Time is of the essence….

September 14, 2021

Is it just me or am I picking up that people are really struggling with managing time at the moment? I know that since the summer break I’ve been flat out. I’m also reading articles in the media about people doing 60 hour weeks, not taking breaks, checking emails late at night. What goes with that is an intense interest in productivity hacks such as getting up at 4am, not doing emails until 5pm, swallowing frogs….But wait – isn’t that just getting on to a productivity treadmill, to make you fitter for the other work treadmill to achieve what? What are you really trying to accomplish? Isn’t getting on that treadmill going to lead to burnout?

The problem with all the health and productivity hacks is that they look like shortcuts and could be silver bullets that have worked for other people. Even something valuable like mindfulness (which I’m not good at) can be a sticking plaster. With all of this, we’re merely snatching time for ourselves.

What does your work require and what conditions enable you to be at your best? I would put money on it needing creativity, especially in these uncertain times, leadership as other people look to you for direction, and at the very least, your good mental health. For all of that, you’ve got to
• give yourself time
• allow yourself to step back
• have time to think, go inside yourself to draw on your intuition
• find confidence that actually you do know the answers or can work out where to find them
• that you can draw on all your valuable experience and knowledge.

This is not something I find easy at all. I like fast-paced working environments, getting things done, ticking things off on my to-do list. However, I also know that to be creative, for example, to design a new retreat, I need to step away from my desk, which is what happened yesterday. As I relaxed, I had inspiration for something I had been thinking about and it started to fall into place. We have become conditioned to think that efficiency is the answer to being effective.

We need to become much more thoughtful about what kind of time we need to give to different parts of our jobs. Of course, much of it requires information gathering, analysis, intelligence and impatience, but to be creative, we have to be comfortable with a different approach to time, one which is characterised by patience, holding ourselves back and tapping into our intuition.

Don’t get back on the treadmill.

Keen to regain your time? Let us help you.

Places for our November retreat are limited so book now and allow yourself the freedom of thought and creativity.

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Back To The Grindstone

by Next Chapter Retreats

September 8, 2021

Hopefully, you’ve had a holiday or at least a break which has left you feeling more restored. The kids are back at school and the old routine is kicking in. Or is it, as you vowed you weren’t going back to your old (unhealthy) habits? You might have been feeling a bit burnt out before the holiday but are feeling much better now. Over the break, you’ve had a chance to think about the months ahead with mixed feelings.

There are lots of opportunities, the business is looking good and you could find yourself being busy. With an eye to all of that, you’ve spent some time planning a fitness regime, getting more wearable tech and reading up about some productivity hacks. Getting up at 4am, leaving your emails until 5pm, swallowing frogs, here we come! But wait… isn’t that just getting on to a productivity treadmill, to make you fitter for the other work treadmill – to achieve what? What are you really trying to accomplish? Isn’t that going to get you back into burnout?

One of the things I realised after I had had my retreat week away on a Scottish island which got me over my burnout, is that I had to do things differently. One of them was lowering my expectations of myself, not trying to live up to other people’s expectations, for example, building a million-dollar business! The problem with all the health and productivity hacks is that they look like shortcuts and could be silver bullets that have worked for other people. Even something valuable like mindfulness (which I’m not good at) can be a sticking plaster. With all of this, we’re merely snatching time for ourselves.

give yourself time
allow yourself to step back
have time to think, go inside yourself to draw on your intuition
find confidence that actually you do know the answers
that you can draw on all your valuable experience and knowledge.

You don’t have to get back on the treadmill.

You might also be interested to read an article one participant published for us: Click Here

Our next 5 day retreat starts on 31st October 2021 – click here to join. By booking a place you will start to feel better, have something to look forward to and a sense of taking control of your next chapter.

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While The Cat’s Away, The Mice Will Play…

by Next Chapter Retreats

August 25, 2021

With our founders and leaders away – enjoying a very well-deserved break somewhere sunny. We thought we’d take a moment to reflect on Hilary and Peter and Next Chapter Retreats over the last 18 months.

When we asked Hilary and Peter why they started Next Chapter Retreats they said…

Two things:

“Someone once said to us, ‘Many people die with their best music unplayed’ and we think that’s a tragedy. We’ve been running retreats for CEOs of SMEs in peer learning groups for some years and were struck by the extent to which they were valued. New people joining the groups were told ‘Listen up, you mustn’t miss this. This is the highlight of the year’. One person even changed the dates of his wife’s surgery because it clashed with the dates of the next retreat.”

“We thought to ourselves, ‘We’ve got something really important here and it’s too valuable to be restricted only to people who have signed up to a peer learning group.’ We wanted to take them to a wider audience.”

Both Hilary and Peter have suffered their fair share of crossroad moments in their lives, including cancer diagnosis, divorce and redundancy. They didn’t want their best music to go unplayed so they embarked on Next Chapter Retreats in 2019.

How have the last 18 months been?
Next Chapter Retreats are designed as residential breaks, so when the pandemic hit in our 2nd year of trading, it railroaded our growth plans. We had to switch to virtual delivery almost overnight and it took its toll on us. We’re people people and not being in front of our audiences was very difficult. But we were not defeated. We focused on business planning, growing and engaging with our audience, business development, and personal brand growth. We signed up for and participated in many webinars, speaking about the importance of self-development and looking after yourself mentally and physically during the pandemic.

In August 2020 we saw a glimmer of hope and the possibility of retreats returning in Q3 but that was quickly dampened by lockdown #2!

In the Autumn of 2020, we designed and implemented our first App. The ‘being your best’ sense checker – have a go if you haven’t already: Click Here

We developed our brand and vision video. Watch Here

We spent a long time testing our concept, reiterating, preparing new content, stress testing it and refining what we do.

We didn’t embrace virtual because that’s not the nature of our retreats, we were strong enough to know our product and our audience and survived the pandemic by being true to ourselves and using it as time on the business to get everything business ready.

We formed long-lasting partnerships with like-minded businesses, and we wrote and wrote and wrote, posted and posted on social and added value to people through our wealth of life experience when they needed us most.

We embarked on an entrepreneurial programme to become key people of influence.

We implemented our brand pillars Uncover / Create / Change.

Returning to our first live event in July 2021, we ran a very successful retreat for a small group, in the wonderful setting of Cowley Manor. The feedback we received from participants was excellent and their response demonstrated that we had succeeded in pioneering a different approach to personal development. No one else is running retreats like these. They are not wellness retreats as such, we don’t offer yoga and detox, but they can make a significant contribution to mental health and wellness. What may take a life coach a year to achieve, we do in 3 months.

Our next 5-day retreat starts on 31st October 2021 – click here to join. By booking a place you will start to feel better, have something to look forward to and a sense of taking control of your next chapter.

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Who We Are – Next Chapter Retreats

by Next Chapter Retreats

August 17, 2021

We work with successful people who may have lost a sense of purpose and direction, have run out of steam, gone off the boil and those who want to get back to their best. Our clients know the power of investing in their own personal growth and development, they are emotionally intelligent and self-aware. We help nurture that awareness into action, leading to a more fulfilled life. Bringing focus, renewed energy and impact.

Our Founders Peter Hyson & Hilary Rowland

What led us to start Next Chapter Retreats? Two things:

Someone once said, ‘Many people die with their best music unplayed’ and we think that’s a tragedy.
We’ve been running retreats for CEOs of SMEs in peer learning groups for some years and we were struck about the extent to which they were valued. New people joining the groups were told, ‘Listen up, you mustn’t miss this. This is the highlight of the year’. One person even changed the dates of his wife’s surgery because it clashed with the dates of the next retreat.

We thought to ourselves, ‘We’ve got something really important here and it’s too valuable to be restricted only to people who have signed up to a peer learning group.’ We wanted to take them to a wider audience.

One of the things we believe about retreats is that they should provide lots of time for thinking and planning, so we give people lots of free time, strongly encouraging them not to do emails or phone calls, but to go for a walk, swim, have a sauna. When we first did this, we thought there would be major objections from busy CEOs, but no, people really valued being given permission to step back from the business and think.

What we’ve learned is that retreats work in all kinds of situations: planning for the business, thinking about the family and a relationship with a partner, working out how to be a better leader, confronting a dysfunctional lifestyle, contemplating a career change, or just the next stage of a career.

Our next 5-day retreat starts on 31st October 2021 – click here to join. Only a few places remaining. By booking a place you will start to feel better, have something to look forward to, and have a sense of taking control of the situation.

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What Are Retreats?

by Next Chapter Retreats

August 12, 2021

What do you think of when you hear the word ‘retreat’? I found this piece by Madisyn Taylor, author of DailyOM which sums it up beautifully.

‘Occasionally we need to pause – and step away from the hustle and bustle of modern life. One way to do this is to go on retreat. Far more than a holiday, a retreat offers us time to ourselves to rest, heal, reflect and renew our spirit. It is a time to cocoon so that we may emerge renewed refreshed and ready to return to everyday life with a new perspective. A retreat gives us time for uninterrupted meditation so that we may go deep within and spend time with ourselves.

A retreat may offer quiet solitude and sometimes even silence. Our senses may be reawakened to the beauty, sights and sounds of nature. When we spend days in contemplation, we can more easily hear our heart when it speaks to us. We are also able to really listen when a bird sings, breathe in the smell of flowers, grass, and earth. When we go on retreat we have time to take a long reflective walk through the woods where we give each step our full attention.

Without the pull of deadlines, relationships, the internet, or other media, we give ourselves time to go deep into our own solitude where we can fully reflect on our joys, sorrows and fears, owning them and releasing them as needed. We may even come to know and understand our life path more deeply. Hopefully, when we return home, we can take a little bit of this time alone back with us. We also may come back to our life more renewed and ready to take on the world.

The beauty of going on retreat is that no matter where you go or how long you are away you will always meet yourself when you get there.’

Our retreats offer all of this. We provide guided reflective activities that stimulate your thinking in very carefully chosen, completely confidential small groups which enable you to explore the stories of your life more deeply to discover what you are like at your best and what holds you back. We help you retell those stories so that you can craft the next chapter of your life, whatever that needs to be for you. Our retreats will make a big difference to your mental health but are not primarily wellness retreats in that we don’t offer yoga or detox, though we stay in a lovely hotel where there’s a very good spa if you want a massage!

We work with successful people who may have lost a sense of purpose and direction, have run out of steam, gone off the boil and those who want to get back to their best. Our clients know the power of investing in their own personal growth and development, they are intelligent and self-aware. We help nurture that awareness into action, leading to a more fulfilled life. Bringing focus, renewed energy and impact. Contact us for a conversation

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Invest in your family

by Next Chapter Retreats

August 5, 2021

What are you most proud of?

When we ask our clients that they nearly always mention that they’re most proud of their children. I know I am. This is a time when we have more time to spend with our families and yet, we may feel we are at the end of our tether ourselves and don’t have much to give them. Sometimes we think that money will fill the gap, but it’s us they really value.

How do you want to invest in your family?

At this time of the year, we have more time to spend with them and that may highlight how little time we normally have with them with all the feelings of guilt that go with that. It often feels like an either/or. Either we put a lot into our work and career, or we take our foot off the pedal to be with the family.

What if there was a both?

We know that people who come on our retreats leave with more to give back to their partners and their families. Watch Belinda Collins who came on one of our retreats reflect on the difference it made to her and her relationship with her family, link below

Watch Belinda’s reflection here

Invest in yourself, invest in the business, invest in the family, come on a retreat. We still have one or two places on our next retreat in September.

Get In Touch

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Burnout – Take Time for you

by Next Chapter Retreats

August 5, 2021

We recently featured in The Sterling Groups Newsletter talking about Burnout and the benefits of taking time out for yourself. Read the full post her e

We are currently taking applicants for our next retreat in September 2021 get in touch here to find out more

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What if you could design the life you want?

by Next Chapter Retreats

July 26, 2021

We’re hearing a great deal about The Great Resignation which might just be a media invention but may also be starting to niggle at the back of your brain. What if…?

Equally, with time to think during lockdown, there are lots of us who started to become aware of things we hadn’t noticed before and started to wonder…what if? What would the life you really want look like?

What are the questions you’re avoiding asking yourself about your life, what are the possibilities you hardly dare imagine? Life is not a linear process – it doesn’t have to carry on in the same direction forever.

Faced with possible change, people tend to respond in one of three ways:

Ignore it. Lie down with a cold towel over your head and hope that it goes away
Get stuck. You know you want your life to be different, but the prospect of change is too unnerving and you’re not sure where to start
Panic. Rush around trying one thing after another in an effort to find something different.

For most of us, it’s unrealistic to think of starting from scratch and completely reinventing ourselves. The self-help gurus make too much of the concept of transformation and not the practical steps. Very few people can make radical, life changes to their lives and often that’s not what’s actually required.

And yet, and yet…. On our retreats, our clients make big decisions about their lives, like complete career changes. We support them in planning the execution of change by helping them build on all they have achieved to date and finding a tipping point to their future success. Some clients make smaller changes, that equally, positively enable them to live the rewarding, fulfilling lives they’re looking for.

The first step is to get you to take a step back and take some time to really look at your life, past and present, what you want to change and what you want to hang on to. If any of this resonates with you get in touch.

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Burnout

by Next Chapter Retreats

July 11, 2021

I’ve just returned from a week’s retreat on the island of Iona, staying in the Abbey and living in community with other guests. There was a spiritual component to it, and I spent a lot of time looking out to sea, just being quiet. I felt I gained perspective on our business and the progress we have made, but the other thing I felt the need to make sense of was the effect that the pandemic and lockdown have had on me.

I realised that when the pandemic struck, I went into something of a panic, especially about our business. Being in the business of running executive retreats we are primarily a face-to-face business and there was little face-to-face last year. The rush for many businesses was to pivot (how often did we hear that word?) online, which we tried, but had we stood back, probably common sense would have told us that it wouldn’t work, which is where we got to at the beginning of 2021 when we decided to sit tight and wait for restrictions to ease and face to face to commence once again.

What I realised last week was that I hadn’t stopped panicking deep down and it had taken its toll. I was mentally exhausted and feeling waves of depression. I know I am not alone. It’s not as though we can see a way out of the difficulties and uncertainties of the pandemic. We thought vaccinations would liberate us and then along came another variant. Each stage brings with it another set of regulations to get used to, school children in bubbles, whether to get the staff back to the office or not.

What we’re all recognising now is that this is burnout caused by endless uncertainty, pressure and lack of control. One of the feelings I had last week was that I didn’t have the right to have burnout: we were safe and healthy, we had food on the table, could talk to family and friends and had each other as companions. Many business owners report that their businesses are doing well, certainly better than expected and staff have stayed engaged.

It’s hard to admit to burnout perhaps because there seem to be so many other people who are worse off, we think it’s not a real illness and probably possible to tough it out if ignored. But left untreated, burnout can cause people to become depressed, anxious, and distracted, which can impact not only our work relationships, but our personal interactions.

What might your burnout be doing to your business, your family, or your friends? Wouldn’t it be great if you could find something that would help you over this and let you enjoy your life again?

The good news is that once identified, burnout can be reversed through taking some time to work on yourself. Take a moment to regain some perspective, learning to say ‘no’ in a constructive way, taking breaks and managing expectations are all ways you can help yourself. Finding your own purpose and understanding your values are also core ways to gaining that perspective and focus.

If you’d like the chance to renew and regenerate as I did on my retreat, we’d like to invite you to our next retreat from 13th – 15th September. If you’re not sure how they work, let’s have a chat.

Our next 5-day retreat starts on 13th September 2021 – click here to join.

Get a sense of your perspective, check out our ‘being your best’ scorecard – click here.

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Time For A Retreat?… I Don’t Think So

by Next Chapter Retreats

June 23, 2021

We have just concluded the first 3 days of our flagship retreat programme for a cohort of senior executives. We wanted to share an article written by one of the group to give you a flavour of the life-changing benefits to be experienced.

“Someone said to me ‘you should go on a retreat’, ‘a retreat? have you seen my diary, I barely have time for lunch each day let alone 5 days out on a retreat’. ‘No way. I’m fine as I am thanks’.

(Getting up at 5am, working until 7pm and regularly working at the weekends too. Heart regularly beating beyond the pace it should, snapping at the children in the brief 30 minutes I saw them before bedtime and so exhausted missing dinner as I didn’t have time and going to bed at 9pm before a restless night’s sleep and groundhog day starting again).

No I’m fine thanks – I don’t have time for a retreat.

Meanwhile, friends raising their concern with me that I’m always working and ‘are you ok’ ‘you must remember to look after yourself’, the occasional gut-wrenching comments from the children that ‘you’re always working mummy’ ‘we never see you’ ‘please can you stop looking at your laptop and help me with my reading?’. Family members raising constant concern that ‘you can’t keep going at this rate’ you’ll burn yourself out’.

Time for a retreat…? No thanks, I’m fine. Honestly, I’m fine.

Clients sending me messages of concern, distant contacts from the past noting their concern on social posts, family pleading me to take some time out. Anxiety in my chest, shallow sharp breathing, never taking a deep full breath, sleep getting harder and harder due to a constant busy mind. Restless legs. Drinking a glass or two of wine every night knowing it’s a quick way to get to sleep (despite never staying asleep for long). Changing my diet to try to shift a few pounds but having no luck. Exercising more but feeling more depleted. Running harder and faster on the treadmill but getting nowhere. More meetings, more actions, more calls, ok let’s try getting up at 4am instead then and gaining another hour for work – I’m not sleeping so why not.

I’m no wife, I’m no mother, I’m no business owner, I’m no daughter, I’m no friend. I’m doing none of those things successfully. But then I was told as a young girl, struggling with studies and dyslexia, ‘you’ll never achieve academically so just accept that. Just accept you won’t get high grades you’re not clever enough’.

Time for a retreat…? No thanks, I’m fine.

I’m not fine. I’m far from fine but I don’t have time to take out for myself.

Is that what I want written on my gravestone? Is that what I want my legacy to be. Is that the view I want my children to have of a successful role model and mother?

……..

I met Hilary and Peter through a business group called BoB (Business of Brand) and I helped them shape the strategy and marketing activation for their Retreat business, a new venture they had taken after years of experience coaching and mentoring senior executives and dealing with their fair few personal turning points in life. They were inspiring, they talked about the power and intensity of self-discovery their retreats created and we shared stories from previous retreaters for the website and social.

……

I’ve just returned from the first 3 days of their flagship 5 day Executive Retreat (split into 3 days with a 10 week period of reflection before the final 2 days) and here is what I’ve learned.

I am worth it.
I can break the ground hog day and I will.
I can be successful without jeopardising my family and friends.
I am good at what I do. And people appreciate me and see strengths and skills I me I never knew I had.
I’ve got a strong purpose and I’m value driven, I just never realised those values and how I play them out in day to day life in decisions and relationships.
I’m not the little girl standing in her head teachers office being told to accept second best.
I’m not a failed mother.
I’m someone who is powerful and strong and I now know exactly what I need to do to get the balance I need in life. I need to let the fun back in. I need regular time out, for me, to make me the best version of myself I can be.
I’m three days in but world’s apart from the women that arrived on that sunny Sunday afternoon.

Set in the beautiful countryside in the Cotswold, surrounded by two ultimate professionals who know exactly what they are doing and the journey they are taking people on – I discovered I have passion, kindness and determination racing through my veins. I’m better equipped now to channel this and I’m on a journey with like-minded professionals.“

www.nextchapteretreats.guru

Time is of the essence….

Back To The Grindstone

While The Cat’s Away, The Mice Will Play…

Who We Are – Next Chapter Retreats

What Are Retreats?

Invest in your family

Burnout – Take Time for you

What if you could design the life you want?

Burnout

Time For A Retreat?… I Don’t Think So

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