I'll spare you the new year, new me talk. This is about crafting a clear vision of what you want in 2021 and then committing to yourself to make it happen regardless of any obstacles you might face. It's your Rubicon moment! No plan B.

When in do-mode, I find it hard to make time to sit and reflect. My body gets agitated. My mind rebels and acts like a toddler, easily distracted, wandering off to chase the next shiny object. The best I can do is squeeze out a few sentences at a time. But really, the best thing for me to do is MOVE! So that’s what I did. And I brought my audio recorder along to capture the flow of my thoughts.

In this episode of the Coach's Notes, I share 4 key questions to ask yourself when faced with uncertainty.

In this episode, Clay and Nicola talk about the Overextended Persona in the Lumina Spark Model and how the persona relates to stress.

In this episode of the Coach's Notes, I get together with a couple of my friends, Jennifer Brown and Lynsey Weir, who are also leadership coaches, to talk about what they have been finding out in the field as they interact with leaders coming to grips with leading teams, many of them remotely, in a pandemic world.

A coffee contemplation exercise...

In this episode, I catch with Coach Andy Chandler to talk about what it takes to be resilient and deal with uncertainty in a time of crisis.

For all my friends in the UK, welcome to Lockdown 2020, week number 6. I hope you had a fabulous weekend and managed to get some sun (in your back garden of course!). This week has started off quite reflective for me. During my morning reading period, I couldn’t concentrate. All of the stuff that has been percolating in my head this past week was now ready to surface. And so I got dressed and headed out in to the back garden to let it come. I captured some of my thoughts on tape for the Coach’s Notes. There are still a few things to unpack, but now I need to roll on with the day. Take care,Clay

Today I returned to a practice I haven't done in a while, a practice called morning pages. In this episode of the Coach's Notes, I recap on the practice and what led me back to it.

Audio podcast version here. For the video version go here. I'm a big fan of behavioral style profiles and personality tests. I think they're a great place for you to start your self-development journey. Tests like these give you a basic insight into your underlying motivations and behavioral style preferences. And this goes a long way in heightening your self-awareness. As the saying goes, that which you are aware of you can control, that which you are unaware of controls you! Over the Easter break, I took some time out to do a little self-development using the Big 5 Personality Test. In the video, I'll tell you what led me here and what I found. In a nutshell, the Big Five personality test measures the five personality factors that psychologists have determined are core to our personality makeup. The Five Factors of personality are: Openness - How open a person is to new ideas and experiencesConscientiousness - How goal-directed, persistent, and organized a person isExtraversion - How much a person is energized by the outside worldAgreeableness - How much a person puts others' interests and needs ahead of their ownNeuroticism - How sensitive a person is to stress and negative emotional triggers In the video, I share my results with you. For the most part, I wasn't too surprised how are scored in the Big 5, but what did surprise me was some of the personality patterns the test revealed. I'm going to have to spend some time unpacking those. I said I'd share my full report with, so here it is. If you do decide to take the test, you can take it for free here. Let me know how you get on.