These boots are made for swaggering...

When I lived in Los Angeles in my early twenties one of the first things I bought myself was a pair of stunning cowboy boots. Actually, they were more like cowgirl boots. They were wonderfully loud – bright red and white and I wore them with pride. They’re now lying scuffed in a cupboard somewhere – too small for me to fit into and occasionally used by the children for dressing up. A shadow of their former selves.

I’m in Dorset this week for half-term and took myself to the Bournemouth Life Club as a treat. We spent the evening working on perspectives. Most peculiar things kept popping into my head. When asked to think of an animal, I thought of a tadpole (!?) and when asked to think of a character from a film I thought of John Wayne.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been a fan of cowboy films (apart from Butch Cassidy – and I’m not sure you’d count that) and I certainly have never been a fan of John Wayne, but there he was, larger than life in my mind.

So, what did my life look like from John Wayne’s perspective? It looked simple. Suddenly I had the power and the arrogance to make decisions, to be confident, to be ruthless, to determine my future.

I left the Life Club not walking, but swaggering. I’m going to buy myself another pair of cowboy boots – maybe black this time.

What item of clothing makes you feel confident? Or even swagger?

See you at Life Clubs.
All best wishes,
Nina
PS We’re looking for Hosts to run clubs in the UK and Canada right now. Check out our website for more.

Happy Second Birthday to Watford Life Club

Watford Life Clubs second birthday celebration was great fun. Juliette cut the stunning cake my daughter had made and we all ate, drank and were merry.
Hope you can make the next party. Cake's all gone, but maybe I can persuade her to make another.
Nina
Founder Life Clubs

Being You

I love Russian dolls at the best of times, but this week's workshop is all about values and to me that little Russian doll says so much about values. She seems to be peeping out of her many-layered protection going 'My values are what keep me safe'. And yet her values on each level may be contradictory and each doll may represent a different collection of values.

We are multi-dimensional, thank goodness, just like this doll and studying our values is one of the most fascinating and fun and basic introductions to self-development.

I strongly urge you all to have a go.

See you at this week's Life Club,
Nina
Founder Life Clubs who values... integrity, freedom, happiness, running along the beach (not doing enough of that these days!) to name but a few.

Happy Me Day at Base Camp

Hope you all enjoyed Me Day as much as we did. We ate delicious fairy cakes that Gen created and Smarties and Love Hearts. We also laughed doing the workshop and filling in the quiz. A good time was had by all - including two of my children who joined us. And the effects of the workshop made us all feel good.

Do let us know what you did to celebrate.

See you at Life Clubs this week. We're talking about money - very appropriate at this time of year.
All best,
Nina
Founder Life Clubs

It's going to go wrong

I always assume machines know nothing and people know everything

One of the assumptions I make is that my computer is going to go wrong and all my work is going to get lost.

I have lost things on occasion, but by and large I know this assumption isn't true. Firstly because I have one of those little MacBooks and I've been told they rarely break down. Secondly because (when I remember) I back everything up 'in space' so it can't get lost and, what I don't back up google, my e-mail account, does. And thirdly - I think I need a thirdly here - because it hasn't gone wrong since I had it - and those odd times when I thought it had - it was always me that had done something wrong.

So, logically I can reassure my assumption that all is well. The facts stack up nicely against it and so I have to stay calm and trust that everything is OK.

My other assumption - that people know everything - is equally difficult to feel comfortable with. It takes me a long time when I meet someone to realise that we have different pools of knowledge. I always assume they know everything I know - even if I know that I don't know everything they know.

The last five days I've spent training Life Clubs hosts and increasingly I find training others a little uncanny. I can't imagine that they don't know what I know, so I cut corners in what I tell them and skip over things that are probably quite important - anything rather than risk telling them something they already know. And yet if I thought about the facts, it would be apparent that they don't know anything I'm going to teach them or else why would they be there.

If only I could assume that people know nothing and machines know everything, I'd be all right.

See you soon,
Nina
Founder Life Clubs