Ask Donna: Exhausted and Discouraged

Question: I am following my big dream and it’s been really hard work. I feel exhausted and discouraged, and worst of all I don’t feel I can talk about this as everyone keeps telling me to ‘be positive’ or give up. Maria

People who are not following their big dreams sometimes don’t understand those of us who are. Ask for the support you need from your friends – be really clear with them about how they can help you. Take a break from your big dream – when you are exhausted, the best thing you can do is relax and take a couple of days off from working on your big dream so you can replenish yourself and come back clear headed and chilled out.

Here’s the link to the podcast about the 3 Pillars: http://www.donnaonthebeach.com/blog/2012/01/dreams-to-reality-podcast-the-3-pillars/ – the 3 Pillars are self-care, energy and joy. If you’re not feeling cared for, you will feel exhausted and discouraged just because your self-care is low. If your energy is low, you have less to give your big dream. If you are not enjoying life…well, that sucks!

If you have a question, leave a comment below this post.

Love

Donna.x

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February Daily Practice: 10 Minute Tidy and Clutter Clear

Did you get outside in January? I admit, I cheated a bit – I was on holiday for 10 days which made getting outside for me a whole lot easier than it is at home in the cold, wintry, dark, horrid conditions. Brrrr. But even when I got back from holidays with thinner blood and found it even colder, I still got outside! Often grudgingly, grumpily and with much muttering about the cold, but it was still good to do. And it’s the holiday that inspired this month’s daily practice: 10 Minute Tidy and Clutter Clear.

You see, I had to clean up my office and bedroom for the dogsitter. These rooms are usually scenes of utter devastation. I am by nature a hoarder and messy, so I leave a trail of destruction behind me in the house…and particularly in my office and bedroom, there are piles of books, clothes, paper, stationery, shoes, bags, and general clutter and stuff.

But when I got home from holidays, the office and bedroom were beautifully clear of the usual mayhem and mess. And I’d quite like to keep them that way! Ok, I’m never going to be a neat-freak (no, really, I’m not!), but I think with this “10 minute tidy and clutter clear” practice, I can at least get into the habit of clearing up every day and keep it relatively tidy.

Are you going to join me? Here’s what we’ll do: Every day we’ll set a timer for 10 minutes, put on some lively music (of course!) and rush around for 10 minutes tidying and/or clutter clearing. If we do that every day for 10 minutes a day in February, it will be the equivalent of a half day of clutter clearing…only in easy chunks of time that don’t give you a chance to get back ache or so fed up that you just want to throw everything away! If you’re going to join in, leave me a comment below to let me know.

Love

Donna.x

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Ask Donna: I lost my job

I had a dream and was saving towards it, then I lost my job and I’m having to use my savings to live on. It feels like my dream has had to take a back seat and that makes me really frustrated and miserable (as well as being down because I’m unemployed) – Sharon

Look to the positive – you may not have money to pursue your big dream right now, but you do have a lot of time to work towards your dream if you are able to. When you have constraints, you can either get frustrated OR you can get creative and find new ways to do things (and you sometimes find a better way!)

Making progress on your dream will help you feel less frustrated, it will give you energy to help you find a job, and you will feel better. By the time you find another job, you will be further along with your goal and you can start saving money again.

I’m a big believer that life works for us, not against us, so ask yourself this: What if this situation was bringing you closer to your dream, not further away? Explore that possibility for a while and see how that could be true.

Love

Donna.x

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Dreams To Reality Podcast: Acclimatize Yourself To Your Big Dream

You’ve found out what your big dream is…now what? Aaaaargh! Don’t worry! Relax. Take the time to acclimatize yourself to your big dream. Give yourself a chance to get used to it, sniff around it, feel how you feel about it, ruminate, consider, and ponder.

To listen to this week’s podcast, click here: Acclimatize Yourself to Your Big Dream

Homework:
Get a pen and piece of paper, set a timer for 5 minutes and answer this question: How do I feel about my big dream? And just write, whatever is coming out of you, let it express. Don’t judge, don’t censor, just write and let it out.

You can also subscribe to this podcast on itunes here.

May all your dreams become reality.

Love

Donna.x

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Dreams To Reality: Your Big Dream

It’s the start of a New Year – for many of us a time for setting goals, thinking how to make this year better than last year, setting New Year’s Resolutions designed solely to take the joy out of our lives! (Don’t get me started on New Year’s Resolutions – for my thoughts on this, see this blog post from last year.)

Anyway, forget about those joyless, sensible, boring, uninspiring ideas. What do you REALLY want? What’s your BIG dream? What’s the thing that you’ve always wanted to be, do or have? What’s the thing that would set you happy dancing for a week just at the thought of achieving it? What’s the thing you’ve never told anyone you wanted? What’s the thing that you don’t think is possible (but want anyway!)?

You see, over the last year or so, I’ve realised something. Too many people go through life with that thing locked up tight inside them – through fear, or life getting in the way, or lack of belief, or lack of inspiration, or some other thing that really shouldn’t get in the way of our biggest dreams. Hence all these new things I’ve thought up (videos, podcasts etc) – because I think that’s criminal.

It is awful that those dreams go unacknowledged, aren’t followed, are left to atrophy in a dim and distant past where we ‘used to have dreams before we realised they won’t come true’. Well, they certainly won’t come true if you never try! And if you do try, 2 things will happen – one, your dream has a CHANCE of becoming reality. And two, your life will get better whether it does or not.

Only a CHANCE you say? No one can guarantee success. But that chance is all your dream needs to take you on the adventure of your life! Moving your dreams into reality gives you confidence, it’s fun, it helps to challenge you, stretch you, grow you into the you that you know you were meant to be. That’s what those dreams are for – to help you grow into the greatness that you are!

You are following your passion, your purpose, your heart’s desires – there is nothing more fun in life! To me, that’s the whole point of life – to do things you love to do every day, to honour the whispers of your heart and soul, to acknowledge YOUR dreams, even if it doesn’t work out quite the way you planned (it never does, by the way! Sometimes it’s better).

So let your heart and soul speak. What is your big dream? What do you REALLY want in 2012?

Your Homework
This New Year, resolve to listen to your heart and soul speak, acknowledge your big dreams and consider taking some action to bring them into reality. And I’d LOVE to hear what your big dream is – drop me a line. I believe in you, and in your dream, so let’s make 2012 the year that you bring that dream of yours into reality!

This article was taken from January’s Dreams to Reality newsletter – to sign up, click here.

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Ask Donna – Energetic and Healthy

I don’t know what my big dream is. The only thing I can think of is to be healthy and full of energy. But that is so far away from where I am right now – I am 4 stone overweight and exhausted all the time. – Cat

That sound like a fabulous big dream to me! Most big dreams come to you when you are a million mile away from them, so don’t worry about how far you have to go to get there – just start moving in that direction.

Every day, ask yourself ‘what can I do today to improve my health and improve my energy?’ Then do that thing – step by step, you will become more and more healthy and energetic. It will also allow your other big dreams to start to come to the surface when you’ve paved the ground to allow them.

Love

Donna.x

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Dreams to Reality Podcast – What’s Your Big Dream?

I am super excited to do the last of my “5 Launches” in January 2012. The Dreams to Reality podcast – this is going to be a weekly podcast with tools, tips and ideas to help you make your dreams reality. I will also be interviewing people who have made their dreams reality later in the year.

To listen to the first podcast, click on the link below or right click and ‘save link as’ to download it to your computer.

Dreams to Reality – What’s Your Big Dream

You can also subscribe to this podcast on itunes here.

Your Homework: Write this down: “My big dream is…” Set a timer (you can find a free online timer here) for 10-15 minutes and just keep writing – even if you write ‘I don’t know’ for 7 minutes, eventually your dreams will start to come out. Share them here if you want to!

May all your dreams become reality.

Love

Donna.x

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Ask Donna: Making Your Dreams Reality Launch

Yay! It’s launch number 4! The video will tell you all you need to know:

So, what questions do you have about Making Your Dreams Reality?

Love

Donna.x

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Silly Season

How stressful has Christmas become?! Since November I have heard people everywhere saying ‘oh god, it’s nearly Christmas…are you ready? I’m not ready, I haven’t even started. Aaaaaaaargh!’ Now Christmas really is nearly hear, the stress is reaching a crescendo…just look at the joyful (not!) faces in the shops.

Magazines and newspapers are full of articles on ‘surviving’ Christmas – like it’s some kind of disastrous event! What happened to ’tis the season to be jolly’?! Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate that Christmas can be stressful – there’s the financial strain, the consequences of getting the ‘wrong’ present, the enforced family time, the cooking, the endless parties…

However, it’s a national HOLIDAY! A time to enjoy yourself. And get pressies. This year, why not give yourself the best pressie of all and design your Christmas so you look forward to it, enjoy it and ‘survive’ with effortless ease?! I am very lucky, because my Christmas is always the same – mass, breakfast, pub, dinner, pressies, tv, sleep. Hoorah!

A few of my favourite things in one day. So, you’ve got 2 weeks (stop panicking!) – what can you do to minimise the things you hate, and maximise the things you love this year? Tip: if you join in with the December Daily Practice of Self-care, this will help immensely!

- Something to Play With -

A. What do you love about Christmas? B. What do you hate about Christmas? C. How can you make sure you get more of A and less of B in this festive season?

Love

Donna.x

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December Daily Practice: Self-care

Happy December to you! Woohoo! I love December – despite the fact that I despise the cold and dark, December contains my birthday, Christmas, pressies galore, sparkly lights, holidays and crap tv. Hazah! Hope you are delighted to see the beginning of December too! So, a new month, and it’s time for a new daily practice for this month. After a couple of fun ones (laughter, dancing), this month is a more caring one. Self-care to be precise. December is one of those months where there is a lot of stress – financial stress, time stress, work stress, pressie stress, shopping stress, cooking stress, family stress, friend stress.

Added to all that, in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s bloody cold. And with all the stress, it’s a prime time for colds and flus, exhaustion and depression. Which is when we need self-care the most, and for many of us, the time we care for ourselves the least – that’s why we get sick, over-stressed, wound up and agitated. So this month, our daily practice is self-care. To join in this practice, all you need to do is take a moment every day to check how cared for you feel on a scale of 1-10 (where one is ‘not at all’ and 10 is ‘cradled in the arms of love’). If your level of self-care is less than a 7, you need to do something to take care of yourself.

I know time is scarce in the busy holiday month, but your self-care is very important. You will enjoy the holiday season much more if you take care of you. You will enjoy your LIFE much more if you take care of you. And it can be done with much less time than you think. 10 minutes a day, 5 minutes, even 30 seconds of self-care will make a difference to how cared for you feel. And as for it being ‘selfish’ to put yourself first – who benefits most when you are healthy, happy, joyful, fun to be around, rested, and filled up so that you have more than enough to give? Your family and friends.

When you are depleted, sick, angry, agitated, exhausted and have nothing to give, your closest friends and family suffer. Because you have nothing left for them. So it is LESS selfish to take care of yourself! So are you in? Are you going to make self-care your daily practice for December? For daily reminders, join me on Facebook. And keep an eye on the blog this month for articles and ideas to help you take your self-care seriously!

Love

Donna.x

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