You Gotta Have Friends

Among the many wonderful things about self-employment, there are a few things that totally suck. One is the fact that every day you have to pick yourself up to work – whether you feel good or bad, prosperous or broke, whether everything is going well or everything is going wrong, whether you have lots of clients or are wondering if the whole world left for another planet and no one told you. Every morning, day after day, you have to pick yourself up to do some work.

And no one else tells you what you need to be doing either. You can work for a week on something and then realise it doesn’t work and have to start again. You have moments where it is all coming together, and moments when it all falls apart. Days when you seem to meet ideal clients, business partners, mentors and new friends with ease, and days when you are so isolated you accost the postman for a chat.

There are times when this gets exhausting, and all you want to do is lay your head on the desk and weep. And at these times there are 2 things to remember: Number one, check your level of self-care – when you’re self-employed it is even more important that you take care of the engine, because if your engine breaks there’s no one else to step in. And Number two, you gotta have friends – remember they are there for you when you need them.

I recently had one of those days where everything looked immensely bleak, it was all very difficult and I was too exhausted to pick myself up and carry on. Luckily one of my friends called as I was in the middle of my stress, and the troops rallied round to help me. One friend offered me help to get shit done, one offered me a facial, one offered me a big hug, one offered me a shoulder to (literally) cry on, and one told me that if I got in this state without calling her again, she’d beat me up!

See, you gotta have friends!

Love

Donna.x
PS thank you friends. Love you. xxx

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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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It Doesn’t Matter

OH MY GOD! I’m not feeling 100%…it doesn’t matter.
I didn’t do all the housework today…it doesn’t matter.
I didn’t do everything I wanted to do workwise today…it doesn’t matter.
I didn’t go to the gym today…it doesn’t matter.
I haven’t taken over the world today…it doesn’t matter.

Why doesn’t it matter? Because none of this is life shattering! It is only my expectations that I ‘should’ have perfect health all the time (insane!), have a sparkling house (never gonna happen!), finish every work ‘thing’ I ever thought of (yeah, right! I would need about 200 years to take action on every idea I have), go to the gym every day (unrealistic…and I don’t want to do that), take over the world (like I’d want that responsibility?!). So what does matter?

Only that you feel good. Life is here to enjoy – most of the stuff we get stressed about DOESN’T MATTER! Feeling good, now that’s important! So forget the rest of your to do list today and put right at the top ‘Enjoy life’.

Love

Donna.x

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Know When To Stop

A desk piled with paper, a to-do list 12 people couldn’t complete in a month, and a racing mind.

Sound familiar?

Do you know when to switch off, or do you stock up on caffeine and adrenaline and keep going late into the evening…day after day after day?

Here’s a tip: if you need artificial stimulants to keep you going, you need to stop. Probably about 2 hours ago!

Don’t force yourself beyond your endurance. Know when it’s time to stop.

Love

Donna.x

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Release the Tension

Yesterday when I woke up, I realised I was tense. My shoulders were tense, my jaw was tense, even my eye muscles felt tense! Now it’s one thing to end the day feeling tense, but to start it feeling tense? Had I had a very stressful sleep? I realised that there’d obviously been a bit of a build up of tension so spent the day yesterday consciously relaxing whenever I thought of it, and noticing where I’m holding tension.

Join me – take a moment now to scan your body – are you holding tension in your scalp, your eyes, your jaw, your neck, your shoulders? Everywhere you find tension, release it. Move down the body all the way to your toes, releasing tension where you find it. Take a breath and mentally say to your muscles ‘relax’. When you’re done, get on with your day. Repeat as often as you feel it’s necessary. If tension is something you’ve been living with for a while, you may need to do it often to begin with, but it’s worth it.

Be relaxed as you go about your day.

Love

Donna.x

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More Fun to Life

Do you ever wake up in the morning and think “There must be more to life than this”? Back in the 90′s, I woke up almost every day with that thought. I wondered if this was ‘it’, if this was how life was going to work out – a seemingly endless slog of get up, go to work, come home, go to bed, at the weekend dance all night and sleep all day, seeing daylight only briefly and through bleary eyes. The hamster wheel had me and I was slowly drowning in a life that felt increasingly ‘too tight’. I desperately wanted life to be different, but I didn’t ‘do’ anything differently, I just carried on doing the same and complaining about it.

Until eventually I did something very different and went off travelling around Australia with a backpack and no plan. That was the start of ‘the change’. Since then my life has changed and I have changed in ways that make me almost unrecognisable from that unhappy lass 10+ years ago. But still, sometimes I wonder if there is more to life. Usually when I am busy focusing on the fact that I am not Mistress of the Universe (still working on it!), I am not living in a million pound mansion overlooking the ocean (yet) and I am not with the man of my dreams (haven’t met him yet).

When we’re busy focusing on what is NOT in our life, our attention is taken away from the wonderful things that are here now. Not material possessions or even people, but our own internal brilliance. Our ability to be fascinated by life, to find joy in the smallest of things, to dream of better and to TAKE ACTION towards that ‘better’. When we’re too busy focusing on how much life sucks, we’re wasting time that could be spent improving said life. I’d been in quite a funk for a few days, but one conversation with a friend which was filled with laughter and suddenly I saw the light!

It’s not about having everything in your life arranged perfectly, being Mistress of the Universe with the perfect house and perfect man. When that’s what you’re focusing on, there IS MUCH more to life! Because those things are fun, and nice, but they’re really quite irrelevant! What is important? Your energy, your connection to life, your joy, your love, your peace, your laughter. That inner well of magnificence and brilliance that no amount of shit in your life can completely bury. Your spirit, your soul, your light.

Because we can’t buy them or count them, we relegate their importance below a flat screen tv. And that’s the mistake. Because they are the ‘more to life’ you’re looking for. It’s only when we’re not enjoying life that we think ‘there must be more’ (let me know if you ever thought there was more to life while you were having a great time!) And most of the time, that desire for more takes us on a search for ‘something else’ – a new job/relationship/pair of shoes/holiday/challenge. There’s nothing wrong with this as such. It’s just that there’s an easier, quicker, funner* way. Start enjoying your life right now – warts and all. Your light, laughter and love will draw you towards changes that no amount of negativity will ever reveal. And even if no changes come, there’ll be more FUN to your life!

Something to Play With

If you’re wondering if there’s more to life than ‘this’, find a way to get enjoying your life – do things you love, spend time with people who make you laugh, listen to your soul sing and dance to the tune. Leave me a comment and let me know what you’re going to be doing to bring more fun to your life.

Love, life and laughter

Donna.x
*Dear dictionary, funner is a word. Honest.
PS to sign up to receive weekly beachy articles right into your inbox, click here.

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Conscious Joyfulness

Well, the office revamp is still going on – today we put together a new wardrobe, which was going to finish off the revamp, give me some storage in there, and turn my office into a little dance studio too cos the doors are mirrored (I’m not a prima ballerina, I just always wanted a dance studio!). Anyway, the mirrored doors are the reason the office revamp is still in progress – 2 of them are broken. Sigh. Still, one was fine and Ikea were lovely and immediately agreed to replace them. So, next week I should have my new office completed! I hope. Meanwhile, I was talking to a client today and we were talking about Joy and being Joyful, which reminded me of this article: enJOY!

- Conscious Joyfulness -

The dictionary definition of joy is ‘a deep feeling or condition of happiness or contentment’. Sounds wonderful – I’ll have some of that! So, how often do you feel joyous? All day every day? Once a day? Once a week? Every now and again? I have a vague suspicion (I could be wrong) that it isn’t that often.

After all, we’re not programmed for joy are we? We’re programmed to be stressed, exhausted, busy and tense. So, we walk round scowling rather than smiling, we worry rather than getting excited, we are more serious than frivolous. Hmm. Which state would be more fun? Which state would be easier? Which state do we work on?

Interesting eh?! We’d enjoy life so much more if we worked on the state of joy, but most of us instead work on the state of stress! You may be frowning at me right now – why would you work on being stressed?! Make no mistake about it…every time you spend time on worry, anger, criticism, negative thoughts and actions you are working on your stress.

Perhaps not consciously, because if you were conscious of ‘working on your stress’, you would stop it. Here’s what we do: something upsets us or stresses us out. Then we worry at it like a dog with a bone. Then we talk about it with our friends, and every time we repeat the story (depending on the level of stress/worry/pain, anywhere between 5 times and 200 times) we relive the pain/stress/worry and charge it with a tremendous amount of energy and exercising our stress muscles so they get big and strong.

When I started thinking about this article, I realised that I too do not feel joyous 24/7, and I started looking for specific examples of things that brought me joy in the last week. A smiley moon, sunshine and starlight, catching up with friends, hearing about achievements and good stuff happening for people, connecting to a higher power, music, dancing, laughter, a good book, a new idea, a hot bubbly bath and a magazine, random acts of kindness, love, spending time with my family…the list goes on and on.

And do you know what I found very curious? I had barely noticed these fabulous things – I was far too busy worrying about something else altogether! Now, I’m going to spend more time working on joy, rather than stress. What about you?

- Something to Play With -

Spend 3-5 minutes brainstorming the things that make you joyful. Then decide to live a joyous life and consciously bring more joy into your life. For example, plan one joyous activity a day for the next week, and see what a difference it makes to your outlook. Want to share your thoughts on this article? Leave me a comment below.

Love

Donna.x

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Emptying Every Spare Minute

Dear reader, I hope your week is going exactly to plan. Mine is not. I had a lovely day out to visit my friend, came home intending to check my e-mail, write a blog, relax and instead discovered that the carpet in my office needed to come up. Some new flooring is going in on Saturday, and the concrete underneath the old carpet is wet. I thought it was just a little corner, it was actually three quarters of the room! So my lovely plan to relax and chill out turned into a mad few hours moving furniture around to get the carpet up and moving boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff out to the garage to leave as much of the floor exposed as possible so it will dry.

Big, deep sigh. It also means that my plans for tomorrow (in a relaxed way catch up with admin, marketing and writing tasks) have been replaced by ‘box everything else to get it out of there’. In the meantime, my office is a building site. So in true ‘beach’ style, I will be trimming other tasks to make way for this to happen, not frantically trying to pack everything in and collapsing exhausted at the end. Which reminded me of this mini article that I thought you might enjoy.

- Emptying Every Spare Minute -

I was thinking last week about what stresses me out, and noticed that about 99% of the problem was my insistence on filling every spare moment with ‘something to do’. Got 15 minutes before a client? I’ll just go and write my blog. 10 minutes to spare? A quick tidy up. 5 minutes to spare? Check my e-mails. 1 minute to spare? Read half a sentence of this book…

No wonder I get stressed! And no wonder I often run late and work late. I have no time to myself to just chill, to reset, to plan. I cannot proceed from task to task in a nice relaxed manner because I have ‘mustbedoingsomething-itis’. Is this busy-holia making me more productive? More efficient? More at ease? Nope. Instead I am wild-eyed and fraught.

I have a client call in 15 minutes – if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to use that 15 minutes to do nothing.

- Something to Play With -

My articles are usually longer, so take the time you would have taken and just do nothing for a couple more minutes. You can pretend to be reading if it makes you feel better. And all this week, notice if you are ‘filling time’ and experiment with emptying it instead. Want to share your thoughts on this article? Leave me a comment below.

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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