ActionPodcast

Have you got friends who always seem to be down in the dumps, project their fear and negativity on to you, and seem jealous of your success or drive to move forward in life? We've all got friends who need support now and then, but some friends have invested in staying small - and they are keeping you small too - if you let them. Paul and Gina discuss ways you can attract more like-minded and dynamic people into your life, without making a drama out of leaving 'old' friends behind. One way to meet new people is via meetup.com  This is a great organisation that runs local meetups in your area. They are all over the world with activities ranging from paragliding to real ale to coaching groups to wine tours. The choice is endless. A sure fire way to connect with people is to find other folk who love what you do. We'd love to hear your stories of how you committed to yourself and your happiness, and made the decision to surround yourself with supporters, not detractors. Please leave a message on our voicemail on our home page. Just click the link! "80 Tips" is now available on Amazon, download your copy instantly to your Kindle, or the Kindle app on iPhone/iPad & Android

Engaging our willpower to achieve certain goals and outcomes in life is deemed essential. But what if we turn the forceful proclamation of "I Will!" into "Will I?" Gina and Chris play with syntax and discover that we can reduce the pressure, yet still be productive, by asking ourselves this very powerful question. When we try to use our willpower toward a goal, we can quickly feel guilty or embarrassed if we start to fall short. Whether that's for ourselves or other people's expectations of us. Yet, research shows if we have an open mind about what we might accomplish, we feel like any and every positive move we make we are getting ahead of expectations and can feel like we're winning. It makes the process better - whether you're trying to save money or try to exercise - and you can develop a better sense of pride at each step of progress. Additionally, when you ask the inquisitive question of "Will I?" you go a little deeper into understanding your interest in taking the action, your motivation to do it, and on a practical level gets you to think more clearly about what you actually need to do in order to take the necessary action. Little things like planning out your day and determining when, where and how you'll do it in advance will dramatically increase your odds of success and saves your willpower for the things that truly need an extra dose of inner strength. Listen to this podcast with Chris and Gina for further insights and get ready for a new start on your goals and tasks with less resistance and more fun. Leave us a comment on how this changes your perspective and what success you've had by asking "Will I?".

Giving feedback to others is something almost all of us do on a regular basis - sometimes more proactively, sometimes reactively. Often times done poorly. In this podcast, Paul and Chris discuss the critical difference between giving well-intended feedback and well-delivered feedback. Delivering feedback well is a combination of making it meaningful, specific, respectful and authentic. Whether it's to colleagues at the office, your kids at home or your partner, with a bit of forethought and consideration, you can have a significant impact on someone's day...all in a matter of a few, well-delivered seconds. Listen now and leave us a comment on what results you experienced after putting this in place.

At ActionPodcast we believe that small things, consistently done produce extraordinary results - so is it possible to overdo it? Those small steps can start to build strong momentum, so is there such a thing as taking too much action? There are two aspects to consider when you are taking massive action towards a project or outcome that you want - one is focus, and the other is natural rhythm. If your focus remains fixed on only one action, and all your energy and effort are directed towards that point, then you could be losing sight of how this action fits within the bigger picture of what you want to achieve. Likewise, if you ignore the human need for the natural ebb and flow of energy - the need to expel energy and then recharge, you could find yourself feeling burnt out or frustrated and guilty because you can't maintain that pace indefinitely. How Not To Overdo It Taking time out to recharge is an essential part of any action plan, and it can be helpful to think of the cycle of the Seasons as a metaphor for this. The type and level of energy we need to invest varies through Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, and this cycle is something that can play out repeatedly during a larger or more longer-term goals that we're working towards. Allowing ourselves this 'downtime' not only recharges our batteries (making us more effective when we move back into action), but it also gives us the chance to step back and examine our area of focus, and to shift it if needs be. If we are lacking sufficient times to recharge or the perspective to check whether our action is moving us in the best direction, then we increase the chances that we might appear to overdo it. Join Chris & Sam in this podcast as they explore effective ways to put boundaries around your recharge time, and ensure that you are focusing your action in the best way. Thanks to Mark @StarbirdTV for his brilliant inspiration!

Begin doing a few things daily that you love. You'll soon see a marked difference in the way you are thinking and in the way you perceive the world. You are a creator....

How do you measure your life? And how can you be sure you'll find happiness in your career? The definition of a career (as a job for life) has well and truly changed over the last decade or so. Sometimes 7 years on one track can feel like a lifetime! We are now faced with an abundance of choice for the directions we can take. And for a while now we've started realising (and research has proven) that financial or positional success in our careers doesn't necessarily makes us happy. As we evolve, what we want and what makes us happy in our career can change too. How to measure your life & find happiness in your career? To understand happiness, we first need to understand what makes us tick as individuals. What motivates us? In this podcast Chris & Sam discuss the fundamental motivators in our work - including those 'baseline' factors that are necessary and those that really enhance our motivation and sense of fulfillment in our careers - and then outline some poignant questions you can ask yourself as you take a moment to reflect on where you are at and how you can measure the happiness you find in your current role. Whether you're considering taking a leap of faith into a new role, company or career, or whether you're only just starting to evaluate how happy you currently are - Clayton Christensen's book - [amazon ASIN="0007449151"]How Will You Measure Your Life?[/amazon] - will help inspire you to ask some of the questions that really matter, and find meaningful clarity in your life and career. How do you measure your life? Have you found happiness in your career? We'd love to hear how these questions have inspired you, or whether you have different ways of evaluating your happiness in your life and work.

Both Sam and Paul have very different points of view when it comes to more spiritual ideologies, but this didn't stop them finding the book equally intriguing and even powerful in what it sets out to teach the reader through a mini adventure.

When high stakes, opposing  opinions and strong emotion come together, you know you've entered the realms of Crucial Conversations! Not only are you facing a difficult discussion, but your body is wired to shut down the reasoning part of your brain so that you react rather than consider your responses - and for most of us this means we do our worst at these moments. Ironically, these Crucial Conversations are the 10% of our conversations that are also the most important. The book [amazon ASIN="0071401946"]Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High[/amazon] is one of the most important resources in my personal toolkit and I am delighted to be able to share this interview, with one of its co-authors Ron McMillan, with you today. "If you can create safety, you can talk to almost anyone about almost anything, and they will thank you rather than being angry with you." Join me [Sam] as I interview Ron about the incredible impact these skills can have for transforming our relationships, the consequences of trying to ignore Crucial Conversations, and some tips for how we can: Recognise when we're in or entering Crucial Conversations. Start improving, even if we are naturally conflict avoidant! Learn a few simple techniques that we can start applying to immediately improve our ability to create safety in Crucial Conversations. Fantastic free tools and resources are available at CrucialConversations.com. And the new edition of Crucial Conversations is also available as an enriched eBook - so that you have direct video examples of Crucial Conversations and how to use the skills presented whilst you read! Ron McMillan is the four-time New York Times best-selling co-author of Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High. For more than 25 years, he has served as an expert in organizational behavior, interpersonal communication and corporate training. McMillan is also the co-founder of VitalSmarts, an innovator in corporate training and organizational performance.   Have you found yourself thrust into the middle of a Crucial Conversation that you handled either really poorly or really well? Are there any conversations that you've been avoiding or ignoring because you know they'll turn Crucial? We'd love to hear from you, whether this is the first time you've heard about the book or it has played an important role in your life too.

I spend time with Rob talking about dispelling some of the myths in the personal development field and how vital it is to back up your beliefs in what works with real scientific research.

In the latest of our summer book season podcasts, Paul and Gina discuss David Richo's amazing book How To Be An Adult in Relationships (The Five Keys to Mindful Living). A wonderful book for anyone in a relationship, just out of a relationship or single, David Richo talks about being mindful and present in all our interactions with others. By using the 5 As of Attention, Acceptance, Affection and Appreciation as guideposts, Richo takes the reader on a journey of mindful awareness, right to the heart of what it takes to communicate from a place of love, rather from a place of fear. Society all-too often teaches us that everything we need is outside of us - that once we find the person we love they will provide 100% of all our needs. Wrong!! We're lucky if we get 25% of our needs met from our partners. We need to learn to parent ourselves and find the remaining sources from within ourselves or from work or hobbies or friendships. Most of us appear to have grown up - we're in adult bodies after all - but in reality we are all wounded children running around in grown-up bodies. We're still looking to heal those wounds from childhood and therefore all too often replicate the relationships we had with our parents, with our partners.

According to #1 New York Times best selling author Brendon Burchard, it's time to re-evaluate the fundamental drivers of human motivation. Brendon Burchard The ChargeIn a world where most of our basic needs of shelter, food, security and connection are readily met, we are now overwhelmed with an abundance of choice. To the untrained eye, a wealth of choice seems like a helpful gift, yet the reality is that too much choice usually leads to too little action. In his book, ​The Charge, Brendon Burchard outlines how to activate the 10 human drives that make us feel alive. He inspires us to re-evaluate our approach to day to day living and to reignite the energy within us to live more, give more and become more. In this podcast, Chris and Paul explore Brendon's ideas and encourage you to take action to light your spark again.

Often it's the little things in life that really light us up, bring a smile to our faces or warm our hearts if we catch them - but when they pass by unnoticed we miss that little bit of awesomeness that could have brightened our day. Simply giving ourselves the chance (and permission) to enjoy a bit of this magic in our daily lives is a great gift to give ourselves and those around us, and some of the many ways we can do this are explored in Neil Pasricha's [amazon ASIN="1742700497"]The Book of (even more) AWESOME[/amazon]! Noticing Awesome Things? In fact, via his hugely popular blog, Neil shares 1000 awesome things that can help inspire you to notice more of the naturally occurring awesomeness already surrounding you. Join Chris & Sam as they explore some of the ways we can find inspiration, motivation and get into the habit of appreciating the awesome people, moments and occurrences in our daily lives. We'd love to hear about which of the Top 1,000 Things resonates with you, or what your favourite pieces of awesome are - please leave a comment below or share your little bit of awesome on facebook with us here.

In The Meantime by Iyanla Vanzant, is at its heart about learning to love & find yourself again, using a helpful metaphor that takes you room by room through a journey of letting the light in...

Inspired by Gretchen Rubin's book [amazon ASIN="006158326X"]The Happiness Project[/amazon], this is the first of our Summer Book Series podcasts, and this is one book that is packed with action tips and ideas! Happiness is not necessarily easy to define, and it isn't a destination we arrive at for a "been there, done that" t-shirt. It is a state that we can choose to experience every day, but what helps us to feel happy varies from person to person and moment to moment - so it can be worth considering whether we're waiting for happiness or are creating happiness for ourselves. The Happiness Project book encourages you to create a Happiness Project of your own - and whether you're feeling in need of a lift or are already basking in joy - a personal Happiness Project challenge for a month (or even just a week) will give you a valuable daily boost! Your Personal Happiness Project Whether you are guided by one of the monthly themes from the book, decide to try a range of different things, or create a theme of your own - this is a challenge that will help you become more aware of what allows you to achieve a state of happiness in your daily life, and to prioritise small consistent steps of action to shine rays of happiness into your summer days regardless of the weather! Join Chris & Sam as they explore what can trip us up, and how you can make a happiness project challenge work best for you. Decide to create your own guide on how to be happy, and help spread that happiness to the people around you! We'd love to hear what you've chosen to focus your Happiness Project challenge on, and what you learn about your own happiness during the month or whether you've also been inspired by Gretchen Rubin's book - please share below.

Confidence is simply a belief that something is true. Our challenge in feeling self confident stems from the story we tell ourselves and the imagination we allow to run wild that allows doubt to creep into our minds. Often we put off doing things until we feel super confident and until we feel we won't be rejected or fail in our mission. But as Chris and Gina discover, you can take action towards your desired end result NOW - and still get great results - without waiting till you're perfect or a superhero! Let us know in what area of your life you'd like to have more confidence and we'll do a future show to give you practical tips and strategies we know will work. Leave us a comment here or on our Facebook page.