Surprisingly Simple Stress Trick: How to Get Out of Your Head Fast!

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‘Faith is an oasis in the heart that will never be reached by the caravan of thinking’

Khalil Gibran

 

How often do you find yourself overthinking when you’re stressed?

Totally stuck in your head or going round in circles with no end?

It makes sense to think we can think our way around things but sometimes, getting out of our heads and into our bodies is the best thing we can do. Y’see, without learnt tools to master our minds, our brains are designed to keep us stuck focusing on the negative and continuing to do what we’ve always done. Not very evolved, hey?!

Case in point – a career coaching client who was so stressed she was really quite depressed and unable to move forward had a 360 about-turn when she took her focus off thinking about careers and instead reconnected with doing the things that brought her fun and joy in life.

All the things that took her out of her head whether cooking, drawing, running or seeing her friends.

And boom! Then the clarity came – from being more and thinking less. Like a counter-intuitive detour around stress. The renewed energy and clarity came from moving her body rather than just sitting in the stasis of thought. Ironic, isn’t it, that when we stop thinking so much, sometimes we unlock feelings that guide the way.

As the legendary Dr Wayne Dyer says: ‘Think less, feel more’.

What do you do that brings you joy and gets you out of your head? When did you last have this experience? And what were the results?

For me it might be things like travelling, local adventures, meeting new people, working in new cafés, or doing a new activity like paragliding in the wilds of Italy above. Connecting with free spirits in sublime nature is always a sure fire way for me to change my state and get clarity on confusion. Note – most of these things involve movement – as Tony Robbins says: ‘Motion equals emotion’.

What one change can you make today to get out of your head and into your body?

How would that feel?

And what’s the best possible outcome?

 

 

 

Podcast Episode 12: Why Becoming a Mother is the Perfect Time to Start A Business

Sabine Matharu, Author at The Future Shapers

Episode 12 of The School of Success Podcast Series is now live! An inspiring and eye-opening deep-dive into why becoming a mother is the perfect time to start a business!

This interview with the accomplished Leadership Coach, Author and Workplace Wellbeing Creator, Sabine Matharu, teaches you:

– top tips for overcoming the limiting beliefs that stop people from launching their own businesses;
– what’s really going on in new mums’ inner monologues when they go back to work;
– myth-busting around the risks of launching your own business;
– how to use adversity to laser-focus new career goals and expedite health, wealth and happiness; and
– how organisations can better support working parents

This is also for you if you have an interest in how to optimise career clarity before making a change and how to find the killer weapons required to start and scale a business fast. This is also for you if you’re not sure what a Leadership Coach is and the main benefits of investing in one!

In this super informative interview, Sabine shares her expert wisdom from years as a management consultant turned successful author and entrepreneur working with women across a whole host of industries whether new mums, aspiring entrepreneurs or leaders in their field.

You can find Sabine at www.instagram.com/sabine.matharu/ on Instagram and at www.theempowermentportal.com. Her recent book, “Shift – A New Era Begins” can be found here: www.learnmoreabout.info/shift.

Full podcast episode here!

From New York Journalist to Farmer’s Wife: What The Dirty Life Teaches Us About Happiness

Good Husbandry by Kristin Kimball review – a new life on a community farm |  Society books | The Guardian

What are you?

A professional or an entrepreneur, a country bumpkin or a city slicker, a conformist or a free spirit? Or are you a hybrid – a suited and booted banker or lawyer with the ‘perfect job’ but a niggling desire to explore less well-trodden paths? Or maybe you’re just plain confused about where you fit and what really drives you.

Whatever category you fall into, most of us from Generation Y were bred by folks with far less opportunity than us professionally. With more conventional views of what constitutes a ‘proper’ job, our parents may have inadvertently left us stuck between a rock and a hard place – between what we should do and what we want to do. But ‘should’ is where it all goes wrong.

Expectations versus reality

OUR HOTELS IN NEW YORK

Nobody knows this better than Kristen Kimball, author of ‘The Dirty Life’ and former freelance journalist and Harvard graduate from New York. After a chance interview with a hunky farmer, she upped sticks to set up farm with her green-fingered interviewee, leaving the city lights and life as she knew it in her wake. You heard right – East Village in favour of mud and veg in the middle of nowhere. This is a story of two love affairs that interrupted the trajectory of an intellectual glamour-puss’ life – one with farming and the other with a man who milks cows for a living. A striking tale about love, happiness and the power of instinct, ‘The Dirty Life’ is a must-read for anyone feeling a little disillusioned with the daily grind or what life’s all about.

The product of a neat, middle-class world, Kimball’s novel charts the mental and physical challenges she faced leaving the glitzy world of ‘convention’ in favour of rural slog. ‘Writ[ing] with precision, authority and gratitude about what is evidently, despite its rigours, an idyllic life’ (New York Times Book Review), Kimball challenges our views about wealth, success and love, giving food for thought as compelling as the gastronomical delights she chronicles.

Kimball’s union with Mark, a rugged hulk of a man with a passion for food and farming, is a world away from the corporate sphere she might have settled into. But as with the different kind of ‘wealth’ she finds farm-side, Kimball takes us on a journey full of surprises, a journey which exposes some stark ironies about our perceptions of ‘success’ and ‘happiness’ of City life.

Does success equal happiness?

How to Get Hens to Lay Eggs in Nest Boxes

‘The Dirty Life’ makes us question our ‘values’ as we know them. In Kimball we find a cosmopolitan New Yorker who, like many of us, supposedly ‘has it all’. A woman with all the trappings of refinement, yet one who is, by her own admission, blinded by ignorance. Openly admitting her surprise that a ‘salt-of-the-earth-type’ person such as Mark could talk with dexterity and intelligence and that ‘the physical world – the trades’ was not in fact ‘the place you ended up if you weren’t bright or ambitious enough to handle a white-collar job’, Kimball shows us the danger of defining people by what they do. In Kimball we find a highly educated woman who has travelled the world with her job, yet whose eyes are opened by an entirely different world, stunned by the happiness she finds ‘pulling warm eggs out of a nest box’.

Shake things up…

So, what is the moral of the tale? Keep meeting new people, keep an open-mind and be true to yourself. Work out what is important to you and don’t be afraid to question reality as you know it. Have the courage to live a life true to yourself, not the life others expect of you and remember, the most successful life is one which unearths what makes you truly happy. Fulfilment goes far deeper than an impressive job title and it will bring you fruits that money can’t buy.

Watch an interview with Kristin Kimball here.

 

 

The Theory of Everything: What Stephen Hawking’s Divorce Teaches Us About Love

The Theory of Everything' Review: Eddie Redmayne Is Stephen Hawking - Variety

The Theory of Everything was quite something for Eddie Redmayne. He was already high on my list just for being a dazzling, redhead, for his (inoffensive) public school charm and for those stunning green eyes, but his performance in The Theory of Everything propelled him into unchartered territory.

I had assumed that The Theory of Everything would be about physics, planets and a famous scientist. And though it is, of course, about the incredible Stephen Hawking and his awe-inspiring achievements, it’s about far more than physical matter.

A Bit of A Game-Changer

IMAGINARY FOUNDATION COSMIC SYMBOLISM FLY-THROUGH

This is a tale about the great themes of life – love and loss, strength and frailty, courage and fear, comedy and tragedy. This isn’t a perfect love story with violins and roses, romantic longevity untainted by challenge, this is a story about the varied and subtle shades of life at its most difficult and most beautiful. This is a story of reality and hope united, a story of a young couple bound by a love so strong that we are carried to dizzying heights with Jane’s passionate commitment to Stephen, a commitment at its most beautiful on his diagnosis with Motor Neurone Disease. Her inner courage is heightened by her miniature size, a gumption soaring way above the testing physical and emotional obstacles which are laid in their marital path. Stephen’s strength is as inspiring, manifest in his wicked sense of humour, sparkling eyes and remarkable scientific achievements despite his physical constraints. Nothing grips human nature more than strength in adversity and boy is this a hero’s tale – not just of the incredible scientist himself, but of his steadfast wife, unbending in love and sacrifice for the man she loves.

Where’s The Real Wow?

Jane Hawking with her ex-husband

But for me, a more subtle ‘wow factor’ lies in the twist towards the end. The Hawkings’ ability to adapt to new and uncomfortable truths is established early on through Stephen’s illness but later, with the breakdown of their marriage, come some truly powerful messages. That the changed status of their incredible relationship didn’t undermine their happy ending bears poignant testimony to the power of the human spirit, challenging our perception of romance, commitment, happiness and success. For despite being the most brilliant example of ‘for better or for worse’, this ended up being a tale whose value wasn’t determined by whether the couple remained together or apart… this was a tale about success in a far wider sense – the ability to accept the twists and turns of life and adapt to changes thrown your way, no matter how unfair or futile.

What Can We Learn From The Theory of Everything?

In this respect, The Theory of Everything is aptly named, for it really is rich in messages about so many aspects of human existence. The aforementioned twist, set against a tale of such supernatural love and professional achievement, shows us that imperfection can still be inspiring and that magnificence is not always born of picture perfect endings. Intelligence is not just about brilliance and jaw-dropping achievement. It can be of a quieter kind, found in dignity, courage and the ability to adapt to change. In an increasingly digital society dependant on the disposable, this film shows us that those who don’t end up with perfect Facebook statuses can still find immeasurable success in their lives, looking back and looking ahead, whether personal, professional or familial, external or internal – together or apart. Indeed, any other type of ‘perfection’ seems rather superficial and mundane set against a tale so rich in challenges and beauty that follows – but a static snap from a virtual world built to dazzle. The Theory of Everything challenges this empty cultural norm, showing that real beauty shifts and moulds to the circumstances of life – a life which can be rosy, shady and just plain difficult. A real life where real brilliance goes way beyond a perfect picture, inspiring hope in loss, beauty in pain, humour in suffering.

And it is in this vein that The Theory of Everything finds its cosmic power – in the quiet beauty of one of the closing scenes which sees the former couple united in the Queen’s perfectly manicured gardens, sharing their pride in the children that they have created together. The dignity with which they move on to confront life apart from one another after their incredible love story, without compromising the deep respect that they developed for one another, struck me as a great perfection. Nothing supernatural, nothing cosmic, nothing to write home about on a Facebook wall but a flawed reality rich in hope, humanity and dignity.

Why Should You See The Theory of Everything?

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The Theory of Everything is a remarkable tale about the power of the human spirit – a spirit which can be dazzling, other-earthly in abilities and passions and spell-bindingly inspiring but one which is also, just that – human – flawed, challenging and complex. A truly metaphysical tale, The Theory of Everything unites improbable points of likeness on so many levels to incredibly powerful effect – strength in adversity, humour in suffering, passion in frailty and happiness despite separation. I can see why Stephen Hawking said he was proud of Eddie Redmayne. Both seem to be remarkable men, probing life’s deepest questions in dazzling fashion.

 

 

 

‘Shift: A New Era Begins’ – Featuring Melanie Pritchard in a New Book About How to Turn Adversity into Success

covid change

Success Coach & Corporate Wellbeing Trainer, Melanie Pritchard is sharing her story of lockdown and the Covid pandemic in a story entitled “Coming Home”.

Just before the pandemic hit, Melanie had a sixth sense she needed to leave London fast. When national lockdown was announced, with no home in sight, she dug deep into her coaching toolkit and looked for the “probortunity” – the opportunity within the problem. On a geographical and spiritual quest to find her true north, she embarked on a deep dive journey to the rural wilderness, re-visiting sacred reminders within herself of what was important to her; boundaries, routine, rest and reflection. Testing her in ways unimaginable, Covid19 was a true wake-up call, reconnecting Melanie to her true self and her soul’s calling.

Read the full article here for top tips on what to do at moments of transition and change in life.

Elephant Journal: The 3 Types of Love & why the 2nd is Most Important of All

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“People are put into our paths according to who we can learn the most from at any given time. Like a giant universal computer, higher forces know exactly what combination of energies, in exactly what context, would do the most to further us” ~ Marianne Williamson ~

I recently finished a powerful book I’d begun reading at the end of a four-year relationship.

Among other things, Marianne Williamson’s bestseller, A Return To Love, shares potent insights into the three types of romantic love:

1. Love born of ego;
2. Love that helps you grow; and
3. Divine love.

She explained that while the third is the one that helps you reach your highest potential, the second, the transformational kind of love, can feel like the most powerful of all three.

You’ll find the below pearls of wisdom helpful if:

a. You’re newly single and wanting to expedite the healing process;
b. You’ve been unattached for a while and are feeling flat about the coming year; or
c. You’re in a relationship you’re not sure about and are struggling to get clarity.

Read the full article here

Career Mistakes or Regrets? Top Tips for Changing Jobs Without the Stress

career coaching tips

“Our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers”

M. Scott Peck

If you went to bed feeling anxious about your work week ahead in a job you dislike, or you’ve woken up feeling sick about another day in an environment or role that simply doesn’t fit you, don’t despair.
That fear is a barometer for much needed change and scary as taking the leap can feel, it’s much easier when you break it down into bite size steps.
If you relate to the above, check out my feature in @refinery29 in the link in bio, ‘I Changed My Career & Regret It. Now What?’, for the ultimate guide to making that big leap – and not looking back.
From the four steps crucial to avoiding career change regret to how to sell a misstep on your CV, it’s packed full of solutions to common pain points clients fret about whether midwives, financiers, lawyers to graphic designers and marketeers. The pain is often the same and the paralysis analysis can often feel crippling without simple steps forward.
Here’s a teaser:
Don’t dive in headfirst. Whether you’re considering changing careers for the first time or feel that a recent change isn’t right for you, step one is making sure you don’t rush your next decision.
“The most important thing in the transitional phase,” says Melanie, “is not to panic and just jump into something else quickly because you can. You need to get clear on what you need to be happy and what your key frustrations are. Because if you dig beneath frustration it’s usually a barometer for exactly what you need more of.”
Read more top tips to career change via the link in my bio and feel the stress dissipate 🪴
Remember, you don’t have to get it perfect, you just gotta get it going ✨

#career #fear #stress #job #wrong #coaching #careercoaching #happy #life #happiness #peace #fulfilment #joy #hope #change

Hot Air Or Life-Changing? How Coaching Banishes Stress & Transforms Lives

instincts and coaching

“Attention energises, intention transforms”

Deepak Chopra

Ever wondered why you’re unable to make change despite feeling frustration, boredom, anxiety or depression about your current life?

Here’s why..

To make any big change in your life, you need to do more than recognise discomfort – you need to create the time, space and resources to get real clarity. From there, change becomes easy.

Ever wondered why people telling you what you should do rarely works? Because sometimes it comes more from a place of projection, protectiveness and bias than objectivity and real listening – truly sitting in the moment with you and really hearing what lies beneath is usually quite different, leaving you feeling heard, understood and pumped to uplevel your life.

This is exactly what I thought coaching wasn’t when I first started out. Honestly, I was hoping it was a quick fix involving talking to a wise owl who could help me cut corners and expedite change fast.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

When I heard it was being guided by the coach asking a series of questions to help me work out who I was and what I wanted, I thought it sounded like hot air.

Then we started practising coaching – and I ate my words fast..

I quickly realised helping someone connect to who they truly are and what they truly want versus telling them what they should do, is where the magic happens.

I see this kind of magic happen daily with clients – whether midwives moving into project management, financiers moving into consulting, lawyers moving into coaching or graduates moving into advertising and beyond.

It’s not rocket science, but boy does it work.

As a wise friend on Mindline once said, really active listening is like developing a sixth sense.

So I say again – attention energises, intention transforms. Finding space to be truly heard and to deconstruct what’s really going on for you is an essential component to creating the intention required for change.

So if you’re feeling misaligned with your life or career, what’s stopping you?

And if you’re still feeling stuck, remember, nothing changes if nothing changes 💫

#coaching #life #career #change #listen #plan #goals #transform

 

Podcast Episode 11: Why Becoming A Parent Doesn’t Have to Mean Sleep Deprivation

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Episode 11 of The School of Success Podcast Series is now live! An inspiring and eye-opening deep-dive into why becoming a parent doesn’t have to mean sleep deprivation!
💎
This interview with the accomplished Baby Sleep Consultant, Creator and Author of The Sleeping Baby Routine teaches you:

– top tips around the key pain points that stress new parents out;
– what’s really going on in most mums’ inner monologues in the early days;
– myth-busting around the trials and tribulations of breast-feeding;
– the impact of birth hormones on women’s bodies and brains; and
– the surprising impact of birth on men
💎
This is also for you if you have an interest in how to optimise sleep in the early days of parenting, why how couples interrelate with a newborn is so key and the ups and downs behind jolly social media posts many new parents don’t share. This is also for you if you’re not sure what a Baby Sleep Consultant is and the main benefits of investing in one!
💎
In this super informative interview, Charmian shares her expert wisdom from over 20 years as a Baby Sleep Consultant working with clients across a whole host of industries and countries on why getting a baby’s sleep right is the greatest luxury you can give yourself (and your relationships!)
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You can find Charmian at The Sleeping Baby Routine on Instagram and at www.thesleepingbabyroutine.co.uk
💎

Podcast Episode 10: How to Re-Wire Your Sub-Conscious to Transform Your Life

AnnaLancasterTherapymainhomepage 2

Episode 10 of The School of Success Podcast Series is now live! An inspiring and eye-opening deep-dive into how to re-wire your sub-conscious to achieve transformative life changes from weight loss and fertility and relationships to career success and beyond.

This interview with the accomplished founder of Anna Lancaster Therapy, Anna Lancaster teaches you:

– how stress works in the brain and why the brain can change;
– where our thoughts and beliefs really come from;
– why re-programming our internal monologue is critical to true happiness and success;
– why early childhood is so key in shaping our identity and top tips for parents;
– the 3 root causes that lie at the heart of all dysfunction and how you can upgrade your life through re-wiring your sub-conscious

This is for you if you have an interest in what makes us us, why we behave the way we do and how we can uplevel our lives to achieve true mastery. This is also for you if you’re not sure you have what it takes to change your life and don’t know where to start

In this super informative interview, Anna shares her expert wisdom as a Licensed Rapid Transformational Therapist and Certified Hypnotherapist working with clients across a whole host of industries and with a whole host of sticking blocks to reveal why transforming your life may not be as hard as you think

You can find Anna @www.instagram.com/annalancastertherapy/ on Instagram and at www.annalancastertherapy.com/

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Melanie