Do you know how amazing your mind is? How awesome you are? Yes, you are astonishing. How about that as a welcome to January? (But no, this isn’t a celebration of how well you did managing all those people, presents, palaver and general overwhelm at Christmas - although I’m sure you’re very deserving of praise on that front too). It’s astounding what complex things your brain undertakes every day and in this short Flourishing Female mailing I’d like to showcase just one of your mind’s extraordinary talents: its ability to pick up on opportunities around you to help you get what you want in life. Hoorah for you and your brain chemistry.

I’ve got a build and refurb project going on at home at the moment and last week as I stepped over some paint

splattered newspapers in the doorway of my son’s new bedroom I noticed an article about why it pays to blow your own trumpet at work. I hadn’t seen the feature before – it was the builder’s newspaper, not mine - and I wondered why and how I was suddenly paying more attention to it than the quality of the decorator’s work. Then it came to me: I’m hosting a talk come workshop for the female employees of an IT company at the end of January. The company recognises their male/female ratio is well below the industry average of 35% and that there is work for them to do around boosting their female talent’s career progression. I’m one part of this IT company’s strategy to retain and develop talented women and my brain had noted that a feature about how to put yourself forward at work could contain other interesting fodder to weave into my commentary on the night. Oh brain how clever you are.

Psychologist Richard Wiseman writes in his book Did you spot the gorilla? (about spotting and making use of all the opportunities that are in abundance around each and every one of us every day): “The key is to prime your brain with the types of opportunities that you wish to encounter, or the problems you want to solve, and then allow it the time and freedom to scan your surroundings for possible openings and solutions.”

So what can this snippet of science do for you? First off, it’s suggests that if we know what we want the world will conspire to help us achieve it. ‘World’ may mean our private, unconscious minds or also the people around us if we choose to tell them about our aims as well.

Secondly, whatever your line of work it often pays to start thinking about a problem or a challenge a few weeks before you need to deliver the finished product. In my case the ‘product’ is often a talk or a workshop. In your case it might be a series of a lesson plans, a courtroom strategy, a TV format, a magazine feature or a funding application. “Thinking” in my case usually means bringing to mind some semblance of what the finished product will look/feel/sound like and then I step away from the challenge and let my ‘unconscious’ mind work on it and bring goodies to me, like the paint splattered newspaper article.

Let me leave you with a couple of quotes and just for fun drop me a line with your guess at who they come from:

“In the fields of observation, chance favours the prepared mind.”

“Oh there’s a lot of opportunities if you know when to take them, you know? If there aren’t you can make them.”

Flourishing yours,

Jessica

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