How can you feel better when you need a pick me up?

My go to is always dancing. It’s not that I’m a great dancer or anything like that. But getting my body moving releases endorphins which help me to feel good, at the same time as reducing cortisol which causes stress, anxiety and depression.

The music I dance to affects my mood as well. In the mornings I choose to dance to praise music. So my dance time doubles up as a sort of prayer. Sometimes I might dance to Salsa, because I love it. I enjoy listening and singing along to the Spanish.

Today I am dancing to Bollywood songs! Although I don’t know any of the right moves, it doesn’t matter at all. I can try to copy what the dancers in the video are doing. And if I get it wrong, so what? I can make it up and I still get a workout. It’s not like anyone’s watching!

The videos are so much fun to watch with all the red, purple, orange, teal and gold clothing. Since the songs are usually part of a movie, you get a sense of the story they are part of. Which makes it so much more fun for me than jogging on a treadmill!

What can you do to release your endorphins and reduce cortisol in your body? Perhaps you love the treadmill! There’s nothing wrong with that! And the elliptical machine can give you a really good workout without putting strain on your joints. It’s a great way to get fit and burn fat as well.

But what I want to know is, what kind of movement do you absolutely love to do? Because if you really enjoy it, you’re far more likely to do it regularly. And it doesn’t have to be for a long time either. Just 5 minutes a day of some movement that you love can give you so much joy and improve your self esteem. It might help your physical fitness too!

So what will you choose next time you need a little pick me up?

What do I mean by Living Your Light?

It is about who you are being rather than what you are doing. We’re all very unique even though there are a lot of similarities to us. We’ve all had different upbringings and experiences. We’ve lived in different places and in different families.

When I talk about Living your Light I mean being the authentic version of you.

Who is the authentic version of you, the innermost person? Maybe you go to work and put on your foundation and makeup and work clothes, and this makes you feel confident. Just like those power suits people wore in the ’80s to become a super confident character. Who are you when you take off your makeup and you’re not wearing your work clothes?

I’m a coach, and what I spend my time doing is coaching people. But in my morning job, who am I being? If people are stressed, who can I be to help them to be calm?

Being authentically you is also about to having to conform. We feel that we need to be accepted by society, so we conform to certain norms. When we are authentically ourselves, we don’t have to try to fit into those pigeon holes. Embrace the weird!

As a child maybe parents or teachers told you not to do certain things so you suppressed parts of your character. For example I remember at school always looking out the window and day dreaming. And teachers definitely saw that as a bad thing, as a sign of laziness. But actually the ability to dream big is a good thing. It’s a superpower!

Also my mother used to say “Stop showing off” because I was always being the comedian at home. So as a result, I suppressed that part of my character. It’s only later in life that I have got back into performing, and now I would like to develop the comic side of myself. What are the quirky things about you that you have suppressed? These may be your superpowers! And to really shine your light into the world, you will need to develop your superpowers.

This week in my FB group, I did a training on how to start Living Your Light. If you would like me to send you the link let me know.

If you’d like 1:1 help with living your light or having a more awesome life, you can book yourself a coaching call with me here

Have a look and see if you can find a time that works for you.

It’s time to embrace change!

Change is what life is all about. So why do we sometimes fear it?

Positive changes are what coaching is all about! I am enjoying the changes I’ve been making in my life. I was feeling overwhelmed, so I started a part time job! And it has really helped me become much more efficient.

I’ve been doing really well with my morning routine. I added a 15 minute piano practice to my dancing, walking, and journaling. And in the afternoons between calls, I have just started having ‘Dance and Declutter’ sessions!

My clients are all making good progress in their lives and it is great to see them grow. And I am making progress in my own fitness, faith, and friendships.

However there is one area in my life where I still need to make improvements. And that is in a particular relationship. So that will be my focus for change from now on. And I feel positive about it, because I have made positive shifts in other relationships.

Could you call my focus on everything else procrastination? In a sense yes. But not in a bad way. Because I believe that any movement is good. It is always better to do something than nothing. Even if that something is not the one most important thing that you need to do.

What if you’re trying to decide between two paths? You are finding it hard to commit to either. So as a result you do nothing. That stagnation is what we should be afraid of!

Surely it is better to do something… anything just to get some momentum. Because as you make little changes, even if they are less important, they shift something in your thinking. You discover more of what you like and what you don’t like. And you grow in confidence to make other changes.

So I say it’s time to embrace change.

If you’d like any help with making positive changes in your life, you can book a call with me here.

To find out what other people have said about coaching with me see their reviews here.

This coming Friday,  I will host my group coaching workshop called Overcoming Overwhelm. It is the last in a series of 6 workshops.

Overwhelm strikes when you have too much work to do, you have personal issues and significant life events happen all at the same time. It feels like there is too much to deal with and you don’t know which situation to look at first. You don’t know which way to turn. It’s hard to focus on the bigger picture. Instead your brain thinks about all the details of the many different situations. And it feels like you are drowning.

When my sister and mother died within 5 weeks of each other, strangely I wasn’t overwhelmed. I arranged the funerals, emptied the house, with my other sister. It was clear what I should do and in what order. So I got on with it.

Then when I lost all the money in my account because our airport was closed to tourists, I was worried, but not overwhelmed. We were waiting for our airport to reopen.  Suddenly American Airlines announced they were cancelling all their flights regardless.  At that point I definitely felt desperate, but not exactly overwhelmed.

In the meantime, I was doing a refurbishment of my sisters’ flat in London, emptying my parents’ house, trying to rescue our tourism business and setting up a coaching business.

Overwhelm struck when I became aware that the London flat needed a lot more radical work done than the initial refurbishment.

The worst moment for me was on a particular day when I messaged my tenant at 6 am and over the next few hours she sent me 40 messages back, including several videos of things that needed fixing, after she had already moved in.

How do you typically deal with this sort of situation?  Maybe you take one day at a time and work through it. Perhaps you pray about it. You might talk to someone. Having someone listen to you definitely helps, whether that is your partner, a good friend or colleague, a coach or God!

But there is more we can do to overcome overwhelm and stay calm.

Nowadays, I help my clients with coping strategies using the 5 senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell and even taste. My methods also include Guided Meditation, visualisation, breathing and body movement.

These techniques help you to take a step back and put things in perspective.

Working on our self love, setting boundaries, boosting our confidence, and speaking our truth as well as practising gratitude and self soothing methods all help us to overcome overwhelm.

So I invite you to join us on Friday for the Overcoming Overwhelm workshop. I am going to share with you a very simple but useful tool. And it’s going to be fun!

To enrol in this Group Coaching, please fill this very short Enrolment Form https://forms.gle/huFJbb6rjbJh67bD8. After you have registered you will receive the link to the calls.

Yesterday, we had my Speaking Your Truth workshop, which was the 4th in a series.

The first question I asked was “Why is speaking your truth important?” The answer came back loud and clear that if you don’t speak your truth, your life will be out of balance. This will only lead to problems, and even illness.

In the interests of speaking my truth let me tell you about the week I’ve had. On Monday, I coached a very dynamic young lady, who was an inspiration to me! It is truly a joy when I meet someone who is doing so well in life at such a young age. My old self might have felt a tinge of envy since I was held back by old fashioned ideas of women not working. But now I feel so happy for younger women’s success. Maybe it’s my age, but everyone seems so young these days!

The next day, Tuesday, I was interviewed on Radio Cayman about coaching. It was about a half an hour interview, which was amazing! Then the guest after me was late arriving, so I got the chance to coach the presenter live on air! What a cool opportunity! Never have I been so grateful for traffic!

On Wednesday, a funny thing happened. I hosted a Group Coaching for trainee attorneys. I had only invited a very small group as this was a pilot program. We had discussed the topics in advance, and they had agreed to the subjects I had suggested. Almost as soon as we started, it became apparent that they had no need for that workshop! At the end, I went through the other topics, asking if they would benefit from them, and they replied they were doing really well in those areas as well. I was super impressed with how well they had balanced their lives, considering the pressures of their profession.

In the past I would have probably drowned in shame and humiliation! Because I think I would have seen this as a complete failure. But thankfully, the participants were really lovely, polite and kind. They said the workshop would have been helpful to them when they started their “Articles” or traineeship. And since this pilot was designed as a research project, it was useful for me to find out the situation in advance of promoting the program.

On Thursday I had a slight fever so I slowed down. I had a lovely walk in the park with my son, and I took some time to do some dancing. I tried a new piece on the piano, which I discovered was not that hard. It was a Mazurka by Chopin. At the moment I am only playing Chopin!!  I think this must be something like artists going through a “blue” period!

Friday is the day of my regular Group Coaching. As I mentioned above, this was the 4th session and it was on Speaking Your Truth. We had previously covered Self Love, Setting Strong Boundaries and Boosting Your Confidence. But this is the one that was the most challenging for me. Because I still have some work to do in this area. It was powerful! I had my own breakthrough right there on the call. And of course the participants were having their own Aha! moments.  And when I see that happening, it is what makes it all worthwhile.

Do you want to boost your confidence? This is the story of how I grew mine. I did a series of challenges that took me increasingly out of my comfort zone.

In the early months of this summer, I did a weekly challenge on Facebook Live, that I called Cowardly to Courageous. Each week I undertook a challenge that was slightly scary for me. Even though the challenges may not have seemed scary to other people, the point was that they were out of my comfort zone. They ranged from jumping from a rock into the sea through having acupuncture, to getting a tattoo of the word Courage on my arm.

The interesting thing about confidence is that we don’t need it before we take action. In fact, it is in the taking of action that we gain confidence. A wonderful result of taking action and gaining confidence in one particular area is that it gives you confidence to do other daunting tasks. So after each challenge I took, I stood taller and felt braver to do the next one.

After that, I did a FB Live challenge for 5 weeks, which I called The Joy of Creation. The goal here was to create something without worrying about it being perfect. Each week I did a different creative art, such as dancing, writing, singing, acting and visual art. People commented on the Lives with their prompts. As soon as I saw a prompt, I had to incorporate it into what I was doing. The one I had the most fun with was the Improv acting with a friend.

After the summer, my challenge was to reach out to people and offer them coaching. I worked through a list in alphabetical order. Meaning I started with Attorneys in Atlanta, Barristas in Brooklyn, Chiropractors in Chicago and so on.  This only lasted a week, as not a single person acknowledged my random message! I gave myself permission to stop and do something else.

Here’s what’s significant though. While nobody was interested in finding out more about a gift of coaching from a random stranger, the project was not a fail. The goal of growing my confidence was a great success. Before the challenges I was reluctant to strike up a conversation with someone I didn’t know. After that, I felt much more able to speak to people, regardless of what they do or where they live. So that’s a win!

As I have said before and will say again, it’s all about taking those small steps and reaching further out of your comfort zone each time. That’s how I have been growing my confidence. I would encourage you to do the same if you asked me how to boost your confidence.