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Where she opens her heart...

As I sit here, pondering the past year and what lies in store in 2013, I have to say I love where I am right now. My relationship broke down in 2011 although I only moved out in early 2012, and so much has happened since this time last year. Although of course I'm not happy our relationship had to end I am such a believer of the old adage "things happen for a reason" that I can't find it in me to remain upset. Of course I was devastated when it happened, but since then I've pulled myself up straight and decided to look to the future. Such a dazzling one it is too.

A funny thing has happened along the way. I have discovered the meaning of true love. As a mother, I immediately discovered what unconditional love was when I had my daughter, but this is different. The man I spent 13 years of my life with remains a very special part of me. He will always have a little piece of my heart. They say "if you love someone, set them free" and oh my, is that true! I knew without a doubt, from day one of our relationship, that I would never stand in the way of him fulfilling any of his dreams or ambitions. I naturally hoped that we would walk side by side into the future, but I knew that I didn't OWN him and that one day this might happen. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't consciously thinking "he will leave me some day" - I just feel we are all individuals with our own paths to follow in life, and as I love him dearly I want him to be happy. I know a little bit about what is coming up in his future and I am excited for him.

Why am I opening up about this now? Well, a New Year seems as good a time as any to share this with you: please believe me when I say life is too short to be bitter or hold grudges. I do not have any room in my heart for hate and I refuse to live my life thinking what if? or why me?  I know I won't always be smiling and happy about everything that happens in my life, but I CAN decide how I'm going to deal with the aftermath.  

Maybe, just maybe, my words will resonate with someone and if that happens and just one person feels uplifted, then the pain I have experienced will not be in vain.

Love one another! 

Eff You Enn

I have been reading the latest Psychologies mag and I'm so impressed with this issue. I read one a long time ago but wasn't blown away by it, but this one has a 16 page dossier about how to inject more fun into your life. A journalist was given the task of doing something fun every day for a week. At first she wanted to refuse the assignment but then she asked herself "when did I get too busy to have fun?", so she accepted. At first she felt quite self-conscious doing silly things but as the week progressed she realised that it was vital to make time for fun. Obviously, she says, a week doing nothing but having fun would become boring because when it's forced the enjoyment goes. However, each time she allowed herself to have fun, she felt engaged and energised.

This whole dossier really spoke to me. The more I journey through YOU University and discover my authentic self, the more I realise how life can just "get in the way" if we let it, and we don't even realise we are doing it. My authentic self is fun and carefree but serious when I need to be. I have become bogged down in worry and self-doubt and this has led to a serious sense-of-humour failure recently! Obviously, when you have to look at how you are going to pay the bills and keep a roof over your head, you are not going to do it while acting the clown, but I do think you need to maintain a balance between being serious 24h a day and having a laugh to relieve the tension. More than most, I realise how short life is and how close I came to not being here to enjoy it, so from this moment I am not only going to keep reminding myself to seize the day, I am actually going to do it. 

I'm going to have more F.U.N. in 2012! Join me?

One word

There's a lot of talk in the scrapbooking community about choosing one word for your new year. I know I chose one last year and then promptly forgot about it. Oops.  This year I think my word might have to be CHANGE. We shall see. There is so much shifting and moving in the whole world, not just in my little sphere. I feel that 2012 will be full of new things and I'm going to live it to the fullest.

It is as plain to me as the nose on my face that life is SHORT and now that my health is back to normal (apart from residual lack of energy), there is no excuse for letting the days, weeks and months drift by.  I need to work on the planning aspect, as this is what I need to keep on the straight and narrow, but even that is fun - I love stationery and books and pens and colours... and that "back to school" feeling you used to get in September but now seems to happen as the old year gives way to the new. 

I feel full of hope for what is to come and I hope you'll join me on the journey. 

Inky fingers

At the weekend I had a coaching assigment to do, and I was asked to think back to my childhood to do it creatively.  That got me thinking and as I had bought some canvases and paint, I decided to do it as a piece of artwork.

Getting ready:

During:

And this is the result, which I love by the way....

Especially as I used Glossy Accents all over it when the paint was dry....

 

I can highly recommend getting messy with paints :)

Life coaching

You might remember that I started training as a life coach before all that brain stuff happened. Well, although I haven't posted much about it, I'm still training, but in a different format.  I started by joining the Journaling Community at allaboutlifecoaching.com - if you click on that link you will see my wonderful coach, Maia Berens, and in the middle of the page a link to "self-guided journaling".  It's a wonderful, FREE, course that takes you on a journey of self-discovery.  If you scroll down, you will also see that Maia's course is endorsed by the famous John Gray (of Mars & Venus fame). That's because Maia worked very closely with John and even founded and directed his Mars Venus Institute. I don't think it gets any better than that, right?

Carpe punctum*

*seize the moment

After seeing excerpts from the movie "Peaceful Warrior" with Nick Nolte, I found myself looking at videos of author Dan Millman on Youtube. This series of 5 (of which more later) from a radio show was another serendipitous moment: just the other day I was telling Claire I had decided that sticking to a healthy diet was easier if I just dieted for one moment at a time, i.e. if I chose a healthy snack instead of chocolate THIS TIME, and if I ate a balanced meal for dinner instead of a take-away THIS TIME. Does that make sense?  I am only human, I don't manage to do this all the time, but instead of beating myself up when I slip up I've decided to just get back on the wagon. Or as Dan Millman says, use the tool that we can learn from St Nike: JUST DO IT.... Turns out, "St Nike" is a philosopher in the same vein as Socrates or Confucius!!

Anyway, it was such a timely reminder to seize the moment (as opposed to seizing the day) that I thought I'd post a link to the first Youtube video out of the 5, and you can go on to listen to the others from there. Just a heads up: there is something like a 4.5 minute intro on that first video which you'll probably want to skip.

So, remember people: SEIZE THE MOMENT.  Happy Sunday to you all. 

Getting organised part deux

I decided to take some time to get organised and at the same time get crafty. I had already created a project planner in Word, based on an organiser that Maia told me about. Now I needed to put the printed sheets in a folder or something so I got out my trusty "Bind-it-all" and some card, and made a quick book. I only punched six holes to hold it together rather than use a full-length spiral, and I printed out 3 months' worth of sheets.  I used my Décopatch glue and some vintage-style scrapbook papers to decorate the cover. The result looks like this:

 

And on the inside it looks like this:

The way it works is this: the top two-thirds of the page has columns which are my to-do lists for various projects or tasks that I have to keep on top of. At the bottom of the page there are 6 boxes for the days of the week (only one for the weekend) so I can write things to do on a particular day. It also has 8 circles to cross off to keep track of my fluid intake. Well, it works for me... I also put everything in my iPhone so that it actually beeps at me to remind me, because I still have a tendency to forget things that aren't right in front of me. On that front, things are definitely much better now than they were after my SAH, but as my surgeon and psychologist said, improvements can take 2 years, so at least I'm on track. 

So: the way I'm supposed to be using the planner - listening to the fatigue management OT- is to see what I've got in the way of obligations, such as doctors' appointments and meetings, and then make sure that I build in rest times or rest days in between. It's not always as straightforward as it sounds because life has a way of getting in the way (smile), but at least with the planner I've got the means to do this. And I'm really, really trying to use it properly!!

Right, well I know it's not Tuesday, but Claire and I saw a video by Lemar on tv earlier on and it got us thinking about some of his old songs. This one I particularly like, so I'm sharing it with you. I love the Gospel Choir backing vocals. Enjoy.

 

Getting crafty

I thought I'd share my vision board with you. I'd been meaning to do one for aaaages, but somehow the thought of getting messy meant that I kept procrastinating. I don't know why, because every. single. time. I get crafty or start painting I find it extremely therapeutic and promise myself I'll do it again very soon.  This time was no exception.  Yesterday I treated myself to a day off because I've had so much on my plate (I've been doing stuff every day) and resting Sat, Sun and Monday wasn't enough to restore my energy... Anyway, after spending the morning in bed I got up and decided today was the day I would get on with the vision board. So without further ado, here it is. And it's PINK. Funny that, eh?!

I covered the canvas (from the 99p shop) with pink and white acrylic paint, then used my Décopatch glue to stick down the stuff I'd cut out of magazines. And then, being a scrapbooker I had to fill in the gaps with some embellies and bling. I like it so much, it's hanging in the living room now.  Here are some close-ups:

The pictures are looking less wrinkled now it's properly dry. It's great fun - try it for yourself!

In other news, yes I know it's summer now (already? How did that happen?), but I've not had time to update the banner. I will very soon.  As it is, I know it's summer because Wimbledon is here, and we've been eating strawberries and cream. And it's raining. LOL!!

Changing your mindset

I was listening to the "Beyond Diet" podcast by Keith Klein the other night, and I found myself thinking how simple it actually is to change your mindset. We over-complicate things, but if we wised up to what we are doing, we'd all be able to transform our lives. 

Keith started by saying that you have to own your actions, i.e. understand that what you have done up until now has brought about your current situation. This is what my coach, Maia Berens, says too, by the way, Wise Fairy Godmother that she is!  Ok, so once you've accepted that, you can start making progress (we are talking about diet here, but it applies to all areas of your life).  

In this particular edition of the podcast, Keith doesn't say you have to give up eating all the things you like, but that small changes, over time really add up to yield huge results.  All you have to do is start by listing 2 or 3 things you'd like to change and start by focusing on one thing one week, then bit by bit you can move on to the others.  

For example, if you drink regular cola you are ingesting 40g of sugar with every can. Do you know how  many spoonfuls of sugar that is?  How can you change if you don't know what it is you are doing?   He explains that to convert grammes of sugar to teaspoons, you divide the number by 4, so that makes 10 teaspoons in one can. Say you drink two cans a day, that's over 1lb of pure sugar in one week. If you  just moved to diet cola, or cut out your cola altogether, that would add up to cutting about 62lbs of sugar from your diet over the year. Can you see how that would add up?!  And that's not saying you can't eat croissants or take-aways any more. If you just did that one tiny thing, and stuck to it (that's the kicker!), then you'd already be taking steps to be more healthy.

I can really feel a shift happening in my mindset, thanks to knowledge like this. I know that I can make small changes and stick to them if I take them one at a time.  When you next have a free half hour or so, go and listen to the podcast and you'll see what I mean.

The Four Agreements

I was recently told about this book by Miguel Angel Ruiz that came out in the 90s. I haven't read it yet, but I like the premise:

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word.
2. Don't Take Anything Personally.
3. Don't Make Assumptions.
4. Always Do Your Best.

And you know what? Reading those four little sentences, I am struck by how exactly they match the life rules of that special man I have the privilege to share my life with. He is so innately insightful that he doesn't need to read personal development books. He just seems to KNOW. Blows me away every time.

Me, I have a bit more of a hard time with a couple of them... but I'm working on it.

 

 

(PS: I realise that, if you are an Oprah follower, you've most likely already heard of this book or even read it years ago)