You’d Think I’d Know Better

Despite knowing that I get my worst and least work done when I am feeling uninspired, still I find myself forcing myself to sit at my desk and ‘get on with it’. Instead of getting up, stretching, playing with the dog, dancing, singing, laughing, getting some fresh air, blowing bubbles, bouncing on the trampoline or doing just about anything else to wake me up, energise me, make myself feel more inspired and up for it, I was sat at my desk, my head getting lower and lower to the surface, my brain atrophying, my energy ebbing away, my creativity hidden under a fog of indifference.

You can imagine that my output was legendary in that state! Sheesh. The good news is that it takes so little time to turn it around. A change of playlist, a quick dance (my big sister showed me a new dance today – it’s completely hilarious, energising and ridiculous. Love it.), moving my keyboard and straightening my back and a new blog post is born! It’s really very simple when you think about it. When your energy is really low, re-energise, THEN ‘get on with it’. We manage this with our cars – if the petrol indicator is low, we fill up. Every time.

But when it come to ourselves, we seem to believe that we should be able to run on fresh air and will power alone. It’s nuts. Stop the insanity – next time you are feeling uninspired, take a moment to re-vitalise yourself in whatever way works for you. Then when you get back to work, you’ll be 1000 times more productive than you will if you don’t re-fuel.

Love

Donna.x

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The Standard of Success Is Joy

“The standard of success in life isn’t the things. It isn’t the money or the stuff. It is absolutely the amount of joy that you feel.” – Abraham

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Happy Monday!

Love

Donna.x

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Fun Makes All The Difference

Check this out, with credit to Ande at the Secret is Wags blog for bringing this to my attention – I love it. I want it on my stairs!

Love

Donna.x

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The Best For You

This week’s OnTheBeach Article – to receive it every Wednesday, sign up here.

Something I come across often in clients is that we expect the best from ourselves, but rarely give ourselves the best. There is some kind of paradox that says we should be superwoman …yet we don’t deserve to be given the very best – by others or by ourselves.

I’d say that we treat our cars better than we treat ourselves. We will service and MOT our cars regularly, but how often do we do the same for ourselves? We make sure the car has enough fuel for the journey, but often do we run on empty? Ok, we ‘have to’ with the car or it’ll break down…but don’t you think the same might happen to you?

I am all for people wanting the best from themselves. What I don’t understand is why these same people don’t want the best for themselves. Ask yourself right now – do you deserve the very best? And if the answer is not a resounding yes, why not?

Let me just be clear here, I am not talking about decking yourself out with Prada, Cartier and Versace. I am talking about giving yourself the best care and attention you can give. Good food, good rest, kindness, support, mental, emotional and physical fitness, having the best team around you.

Being the best you can be requires you to have 100% self worth – believing that you deserve to have the very best too. Picture it – you have someone with enormous potential (You), and you give that person the best fuel, rest and encouragement you can. Wow. Imagine how far that person (You) can go!

Alternatively, you can use the current model of motivation favoured by many in society by pushing this person hard, giving them no rest, poor quality food and poison for fuel, whipping them and demanding the best from them without giving anything in return. Sheesh, sounds like the workhouse to me.

If you really want the best from yourself, determine right now to get the best for yourself, and see how much difference it makes to feel supported by, valued by, and special to yourself.

- Something to Play With -

If you deserved the very best, what might be different in your life right now? What can you do this week to give yourself the best for you? Want to share your thoughts on this article? Leave me a comment below.

Love

Donna.x

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What’s Your Life About?

If you had to say what the ‘theme’ for your life was, what would it be? For too many of us, it is ‘misery’, ‘working hard’, ‘getting through the day’ – and largely because we don’t pay attention to what we WANT our life to be about and take steps to make that happen. So if you were to choose what your life was about, what would you choose? Love? Fun? Joy? Enjoyment? Energy?

My life is about falling in love with life – enjoying my life no matter what the circumstances, walking through life with a spring in my step and a smile on my face. Do I always have this? No. I am often pulled off course by “comparisonitis”, “impatience”, “should-bee’s” and wanting things to be ‘different’. But more and more I come back to what life is really about – enjoying it.

So what’s your life about? And what are you going to make it about? Leave me a comment and tell me about it!

Love

Donna.x

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The Heart of the Matter

So tell me what you want, what you really, really want (and then PLEASE forgive me for quoting the Spice Girls!) Do you know what you want? And why do you want that thing? Keep asking why do you want that, and why do you want that, and why, why, why until you get to the heart of the matter. Why? Because sometimes you can get what you want faster than you think, sometimes you can get what you want more easily than you think, and sometimes you realise that what you thought you wanted isn’t what you really really want at all.

For example, I want to lose weight. Why? So I can look in the mirror and be happy with what I see. Why? So I can love myself. Why? That’s the root of it – loving myself. Do I need to lose weight to do this? Nope. I can love myself right now. At the weight I am. It doesn’t mean I won’t still want to lose weight, because there are other ‘why’s for that – fitness, health, wearing my favourite shorts that are currently a size too small. But the main ‘why’ I can get right now, just by changing my attitude to me. (Just planted a kiss on myself. MWAH!)

Here’s another example: I want to expand my business. Why? 1. To help more people. Why? That’s the root of it! 2. To make more money. Why? To enjoy my life more! Why? That’s the root of it. Can I do that without expanding my business? Oh yeah. In fact, I can do it without making any more money at all. And I can make more money without necessarily expanding my business (money can come in a thousand different ways). And one final example from a client of mine: “I want to get a promotion.” Why? “So I can make more money.” Why? “So I can leave this job and travel the world.” Seriously, that was the answer!

This person realised that they could travel the world by selling some old stuff, saving from their current job, and doing a few hours overtime for a couple of months. Within 6 months, they had bought their round the world ticket. Whereas the promotion would have added a lot of stress, overtime without pay, and a good 2 years onto the dream…if not forever. So check what you want, what you really, really want at the heart of what you’re aiming for. And you never know, there might be a quicker, easier, or more fun route to get what you want!

Love

Donna.x

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Paddle Your Own Canoe. Your Way

I was just reading a newsletter from Chris Guillibeau of The Art of Non Conformity, and he got me thinking. He was talking about going against conventional wisdom. For example, Henry Ford said “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said “faster horses.”" Yet ‘conventional wisdom’ says ask your customers what they want. The article made me think about all the conflicting ‘success’ advice there is out there, and how I am often paralysed by the advice that tells me to do something I just don’t wanna.

For example, apparently I “should” blog every hour, have ‘conversations’ on Twitter (even though I HATE how that clogs up a tweet stream with half a conversation), get a bazillion people on my list (whether they’re interested in what I do or not), have a positive title for my blog posts, have a negative title for my blog posts, post on Facebook approximately once every 4 seconds…yadda, yadda, yadda. Ok, maybe I misheard or misunderstood or wasn’t listening properly to the advice, but the point remains, there’s a lot of contradictory stuff out there.

And here’s the funny thing (for me): lots of successful people DIDN’T follow the advice and they got on ok. I met Sarah Tremellen, the founder of Bravissimo, and she said that she did everything wrong (according to conventional wisdom)! Of course, she’s only turning over £42 billion or something like that, so clearly she got it wrong. And I was just thinking, if I had taken advice on how to do it when I learned to walk, I would NEVER have learned to walk! There would have been just too much contradictory, conflicting and confusing stuff.

So here’s an idea: By all means watch what the others are doing and copy it if it feels good for you…but otherwise, paddle your own canoe. Set your own course. And one day you can say to others “this is how to do it” when you of course mean “this is how I did it”.

Love

Donna.x

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Wearing Your Stress as a Badge of Honour

I was speaking with a client this week about her work ethic and how this affected her stress levels. She told me that she wears her stress ‘like a badge of honour’. She is proud of how much stress she can take. She is rewarded for taking on more projects than one person can reasonably handle, and her friends admire her for being able to handle her stress.

Sounds great, right? There is only one minor problem – she hates the pressure and it is making her ill. Ah. Suddenly it’s not so great being superwoman – the expectations people have of her (including her own) are too high, and too demanding. Fortunately she is coming to realise that this is not the way it has to be. I know she’s not alone in this. I did something similar in a previous life – taking on too much and feeling important because I had so much ‘on’.

Do you ever feel the same? It’s a sad situation when people are rewarded for how quickly they can grind themselves into the ground, how busy they are, and how little they are enjoying their life. In these days of being able to ‘have it all’ it seems that we prefer the fiction that an overfull life is great over the fact that an overfull life makes you ill.

In case you’re unsure, let me make my position on this perfectly clear – stress is not something to be proud of. I do not admire stressed people. I admire happy, balanced, successful people. Success is not (to me) working an 80 hour week, and being available by mobile phone at 4am on your holiday. Success is not running from social engagement to social engagement being unable to enjoy any of them because you are too tired and too busy thinking about everything you have to do.

I would much rather say ‘I am loving life’ this year than ‘I had a nervous breakdown’. Wearing your stress like a badge of honour is dangerous to your health. Because of the harmful effects of stress, companies are required by law to provide reasonable stress management measures for their staff. Personally, I think individuals need to provide reasonable de-stressing measures for themselves. And the first one to adopt is to treat stress appropriately.

Think about your relationship with stress – is it healthy? Do you use your stress to get you out of the way of a speeding bullet or as a signal that something needs to change. Or do you wear your stress like a badge of honour? How about a different badge of honour – be proud of how relaxed you are! Or is that too radical for the noughties?

- Something to Play With -

Treat stress as a warning sign that your life needs to change. Ask yourself (if you’re stressed) how you can simplify, what you can do to take extremely good care of yourself (make sure you have my free ebook for self care ideas), what you can do to relax and ENJOY your life to the full rather than fill your life to the brim and miss out on any fun! Want to share your thoughts on this article? Please leave a comment.

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Some Ideas for you to Try

A bit of Tuesday fun!
Be A Kid Again
1. Do a cartwheel.
2. Sing into your hairbrush.
3. Walk barefoot in wet grass.
4. Play a song you like really loud, over and over.
5. Dot all your “i”’s with smiley faces.
6. Read the funnies. Throw the rest of the paper away.
7. Dunk your cookies.
8. Play a game where you make up the rules as you go along.
9. Step carefully over sidewalk cracks.
10. Change into some play clothes.
11. Try to get someone to trade you a better sandwich.
12. Eat ice cream for breakfast.
13. Kiss a frog, just in case.
14. Blow the wrapper off a straw.
15. Have someone read you a story.
16. Find some pretty stones and save them.
17. Wear your favorite shirt with you favorite trousers even if they don’t match.
18. Take a running jump over a big puddle.
19. Get someone to buy you something you really don’t need.
20. Hide your vegetables under your napkin.
21. Stay up past your bedtime.
22. Eat dessert first.
23. Fuss a little, then take a nap.
24. Wear red gym shoes.
25. Put way too much sugar on your cereal.
26. Make cool screeching noises every time you turn a corner.
27. Giggle a lot for no reason.
28. Give yourself a gold star for everything you do today.
29. Have Eggs and Soldiers for breakfast
30. Wave insanely at passing drivers from the car window

Love

Donna.x
PS please tell me if you do some of these things, especially the sandwich trading one!!!

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A Bit of Monday Fun: Random Thoughts

I saw this over the weekend and it made me laugh a lot so thought I’d share it with you:

Today’s Random Thoughts (not mine, but funny just the same!)

1. I think part of a best friend’s job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.

3. I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.

4. There is great need for a sarcasm font.

5. How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

6. Was learning cursive really necessary?

7. Map Quest really needs to start their directions on #5. I’m pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

8. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

9. I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t at least kind of tired.

10. Bad decisions make good stories.

11. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren’t going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.

12. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blue Ray? I don’t want to have to restart my collection…again.

13. I’m always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.

14. “Do not machine wash or tumble dry” means I will never wash this — EVER!!!

15. I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Damn it!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What’d you do after I didn’t answer? Drop the phone and run away?

16. I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.

17. I keep some people’s phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

18. My 4-year old son asked me in the car the other day, “Mom, what would happen if you ran over a ninja?” How the hell do I respond to that?

19. I think the freezer deserves a light as well.

20. And finally…Have you ever wondered if that dollar-bill you’re holding has ever been in a stripper’s butt crack? You are now…

Really want to keep number 20 out of my head! But it made me laugh!

Love

Donna.x

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