My Guiding Principles
My career has at times, been a rollercoaster of experiences, all of which have contributed insights and learnings that have lead me to what I’m doing today. As I look back, I recognise that there have been some core beliefs and values that have guided me through the good times as well as the times of hardship and enabled me to make better decisions with greater clarity. I refer to these as my Guiding Principles. Here they are:
Be true to yourself
When I was in my teens, my parents wanted me to go to Stage School and because I didn’t really want this, (I was scared that I wasn’t good enough) I created a complicated avoidance scenario when I could have just said “It’s not what I want”. I used to feel an overwhelming desire to comply and agree with the opinions and requests of others because I wanted to feel accepted and liked. I thought that my own dreams and goals weren’t as good as the dreams and goals of others, so I tried to change my dreams to the dreams of others. This caused me to do things that ultimately I didn’t want to do and consequently created an inner conflict. Nowadays, I tend to stand back before I make promises or agree to requests and ask myself, “Is this really what you believe and want to do?” Being true to yourself means that you have to listen to and trust your instincts because if you are ‘persuaded’ by others (no matter how well intentioned they may be), to go against what you feel is the right course of action for you (and this ‘right’ action is different for everyone), you could end up feeling confused and angry. Ultimately your life is YOUR life and it’s far more compelling when you choose to live it authentically. This in turn fills you with a serenity that makes it so much easier to make choices and decisions because you make them on the basis of a strong foundation of trust, respect and love for yourself.
Take control of your life
Every action you take creates a reaction that is based on the formula of cause and effect. Everything that happens is the effect of an underlying cause. Most people spend their lives operating at effect….”it’s not my fault I always end up in bad relationships” “Life’s so unfair, things always happen to me” True personal power can be achieved when an individual accepts 100% responsibility for what they create in their lives. To put it another way you get one of two things; the result or outcome you want or the reasons why you didn’t (you may recognise these as ‘excuses’!) The more you focus on the reasons and blame circumstances beyond your control you push away your personal power. Therefore, if you believe that you are in control of the situations that life ‘appears’ to put your way, you accept control of your thinking and emotions, and therefore you can control your own life. This belief has given me the determination to breakthrough so many barriers and overcome countless challenges when at times it was tempting to wallow in self-pity. If something good or bad happens to me I ask myself “How did I create that?” If you choose to do the same you are tapping into your brain’s infinite potential and it will give you all the answers you need. If you’re prepared to commit 100% to taking responsibility for your own life, the results can be extraordinary.
Appreciate the thoughts, feelings and beliefs of others
I used to have very little time for people unless they commanded my respect or they could help me in some way. What I now realise, is that every individual is special and just because they aren’t ‘Nikki Clones’ (thank goodness) means that there is a continual opportunity to stretch one’s mind with different thoughts and ideas. As I reflect on my friends I see a huge variety of characters and personalities: Top performing mega earners, quieter, softer, spiritual souls, funny, driven and eccentric types, yet each of them has helped me experience life from a different perspective and it’s added a dimensional depth to my understanding. I am fascinated by everyone I meet yet this fascination becomes ‘blocked’ if I start judging or becoming critical of others. I remember meeting a woman called Eleni on a Firewalking Instructor course. She appeared to be so different to me and seeing myself as a determined, brave person, I assumed that she would struggle with the actual firewalking. It was a humbling and magical experience to watch Eleni, float and dance on the fire, she looked like an angel. I realised then that ‘ruthless determination’ isn’t always a strength - it is a mask to cover insecurity. When I have facilitated training programmes, I am often amazed by the insightful perceptions of my delegates and I sometimes wonder who is the learner? Today, I now no longer have ‘just my sort of person’, instead I have multi-faceted interactions with remarkable people.
Look for the positive insights you gained from every tough experience
The history books are littered with individuals who have achieved ‘mind blowing’ feats in the face of adversity and when you dig beneath the surface you’ll discover that they all found a way of living their vision that worked for them. There are countless ways of you getting what you want and the real secret lies with your ability to find your own way, the way that works best for you. We have become conditioned by all sorts of influential teachers and mentors in the field of personal development that it’s easy to get what you want if you think positively. Great, except sometimes life can be hard and there are moments when most of us have felt defeated, crushed and scared. As I look back on some of the horrors of my past, I can do so without any emotional attachment because I see them as lessons that provided me with powerful insights. If I allow myself the luxury of wallowing in a bucket of self-pity, I just feel worse. Over the years I’ve trained myself to reframe every negative experience to look for the positive learnings that takes me another step forward in my journey through the School of Life. This is not just a case of adopting a ‘Pollyanna’ attitude because if I can’t feel good inside then it effects my external world. Only when I appreciate that something positive has been created from an uncomfortable experience, can I truly connect with my purpose.
Choose a profession and job that you love
If I didn’t love what I do, I couldn’t feel enthusiastic, passionate and compelled by every twist and turn in my career road. I genuinely find it shocking when people tell me that they’ve been in a job they dislike for years. My work is part of me and I give a piece of me to everything that I do and it rewards me with so much pleasure. As I’ve got older, my time seems to zap by so quickly that I don’t want to do anything that isn’t interesting. I remember back to my early career in Retail when I literally dreaded getting up in the morning. I clock-watched, took long breaks and felt myself slowly giving up on my dreams and aspirations. Luckily for me I got fired and this catapulted me into a scary new place that launched me into my chosen career. I’m not particularly smart, intelligent or practical and my qualifications when I left school were somewhat uninspiring. Yet, since I discovered sales, sales development and all the stuff surrounding these areas I’ve noticed a few changes. I’ve become smart, intelligent and practical and now possess an office wall crammed with qualifications and certificates that I got because I wanted to. I’ve mastered certain tasks because they were important to me. I’ve learned new skills because they helped me to become even better at what I do best. If I have a ‘bad’ day at the office, this pales into insignificance because most of my days are ‘brilliant’ days. When people enjoy what they do, they perform better, they connect to their personal power and they activate feelings of satisfaction and desire to improve.
Be clear about what you want and NEVER give up
When I was about twelve years old, I was learning to dance and continually won every dance competition that I entered. On holiday with my parents one year, I broke my leg and was in a thigh length plaster cast for six months. I was told that it would take two months to get my leg back to the flexibility that it once had yet there was a competition scheduled for one month later I was going to enter. Despite the reservations of my dance teacher and physiotherapist, I devoted every waking moment to trying to bend my ‘rock solid’ leg. I did enter the competition and experienced my first humbling second place before winning my remaining five dance routines. That day, I vowed to myself that I would never, ever give up on what I want to achieve. Having a strong vision of where I’m heading causes me to feel alive with possibilities and strengthens my resolve that barriers and obstacles only exist in my mind and there is always a ‘breakthrough’ moment just around the corner. Bill, one of my dear friends who is also my Graphic Designer said to me one day “Nikki, the darkest hour of the night, is the hour before dawn” – it was a brilliant thing to say because I’m comforted now by dark times because I just know that a bright new future is almost here. As life continues to challenge me I’ve installed within me, an inbuilt mechanism that continually searches for a way around the problem. Usually, I get there. Sometimes I fail spectacularly. It doesn’t matter because I hear my mum singing the words from an old song, “Brush yourself off, dust yourself down and start all over again”. Thanks mum!
Nurture your potential
I have learned so much from the day-to-day tasks in my career and constant repetition of many of these tasks, has given me a level of mastery in many areas. Yet as a person I am hooked on continual learning and read hundreds of books each year. I’ve attended several courses where I learned skills including Neuro Linguistic Programming, juggling, Quantum Reading, sky-diving and martial arts. Each new learning opportunity stimulates a wealth of ideas that I can apply in my business and professional career. At the beginning of each year, I’ll take two days to map out my goals for each area of my life so that I can create a Vision Board as a continual reminder to what I want to achieve. I attend brainstorming sessions with colleagues from around the world where we all share our ideas for business growth and it’s delightful how much information can be gained from these types of sessions. The more I learn, the more I become aware of what I don’t know yet and that is probably the reason why I’m addicted to learning. I love experimenting with new techniques and developing my own business models. I can remember one of my Trainers asking me about an exercise I had designed that he was scheduled to facilitate. He asked me how many times had I run this exercise before and when I told him “never” he wanted to know how I knew if it would work! If I decide to only use tried and tested models, I recognise that I will remain in my comfort zone. This is why I love trialling new approaches. Some work brilliantly, some don’t and each time an approach falls flat on it’s face, I know instantly what I need to change to make it work next time. I believe that everyone has an abundance of potential and they owe it to themselves to nurture what they have to develop what they could have.
Appreciate and express gratitude for what you have
I remember reading an extract from Viktor Frankl’s book, ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ that chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate. Frankl concluded that the meaning of life is found every moment if living and that there is always something to feel grateful for. It’s impossible to feel any negative emotion when you are in a state of gratitude and this lifts your emotional state to a level that can attract more good feelings into your life. One evening I was at a restaurant having dinner with my sister and some friends, when we met this strange little man who claimed to possess a sixth sense. I really enjoyed listening to him and as he left he gave me a beautiful heart-shaped rose quartz stone and told me that it would remind me of the importance of love. I still carry this stone with me everywhere I go because when I feel it in my pocket, I’m reminded of all the wonderful things in my life. Recently, I watched The Secret, a documentary about The Law of Attraction (you are like a magnet and l attract more of what you are thinking and feeling into your life). One of the speakers in the documentary spoke about carrying a gratitude rock with him and I realised what my heart-shaped stone was! There is always something to feel grateful for, if you are looking for it and dwelling on those good things creates more good feelings.