THE BIG LEAP 4 - KEEPING UP MOMENTUM

I have to confess that life has been a little stressful since my last report on life coaching. But I was pleased to have another session with Suzy last week.

We'd previously set targets of three days on each specific area - the first being a complete rest from Relentlessly Positive while I gathered my thoughts and composure. That one was easy - a bath and an early night was just what the doctor ordered and the problems I had been having were soon resolved.

The second project was making myself eat breakfast. Again, not too onerous although I had to slightly delay this one as there was no decent fruit in the house...

Thirdly - now it gets harder - walking half an hour in my lunch break every day for three days. Well (and yes, these are excuses but in my defence, they were real at the time) I tried to do this, and on the first day I planned to do it, it rained. Not just gentle rain, but full on "I've been waiting for you to set foot outside the door so that I can soak you" rain. So I didn't go. Undeterred, I re-joined the office gym and thought I'd beat the weather by walking for 30 minutes on the treadmill instead. I managed that the first day, thenI was out of the office at a big event the second so I had to miss it. By then I seemed to have lost my momentum so I decided to move on to the next challenge as this one was clearly not working!

My last challenge - Reiki. I wanted to get back into regular Reiki treatments on myself, to try and alleviate some of my stress. I did manage this, although the very nature of Reiki means that I didn't always manage 30 minutes because I fell asleep!

So, by the next time I spoke with Suzy, I was feeling a bit sheepish. But in her inimitable way, she really made me feel better, and motivated me. We had a long talk about the latest plans for moving to Canada (something good coming out of something not so good) and about how we were going to make me into a freelance writer.

I managed to pitch two ideas to different publications, but have so far had very little positive response. Still, Suzy seemed to think the ideas were good and told me not to be down hearted as being a freelancer ultimately means being ignored a lot by busy features editors.

She set me some more day by day objectives, which I thought I would be able to manage. They were:

1. Have an active day - get off the bus early, take the stairs, do some exercise in my lunch hour

2. Have a Canada day where I research Canada, immigration, the cost of living, areas and jobs.

3. Have an ideas day where I scour the papers and try to find ideas for features I could write

4. Have a pitch day where I write up all the ideas and send them to features editors and magazine contacts

5. Have a relaxing day where I chill out, have a soak in the bath, do my nails, do some Reiki and veg out on the sofa watching Dirty Dancing or Chocolat (again)

6. Have a 'get in touch' day where I contact people I've been meaning to phone, write to or e-mail but never get around to it as I'm too busy

7. Have a 'be nice to your workmates' day - when people are driving me crazy, turn it round and be especially nice to the people who are annoying me!

It started badly - I managed the be nice day...then we were called into the board room and told that we're all losing our posts soon. We will still have 'a job' there, but it will be doing nothing much ... OR something nobody else has applied for. So, that threw me off track...but at least it's made me more determined that moving to Canada is a GOOD THING.