Month: June 2016

Have You Thought of This For Your Weekend?

Are you a planner? Your weekend is sacred. You have lots you want to get done. The necessities such as groceries, laundry, cleaning, etc. And also lots of the good stuff – enjoying time with people or by yourself, doing activities that make you happy and refueled for the week ahead.

Orrrrr…… are you more of a work in progress, like me.

It took me until my late 20’s to figure out that New Years Eve did NOT have to be the best night of the year. So much pressure. Making sure we were going to the best events with our fave people with so much anticipation of what the evening had to live up to.

Weekends don’t need that pressure.

What that period of time needs, from 5pm on Friday until bedtime on Sunday, is some loving attention.

I’ve spent many a weekend going with the flow. No stress. Easy. Not so bad.

Not so great either.

Eventually a restlessness and impatience takes over me and I don’t understand my tetchiness.

I have learned that, for me, I cannot go very long without purposefully planning something great for me. The family usually benefits too.

So much to do, so little time……..

A great place to start is to answer “how do I want to feel by the end of the weekend?”

Sometimes I want to feel happily exhausted – a physically exhausting day hiking somewhere beautiful followed by flopping on a big comfy couch with take-out and a glass of wine (or a cup of hot chocolate, depending on the season).

Sometimes I want to feel sophisticated – like a day of shopping followed by dinner with friends at a great restaurant.

Sometimes I want it to feel very relaxed and outdoorsy – a bbq with family and friends, or a picnic in a park.

The key is to connect to yourself first and listen to what you want. Then to find a way to include it into your weekend.

So, for this weekend, why not plan it to go in the direction you choose and make it perfect for you?

Do the work. You’re worth it.

Hugs, Vicky x

How to Get Control of Your Feelings

I have let feelings run me for the last couple of weeks. In this case, it was a bad idea.

Why a bad idea?

Because my thoughts were running the show, unsupervised, like a toddler with scissors, not meaning to cause harm but….

I’m not even talking about “big feelings”. I don’t have a major crisis going on right now. No. My feelings are small everyday ones and they have been a bit debilitating.

Feelings of tiredness, crankiness, doubt, overwhelm, “should do’s”, guilt, shame, avoidance, discouragement, all resulted in too much Facebook time (a.k.a numbing), no progress in my business, overeating, wanting to sleep more, being gossipy and believing myself when I excuse my behaviour and convince myself it is self care when I don’t get the work done, AGAIN.

A minor blip in my landscape, I get it, but it didn’t feel good and it took me away from being me, and from creating my future.

For the past few years I have been mindful of my thoughts and actions and it has been life changing. Prior to this change I suspect I spent months and maybe even years in a haze of indecisiveness and confusion, self inflicted, even self serving, but so stifling and little to no forward movement.

And so I have learned that feelings should not be left to their own devices. Unchallenged. Unexamined. No, no, no.

We need to be aware that it is our thoughts that cause our feelings.

It was 2 weeks of basically feeling “I’m not good enough to do this” which was caused by what I was thinking.

Thank goodness!!! Because my thoughts, I can do something about that!!

For the last 2 mornings I have returned to visioning and affirmations being the first things I do when I wake up. It replaces waking up and thinking “what do I need to do today? I don’t think there’s much point though.”

Only I am aware of the crazy insane mess that lives inside my head and only I am responsible for cleaning it up. Same goes for you and what’s going on inside your head.

Try it. Pick a negative feeling you have about a relative. I’m guessing you believe your feelings about this person is their fault and something they are doing.

Let’s imagine your mother-in-law makes snide comments about your parenting. Whatever you feel about that is coming from YOUR thinking. If you and I were in the exact same situation, we would both feel, and therefore act, differently about it.

You cannot control another person or guess what their thinking is behind their actions – that’s their own cleaning job, should they choose to accept it. Once you understand that it is your own thinking causing your feelings, you are “response-able” to change it. If you want to that is.

Sometimes we don’t want to change our thoughts because we want to be mad at them, but be aware that this is a thought and decision also.

When you do want to feel differently, you will have to think differently.

Easy peasy? Well……that depends how you think about it ;).

Do the work. You are worth it.

Hugs, Vicky xx