The Waikato Regional Council's recent Quality of Life Survey, found that 79% of respondents rated their overall quality of life here positively. Alternatively, the challenges seem common to many places in the motu right now - financial stress, poor health, work-related stress, and housing problems. The big contributors to quality of life were also health, then wellbeing, and our sense of connection. The biggest factor that your mindset can make to your quality of life is getting a sense of perspective rather than the many tapes that we tell ourselves about what’s really happening, because we so often build on the negative brain that we listen to by default.
It’s not that your problems aren’t real, it’s that your brain will focus on the negative to try and keep you safe and it’s not always telling you the truth. For example, when was the last time you were really hungry and couldn’t afford to get anything to eat?
But these negatively focussed thoughts do things like sap our confidence and fill us with self-doubt to make sound decisions. They can overwhelm us and so we begin to live on autopilot instead of finding the peace we know is possible.
These thoughts, which can take up to 85% of our thinking if we’re over 30, forming limiting habits that mean we find it hard to create change and have the kind of life where we are our true selves.
When we do healthy things for ourselves like take a few moments to be still and appreciate what we have, we find that we also realise there’s more that we want from life than working, and the churn of the day to day.
When a friend of mine considered what she wanted to do that she hadn’t done yet, it was so out of the box but doable, that those few minutes of reflection became very much worth it. She had a stellar career in an industry that meant she had put her body through many challenges. But what she had missed out on, she felt, was something creative. As we talked she told me she’d always wanted to play the guitar. This seemed out of character, but in a few years it formed the bridge of a career change that became important. She decided to run tour groups to some out of the way places she had been, and sitting around the camp fires at night, she’d play her guitar. This new and very fulfilling skill rounded off magic days for her adventurous clients. Times of reflection to discover what you really want can be very useful.
One of the things I find myself doing as a coach that asking questions to an Artificial Intelligence doesn’t do, is reflecting back the patterns I hear in what clients say. It might be said different ways, but remembering these thoughts and beliefs, then holding the space for them to be explored can be very useful for clients. Hearing these thoughts and beliefs from another person often gives the confidence to make new decisions which are consistent with who you are and therefore they become changes that last, and make meaningful change. A few sessions with a coach can make a difference to your life and your family, improving your quality of life.
Not written by AI but me, Sharon
