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Recovery is part of performance - any kind of performance

You’ve worked through your work projects, assignments, chores at home, and maybe your exercise or creative routine. Maybe you’ve also been looking after other people in your household or keeping the house organised, the fridge full, and the bathroom tidy. Maybe alongside all that, you have tried to start a side hustle or to push your side hustle further. And, unsurprisingly, you are exhausted. So, you think you’ll need some rest. Maybe some sleep will help. Or just some time to chill ...

Who are you when no one is watching?

Do you find yourself changing or adjusting your behaviour because you feel like someone is watching you? Sounds creepy, but I mean ‘watching’ more in the sense of looking at what you're doing, wanting to learn from you, looking up to you, or wanting to check in on the quality of your work. When people feel like they are being watched (and potentially judged), they often alter their behaviour. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a good or a bad thing. For many people, it just is a thin...

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Waiting for Motivation...

… is a little bit like waiting for Godot. You might be here a while. Maybe you have to finish an assignment, you have to get onto a project, or you need to go out for a run or a cycle. But you don’t feel like it. At all. Thousands of other things are more interesting to you. Vacuuming, emptying the dishwasher, organising your bookshelf by colours, sorting through your pencil or tea spoon collection, online rabbit holes, or <insert your preferred procrastination activity here>. You know...

What to do when... match yours tasks with your time & energy

'I’m busy. I have so much to do. I don’t know where all the time went.' Perhaps you find yourself thinking these thoughts fairly regularly. But then, when it comes to actually doing what you have on your to-do list, you work slowly, cannot concentrate, avoid tasks, and procrastinate. So, today’s blog is about figuring out your personal timing and energy levels and how to match tasks to make it work for you. Because, surprise, surprise, we are all a bit different - even though our very stru...

Decisions, decisions, decisions...

If we trust the internet… and maybe we should not — the average adult makes between 33,000 and 35,000 conscious decisions a day. That includes what to wear, when to brush your teeth, which cup to drink out of, what to have for dinner, and when to go to the bathroom. Many of the thousands of decisions we make are pretty basic, but they take energy, nonetheless. And then there are bigger decisions that might keep us awake at night for weeks or months while we struggle to decide. Questions...

Hello Emotion... now, what shall I do with you?

Our lives are full of emotion. We might be excited about an upcoming trip, sad that we had to say goodbye to friends we won’t see for a few months, and we get nervous when we have to give a presentation or are up for a job interview. And then there are moments of envy as you compare yourself to others, be it friends or strangers online, moments of frustration when someone cuts in line, moments of desperation when you feel like your partner isn’t listening to you and moments of gratitude for ...

Emotions - Your very own notification system

A few years ago, friends and I rowed across Cook Strait, the stretch of water between New Zealand’s North and South Island. It is a fairly treacherous body of water; it’s often very windy and the water gets pretty rough. It was a challenge to pull it off. Naturally, it involved lots of preparation and training. Doing the actual crossing, from Wellington (Mana) all the way to Picton, covering 93 km which took around 11 hrs, is a story for a different day. One of the reasons we did it, th...

Yeah, but...who is listening?

Sometimes I find myself talking to someone and after a few moments, I can tell they are not listening; they are somewhere else with their thoughts. Maybe their eyes have glazed over a bit. They are not really here. And then, other times, I find myself listening to someone, and after a few moments (or minutes), I realise, I am not taking in what they are saying. I’m someplace else with my thoughts. Listening comes up often in conversations with clients and athletes: how to do it, how it fe...

To Plan or not to Plan...

… that is the question. Or is it? Is it a question at all? As someone who works in sport, where training, performances and life around those are planned in four-year cycles and as someone who has lived that life as an athlete, I am quite obviously biased towards living a life that includes planning. I planned as a teacher too, because, in my view, it is impossible to get the best out of people, if you have no idea of where you want them to get to and what you want them to learn along the way. ...

End-of-year Reflection

What a year! I was thinking about everything that happened in 2024 and everything I did this year, and a lot was going on. Interestingly, they were all quite different things. ‘Will be good to sit down and reflect on all that properly,’ I thought. The time between Christmas and New Year’s sort of lends itself to this kind of reflection. If you are not too tied up with family visits and festivities, that is. Most people have some sort of break over Christmas, whether it’s Summer or W...

Your Window of Tolerance

It’s usually something small. Something that normally wouldn’t bother you. But all of a sudden that small thing pushes you over the edge. Maybe you forgot to buy milk at the supermarket. The one thing you went there for in the first place. Maybe you missed the bus to work. Maybe you dropped and broke a glass. Maybe your flight was cancelled. Maybe you stubbed your toe. Or maybe you are gutted that you can’t hang out with your friends tonight. All little things. All things that are a l...

The ocean between us

Some moments change your perspective forever. I experienced one of those at a conference once. I like going to conferences, mainly because I like learning. The trouble is, usually those events are packed with interesting speakers and topics and you constantly feel like you might be missing out on something. Now, I just look for one or two things (ideas, perspectives, strategies, tools, activities, etc.) that I can use in my practice within a week. If I use it within seven days of learning about ...

WIN - WIN

‘Are you winning?’ one of my colleagues asks me, and I am so perplexed, I have to ask, ‘I’m sorry, what?!’ ‘Are you winning,’ my colleague repeats, and I think, ‘Ohh, you did actually say that.’ And I reply, ‘Yeah…, I think I am, yeah…’ - and I think, ‘Wow Tina, could you sound any more convincing…?!’ I’ve come across a few coaches who ask their teams to spell ‘fun’ right before a game or a race and the team chants back, ‘W - I - N’, and you have pr...

Structure creates freedom

For most of us, it starts well before we become aware of it: We live our lives in some sort of structure. Our parents structure our days, later daycare, primary and high school have specific structures and if we were involved in any after-school activities, they usually happened at particular times and in certain locations. So from a young age, many of us operate in some kind of structure. You have probably had moments where you wanted to rebel against one of those. Maybe you stayed out lon...

You get what you tolerate

I like language. I like playing with it. I enjoy playing with words, with sounds and with repetition. I like dad jokes. And I like it when language is simple. One of my favourite things is short phrases that capture the essence of a concept or an idea. Phrases like, ‘The Conversation is the Relationship’, ‘Structure creates Freedom’ (more on that soon), or the phrase I want to write about today: ‘You get what you tolerate.’ To me, these phrases capture the core of an idea or con...

The Conversation is the Relationship

As a young athlete, I thought I needed to be friends with my teammates. I was friendly with everyone, but I struggled with the idea of having to establish close friendships with them all. How was I supposed to make this work? It took me a while, but eventually, I realised that what teams need is not necessarily friendship (though it is a nice bonus when that happens), but trust and respect. And to build those, you need time and patience. And you need conversations.Years later, working as a ...

TEDx Nelson

Speaking at TEDx Nelson was an opportunity to tell our story and share what we’ve learned about emotions and their role in creating true connections.Download the workbook....