SigmaU Blog

Change we choose is exciting and exhilarating. Change chosen for us can feel terrifying and destructive, but it doesn't have to be that way.

Change allows us to...

Shift focus

Perhaps change has been dumped on your lap today. Perhaps it’s loss or heartache. Forced change makes it necessary to shift our focus. When I recently suffered loss, it made me shift my focus to deep gratitude for the people around me and shared experiences at a deeper level. I shifted my focus as best I could from grief to deeper connection with the people still around me.

New Growth Opportunities 

Nothing will make us level up faster than necessity. When we're thrown in the deep end of disaster, we figure it out. It always amazes me how masterful we can become at something in a short amount of time when we have no other choice! What growth opportunity have you been avoiding or delaying that you could develop now and choose to change before it's forced on you?

New Beginnings 

Our minds crave...

It’s supposed to be hard! That’s something I yell out when I’m feeling exhausted working out. It’s not meant to berate me or demoralize me, quite the opposite. Reminding myself that it requires effort and it’s going to hurt and supposed to be inconvenient is the key to growth.

This lesson keeps popping up for me and so I thought I’d share some ideas around this notion of “hard”. I was recently listening to an excellent podcast and the person being interviewed shared something I found fascinating. He was telling a story about recruits and how at the end of a grueling fourteen days, most would band together and collectively fight back or quit. Under his leadership he was able to retain 90% of new recruits! How did he do it? Did he make it easier for them? Did he let them get away with things? Did he speak nicely to them, cheer them on or coddle them? Not at all. Everything remained the same except for one key thing. He gathered them...

I’m embarrassed to admit it, but while I was doing my annual reflection, the first subconscious thought that jolted me while reminiscing on 2022 was… “you lived below your potential”. 

Ouch! That was tough to hear.  I’m doing my best to be open and coachable and listen to the hard truths that are often just what we need to hear.

Don’t get me wrong, there were several positive habits I kept in place from previous years, but I had this nagging feeling that I could have done way more.  This isn’t about perfection or striving for 10 out of 10 and consistently moving the target. This was an honest reflection on what I had done, and I had come up short.

There were some telltale signs that I missed, or let’s face it, ignored so I’m sharing those with you here so you can catch yourself before too much time passes.

1. Things running too smoothy

You may be thinking “Um Nikki, of course I want life to run...

When was the last time life blew up in your face? Like really blew up. During that time, did you think “well this is a character-building time in my life” or did you think “holy crap, get me through the next 24hours”?

If you’re anything like me, it’s the latter because it’s hard to see and appreciate the lesson during a storm. It’s often when we’re on the other side of it that we can appreciate that the situation happened to help us, develop us, or steer us on the right path.

I was listening to my coach and mentor today describe a rocky situation in his life. He had just purchased land which was to house his dream home. He sunk most of his savings into it and people told him he even overpaid for it. When he went to start developing the land, he was told that the land was no good for building. He persevered and found a developer willing to literally use dynamite to blow up the existing space so he could build his dream home. ...

I picked up Gary John Bishop’s book “Stop Doing That Shi*” at the airport before boarding a flight. I hadn’t heard of the book, and it wasn’t on my reading list so I had zero expectations.  What a ride it was! I gobbled up the entire thing cover to cover on my journey and wanted to share some of the insights with you.  As a side, Gary is from Glasgow and since my parents are Glaswegian, I enjoyed it even more as a I read through with a thick Scottish accent! :D

I had always been taught that you become what you think however Gary took it one step further and shared that you become what you say. He said that you create your reality and experiences by the narrative and language, the self-talk behind the experience. Not only that, but we also create our experiences of the future by our self-talk and then act accordingly. Um mind BLOWN - and we’re just cracking this bad boy open!

Regardless of our life experiences, it’s the way we...

We’re in the homestretch for 2022 and for some this is exciting as you’re right on track with your goals. For others, you may feel a sense of frustration or even dread that the year is coming to an end, and you may miss the mark.

Now is the time to buckle down and get hyper-focused on the goals that matter most to you.

We’ve just had Canadian thanksgiving; Halloween is around the corner and the holiday parties will be starting up in November. This can be a dangerous time for the proverbial wheels to come off as we indulge here, compromise there, and the next thing we know it’s the end of the year and we’ve undone all our positive habits.

I want to encourage you to flip your thinking a little on a couple of concepts that I learned while studying to become a High-Performance Coach. One is that Christmas day is just that, it’s a day.  It’s not a week, month or quarter to celebrate so keep that in check so you feel proud of how you handle...

There is no victory unless a battle is fought and while we may appreciate and long for easier days, the hard days form us. The hardest of times introduce us to the grit and resilience we’re made of. Without the adversity, we might otherwise never know our next level of strength.

I’ll admit that during the battle, it’s brutal. It’s exhausting and it can be easy to become cynical. I’ve found that this is something I have to be hyper aware of so I don’t slip into a negative space. I’m working on being skeptical instead of cynical.

See, there are several reasons why I could be cynical right now. I’ve had friends let me down, people disappear during tough times, people turn the other way when they’ve seen injustice in my life and people placating me with empty words like… “if there’s anything I can do” and then not do anything to help.

I’ve seen the worst in humanity recently and in my personal life I...

When did challenge become such a negative thing in society?

I noticed this recently when I was texting with a friend.  Whenever I added the words hard, challenging or difficult my phone automatically registered a stressed out or sad emoji.

Since when did doing hard things become equated with being super stressed or sad.  It even registered a sad emoji when I entered the word “work”!

We all know that in order to grow and level up we must conquer things that stretch us outside of our comfort zones. As critical thinkers and high performers, we need to challenge the status quo when we see things like auto populated emojis.

The reality is, when I post a picture of a “hard” workout to my accountability partner it’s making me stronger.  When I report to my coach an assignment was difficult, I’m actually leveling up my thinking, questioning and ultimately expanding my mind.  Yes, sometimes it’s difficult to ask ourselves tough...

How do you renew your strength when you're completely out of steam? I'm going to share with you a couple of ideas that I find to be really helpful because I’ve been there too!  I have the best of intentions, I’m fired right up and then, well, it fizzles!

Number one is to revisit your goals often. Most of the time we write out goals and then we tuck them away in a drawer and we forget about them. I'll admit something very cool does happen when you do that and you find your goals accomplished years later, but it’s not as powerful as revisiting them each and every day!

The second thing is to maybe set a new goal. Perhaps your existing goal isn't getting you excited, and you look need to look at a new goal that's going to stretch you, that's going to require courage, that's going to require you to level up, and this may just get you renewed and excited again.

The third thing is to make a checklist of all the things that you've done already. Go through all your...

Influence is something that we’re constantly participating in. We’re either influencing others or we’re being influenced by others. Recently, my colleague Lindsay shared some insights from one of her favourite books “Captivate” by Vanessa Van Edwards.

She shared that the reality is that we’re influenced all the time by other people’s energy.  We also influence others in the room by our energy.  What kind of energy do you want to be remembered for?

We know people who make us feel alive, excited, and refreshed. We also dread visits with those who make us feel edgy, irritable, and somehow like we’ve just run a marathon!  Energy influences relationships but there are some other factors when you consider positive influence.

In High Performance Coaching ™ we look at three key areas of influence and they are based on how positive influencers impact us.

They teach us how to think

There’s a very important distinction...