Author Archives: Sarah Cooper

Identify Those Elusive Transferable Skills: The 3 Pronged Attack

By Sarah Cooper | Published July 24, 2009

Not long after starting my coaching practice I delivered a workshop to young Chinese professionals on creating the perfect CV.
I was shocked to discover that the majority of participants were simply incapable of naming something they were good at – despite them all being competent English speakers with better jobs than most of their peers.
Half-way [...]

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Posted in Building Self Belief, Managing The Transition, Reaching Your Potential, Useful Tools and Techniques | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment
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7 Ideas For Funding Your Dream Work

By Sarah Cooper | Published July 17, 2009

One of the main reasons we stay stuck in a job we don’t like is that it pays us well, or at least adequately. We reason, “well, maybe my job isn’t so great, but at least I can pay the mortgage/fund my kids’ numerous after school activities/go on that Caribbean holiday/justify my daily cake habit.”
Understandably, [...]

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Posted in Managing The Transition, Setting Up Your Lifestyle Business | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
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Are You Cinderella or The Ugly Step Sister When It Comes To Your Career?

By Sarah Cooper | Published July 10, 2009

Photo credit: www.flickr.com/photos/glamhag/
/CC BY-SA 2.0
You remember the classic fairy tale. Cinderella flees the Royal Ball at midnight, accidentally leaving behind one glass slipper.  The captivated Prince Charming picks it up and searches the land to find its beautiful owner.
All sorts of hopeful candidates, including Cinderella’s evil ugly stepsisters, try to force their feet into the [...]

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Posted in Defining Your Dream Work, Reaching Your Potential | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
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How To Recapture The Optimism Of Youth

By Sarah Cooper | Published July 3, 2009

www.flickr.com/photos/zaqography/ /
CC BY 2.0
We all know that being positive is a Good Thing. But as we get older, it’s not that easy to break long-held habits of negative, self-defeating thinking.
I wonder if it’s because our thoughts are both so familiar and invisible that we don’t always appreciate their serious effect.
Imagine that every negative thought we [...]

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The Importance of NOT Being Earnest (with apologies to Wilde)

By Sarah Cooper | Published June 26, 2009

Photo credit: flickr user fernallan

As a relatively new blogger I know it’s important to spend some time getting acquainted with the experts. My favourite is Pamela Slim of Escape From Cubicle Nation. She always manages to sound like a real person, which is harder than you’d imagine.  This “living your dreams” territory can be a minefield [...]

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Posted in Defining Your Dream Work, Reaching Your Potential | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment
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Two Simple Ways To Free Up Your Time

By Sarah Cooper | Published June 19, 2009

Sophisticated time management tools, techniques and theories abound: go here and knock yourself out with a comprehensive overview – Pareto, activity logs, Locke’s goal setting theory, it’s all there.
But I’d like to focus on two very simple ways we can free up our time, by stopping doing things.
Recently I’ve made a great “stop doing” decision, [...]

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Posted in Achieving Balance, Useful Tools and Techniques | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments
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Ann’s Story - Why You Should Never Give Up

By Sarah Cooper | Published May 1, 2009

One of the few downsides of my coaching practice is not always knowing how things turn out for a client.
People come to coaching when they want to make a major change - and that’s not easy. In an ideal world, we’d continue the coaching until the client successfully made all the changes they wanted. But [...]

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7 Reasons I’m Sticking With My Lifestyle Business

By Sarah Cooper | Published April 3, 2009

I started Cows From My Window 18 months ago and despite the inevitable rocky patches of any new business, it has been the best 18 months of my life.
Here are 7 reasons why owning a lifestyle business works for me (and could for you):
1. I can choose my work
Whenever I’m approached by a potential client, [...]

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Posted in Achieving Balance, Setting Up Your Lifestyle Business | 1 Comment
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6 Simple Steps To Naming Your Lifestyle Business

By Sarah Cooper | Published April 1, 2009

I started my lifestyle business, Cows From My Window, nearly two years ago and deciding what to call the wretched thing was definitely one of the hardest parts of the setting up process.
I obsessed over potential business names for the better part of a week. I’d wake up in the night to scribble down [...]

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Posted in Setting Up Your Lifestyle Business, Useful Tools and Techniques | Tagged , , | 2 Comments
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