Finding Your Talents

Both this week's workshop and my talk at The Cheltenham Festival were about finding your talents. The children (and some of the grown-ups too!) who came to The Festival workshop were brilliant - they knew they were talented at sport or being a leader or being creative, but those in my Westminster Life Club were much more dubious.

I don't know about you but I could tell you exactly how brilliant everyone I know is and what they can do really well, but when I used to think about myself I didn't know what made me special.

It was the same in my club. Although my clubbers had written down that they loved adventure and creative writing and all sorts of other things, they just couldn't believe that that meant they were talented in those fields - and yet I believe it does.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers, puts forward a very strong case for needing 10,000 hours of practice in order to be really good at something, and I would agree - talents don't come overnight - but each clubber had identified their passions and it's those passions that make you unique and can be turned into talents with just a bit (10,000 hours!) of practise.

One of my passions is colour. When I was a small child I used to ask to be taken to the local department store so I could admire the carpets displayed so stunningly (just look at those reds!). As I got older my favourite present was always colouring pencils and now we call rooms in my home after the colours they're painted (the purple room... the red room... and so on). Just look at the Life Clubs logo - that too shows my love of colour.

You may not call colour a 'talent' of mine, but that's really just semantics. All I know is that without colour I feel bereft.

What are your 'talents'? Or, if you prefer, the things without which you feel bereft? Don't be modest!

Hope you have a great weekend,
Nina
PS I was at The Cheltenham Festival to celebrate the publication of my book, How To Get What You Want. Do have a look at a copy - it's fun.

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How to learn French

My 11-year old son and I are about to return home to the UK after five weeks in Provence. It’s going to be strange leaving – we’ve become used to being alone together, used to the sun, used to being looked after and used to the company we’ve kept whilst he's been making the film he's in (Mother's Milk, based on a novel by Edward St Aubyn).

The reason this post is all about him is that I've been so impressed with his mature and responsible approach to acting and his role. He's been on set all hours - never complained, never messed about (although once or twice he has got the giggles) and been a wonderful actor too (yes, I'm biased).

In terms of accountability (the topic of this week's workshop) he's never let himself or anyone else down. He’s acted to the best of his ability. And he’s drawn too. He's filled more pages than I can count with stunning drawings that he's done to help him relax in the evenings. He’s also been really good at all his schoolwork and done everything he has to do. There’s just one thing that has let him down and that’s, ironically, his French! Tommy has no interest in learning French at all – not even here, in France.

This week’s workshop, Getting It Together, was all about how you can take what makes you accountable in one part of your life and apply it to the rest. Thinking about Tommy it made sense not to give him hundreds of French words to learn, but just to let him relax about speaking French and do it of his own accord, like he does his drawing.

And it’s worked. Bien sur!

We’ve been accountable to you this week at Life Clubs. Do visit our new website as you can now buy online.

And, if you’re free, come to the Cheltenham Literary Festival on Sunday with your family and hear me talk about How to get what you want.

Looking forward to meeting you,
Nina

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Worrying for the world

This week's workshop was about what you're doing too much of and this week I'm worrying.

Two nights in a row now have been spend fretting over such little things that I'm almost embarrassed to talk about them.

...where we are all going to sit at supper... how I'm going to feel when I get back to the UK... how the balance in our shared house is going to change when my family arrive... when I'm going to have time to write this blog... and on and on.

If I was worrying about - or could indeed effect major changes in the world it would be one thing, but I feel so trivial just lying there tossing and fretting about nothing. Somehow those major changes don't appear as thoughts at night, it's just the little niggling things that pop up to stop me sleeping.

We all do too much of things. Some of us sleep too much, others spend too much, yet others love too much.

What are you doing too much of right now and what are you going to do about it?

Tonight I'm going to write all my worries down before I go to bed and hope they stay away until tomorrow.

Sweet dreams,
Nina
PS If you'd like to know more about excess, do sign up for our bulletin.
PPS If you want to stop me worrying whether anyone is buying my book(!) please do buy a copy.

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Change your mind

Yesterday I changed my screensaver (or desktop as they seem to call it on my mac). I found it quite traumatic. From easy to read files on a black background I've ended up with rather difficult to read files on a white background (but photo I took in a wonderful restaurant in London) and wondering whether to go back to the original picture.

If I found that change difficult, can you imagine how I must feel about changing my mind.

Last week's workshop was about using your mind to give you more confidence, so instead of having those 'I'm rubbish at life' thoughts going round in your head, you've got an 'I am great' thought.

And, I'd like you all to know, that I did achieve that. Changing my mind worked for me.

At a particularly low phase of life I decided I wanted to feel more confident. I settled on a very simple sentence 'I am confident. I can do anything' (no point at this stage in being modest!)

This is what I did:
* Every time I saw a mirror, I repeated my sentence looking at myself directly in the mirror and smiling.
* I did this first thing in the morning, last thing at night and whenever I saw a mirror in between.
* I said it once only, but with enormous conviction.
* At the same time I took some Confid drops (Australian Bush Flower Essences) and dropped them on my tongue twice a day.
* Expected things to change by the time I'd finished the bottle.

But it all happened very quickly - before I'd even finished the bottle.

I can't promise it will work for everyone and I certainly feel under-confident (or at least have under-confident moments) now just like anyone else, but it made an enormous difference at that particular period in my life.

So, change your mind and give it a go.

Next week's workshop is all about the things we do too much of. If you'd like to tackle your under-confidence that way, come along. Or anything else you're overdoing for that matter.

See you there and please, do buy a copy of my new book, How To Get What You Want. I think it's great (that's how confident I am!)
Nina

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Use your dreams to get what you want

There’s something magical about acting. I can see it in my son’s face, he has an extra dimension to him when he’s acting. An expression that isn’t usually there. It’s dreaming yet focused – both at the same time.

Listening to the actors he’s working with, I can hear how precarious their world is. It’s a lurch from one job to the next with long periods of no work and no money.

And yet there’s that beckoning of stardom.

We all have a beckoning. Something in our life that we love, that’s special for us. Something that we want to achieve.

This week’s workshop was called Holding Your Dreams and was about visualising that thing we want most and allowing our fantasy to help us make a realistic, practical plan.

I’m currently visualising my new book selling out.

Using this visualisation I know that I want to find any groups of young people be it in universities… schools… youth clubs… orchestras… anywhere. I see I need to find large groups of parents too, maybe also school teachers. I want great reviews on Amazon and in Waterstones. I’d like a big splash in any media possible.

If you want to help my dream, do buy How To Get What You Want for anyone you know between the ages of 15-25 – and have a look at it yourself before you give it away. You may find you want an extra copy.

My best wishes,
Nina x

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Stop wasting time…

My 11-year-old son is one of the main characters in an indie movie (you asked, it’s a film of Mother’s Milk, Edward St Aubyn’s wonderful book) and we’re in the South of France for filming. ‘All right for some’, I hear you say. Well yes… and no. Yes, it’s really beautiful and yes, today was lovely and hot and yes, we’re staying in the same house as the stars of the film (former crush, Jack Davenport) and the stunning Annabel Mullion and meeting lots of other ‘famous people’ and being involved in a really fun project…

But no, because there’s that niggling little work ethic I have that keeps on letting me know in no uncertain plans that actually I’m wasting my time.

This week’s workshop was all about ‘streamlining’ - organising your life so things run smoothly and right now I’m having to reassess the way I work, which is usually so simple and, yes, streamlined.

Analysing it, there are a couple of things that are making it really difficult for me:

1. Waiting
Tommy and I are constantly waiting. Waiting for the sun to come out, waiting for the crew to be ready, waiting to know what he is doing next. You all know what a lengthy business filming is and how difficult it is to slot work in-between the spaces available. It’s a matter of having to be prepared at all times.

2. Interruptions
I’ll just get started on reading this book (as you asked, it’s Executive Presence by Harrison Monarth) and after about half a paragraph something will happen or someone will say something that makes it impossible for me to continue. And then I’m back reading the paragraph all over again. Or I’ll start writing and, again, something will interrupt me.

But not one to give up, I’ve been racking my brains and I think I’ve found the solution. I’m not going to do anything for most of the day. I’m going to relax and enjoy the experience and realise that this is a once in a lifetime treat. And then, come the evening, I’m going to work for a couple of hours flat out and achieve all the solid graft that’s really urgent for me to achieve right now. I think that sounds like a plan.

That’s me no longer wasting time. What about you? How are you going to cope with everything that stops you moving forwards?

Talking about moving forwards… if you haven’t yet bought a copy of my new book, How To Get What You Want, do it now.

If you want to know more about Life Clubs and all the topics we cover, do join our bulletin or come to one of our clubs.

All best wishes from France,
Nina

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Treading on eggshells...

We've just done our feedback workshop (Telling It Like It Is) and it made me realise two things:

Firstly: yet again I've realised just how difficult it is to give feedback. It's wonderful when you can first practise your feedback on a stand-in guinea pig (like in the workshop) but when you plunge straight in, like I tend to do, you can break hearts.

Secondly: I noticed just how many of us want to get things off our chest. At the club there was a group of lovely people and each one of them had something they really wanted to say to someone else. It could have been a rift they wanted to heal or a situation they no longer wanted to be part of. But there were a lot of unspoken feelings floating around that room.

What would you like to say to someone but have been so busy treading on eggshells that you've never said it?

And is that something you'd like to say for their benefit... or yours?

There's a fun cartoon in my new book How To Get What You Want (£9.99, Walker Books, out on Monday!!!) all about feedback. Do buy it for anyone you know and love who is between 15 and 25. And, whilst you own it, check out if you wouldn't rather like it for yourself..!

Hope you have a great weekend,
Nina
PS Been asked by Psychologies Magazine to ask you if you'd fill out their quiz. It takes five minutes and a chocolate hamper could be yours!!!

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