life coaching

No Pressure. No Diamonds.

4th December 2014 by VParmar Leave a Comment

Can I ask you a question? How do you deal with pressure?

Are you someone who thrives on pressure or are you someone who finds it difficult to deal with the stress and anxiety that it can bring?

Pressure can be a powerful tool to access your inner power and potential if channelled and managed in the right way, just like the process of how diamonds are formed. (No they do not come from coal!)

Check out the video below for my 5 top tips for dealing with pressure and uncovering your diamonds.

No time to watch the video and want the tips? You don’t know what you’re missing.

Vinay’s Top 5 Pressure Management Strategies.

#1 Take a break.

It might seem difficult to do but tearing yourself away from a big work project, demanding family or growing financial bills can be just the thing you need. When you give yourself permission to have some “me” time away from the thing thats causing pressure you could gain new perspective. Remember though this is ‘take a break from’ not ‘run away from’ so you still need to deal with whatever is causing the pressure.

#2 Exercise.

There is more and more compelling evidence to support the premise that exercise is good for your mind and not just your body. You don’t have to go to the gym or pump iron, just 20-minutes of activity such as a walk or dancing around in your PJs when you are feeling stressed has massive impact on your mood that can last for several hours.

#3 Smile and laugh.

The East teaches us that laughter is the best medicine. Our brains are wired with our emotions and facial expressions. When we are stressed, we tend to store tension in our bodies and much of that can be in our faces. Laughing helps relax those muscles, fire off natural anti depressants and feel good hormones.

#4 Friends with Benefits.

Remember the old adage “A problem shared is a problem halved”? Keeping stress and anxiety to yourself is like pushing a self destruct button. Instead of keeping everything in reach out to friends or family to share how you are feeling. Of course ensure it is not with someone who is directly involved with the situation causing the stress.

Oh and never ever share it on Facebook. This might sound old fashioned but pick up the phone and speak to someone.

#5 Chillax

Meditation is a powerful practice that can help relax you and bring stillness to your mind You don’t have to sit under a tree chanting Om or spend hours with your eyes shut. Meditation is the practice of being with yourself and clearing your mind of thoughts. By being with yourself and being still you can gain clarity, calmness and be more relaxed.

Lessons from a Chimpanzee.

1st September 2014 by VParmar 1 Comment

Over the weekend I watched Disney’s Chimpanzee with my 4 year old daughter.

The documentary follows a troop of chimps who are under the leadership of Freddy who is strong, resolute and ruthless in his style.

The story unfolds as a rival troop is looking to infiltrate Freddy’s territory and in the battle a young chimp called Oscar is orphaned.

As this little guy tries to come to terms with losing his mother he attempts to attach himself to others in the troop but gets rejection after rejection as all the other mothers have babies of their own to tend to.

The situation is hopeless. Oscar is unable to fend for himself and his condition starts to deteriorate leaving him facing a certain death.

In what would seem a final, desperate attempt to save himself Oscar approaches the one chimp in the troop that is seemingly unapproachable – Freddy.

Instead of pushing him away, Freddy takes Oscar under his wing. The two begin to bond and Freddy shares his knowledge with Oscar teaching him how to be a chimp.

Then something amazing happens. Something so unusual that the film crew is stunned.
Freddy carries Oscar on his back, something only a mother would normally do. He adopts Oscar as his own.

Oscar was saved and it was thanks to the most unlikely of sources.

What has all of this got to do with you?

In the pursuit of success and in the face of challenging times we can fool ourselves into thinking we have exhausted all options but help can always be found, it is just that sometimes it is in the most unlikely of places.

Having been rejected time and time again, Oscar could have given up…but he didn’t.

The natural order of the troop should have stopped him from approaching Freddy but it didn’t.

Have you ever held back from approaching someone because of their position or stature?

Sometimes we can be so in awe of others or intimidated by their position that we won’t make an approach.

What’s the worst that can happen? Another “NO”?

You wouldn’t be any worse off, would you?

But what if you got a “Yes”?
Just think what that could mean.

Ouch! That hurt.

20th August 2014 by VParmar 3 Comments

Earlier this week I sent my regular Tuesday email to my contacts.

I copied and pasted it into my blog post from my word processing app as usual, scheduled the email to go and thought nothing else of it.

Then I got an email from a fellow speaker friend which I opened with a smile on my face that quickly turned into the kind of grimace you get when you get a kick in the knackers. (Ladies, I appreciate you wont know how it feels but I am sure you have seen the expression on a man’s face when it happens.)

You see the email pointed out – with love and supportive spirit – that whilst the message was good I had made a few errors in my text.

Of course my friends intention was to be helpful but I suddenly felt naked and exposed. My reaction was to sink my head into my hands and wish the world would just go away.

My email gone out to over 800 people on my mailing list, how dumb must people think I am?

At the best of times there is a lot going on in my head. If you were to step into my mind you would find yourself in a place more akin to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory than a well organised laboratory.

You see to many people I appear to be confident and self assured. People tell me that I carry myself well and make an impression when I walk into a room.

But I have a secret.

Under that well polished veneer there is a man who has been fearful each time he gets up to write on a flip chart. There is a person who has trouble spelling simple words at times and who sometimes has to read a paragraph several times before it makes complete sense to him.

The reason I speak more than I write is because I find it hard…damn hard. I don’t write well, it doesn’t come naturally to me. Sometimes my mind is speaking to me so fast that my fingers or pen cant keep up. My brain is left wired meaning I think in a less linear manner and I recently learned that I am mildly dyslexic too.

I am not perfect nor do I claim to be…none of us are really, are we?

This fear of imperfection has held me back from sharing many of my ideas, it’s one of the reasons it took me so long to write my book.

There are more ideas swirling around in my head at any time than I can count and until recently most of them stayed in there. They were locked in a vault away from critique and judgement.

Holding back my ideas, insights and thoughts meant that they never got the chance to add anything to the world. How can I inspire, spark an ideas or move people to change if I am too afraid to unlock that vault?

All the time I was allowing myself to be held back there were others lapping up the opportunities.

I asked myself “What do I do now?”

“Do I wait until I am perfect in every way or do I bite the bullet and take imperfect action, risking judgement, criticism or ridicule?”

I took the plunge, took a leaf out of Branson’s book and thought “Screw it, let’s do it”

So here I am today, warts ’n’ all.

How about you?

Maybe you’ve been in a similar place. Maybe you’ve had an idea to do something but you’ve held off sharing it until everything is perfect and by the time you were ready someone else had come along and stolen your opportunity.

Maybe you have plans to do great things but are fearful of getting it wrong or not doing it the ‘right’ way.

Perhaps you’re really afraid of what people may think if they discover that you’re not so perfect after all.

After all is said and done, I’d rather be in imperfect action than be paralysed by seeking perfection.

Will I seek to improve what I am doing? Damn right I will.

But will I stop until I attain perfection? No, because I’d rather be singing out of tune than not singing at all.

Maybe like me, sometimes you colour outside the lines, struggle to put pen to paper, miss out words or make grammatical faux pas.

Does that mean you should hold back?

Look, despite all these imperfections I have still managed to create success in my life. I say that not to impress you, but to impress upon you that you don’t need to wait to be prefect, for the perfect time or perfect execution.

You simply need to get started and refine what you do along the way.

An average idea with ok execution is worth way more than a great idea with no execution.

“Let it go…Let it go”

31st July 2014 by VParmar Leave a Comment

If like me you have a young child in your household then the chances are that you’ve been subjected to the words “Let it go” more times than you care to remember.

I’m talking of course about the latest Disney blockbuster smash hit move Frozen to which “let it go” is the title track.

But what does “Let it go” actually mean?

A lot of coaches, personal development gurus and performance expects often talk about the concept of ‘letting go’ – particularly when helping clients to move forward from negative or difficult situations.

To many people letting go can sound a little ‘esoteric’, ‘woo woo’ or ‘out there.’ A lot of people think that it simply means to surrender your situation to a higher power using phrases like – “what will be will be” “I’ll leave it up to the universe to decide” or “there’s nothing I can do”

I think they’ve missed the point.

I believe that kind of approach is disempowering.

I say that letting go has nothing to do with surrendering rather it can be a very empowering.

Imagine for a minute that in rope is dangling down in front of you. In order to get what you want you have to climb to the top. How do you approach it?

Do you worry about falling? Maybe you are anxious about losing your grip? Or perhaps you’re afraid of how high the rope is?

If you hold onto those feelings how likely are you to climb that rope? Very unlikely right?

But the thing is that you still have to climb that rope.

For me letting go is about letting of the fear of falling whilst retaining the responsibility for climbing the rope.

When we face difficult situations in life it’s often the same – we experience all manner of emotions and if we allow them to they can paralyse us. Surrendering to the universe is like burying your head in the sand, the reality is that no one is coming to save you – you have to take responsibility for doing something about it.

Why The Middle Is The Worst Place to Be.

21st July 2014 by VParmar Leave a Comment

We are conditioned to believe that being in the middle is the safest place to be, but it’s actually the most dangerous place to be as it locks you into a life of ‘average.’

Successful people know this and understand that you have to take extraordinary steps in order to achieve what you really want in life.

Change The Game Or Remain The Same.

10th July 2014 by VParmar Leave a Comment

There will always be things that happen to us in life that can challenge us, stop us from moving forward or impact our progress. We can look upon these as “defining moments”

It’s not what happens to us but how we deal with what happens to us that creates the difference in our lives – or more accurately how we respond to these events that define us.

In the midst of these challenges you have a choice – do you emerge the same or do you come out stronger?