above to get you in to it. One goal down... several more to go.

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