Sometimes things feel overwhelming. We have so much on our plates and so many things we need to consider, get done, organised or dealt with. Some things we’d really rather not have to do or face. And we all have them, right? Jobs and tasks that don’t particularly fill us with joy but that just need to get done. So how we can bring some pleasure to them? And how can we treat ourselves royally in the process? Anytime you’re feeling overwhelmed take a step back. Write down anything and everything that’s in your head and all of your to-dos. …Continue reading»
What if life was rigged in your favour?
This Rumi quote is one of my favourites: ‘Live life as if everything is rigged in your favour’. How would things change if you really believed this was true? I notice how much I suffer when I believe that something shouldn’t be happening. When I resist what is and fight against it. How I feel like a victim, and how this in turn makes me feel small, weak and powerless. When I can believe instead that it’s all happening for me and not to me, even if I don’t understand why, everything feels better. I have a new lightness of …Continue reading»
With every ending comes a new beginning
Change is part of life. Loss is part of life. Both of these can be hard to bear. But we can resist them and suffer, or we can realise that they’re part of living a full and rich life. A transition of any kind will bring up grief. Even if you want to be moving onto something new, you can still feel sadness around what you’re leaving behind. Sadness will help you to let go and to honour all that you’ve had. We need to honour any endings or anything we’re losing, fully. In whichever ways we choose. They’re ours …Continue reading»
Unconditional love
Too often we place conditions on the love we have for others. We try to get love, believing we don’t have enough already. We look for other people or things to make us feel a certain way, when we haven’t been able to do that for ourselves. It sometimes doesn’t even occur to us that we could do it for ourselves. Real love is about giving and not getting. It’s about what we can give and what we can share, with no conditions attached. Real love frees – both you and the other person. We need to learn how to …Continue reading»
It’s ok not to be ok
It’s ok not to be ok. It’s ok to fall apart. It’s ok to let others in, to lean on them, to ask for support and to be vulnerable. Give yourself time to recover. Give yourself time to grieve. Give yourself all the time you need, for anything and everything that matters most. The fastest way to feel better is to accept it when you’re feeling bad and not resist it. It’s ok not to be ok. It’s only natural to resist feeling bad. It’s uncomfortable. We want to move on and fix whatever is causing us pain or discomfort. …Continue reading»
When the story changes
Every experience you have is part of your story. Every experience helps shape you into who you are. You learn, you grow and you carry that with you. Nobody can take that away. Sometimes things feel heartbreakingly sad. Weave it into the fabric of who you are. Look for the strength you know is inside you. Lean on those you know will support you. Sometimes it’s not the end of a story; it’s just time for one of the characters to leave. And that can feel so painful for the characters left behind. But the one that leaves never fully …Continue reading»
White space
Long story short I managed to lose a whole batch of blog posts this morning. The one for today and others I’d written when I was inspired. Gone and no way to retrieve them despite my best efforts. My own fault. Gutted. Lesson learned! When you’ve got nothing left, say it. Sometimes things go wrong. And sometimes you just have to say f*** it! I was going to try and rewrite today’s post but knew I’d lost the essence of it, the feeling. Hopefully it’ll circle back around in another form when the time is right, but for today it …Continue reading»
Be here now
It can be so tempting to try and anticipate the future. We can spend so much time in our heads worrying, imagining things that may or may not come and trying to figure out the best way to go. But we can’t live for tomorrow. We have to live for today. We can’t possibly know the future. So we’re wasting our time trying to work out what we might want and feel then. It’s impossible! We can only follow what feels right in the moment. You can’t have regrets if you know that you always followed what felt right at …Continue reading»
Trust
Why do we feel the need to control everything? Ourselves, our plans, other people, the way things turn out. We try to control things to prevent anxiety and to make ourselves feel safe. But control of the outside world is an illusion. It’s exhausting. And it’s never ending. The degree to which we try to control is the degree to which we don’t trust. But it’s actually often safer to let go, than it is to cling on – attempting to control. Notice the tension in your body when you’re trying to control things. And notice the relaxation when you …Continue reading»
Staying in your own lane
It’s so easy to get caught up in what we think we should be doing. In what’s ‘normal’ or expected. It’s so easy to think we’re lagging behind, left out or not as successful or fulfilled as others. When we compare we lose confidence and can start to panic. We start thinking maybe something is wrong with us or that we’re not where we’re meant to be. We can become really confused and paralysed by comparison. It’s great to see what other people are doing and to take inspiration from them. But too often this turns into us feeling lacking …Continue reading»