Costa Women Blogs

Have you ever seen or participated in doing the Tango?  If you have, you will know that it is one of the most beautiful dances ever.  It is sensuous, graceful, harmonious, intricate, physical, calculated and well choreographed.  It is also a highly creative way of self-expression….with another person… in a very intimate way!  The intensity of looking into each others’ eyes as if knowing what the other one is thinking and is about to do, shows the magic of the entire production, frame by frame, one gorgeous move after another, one step at a time in a very fast motion; with an outstanding clear message, well executed and delivered. However, it takes two to do the Tango.  It cannot be done alone. This briefly exemplifies the power of “Collaboration” on a 2-on-2 basis. If you want to have a successful business, you must have a collaborative team.  And not just any team, but a team that: Matches your core values. Understands your vision. Is in alignment with the mission your business wants to accomplish. Values being an extension of your business growth. Loves being in the service of those you help. Has a good relationship to their money, so that they feel the same about yours. Simple enough, right?  Not always; however, it certainly could be when in addition to office and managerial team, partners or joint ventures, you also have a Dream Team in place to help you make the best decisions for you and your business. Who’s your Dream Team?  Your Business Coach/Strategist, your C.P.A., your attorney, your financial advisor, your banker, your insurance agent, and other professionals with a genuine desire to help you achieve your desired goals and success.  These are people that you not only know, but you like and absolutely trust.  In the long run it may include partners and joint-ventures colleagues.   CONSIDER: What does it take to create the best “collaborative” office and managerial team? You have to know how to lead. They have to know how to follow. You know who belongs doing what. You know their strengths and weaknesses and use them accordingly. You are masterful at influencing others. You are mastering the art of clear communication of goals, vision, mission and alignment serving the greatest good! You know their job or at least know how it feels to do what you are asking them to do. You fully understand what it takes for them to meet your goals.   OPTIONS: Hire with long-term in mind and room to grow. If short-term is what you are pursuing, a Temporary Placement agency may be extremely helpful. Utilize your data-base of resources.  This could be newspaper advertising, word of mouth, referrals, on-line job-pools like Monster and Career Builders, one-stop career local center, temp agencies, friends, and other professionals in similar industries. Virtual Assistant Teams can be extremely effective to handle on-line jobs remotely, without the added cost of space, insurance, payroll taxes, paid vacations and the like. In this world of fast turn-around time; when it comes to hiring collaborative teams, focus on QUALITY, not quantity.  Sometimes slowing down will get you there faster.   ACTION PLAN: If you already have a team in place, make monthly evaluations. Have a Standard Operating Procedure and Employee manual so everyone plays by your rules and not theirs.  Clear communication is key in forming, sustaining, and maintaining a collaborative team. Create firm boundaries.  What’s okay, what isn’t, and impress upon them the value of YOUR time, as well as theirs. Clearly communicate the common goal of your business. Show appreciation for a job well done. Show appreciation when they least expect it. Acknowledge their contribution to you, your business, and your clients. Consider a profit-sharing plan for those committed to help your business grow. Create promotion opportunities whenever possible. Maintain a sense of enthusiasm and excitement in job-related activities. Help them see how they are part of your bigger picture. Make them feel included, and not excluded. Lead with your passion, compassion and by example. Use your Dream Team for advice, guidance, direction, brainstorming and “accountability.” Enjoy the fruits of your labor! Sometimes it takes a village, sometimes it takes a tribe, and sometimes, it simply takes TWO TO TANGO!

It’s February and with Valentine’s Day just around the corner – love is in the air. But is it possible to live happily ever after, or is that just a fairy tale? For me the answer is a very definite yes – it is possible!   Valentine’s Day has a special meaning for me as my very own love story started three year’s ago at a Valentine’s Day party when a beautiful red heart just fell off the wall right into my hands! A couple of days earlier I had asked my Romance Angel to give me a clear sign so I would recognise my ideal mate when I met him. When the heart fell into my hands I smiled – I knew this was the sign I had asked for. And, as they say, the rest is history and David and I have been living together happily ever since 🙂   But depending on where you are in your life’s journey, Valentine’s Day can conjure up very different feelings. If you have someone new in your life it can be a magical day as you eagerly anticipate the possibility of romance. If you are in a loving relationship it can be a wonderful time to celebrate. And if you are in long term relationship it can be a great opportunity to reaffirm or rediscover your love for each other.   While for those happily flying solo and delighted to be free from the restraints that a relationship can sometimes bring, Valentine’s Day may be just another day. But for anyone who has just broken up with a partner it can bring back painful memories and emotions. And for anyone who is still searching for their ideal mate it can be a very lonely time, as you wistfully survey all the loving couples that surround you.   So what’s the secret to living happily ever after?   The most important thing is to understand that a fulfilling relationship does not happen overnight (except for a few truly blessed beings that discover real love at first sight) but rather that it’s a long, but rewarding journey of self discovery.   But where to start?   A very common complaint in a relationship (and one I hear a lot) is ‘he/she doesn’t understand me’ to which I invariably reply ‘well of course not, why would he/she understand you, when you don’t even understand yourself?’   I realised very early on that people are all different. As a child I remember questioning ‘do unto others as you would have done unto you’ – I just couldn’t see how it could possibly work and I resolved to treat others as they would wish to be treated instead. Many years later I applied it when writing sales training adapting the Golden Rule ‘treat customers as you would wish to be treated’ to ‘treat customers as they would wish to be treated’. (I was really pleased to see that it caught on, becoming referred to years later as The Platinum Rule.)   A good case in point were my friends Bill and Alison – they both loved books, but in very different ways. For Bill, books were sacred objects to be treated as if each were a priceless first edition. Whereas for Alison, it was what was in the books that was important. Her books were dog eared, well thumbed, and had all the important passages highlighted, while the margins were full of her annotations.   I can still remember the look on poor Bill’s face when one of his precious books was returned with coffee stains and a broken spine. It didn’t bode well for their relationship!   So how do we start this journey of self discovery?   There are many different tools available that we can use to help us do just that: whether it’s working with a therapist, meditation and self introspection, Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) or one of the many personality typing systems  available, or better yet a combination of all of the above 🙂   I’ve used them all! Each one has brought me new and rich insights into who I am. And each one has brought me a step closer to finding and enjoying a fulfilling and loving relationship. Because the great thing is that, once you understand yourself, you know what it really important to you and what you want from a relationship and in an ideal mate.   If you would like some help on your journey, David and I would love to share with you what we learned on our respective journeys. Combining our different areas of expertise, we’ve designed a series of workshops that will help you work through all the different aspects of your journey to achieving successful and fulfilling relationships.   There will be an introductory talk on Saturday, 16 February at the Hotel Sultan from 11am to 1pm that provides an overview of the tools and techniques that will then be covered in the workshops in more detail.   These workshops are for you if: you’re single and actively looking for your ideal mate not actively looking but want to be ready for when you decide to start looking already in a relationship but looking to take it to the next level   Although aimed at love relationships the tools and techniques covered in the workshops will apply to all relationships: family, friends, work and most importantly yourself.   See my website for more details http://www.getenergised.com/Workshops.html  

We have a successful ladies fashion shop – London Fashion Café, on the seafront of Fuengirola.  The shop has been a success despite the present economic circumstances and we have got the books to prove...

Thoughts change brain chemistry. Our thoughts affect our neurotransmitters on a daily basis. For example, if we walk past an aggressive barking dog, we think “threat”, and the brain releases norepinephrine. As a result, we become tense, alert, develop sweaty palms, and our heart beats faster. What we ‘think’ about a situation, creates our feelings. Much of the time, these reactions occur unconsciously; we live our lives reacting to events and situations, creating thoughts so quickly that we cannot even see them form. We are a product of our chemicals, reacting to our unconscious programming, that is, until we learn to see our thoughts, and consciously change how we think. The brain works like a huge database. As we go through our daily lives, we are unconsciously, referencing the past all the time. This database formed during the conditioning of our early years, through our conditioned beliefs, experiences and perceptions about the world, and ourselves. If we grew up to think negative thoughts, to perceive the world as a negative place, a overwhelming place to fear, our unconscious mind will continue to react to life from a state of negativity, until something happens to make us change our beliefs and perceptions about life, and to see the world, and ourselves, through a more positive and lighter perspective. If we have a negative database, when we are about to embark on a new business venture, and as we think about the challenges that lie ahead, the potential threats or failures, we reference all of our related threats and failures from the past, and feed our fear of future threat and failure, which serves only to impede progress and generate negative thoughts and feelings. When attend a dinner party, with a new group of people, and it reminds us of being in a similar situation at a new school, perhaps where we were bullied, we automatically reference our past experience, and experience it as our reality in the present. While we live, reacting to life in this way, referencing a negative past, while unaware of what we are really thinking, we shall remain as a victim to our minds, and be susceptible to negative thinking and the resulting feelings. However, it is possible to develop awareness of the thoughts we are having, in response to life, and to choose to change our thoughts, and thus, our brain chemistry, which will then enable us to feel happier, calmer and more in charge of our lives. At the dinner party, when our thoughts reference the past, we can choose to tell ourselves, ‘These thoughts are just my programming, they are not the truth. I choose to see this situation in a positive light; I am about to make new friends and potential business contacts. This could be a fun and eventful evening’. With these thoughts, we create the chemicals that generate positive feelings, and we have a good time. When facing the fear of a new business venture, we can choose to think; ‘This is an exciting time, I am building the foundations for a business that I am passionate about, and I have every faith in my ability to create successes. With these thoughts, we generate the energy and feelings needed to spur us forwards. Learning to observe our thoughts does take some practice, and there are various developmental methods. Meditation is a common one, and a good one, for those who suite this method. I do not, and so I found another way. It was founded on observing my feelings, in response to events that made me anxious, afraid, angry or self-defeating, and to use feelings as guide to help me see my thoughts. With time and practice, every day, often many times a day, I learnt to see the thoughts that trigger how I feel. Being able to ‘see’, developing this mindful awareness, is the first step in mastering the mind. Once we can see our thoughts, as an outside observer, we can begin to change them, to support our chosen objective, be it an external objective, or inner peace and happiness. If you are interested in learning more, please contact: Antonia Behan –Personal and Professional Development. Tel: 00350 54 02 77 56 antonia@antoniabehan.com www.antoniabehan.com Sessions available in Ocean Village, Gibraltar, and Pueblo Nuevo, near Sotogrande, Spain.

We all have dreams and goals to which we aspire, but often, after the initiation into a new way of living and being, we soon find ourselves retreating to our comfort zones, and caught up in old patterns. This is because making a goal successful is an art in transformation that must be properly learnt and continually practiced, so that we break free from conditioned and unconscious behaviours and habits, and consciously create a new programme, that supports our chosen objective. A successful goal begins with the most important quality, a POSITIVE MIND STATE for success; it begins with BELIEVING IN YOUR OBJECTIVE. What do you believe about what you are setting out to achieve? What is this belief founded on? Do your beliefs support your objective? If not, how are you going to change them? The second most important thing, is to set a CLEARLY DEFINED GOAL, that is in alignment with you most important values, because if the goal does not really matter, it will not stand the test of time, or outshine any challenges that arise. AFFIRM YOUR GOAL – why you want it, which values does it support, and what it will give you? A successful goal must be SPECIFIC. When will your goal be achieved by? What will achieving this involve? What will it look like? How will you achieve it? What do you need to help you attain it? You also need to be able to MEASURE your goal; what will be the measure of your success, and how will you mark your progress? If it is weight loss, you can measure your success in inches and kilograms, a business by revenue, clients, profit, and the pursuit of happiness, through a journal that has more positive moments and days, and more notable moments when you truly feel happy and at peace with yourself. You must also ensure your goal is ACHIEVABLE: do you truly believe you can attain it? What evidence do you have to support this? You don’t have to be able to do everything yourself, but you do need to be able to enlist the support of those who can help, if you need it. For optimal success, it is important to THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX. We do this by broadening our mind, which can be done in several ways: Study another industry –You might find that many of the problems people in other industries face are similar to the problems in your own, but that they’ve developed really quite different ways of dealing with them that may be of use to you. Explore other belief systems – our beliefs determine how we interact with each other and the world. Exploring how others think, can teach you a lot about how people relate to each other and the world around them. This can go a long way to supporting marketing campaigns. Try inspirational writing – When we write from an open mind, from feeling and emotion, our more creative right-brain processes are activated, that may bring new ideas and solutions that logic, analysis and left-brain processes were not able to perceive. Change Perspective – If the biggest challenge you are facing today became one of the smallest, because life suddenly brings others, how might you address it differently? By changing how you see a problem, you start to find new ways of managing and overcoming it. Work backwards – start addressing your objective as if it were already achieved, and think back through the steps you needed to make to attain it. See through the mind of a child – ask a child for advice on attaining your goal. Children are naturally creative and speak without prejudice, programming, and with a refreshing ignorance of convention, giving them a gift of perception that we do not allow ourselves to see. Once you know what you want, how to achieve it, and have explored all options and ideas for moving from where you are now, to where you want to be, you will need a clear and realistic EXECUTION PLAN. Identify the tasks that need to be done, by whom and for when. How are your beliefs supporting you at this stage? Do you need to do some inner work, and improve your state of mind? Are you clear about what you want and where you are going? Are you ready to TAKE ACTION? Antonia Behan offers personal and professional development sessions, to help you develop the inner tools and resources, and practical methods, that will enable you to build a clear pathway, and make confident footsteps, towards your chosen objective. Sessions available in Ocean Village (Gibraltar) and Pueblo Nuevo, near Sotogrande (Spain). Coffee Break Solutions available in Marbella. Find out more at: www.antoniabehan.com