If finding time to look after yourself is your biggest challenge let me suggest you create pockets of time just for you because the last thing you need is self-care to be another thing to add to your to-do list! How can you use one of these snippets of time to do something that will improve your mood or help you to feel present so you are able to be more of how you want to feel?

How do you want to feel in your body and mind? What ONE change do you want to see or feel in yourself this month? Whatever word you chose to capture how you want to feel or the change you want to see, think about what it will be like to feel or be that way… How would you walk, talk and interact with people? What would you do differently?

Getting crystal clear on what it is you want to feel/be more of this month and why it will benefit you and impact your life creates an empowered intention and something you can connect to more easily, every day.

Are you feeling festive or frazzled? When you are so busy it can be hard to wind down and de-stress because your body is fired up and not able to fully rest and recover. This is where mindfulness can be helpful and has been proven to reduce stress. Mindfulness gives you time to reset and rebalance and helps shift your perspective. Here are three simple ways you can practice mindfulness over the festive period to help you feel calmer and more centred.

Imagine, if you could ease your anxiety and relieve physical tension with a series of taps. Imagine, if you could catch a negative thought in motion, focus on it and release it, effortlessly. All this is possible and that is why tapping is so powerful in supporting your well-being…

Journaling for me is a release; my thoughts become words on a page that are no longer swirling around in my head. Our thoughts cross the bridge into our bodies, reminding us that body-mind is one and the same. If you can learn to change your thoughts you can change how we are feeling, but first, you need to recognise how your thoughts are impacting your well-being.

Are there days when your mind simply won’t shut up?
Do you get stuck in your head and start to doubt yourself?
Are your thoughts often racing so much it’s hard to keep up?
The thoughts you have, especially self-critical ones, play havoc with your well-being changing how you breathe, and the way you behave and impacting your mood. Your breath gets faster, your chest feels tight and your stomach ends up in knots. These physical changes in your body are reactions to your thoughts…

Creating space for change can sound like an unrealistic concept in our modern world yet change is constant. You only need to look around you, at nature to see the signs that everything shifts and nothing stay the same, except perhaps for us. If change is constant it’s no wonder we feel so stuck when we keep doing things the same old things.

Making time for yourself isn't easy, even though you know you need to. Let’s be honest, knowing what you need and when you need it can be a challenge. It’s easy to keep pushing on when things need to get done and get swept up in the fear of not having enough time. With all that you are doing, where are you giving yourself space to be restored, feel energised, uplifted and reconnected?

Self-awareness happens in the slowing down.

Understanding your personal seasons gives you more appreciation for your emotional well-being. This gives you more creative and intuitive control over your life and inner landscape allowing you to rebalance and reconnect with less effort, more often.

It’s the Autumn Equinox, (in the Northern Hemisphere) the time of year when we sense the shift in the seasons, our moods and our lifestyles… It’s when plants and trees are slowing down as sunlight decreases to get ready for the colder season ahead. We too are being called to slow down and turn inward but how we choose to do that nowadays is somewhat confusing in today’s hectic modern world.

"Why is it so difficult to make time for myself?" Does this sound familiar to you? I know it does for me! This sentence has been said to me in many ways, many times over the past few weeks, it's something we all seem to struggle with. I know this feeling all too well, and although nowadays some would call me selfish with my time, my well-being is patting me on the way!

September is when I start to reflect on what I wanted from and for myself this year, it's a time when I renew my intentions and have a deep desire to make these next few weeks and months really count! If you feel the same it’s easy to see how easily you can get caught up in the hustling energy and become impatient. It’s when we allow ourselves to get swept up in the doing that we lose a sense of why we’re doing it in the first place.

When we say, “don't get your hopes up”, it’s almost like we are limiting our own belief in things being better, in things improving or something changing for us. Let's all agree that getting our hopes up is a rising of our vibrational energy. The energy within us is what influences our mood and the way we are in the world. When our vibration is high, we feel more switched on, we feel alive, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to dull that down.

I want to say I didn’t have a plan and that people didn’t call me mad but neither of those things is true. There was definitely a plan and people definitely called me mad, bonkers and brave. On a side note, I think brave is the polite way of saying “You’re mad”, or maybe, “You’re mad but you inspire me anyway”. All I knew was something had to change because I was so stressed.

It’s possibly the thing I love most about nature; the visual reminders that things change and the realisation that nothing natural is meant to stay the same… I often wonder when we let go of the idea that we get to change and be seasonal too?

Does feeling self-conscious mean you resist doing something that you know will do you good?

Feeling self-conscious can be about your mood or how you feel about your body, it might be about how you feel IN your body if you are working with an injury or feeling less mobile in your body. Feeling self-conscious can be about many things and it’s the mix of thoughts in your mind and feelings in your body that makes you want to avoid doing something new.

Being present, even with the uncomfortable feelings, created space for me to be honest with myself about how I was feeling.

When I make space to feel my emotions, from that place I can take inspired action.

Inspired action allows me to change how I am feeling and begin living on purpose.

How you choose to take care of yourself depends on what makes you feel good, what helps you relax, what energises and replenishes you. Self-care is unique and personal, it’s also seasonal. With a shift in seasons comes a need to alter how we do things in reflection of how we are feeling within that transition.

Self-confidence is an emotion that influences you on all levels because your emotions are a bridge between what you think in your head and how you physically feel in your body. It’s no wonder then that confidence is so interwoven with your wellbeing. Confidence isn’t skin-deep, it’s soul-deep and cultivating more of it is a practice of self-love.

Grounding has become a daily practice and one of the most important things I do to support myself when feeling flustered, anxious or overwhelmed, whether I am worried about an experience or an event in the future it is a simple practice self-care that works by bringing me back into the present and helping to reconnect to my body.