Articles Tagged with

5-day retreat

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Do you aspire to a life less ordinary?

What do you aspire to? Do you feel you haven’t yet achieved your potential? Do you believe that it’s never too late to invest in yourself?  Do you have a sense that you have so much to give but are held back by your current role? Is there someone you’re close to you feel is holding you back? Are the circumstances of your life getting in the way? Are you looking for inspiration to take the next step? Or even courage?

It’s time to act!

We meet a lot of successful people who’ve lost a sense of purpose and direction, run out of steam, gone off the boil, been knocked off course by any of life’s difficulties and we help them 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. 

If this is you, one of our 5-day retreats (spread over 3 months) is exactly what you need.

We’re not for the ‘yes but-ers’, ‘someday I’ll-ers’, ‘I’m too busy-ers’. We are for you when you’re starting to feel the effects of ‘I haven’t got time for myself’ when you find yourself making mistakes, postponing important decisions, feeling the loneliness of your position, always in a rush, never enough time for the family, not sleeping, using drinking or drugs to get you through.

‘I haven’t got time for myself’? What about all the people who depend on you: your family, staff, clients, suppliers, friends? What would happen to them and how would they feel if something happened to you?

Are you ready to take yourself on an adventure? Ready to embark on your own hero’s journey? And what about the consequences if you don’t? We are your Sherpas. We’ll get you to the top and back in one piece.

Our next ‘Your Next Chapter’ retreat starts on 7th March. See you there?

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What is Wellness?

Wellness is a word that’s on everyone’s lips and everyone’s mind these days, but what is it really? Why do we seem so obsessed with it? Why is it that tech companies seem able to sell us any number of apps and gadgets to measure every aspect of our physiological function? Is it the sense we have when everything is going well, as well as when we’re physically healthy? Can we have a sense of wellness when times are tough?

At its most basic and as defined by the WHO it is “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” The Global Wellness Institute adds three more dimensions, emotional, spiritual, including purpose, and environmental and those make sense too.

Most of us have heard of the psychologist Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs. For anyone who needs a reminder, it’s a triangle with our basic physiological needs at the bottom, then safety needs, love and belonging next, and then self-esteem. The last two are the Californian sounding ‘self-actualisation’ which is to do with our growth needs, wanting to achieve our full potential as human beings, doing the best that we’re capable of doing. Later Maslow added transcendence, what brings the individual “peak experiences” in which they transcend their own personal concerns and see from a higher perspective. These experiences often bring strong positive emotions like joy, peace, and a well-developed sense of awareness 

I suspect this is where our interest in wellness comes in. Most of us have our basic needs met, though it’s not a case that they don’t bother us anymore.

Interestingly, much of the advice on wellness seems to focus on those basic needs, healthy food, exercise, sleep and they challenge us too. But there’s something more that keeps us looking, keeps us searching for that something that is going to unlock our best selves.

Bearing in mind that a lot of the time, life is tough one way or another, especially at the moment, how do we cultivate that sense of wellness or wellbeing? How do we concentrate on the upper levels of wellbeing? This requires us to embrace being proactive in pursuing wellness, preventative action, maintenance, taking individual responsibility and ultimately, thriving. For me, when I’ve got the basics in place, peace of mind is a large part, knowing that I can meet the challenges that come my way.

How do you pursue wellness and is it working? What are you missing? If what you need is some preventative action, a reset on your wellness, or starting to focus on your needs for growth, one of our retreats might be exactly what you need.

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And what do you want for Christmas?

I bet a lot of us get asked this at this time of the year and sometimes my heart sinks. What do I want that’s within the budget? It’s prompted the thought that there can be significant times in our lives when we don’t know what we want. The hardest people to buy presents for are those who have everything they need or want, but increasingly I’m coming across people who do have some idea what they want but feel hampered in getting it. Needless to say, it’s not another Christmas present!

Quite often, this occurs in the run-up to ‘retirement’ whatever that means for the individual. If they’re stepping back from full-time paid work, what this inevitably brings into focus is their relationship with their partner who may well have got their own life very well organised and doesn’t want it disrupted – the ‘I married you for better or for worse, but not for lunch’ phenomenon.

I speak to many people at this stage in their lives who recognise that change is coming, have some ideas about what the next stage of their lives might bring, but it’s vague and not well thought through. Because it’s ‘retirement’ many don’t feel they can make an investment in themselves at this point – it’s just not worth it, they think. But life expectancy being what it is, if you retire at sixty, you might have another thirty years ahead of you, thirty years of what? Trailing around in the supermarket?  Not only that, but you’ve built up a considerable bank of skills, knowledge and experience – all to go to waste?

But what if you do invest in finding what you want for this next chapter of your life? And what if it’s different from what your partner envisaged? The management writer Charles Handy made the point that relationships need to be renegotiated at different stages of our lives. It makes sense when you think about it – how you need to be as a couple with small children is very different from when the children have upped and gone to university. There’s no doubt about it, it’s a risk. What if you find some quite big gaps opening up between you?

But if you don’t know what you want, you don’t have a starting point for negotiation and then it’s very easy to fall in with someone else’s wishes, to opt for a quiet life, not rocking the boat. But don’t forget about those thirty years. Not knowing what you want is not a recipe for happiness. This week we’ll be doing a virtual retreat with an engaged couple in the US working out what they want for themselves and together.

If you do want to invest in those thirty years, how about coming on one of our retreats? We give you space and time to start knocking those half-formed ideas into some kind of shape. Give yourself something to look forward to.

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Here we go again?

‘Oh no, here we go again,’ I’ve caught myself thinking this last week in response to the news about another variant. But are we in the same place? No, we’ve got vaccines and we’ve got learning about how we’ve already handled the virus, but it still injects another wave of uncertainty into our lives. What about Christmas? We’ve made the decision not to travel after mid-December to give the Christmas we didn’t have last year the best chance.

So we’re making some concessions to Omicron and being sensible, but I can’t deny a degree of anxiety about all the retreats we’ve got planned next year. That’s got me thinking, what do I bring to this stage of the pandemic adventure to get me through? I wrote last week about the need to look back, to recognise our achievements and successes and that’s certainly a good place to start.

Then there are all those old-fashioned virtues that are not always prominent on Instagram – determination, perseverance, patience, perspective, not giving up. I sometimes torture myself by asking myself if we shouldn’t be building our business faster. Maybe it’s just not possible in the current climate.

But maybe as you start to look inside yourself to find what you bring and what you have to offer to all the people who depend on you – staff, clients, suppliers, family, friends, you find you’re running on empty and the possibility of getting away for a break is rapidly fading. We know that one of our retreats would be ideal to help you recharge the batteries and find the resources to keep going.

It’s our intention to keep running in-person retreats as far as possible, so please keep in touch and watch this space for what’s coming up. Our ‘From Burnout to Flourishing’ retreat in February could be just what you need.

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What’s your next chapter?

As I write this I am looking forward with excitement to Monday and Tuesday of next week which is the second half of our five-day retreat which began in June. Since then, we have been meeting the participants at regular intervals on Zoom calls to find out how they’re getting on and to support them in making the changes they want in their lives.

The group which included three MDs and a partner in an accountancy firm came with different motivations: one to take their leadership to the next level, one to completely change careers, another to think about the last few years of their career and into retirement, and one with a lifestyle that was killing them. We used the Japanese concept of Ikigai to help them articulate their purpose and then write their next chapter – to be revealed on Tuesday!

We work with people’s stories of both success and failure. One of the key moments in the retreat is when we get people to tell stories about experiences that have been difficult, and which have held them back in some way. One of these stories is told in this blog https://thenextchapter.guru/time-for-a-retreat-i-dont-think-so/  Retelling these stories enables people to make some real shifts in their lives.

One thing we have noted in our Zoom calls between the two halves of the retreat is the extent to which people are making big changes not just in the externals of their lives but in their mindsets and attitudes and in developing new habits. As we all know, these changes are sometimes the hardest and then it’s good to have some people with you who’ve been through the process with you, understand what you’re trying to change and why and are your biggest cheerleaders.

Of course, these kinds of changes can be made in lots of different ways but the retreat acts like a reset button. It’s five quite intensive days spread over three months, but the changes happen more quickly than when you’re working on your own exerting all your self-discipline which is hard when you’ve got so much else on.

We’d love to talk to you about what you’re trying to achieve in your life and whether one of our retreats will give you a kick-start. The next one starts on 1st – 3rd November so you need to get in quickly.

Blog

What Are Retreats?

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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