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It did me! I stood at my front door and clapped along with most of my neighbours - it was such an amazing moment, a feeling of appreciation for everyone who is holding our country together. And such a moment of unity too.

I didn’t even know what some of my neighbours looked like!

We’re all in this together!

We really are, and it really felt like it too. 

My sister, who is a children’s social worker, my friend Manda who is a Personal Trainer and myself a coach and a children’s nurse have come together to create a free resource for ALL key workers. We’ve done this for a number of reasons, one that all three of us believe in being inclusive, two that we can feel the intensity of this pandemic on all of our key workers and also between us, we have the knowledge and skills to be able to help and support our key workers.

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Mindfulness, A taster.

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Connection.

Today I want to share some of my top tips for weathering this storm that we find ourselves in.

Firstly, we’re all in this together. I went for a walk recently and as I was walking I said hello to everyone, which I usually do anyway. Though I also waved at people who were looking out of their windows and received some rather big smiles! I wouldn’t have waved at people before, but it felt nice.

Which brings me on to my first top tip - to find all of the ways you possibly can to connect with other people, with your family and friends, but also people you don’t know. Whether that is a smile through a window, or a comment on someone’s post on social media, a phone call, a video call - we have many options available to us, despite the difficulty of not being able to visit our family and friends in person.

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We are experiencing trauma.

What we are...

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The times we’re living through now and are about to live through are unprecedented, we have no idea what is to come. I’m guessing like me, you are feeling a range of emotions, some good even!

I often hear people talk of the benefit of hindsight and what I’m sharing here is the benefit of foresight, we can be proactive in how we approach the next few days, weeks, months even.

I want you to know that I am experiencing all of the emotions too, I’ve had spontaneous tears, I’ve felt scared and anxious, I’ve felt relieved and then guilty, all kinds of emotions. I also want you to know that, that is OK. It’s OK for us to experience these emotions, we don’t have to be happy or positive all of the time.

It’s healthy even to allow ourselves to feel whatever it is we’re feeling. If however, rather than experiencing these emotions in ebbs and flows you are feeling them...

You know, people have always thought I was confident. Even at times when I felt I had no confidence at all people have thought I was confident! Which of course is a lot less about my actual confidence and a lot more about peoples’ perception of what confidence “looks” like.

Perception of confidence.

Why am I telling you about my confidence? Because perception is a huge part of it, there are two elements of confidence, how you are perceived and how you feel. With me as your example, you can see it is possible to be perceived as confident when you don’t feel it.

Of course the same can be true the other way round, it’s possible too (though some may argue less likely) to feel confident and be perceived as not confident. As well as being confident and appearing confident, which was me talking about this live inside my free Facebook Group (click here) and of course finally, not feeling confident and not being perceived as confident.

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We live in a world of unprecedented choices, and yet many of us feel like we don’t have choices.

Many of the women I work with have told me that although they wanted to exercise or eat healthily, they didn’t. Usually there are a number of reasons why they didn’t exercise or eat healthily. The reasons given don’t usually include the words, because I chose not to. 

Because honestly they don’t believe they made the choice.

What I say is this, if you didn’t choose to do it, you chose not to. I’m going to let that sit for a moment.

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If you want to do it, and yet you don’t, you’re making the choice not to. It is quite possibly a subconscious choice, but a choice all the same.

Many choices we make are subconscious - there’s a reason for this, because there is such a thing as decision fatigue, which describes the fact that decisions can become harder and lesser...

When I was younger I wanted to be an actress! I couldn’t think of anything better than performing in the West End! I thought I was amazing - I thought I was amazing, and I was so confident, in fact, it was the ultimate confidence! At 15 I was Maria in West Side Story - one of the main parts. 

At the same time I was being bullied at school - the bullying actually got to a point where I had to move schools half-way through my GCSE’s. 

Looking back I think - thank goodness I had my drama group!

I found it hard to make new friends in the new school, well I had people I knew from my dance school who were nice and let me “be” with them. That was it though I was with them, they let me be there, but I didn’t feel I fit in.

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At 18 I went to drama school in London, where I knew I was going to finally fit in - I didn’t. In fact it was a big shock to my system, because I wasn’t actually amazing...

So many women I work with describe their lives as ordinary, run of the mill, mediocre. And so many of these women have finally realised that they don’t have to settle for this anymore! We’re not here to live ordinary, run of the mill lives - we’re here to live life to the full, live our best lives feeling happy and fulfilled!

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How can you move from ordinary to happy?

You can work with me and we’ll explore who you are, what you want and most importantly how you’re going to be the very best version of you, living your best life. Know you’re ready to start? Then book a call here to talk about how we can get started. (click here)

If you’re not sure you’re ready to work with me just yet, then here are some other things you can do to move from an ordinary life to a happy life.

Have you heard of Martin Seligman? He’s a Psychologist in The States who after 25 years working in psychology has...

 3 years ago I was at rock bottom, I was off work with stress, depression and anxiety (that narrow diagnosis!), I was considering antidepressants and I had no idea how I could keep going, life felt like so. much. effort! I didn’t realise it at the time, but really what I wanted was a magic wand to “fix me”.

We all know that doesn’t happen, but it doesn’t stop us from wanting it does it! I felt powerless, I was waiting for my life to get better. I started antidepressants, (which work differently for different people and this is in no way a suggestion that they are the right thing for you), I started them and I didn’t experience the magic wand, I wasn’t all of a sudden fixed - in fact I was now also experiencing the side effects of the drugs. 

I think it took this for me to realise I had to take control of the magic wand and wave it for myself. Was it easy? No! Did I manage it? Absolutely! I took intentional action.

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As someone who was bullied throughout my teenage years I didn’t experience women supporting women. I experienced girls making me feel all kinds of horrible, I felt like I lacked worthiness and I developed a general feeling of not being good enough. I don’t believe the girls that made me feel this way wanted to have such a huge negative impact on me.

Sadly though, they did, and it was a lasting feeling that stayed with me through my 20’s. 

This is a big factor in why I’m so passionate about women supporting women. And here are my top 5 reasons why I believe women should support women.

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Because it’s natural.

“Compassion is a natural and automatic response that has ensured our survival.” Emma Seppälä writes in her article Compassion: Our First Instinct.

Seppälä also highlights research that suggests that we have an internal motivation to help others - without an...

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“This time I’ll say no.”

We’ve all been there haven’t we, we go into a situation, knowing that we want to say no, “this time I’ll say no” only to come away having said yes!

Why do we do this? 

Not because we’re weak, though often we tell ourselves this. Most likely it’s because although we had the intention of saying no, we didn’t have a plan to back us up in a moment and we were expected to say yes because that is what we’ve taught people to expect of us right?.

Chances are, if you say yes a lot, then you’ve taught the people around you to keep asking you because you’ll say yes.

So how can you teach people that you also say no?

Where to start?

If you’re used to saying yes, and those around you are used to you saying yes, you might find it easier to  make the first time you say no, something small and safe. For example, the next...