There’s so much more up for grabs here than just working at home so give it some thought this week. How can you do a cracking job, but fit it around you and how you operate best?

You'll notice that there are things you are doing to prevent you from reaching your goals. This is the first light bulb moment - realising that you create your outcomes. The second light bulb moment is where people then uncover specifically what it is they want to change, in order to achieve the outcome they want - and to be clear about it.

Time goes by, and then...the niggling voice comes back. It says "what's the next thing? You could be doing more". And let's be honest, the voice is tiring. I can't say I greet it fondly when it returns to my life. Pushing me again. But it's definitely better than sleepwalking through life in old patterns.

Whilst setting goals fires off neural pathways that help us to focus and think analytically (helpful), it also shuts down the part of the brain responsible for learning. Our goals can end up being too narrow/ not what we truly want, because we didn't take time to explore first. So it follows that we need to get our juicy creative thinking done BEFORE we want to channel this into a goal or intention.

We can say we want one thing, but sometimes our behavior says something different. Challenging question this week - where in your life are you being a hypocrite?

I suggest having your own version of this mindfulness exercise that you can talk through in your mind or record this script (speaking slowly) to play for yourself until you are able to notice without prompting.

Intelligence is a great attribute, until it overwhelms your mind with complex thought patterns. It's important that you regularly find a way to unwind and empty your mind, to keep it in peak condition.

Frustration can actually be a really useful emotion - it tells us to have a look at what's really going on and make a change.

It’s useful to have a couple of decision making tools up your sleeve. If you find yourself zig-zagging between options, then it's time to pick a technique and write down your thought process. Bring on clarity.

I expect many of us will face career decisions in 2020, so over the next couple of blogs I'll be sharing mindset hacks and practical tools to help you decide your own next step.

As lockdown eases but prolonged uncertainty remains, leaders need to help staff remain motivated now more than ever. In this context, one of the most important things a leader can do is to keep creating hope.

Fear of failure is a major factor that can hold us back but given that we're bound to experience set backs on any road we take, why not pick a path that has the greatest chance of happiness? The supposedly ‘safe’ path could generate just as much failure/ rejection/ challenge anyway.

When we make excuses and list out all the reasons why we can't do or have something, somewhere else, someone is using that exact same reason to inspire and motivate themselves into action.

One thing that impacts how we deal with conflict in the workplace, is how we were initially taught to respond to conflict in childhood. If we have these rattling around in our unconscious mind then it’s no surprise that we’re going to struggle when we face a challenging interaction at work…

We can be guilty of being quite one dimensional at work. We box people off based on their jobs - lawyer, banker, accountant etc - and assume these professions attract a certain ‘type of person’. We reduce people to having just one identity. But the truth is that we’re all multidimensional, and it's our points of difference that are our unique selling point.

We're finding it harder than usual to (try and) predict the future. At the moment, even scientists, governments and think tank specialists don't really know what's going to happen.

Coaching leaders over the last month has given me an opportunity to see how and what they’re communicating in response to Black Lives Matter. I thought it could be helpful to share some of the things I’ve noticed that seem to work, so that we can keep building on this.

What do you need to change about the information you're consuming?

You have a choice as you test your resilience muscles right now - recovering back to your original state isn’t the only option.

I thought I'd gotten over the old feeling I had of needing to do a great job all the time - until it reared it's head again last week.