Author Archives: dennisro

Empower Your Life: How to Set and Maintain Healthy Personal Boundaries

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Setting and managing personal boundaries is key to maintaining healthy relationships, ensuring emotional well-being, and protecting your time and energy. Here’s a step-by-step approach to help you establish and manage boundaries:

1. Identify Your Limits
Reflect on what makes you feel uncomfortable or stressed. Pay attention to your emotional reactions in various situations (e.g., feeling overwhelmed, resentful, or drained). These are clues that boundaries might need to be set.
Assess different aspects of your life where you might need boundaries: work, relationships, time management, emotional energy, physical space, etc.

2. Clarify Your Values
Determine what matters most to you. Your boundaries should align with your values (e.g., respect, honesty, time for self-care). When you know what you prioritize, it becomes easier to say no to things that contradict those values.

3. Communicate Clearly and Assertively
Express your boundaries to others calmly, directly, and with confidence. For example: “I need time to recharge after work, so I won’t be available for phone calls in the evening.”
Avoid over-explaining or apologizing too much. Be concise but clear about your needs.

4. Practice Saying No
Start small if you’re not used to setting boundaries. Get comfortable with saying “no” when something feels overwhelming or goes against your well-being.
Use phrases like “I can’t do that right now,” or “That doesn’t work for me.”

5. Be Consistent
Once you set a boundary, stick to it. Inconsistent boundaries can confuse others and lead to them being ignored.
Consistency reinforces your commitment to your own well-being.

6. Prepare for Pushback
Not everyone will accept your boundaries easily, especially if they’ve become accustomed to you not having them. Stay firm and be prepared to handle resistance calmly.
Remember, it’s okay to prioritize your needs even if others disagree.

7. Monitor and Adjust
Regularly assess how well your boundaries are working. Sometimes, boundaries may need to be adjusted depending on new circumstances or if you feel they aren’t strong enough.
Be open to evolving your boundaries as your personal and professional life changes.

8. Manage Guilt and Self-Care
It’s normal to feel guilty when setting boundaries, especially if you’re used to pleasing others. Remind yourself that boundaries are necessary for your health and well-being.
Practice self-care and prioritize your own needs to reinforce the importance of maintaining your boundaries.

By understanding your limits, communicating effectively, and staying consistent, you’ll build stronger, more respectful relationships and protect your mental and emotional energy.

What does it mean failure is feedback?

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The phrase “failure is feedback” suggests that failure should be viewed not as a negative end point but as valuable information or a learning opportunity. When you experience failure, it provides insight into what went wrong, which you can use to adjust your approach, refine your methods, or gain a deeper understanding of the challenges. Instead of seeing failure as a defeat, you see it as a form of constructive criticism that helps guide you toward future success.

In essence, failure is a natural part of progress, teaching you what doesn’t work so that you can get closer to what does.

What can i do then with failure?

When you experience failure, you can turn it into a growth opportunity by taking the following steps:

Reflect and Analyze: Understand what went wrong by breaking down the situation. Identify the factors that contributed to the failure. Ask questions like: What did I overlook? What assumptions did I make? What could I have done differently?

Learn from It: Treat failure as a lesson. Look for the key takeaways that can help you improve. Each failure teaches something—whether it’s about your approach, your skills, or the environment you’re operating in.

Adjust Your Strategy: Use the feedback from the failure to make changes to your plans or methods. This might mean refining your goals, improving your skills, or trying a different approach.

Stay Resilient: Failure can be discouraging, but it’s important to maintain a positive attitude and persistence. Resilience helps you bounce back from setbacks and keeps you moving forward toward your goals.

Apply the Lessons: Take what you’ve learned and apply it in your next attempt. Each iteration will bring you closer to success, as long as you continuously refine your process based on feedback from failure.

Embrace a Growth Mindset: Viewing failure as part of the learning process fosters a growth mindset, where you see abilities and intelligence as qualities that can be developed through effort, practice, and persistence.

Failure, in this sense, becomes a stepping stone, helping you progress toward success.

#dennisroberts #coachpro #executivecoaching #lifecoaching #careertransition

What is adrenal fatigue?

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Adrenal fatigue is a term often used to describe a collection of symptoms, such as chronic tiredness, body aches, and difficulty coping with stress, which are believed to be caused by the adrenal glands not functioning properly. The adrenal glands produce hormones like cortisol, which help the body respond to stress.

Proponents of the adrenal fatigue theory suggest that prolonged stress leads to the overuse and eventual exhaustion of the adrenal glands, resulting in a suboptimal hormonal response.

However, adrenal fatigue is not recognized as an official medical diagnosis. Most medical professionals, including endocrinologists, view it as a myth, as there is little scientific evidence supporting the idea that stress can cause the adrenal glands to become “fatigued.”

Conditions such as adrenal insufficiency (e.g., Addison’s disease), where the adrenal glands cannot produce adequate amounts of certain hormones, are well-established but different from the concept of adrenal fatigue.

People experiencing symptoms often associated with adrenal fatigue may actually be suffering from other conditions, such as sleep disorders, depression, anxiety, or thyroid dysfunction, which should be evaluated by a healthcare professional.

What causes it?

While adrenal fatigue is not recognized as a legitimate medical diagnosis by most healthcare professionals, those who believe in the concept suggest that it is caused by prolonged or chronic stress. They claim that the adrenal glands, which produce stress hormones like cortisol, become overworked from constantly having to respond to stress, eventually leading to a state of exhaustion.

Here are some proposed causes of adrenal fatigue according to this theory:

Chronic Stress: Emotional, mental, or physical stressors, such as work pressure, relationship issues, financial problems, or trauma, can supposedly cause the adrenal glands to constantly produce cortisol, leading to their exhaustion over time.

Poor Lifestyle Choices: Lack of sleep, poor nutrition, excessive caffeine or sugar intake, and insufficient exercise are said to contribute to the imbalance of hormones and strain the adrenal glands.

Infection or Illness: Some proponents suggest that chronic infections, like the flu or respiratory infections, as well as long-term health conditions, might contribute to the depletion of adrenal function.

Overuse of Stimulants: High caffeine or stimulant use is thought to push the adrenal glands to release more cortisol, eventually leading to “burnout.”

That said, the medical community emphasizes that the symptoms attributed to adrenal fatigue—such as fatigue, brain fog, and low energy—are likely linked to other medical conditions, such as thyroid issues, sleep apnea, depression, or anxiety. For true adrenal problems, like adrenal insufficiency (e.g., Addison’s disease), the cause is often damage to the adrenal glands due to autoimmune conditions, infections, or other systemic diseases.

If someone is experiencing symptoms associated with adrenal fatigue, it’s recommended to seek advice from a healthcare provider for proper diagnosis and treatment.

Why is a midlife crisis such a powerful trigger for change?

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A midlife crisis is a powerful trigger for change because it often represents a period of intense self-reflection, where individuals reassess their life choices, accomplishments, and the trajectory of their future.

Several factors contribute to this:

Awareness of Mortality: As people reach middle age, they become more conscious of their mortality, realizing that their time is finite. This realization can lead to a sense of urgency to make meaningful changes before it’s too late.

Unmet Expectations: By midlife, many people have established careers, relationships, and lifestyles that may no longer align with their core values or dreams. Discontent with where they are compared to where they thought they’d be can push them to re-evaluate their priorities.

Shifts in Identity: Life transitions, such as children leaving home, relationship changes, or career shifts, often occur in midlife. These changes can unsettle a person’s sense of identity, prompting them to seek new roles or passions to regain a sense of purpose.

Emotional and Psychological Imbalance: Feelings of dissatisfaction, regret, or a lack of fulfillment can surface during midlife, compelling individuals to address these emotions. This emotional turbulence can act as a catalyst for personal growth and transformation.

Desire for Authenticity: As people age, they may feel more inclined to live authentically, pursuing what genuinely makes them happy rather than conforming to societal or external expectations. This drive for authenticity can lead to significant life changes.

In essence, a midlife crisis acts as a powerful moment of reckoning, often encouraging people to realign their lives with their deeper aspirations, leading to positive personal growth.

#dennisroberts #coachpro #executivecoaching #lifecoaching #careertransition

Leaders of the new light: How the feminine transforms leadership

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The new model of leadership is founded on personal empowerment. At its core is heightened self-awareness and awakened consciousness. It isn’t so much about self-mastery as it is about the self-acceptance. The Taoists believed that all living things, including people, had an essential nature, an innate nature.

Once consciousness is invoked it permeates everything including the business enterprises we lead and serve. This emergent feminine energy will not announce its arrival. It will sweep forth like a tsunami underfoot. It’s power irresistible and unrelenting.

Unlike masculine power won from hard fought battle this tsunami effect is quite a natural phenomenon. In leadership parlance it does feed on power, control and authority structures and this is why it is more prevalent outside the traditional organisational structures that we know of in large corporations and government. It is also one reason why there is such perpetual struggle in these corridors of power.

In practical terms we work in a business, economic and technological environment unlike anything we have experienced before. This change is of our own doing. As Einstein so poignantly put it, “You cannot solve problems with the same level of thinking that created them”.

We need another way of approaching complex problems. A more feminine approach would be sit with the problem and its unresolved tension, expand our thinking, or better still let the tension bring forth am emergent solution of its own accord. These leaders of the new light are artisans at sitting with unresolved conflict, unsolved problems.

Heart guides will. Invite your intuition to guide you. Relax your highly tuned problem solving skills, which are the domain of the left hemisphere of your brain, and allow yourself to be guided by a felt sense of direction, purpose and resolution. Brian Tracy once coined the phrase, “As you take one step towards your goals, your goals take two steps towards you.” It is a bit like that. Trust in your intuition and that creative resolution will be invoked by your heart.

This feminine energy is omnipresent in business. It always has been; just like our intuition has always been available to us but we have stifled it through one dimensional learning methods like rote learning and homogenised success formulas in business and problem solving.

Ask any small business operator if they use a business plan and most will say they either don’t or they prepare one and shelve it. Now, I am an advocate of strategic planning. I am also an advocate of scenario planning, brainstorming and thinking outside the square.
The first question to ask is not, “How do I create success?” but rather, “Why am I in business?” in sequence the order of questioning is, Why, What and How?

There are three keys principles of the emergent feminine energy in leadership and business. They epitomise the invocation of the new light, a new light of consciousness awareness. They are:

Potential:  The epitome of the feminine is potential – unrealised potential. The expressions maximise your potential and reach your full potential are misleading. Unrealised potential knows no boundary, no ceiling. The feminine is a metaphor for universality or infinite possibility. The leaders of the new light accept and embrace the divinity that is inherent in all things. Genius springs forth in such an environment.

Space:  This notion of creating and holding space is at the core of all coaching engagements. It has its origins in ancient shamanistic practice and it is significant that it does. These leaders of the new light are leading us on a return voyage. A return to heartfelt leadership, values infused culture and a deeper exploration of what is purposeful and meaningful to us as individuals and collectively as humans. The adage, “If you want your outside world to change, you must be the change” holds true.

Flow:  When our hearts and souls are aligned with our purpose, mission and values then we are in flow with our innate nature. This is our innate state. This is how life works until you limit your beliefs, doubt yourself, place blocks and limitations in front of your feet. Beliefs like “You have to work hard to succeed” belong to a bygone era. Many of the inspirational quotes and elements of the success formulas were also penned in eras of war, lack or male domination. They served their time but the leaders of the new light will shine the way for you into the future.

The leaders of the new light, a new light of consciousness, start from a paradigm that you have potential (unlimited potential) and that when you aligned with your own heart you will evoke a creativity that is innovation at its core. And it is the most innate natural state you can live and love from.

What Happens if You Ignore Your Intuition?

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Intuition is often described as the inner voice or gut feeling that gently nudges us toward a certain direction. It’s the deeper wisdom that transcends logic, offering guidance rooted in our authentic self. But what happens when we choose to ignore this quiet yet powerful inner knowing?

Ignoring your intuition can have subtle but significant consequences. At first, the effects may seem minor—like mild discomfort or feeling “off” about a situation. But over time, consistently dismissing this inner voice can lead to larger, more challenging issues.

1. Living Out of Alignment

One of the most noticeable consequences is feeling out of alignment with your true self. Intuition often guides us toward choices and paths that resonate with our soul’s purpose, helping us live authentically. When we ignore it, we can find ourselves making decisions based on external pressures, expectations, or fears. This disconnect can lead to a sense of dissatisfaction or feeling lost, as though we are living someone else’s life rather than our own.

2. Increased Stress and Anxiety

When we ignore our intuition, we often override feelings of discomfort or unease, pushing forward in situations that don’t feel right. This can increase stress and anxiety, as we’re not honoring our internal signals. Over time, this disconnection from our inner knowing can lead to burnout, emotional exhaustion, and even physical symptoms like headaches or fatigue.

3. Missed Opportunities

Intuition often leads us to the people, places, and experiences that are in alignment with our highest good. By ignoring it, we can miss out on opportunities that would bring us fulfillment or growth. Whether it’s a career move, a relationship, or a creative pursuit, bypassing intuitive insights can leave us feeling stuck or stagnant.

4. Regret and Second-Guessing

Many people who consistently ignore their intuition often look back with regret. They may find themselves wondering, “What if I had trusted that feeling?” or “Why didn’t I listen to myself?” This second-guessing can create a cycle of self-doubt, making it even harder to trust your inner voice in the future.

In the end, your intuition is there to guide you toward your most aligned and fulfilling life. Ignoring it can lead to unnecessary challenges, but the good news is that it’s never too late to start listening. Trusting your intuition is a practice—one that leads to a life of greater ease, flow, and authenticity.

Coping with Personal Stress: Adjusting to a New Role and Life Changes

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Starting a new role is exciting but can also bring emotional and physical stress. Adjusting to new responsibilities, relocating, or reorganizing your personal life can be overwhelming. Here are some strategies to help you cope effectively:

Acknowledge the Stress
Recognizing that stress is part of transitioning into a new role is essential. It’s normal to feel a mix of excitement and anxiety. Being kind to yourself during this adjustment period can ease the pressure.

Prioritize Self-Care
Maintaining your well-being is crucial during stressful times. Incorporate regular exercise, healthy eating, and sufficient sleep into your routine. Simple practices like mindfulness or short walks can help you recharge and stay focused.

Set Boundaries Early
Establishing clear boundaries between work and personal life is vital to avoid burnout. Communicate your availability to your team and ensure you take time to unwind.

Seek Support
Don’t hesitate to lean on friends, family, or mentors during this transition. Connecting with others, especially in your new area, can provide valuable support and ease feelings of isolation.

Focus on the Bigger Picture
Keep your long-term goals in mind. Remember, you were chosen for this role for a reason. Focusing on growth and the opportunities ahead can help put stress in perspective.

Take it One Step at a Time
Break down challenges into manageable tasks. Tackle each aspect of your transition gradually to make it feel less daunting and more achievable.

Conclusion
Adjusting to a new role can be stressful, but managing that stress is key to thriving. By acknowledging the challenges and prioritizing self-care, you can navigate this transition more smoothly.

What is evolution to heart consciousness?

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Evolution to heart consciousness refers to a profound shift in how we perceive, experience, and navigate life—moving from a mindset dominated by the intellect (logic, ego, control) toward one guided by the heart (love, compassion, intuition). This journey signifies a deepening awareness of our connection to others, the world, and our own soul’s calling, often described as a spiritual awakening or transformation of consciousness.

At the core, heart consciousness is about living from a place of love and empathy rather than fear and separation. It’s a movement from self-centered survival instincts (which are often rooted in ego and competition) toward a collective, interconnected approach to life, where the well-being of others and the planet becomes as important as our own. This shift can be seen as an evolution because it represents a higher level of awareness—one that transcends basic instincts and mind-driven desires in favor of a more holistic and unified understanding of life.

The Path of Evolution to Heart Consciousness

Awakening to Inner Wisdom: The first step in this evolution is often a deeper connection with our intuition, or inner knowing. This intuitive guidance comes from the heart, rather than the mind, and allows us to make decisions aligned with our soul’s purpose. It encourages us to trust feelings of resonance, to embrace vulnerability, and to be guided by love.

Healing and Releasing Ego Patterns: As we move toward heart consciousness, we begin to see the limitations of ego-driven thinking—where control, fear, and separation dominate. The ego seeks to protect and defend, but often in ways that isolate us. Through healing and releasing these old patterns, we step into greater compassion and understanding, both for ourselves and others.

Embracing Oneness and Connection: Evolution to heart consciousness involves recognizing the interconnectedness of all beings. We begin to feel that our actions affect not only our immediate surroundings but also the larger collective. From this place of oneness, we naturally adopt more compassionate, collaborative approaches to life, seeking to uplift others rather than compete.

Living Authentically with Love: The culmination of this evolution is a life lived in alignment with love, authenticity, and integrity. It’s about expressing our true selves, free from the masks of ego, and allowing the heart’s wisdom to guide us in every decision. This type of consciousness brings peace, joy, and fulfillment, as we are no longer driven by external validation but by a deep sense of inner harmony.

In essence, evolution to heart consciousness is the next step in human growth, where love, connection, and compassion become the guiding forces of our actions. It represents a shift from surviving to thriving, from separation to unity, and from fear to love.

Instinct vs. Intuition: Understanding the Difference

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Both instinct and intuition are powerful forms of guidance that often arise without conscious thought, yet they operate on fundamentally different levels of our being. To truly understand their distinction is to appreciate the roles they play in our lives.

Instinct, as many of us know, is rooted in survival. It’s hardwired into our biology, the legacy of countless generations who relied on it to stay alive. When faced with danger, our instinct kicks in, triggering the fight-or-flight response. It’s a reactive, automatic mechanism designed to protect us from physical harm. Whether we’re dodging a car in traffic or feeling uneasy around a certain person, instinct acts swiftly and universally. Its purpose is clear: survival.

Intuition, however, operates on a more subtle, spiritual plane. Unlike instinct, which is about immediate protection, intuition guides us toward alignment with our deeper purpose or soul’s calling. It’s that inner voice or gut feeling that whispers when something feels “right” or “off,” even without concrete evidence. Intuition draws from a reservoir of subconscious knowledge, experience, and a deeper sense of connection to our true path. While instinct reacts, intuition gently steers. It’s often the feeling that urges us to take a certain job, leave a relationship, or pursue a creative passion—even when it defies logic.

Many spiritual traditions hold that intuition is a form of guidance from the higher self or the soul. It helps us navigate life’s choices in a way that aligns with our authentic essence. The more we tune in to our intuition, the more we feel in flow with our life’s purpose. While instinct is universal—nearly every human and animal shares the same basic survival reactions—intuition is personal and unique to each individual. It evolves as we grow, offering insights not just about immediate situations, but about our life’s broader journey.

In essence, instinct is about survival, while intuition is about thriving. To live fully, we must learn to trust both—allowing instinct to protect us in the moment and intuition to guide us toward our soul’s true path.

Tips for improving your performance

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Many business owners, small and large, provide performance incentives for their staff, eg annual bonuses, gift vouchers, time in lieu, equity schemes and the like.

But what exactly are you rewarding?

Incentive programs don’t typically reward performance, rather they reward results. Business success demands results. Fair enough, too. But, let’s go back a step.

“Most incentive programs don’t reward performance, they reward results.”

Results are outcomes, eg sales targets, profit, market share, growth, customer satisfaction. They are all business outcomes. In a cause and effect relationship, they are the effect. What then drives results? Performance drives results and is the cause in the relationship. So, what then constitutes performance and how do you measure it?

End Goals v Performance Goals

There are two types of goals. End Goals and Performance Goals.

End Goals are the outcomes or results you achieve from having done something, eg sales, turnover, profit, customer satisfaction. They are measured ex post facto (after the fact) or what are commonly referred to by management consultants as lag indicators.

Performance Goals are the drivers that get you the results, eg sales calls, customer visits, prospects, outbound calls, customer response times. These can be measured in real time and are referred to as lead indicators.

There can be considerable and costly time delays between when a lag indicator is first brought to the attention of a business owner for corrective action. Time means money. Do your performance measures include lead indicators?

Lead indicators are predictive measures of future success. And success is the cumulative effect of doing the little things day-by-day.

“Lead indicators are predictive measures of future success.”

Lead and Lag indicators form an integral part of what Harvard academics, Kaplan and Norton, call a Balanced Scorecard. Many large corporations use Balanced Scorecard measures and increasingly franchisers are too. They are equally applicable to small firms and truly are essential to driving performance to higher levels.

What drives Performance?

If performance drives results then what drives performance? Well, there are two things that drive performance:

1. skills

2. behaviour

What is the difference? A skill is learned knowledge of how to do a task whereas behaviour is a conscious/subconscious response or choice.

Ask yourself; does this person know how to complete the task? Have they ever completed the task beforehand? Have they received skills training? Have they demonstrated competency in the skill? If not, then you may have a skill deficiency that needs addressing through skills training.

On the other hand, if your employee is competent or has the necessary skills but for some reason doesn’t apply them, then you may have a behavioural issue. In which case as the manager/employer it is incumbent upon you to call them on it. Behaviours tend to run in patterns so it is likely that the employee will repeat the behaviour (at work and at home). So, you are really doing them an enormous favour long term.

In essence you bring to their conscious awareness the subconscious (or conscious) choice they have made. It now becomes their conscious choice whether to amend the behaviour or not. Either way hold them responsible for their choice and the resulting consequences.

Try these exercises:

1. Create a Performance based incentive program. Offer staff gift vouchers or lifestyle rewards based on their performance not results. Reward behaviours such as proactivity, attention to detail, customer focus, team work.

2. Ask your staff to benchmark themselves. Empower them to take responsibility for

their own performance. Nurture the talent you have within your reach. If you are self-employed benchmark your sub-contractors/ suppliers.

3. Include a lead indicator in each functional area – Sales & Marketing (customer visits, qualified prospects, customer complaints); Finance (reminder notices, daily cash position); Operations (capacity, occupancy rates); Service Delivery (response times, compliance with packing slips); People (absenteeism, timeliness, overtime).

4. Call an employee/ sub-contractor on a behavioural issue, eg coming late to work, failure to meet a deadline, failure to keep a promise. Give regular and informal praise for good behaviours.

5. Practice asking open questions. What? When? How? Engage your employee’s creative genius. Encourage them to come with solutions and not problems. You’ve got enough on your plate.