I am sooooo not a morning person – or so I thought!!!

Isn’t it amazing what we tell ourselves?  The  thing is if we tell ourselves something for long enough then we not only start to believe it but we also act as if it is the absolute truth and that is exactly how it was for me and mornings!

For years, I told myself that I wasn’t a morning person and for years I behaved exactly like that – always working late,  last one to leave a party, no meetings before at least 10am, - I figured that if I had to be up, out and functioning at that time then the least I deserved was a good shot of caffeine in as relaxed an environment as possible beforehand.  I lived like this for years – ok, the parties became less frequent and were replaced by night feeds but the sentiment remained the same in that no matter what time the alarm went off in the morning, it was always still too early!

So what happened to not only get me up at the crack of dawn but also to have me bouncing around with a spring in my step??  I discovered morning exercise!!!   I can hardly believe it myself !!!     It  all started a few months ago when I really wanted to challenge myself to do something different.  I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “if you do the same thing you’re always gonna get the same results“, I wanted different results in my life so figured that a big change would be to get up earlier.  You know what it’s like, you make a decision to do something and then, God (in my case) starts to conspire to make it all happen.  The next thing I know, I’m getting up at 5.15AM at least twice a week – sometimes 3 times – and going off to a local fitness studio to do circuit training until 6.45AM! It’s now been nearly 3 months and counting

And what has been the side effect of all of this – aside from a few lost inches?

• I get more done in my day, in a more productive way
• My beliefs about who I am and what I can do have changed and continue to change
• Opportunities have opened up for me in areas that I hadn’t even thought about before
• I love mornings!!!!

So this is only a snippet of the benefits I feel as a result of changing things up a bit and doing things differently.  I wonder what your benefits would be if you challenged yourself.  In fact, what do you currently believe about yourself which may not actually be true????

Imagine a Woman In Love With Herself

A beautiful, beautiful book – a must for any woman on the journey of self love and acceptance.

Inspired on International Women’s Inspiration Day? I should think so too!

Well today – Wed 18th November – is International Women’s Inspiration Day and if you can’t be inspired today then when can  you be???  I certainly was!

Went along to the 2009 Every Woman National Conference today and was totally blown away not only by the many lovely women that I met and the great workshops that I attended, but also by the organisation of it all!  It was such a phenomenal event and it was organised beautifully – especially that lunch!!!

Learned lots of new information about tekkie stuff today – hence the reinstatement of this blog!! – but was also reminded about some great things such as being bold and never being afraid to be myself and fly the flag for my business (not that I’ve ever had any real trouble in that department!).  However, the highlight for me was listening to Allegra McEvedy’s keynote speech – OMG, how entertaining and inspiring she was!!!  If ever there was an advert for being true to yourself and the success will find  you then she is definitely it!

All in all a fab – and very inspiring – day!!

We Do Not Walk Alone

Yet again have been reminded that I am truly not alone….

One night, a man dream that he walked along a shore

with the Divine Source of all things (some of us will know this as God),  and as they walked

scenes from his life flashed across the sky above them.

Most of the time, he saw two sets of footprints in the sand for each scene,

but many times along the path there was only one set of footprints, often at the very

darkest and saddest times, and the man was greatly troubled.

 

He turned to the figure beside him and said, “I looked for you and tried to serve

you all my days.  I thought that you would care for me in return, yet

now I see that during the most difficult time of my life, I was alone.

I don’t understand why you would leave me when I needed you most.”

 

The Divine Intelligence replied, “My precious child, you are always in my heart,

and I would not desert you in your times of trial and difficulty.  When you saw

only one set of footprints in the sand, it was then that I carried you”

- Mary Stevenson -

 

It’s been a really ‘funny’ time recently… not quite “ha ha” type funny but more “mmmmmmm” type funny, if you get my drift!! 

 I’ve noticed really just how much I’ve tried to hold on to things when they had already expired their time…the great learning here is that the time for letting go comes whether you’re ready or not! 

Recently, I’ve had to face up to the reality that the growth and development of my core business means that I cannot always get involved with all the business opportunities that come my way.  This is fantastic for me – the fun and determination that I’ve had along the way is paying off.  This is also fantastic for the opportunities that I’ve had to walk away from as they will also now  be able to grow and develop with the right person alongside them.

I’ve been reminded that things happen the way they are supposed to happen. I don’t have to understand it but just trust that its right and so far so good!

Juicing…

Am really getting into this.  A friend of mine recommended a book to me called “7lbs in 7 days” and I was about to dismiss it as yet another diet book and definitely not one that I would be interested in.  However, it is actually about juicing rather than weight loss and was written by Jason “The Juicemaster” Vale - brilliant! 

To be honest, I wasn’t very good at eating lots of vegetables however, over the past few days I’ve been juicing carrots, apples, pineapples, beetroots, courgettes even spinach, kale and parsley. …and OMG…I love wheatgrass and spirulina!!!   All the juices in Jason’s book have tasted divine – bar one, which I will leave for you to discover yourself just like I did! – and the difference in my energy levels both mentally and physically in such a short space of time is remarkable.   I love it and will certainly continue juicing for the foreseeable future.   Let me know if you have any good juice or smoothie recipes.

Where have I been???

I know, I know, I know!!!  Mind you it was to be expected that I would take an unexplained absence from blogging… remember I did say in my inaugural gambit that it would be a miracle if I lasted more than a week!!

Anyhow, I must admit….I missed this weird cyber-journalling!  So, what have I been up to??  Well  I’m now a fully certified Master Practitioner in NLP!!  Extremely proud of this achievement as it has been a long time coming!!

Spent most of last week celebrating in one form or another… the highlight being that I got to see one of my ‘She-roes’ , Marianne Williamson, in person the other night as I attended a lecture she was giving in Central London – a fascinating and truly enlightening experience.  If you ever get the opportunity to hear Marianne speak – take it, you won’t regret it.

Life….

This was a speech made by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Anna Quindlen at the graduation ceremony of an American university where she was awarded an Honorary PhD. 

“I’m a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don’t ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree: there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk or your life on a bus or in a car or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank accounts but also your soul.

People don’t talk about the soul very much anymore. It’s so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter’s night, or when you’re sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you’ve received your test results and they’re not so good.

Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my work stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the centre of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends and them to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cut out. But I call them on the phone and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, at best mediocre, at my job if those other things were not true.

You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are. So here’s what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger pay cheque, the larger house. Do you think you’d care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon or found a lump in your breast?

Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze at the seaside, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a sweet with her thumb and first finger.

Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an email. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beer and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough.

It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the colour of our kids’ eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again.It is so easy to exist instead of to live.

I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby’s ear. Read in the back yard with the sun on your face.

Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived”.

Phew…I need to sit down!

What a couple of weeks it has been!!  Its been a continuous round of living, living and more living!!! When is it all gonna stop?  The truth is I don’t know and I don’t want it to, but I’m quite happy to just keep riding this wave of excitement called life.

 Now before you start thinking that I’ve swallowed some self-help, psychobabble book or been watching “The Secret” or “What the Bleep?” The truth is that I am falling more and more in love with myself and my life on a daily basis – is that weird to do so or is it weird not to do so?

Don’t really want to go into too much detail – this is the internet, after all! – however, I beat myself up for a long time over what I SHOULD or SHOULDN’T be doing, looking or feeling and my birthday present to myself last year (November…yep, I’m a Scorpion and if your belief system is one which has expectations of that then prepare to be either disappointed or excited!) was that I was no longer gonna do that and that I was gonna give myself a different experience of me and my life by doing it differently.  

The greatest revelation, I suppose, in all of this has been that as a Specialist in Change & Development – I can actually be my own client! How fantastic is that?  And how comes I didn’t notice that before??   I am truly enjoying myself because through doing things differently and having an alternative experience, all areas of my life are going through a transition that feels exhilerating and producing some totally unexpected results – good ones too! 

My biggest learnings out of all this – i.e the things that I know for sure but was pretending that I didn’t:

• You can’t un-know what you know
• Life goes on so you may as well get involved!
• What you’re looking for could just well be under your nose.
• It doesn’t have to always make sense but it helps if it makes you smile!!

Head down and midnight oil still burning…

Yep, its course time again and you would think that by now I would have mastered the arts of preparation and allowing enough time for revision….yeah right!!!

 Instead I’m here frantically putting together my pre-course study, cramming in info that should have been in since last year and wondering how I’m gonna recreate Halle Berry’s look in the morning!!

Just wish me luck guys because when this is over I will be a Certified Master Practitioner…certified being the operative word here!!!  I wonder if the white coats are only for the staff!!