-
My blog is about trying new things and pushing myself well and truly out of my comfort zone. Oh and I love food and travel too. Join me.
social
Award Award!
I’m a Coconut Queen!
Proud Associations!
Searching for something else?
Category Archives: sometimes wellbeing
Dealing With Your Inner Critic Right Now
Some give it a name, others tend to pretend it isn’t there. Meanwhile, I prefer to be constantly aware. If you don’t acknowledge what’s happening, how can you deal with it? We all look for support. This can be from family, friends or work colleagues. How about ourselves?
Sarah Doyle recently launched a book called ‘Be your own best friend’. This short interactive journal encourages self-love and acceptance. It involves focusing on self-support rather than self-deprecation. Activities in the book encourage celebrating wins and successes and what seems like, combatting the inner critic.
In the book, ‘The inner game of tennis’, author Timothy Galwey addresses the relationship with the self. Internally, there’s a voice that we engage with and which influences who we are, what we do and most significantly, how we view ourselves. They say that mastering the relationship with the self is the most relevant of all. If you don’t love yourself, how do you expect someone else to love you?
That niggle that pops up when you’re exercising and thinking, I’ll quit. That’s the inner critic. The one that tells you you’re not good enough when you so clearly are, that’s the inner critic. When there are positives about yourself and your performance in any given situation and yet, there’s a voice from inside picking out the negatives – yes, that’s him/her again. They say that your own thoughts are what influence your life so why put up with the negative ones?
When flicking that proverbial negative angel off your shoulder, here are some ways that can help you get on track and feeling more positives overall.
*Don’t hate on it. Just like scrubbing a sore wound won’t make it better, neither will berating your inner critic. Be sound, understanding and have a gentle influence on it. Start by sharing three successes with yourself if a negative thought pops up.
*Remember where you started. Things change and maybe you’ve come a long way. There are going to be days where we’re harder on ourselves than others. Give yourself a break every now and then!
*Be aware – this all comes from you. No matter what, you have the power. If you’re not happy with your internal thoughts, then change them. That starts with loving yourself and celebrating your successes. After that, it’s about acceptance. Here’s my list of books that might be helpful.
*Use physical reminders. Stick up quotes around your apartment, listen to the relevant Podcasts (Try Model Health Show or Oprah) and journal. It could be a blank book or a specific self-focused journal. In any event, recording your thoughts and positives in a particular place will help encourage your self love and acceptance.
Support yourself first.
Cancelled Flights And Falling For Snowmen
We’re indoors. It’s been approximately 12 hours since we’ve driven the car anywhere and Andrew is nicely intact outside. Andrew is our snowman you see. He is approximately 5ft 5″, pale with a big head and great dress sense. He’s a great example of how, when it snows so much your flight gets cancelled, you use that snow to avoid turning to feeling overly disappointed. Keeping the mind busy is vital especially if it involves creating something on a decent scale.
I was supposed to head to Budapest tonight at 19.30 from Dublin Airport. It was a long awaited treat with lots of planning gone in and my case already half packed due to the sheer excitement. I had the notion of going swimming outdoors in the thermals on a few occasions and staying in a fancy hotel room. Meanwhile, I’d be spending time with a great friend and reflecting on why life is so great and saying “Isn’t it lovely that we can get flights and trips so cheap and easily in 2018?”. Sure you can’t stop the weather.
When things didn’t go as planned, my mother would always quote my late grandfather (who clearly quoted another guy) ” Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference”. That’s life you see. There’s always going to be something around the corner that doesn’t work out. Not to be a pessimist but flights will get cancelled, challenges will occur and something you’ve built up in your head and elsewhere will not come into fruition. It sucks but well, there’s always something else around to look forward to.
I’m using my free time to get blogging done (overdue blogging I might add), I’m planning some trips for the Summer and I’m having lots of downtime to chill and reflect on weeks gone by and, what’s to come.
And of course, there’s Andrew.
If you’re stuck indoors this week or stuck in a disappointing twist in your life. There’s a few things you can do to turn it around and hopefully, feel better.
*Plan something else! When do you next have some free time? What have you been thinking about for ages and not planned or booked? Do it! Life’s short. I’ve just looked up flights for my Summer trip in July.
*Write a list of the positives to come from the situation. Did you save some cash by not partaking in a certain adventure? Has this time allowed you to achieve something you’ve been procrastinating? What goodness has come from it?
*What does this mean to you? Having a twist or turn in your day, week or life can evoke certain feelings. This can teach us something about the path we’re on and what we’d like to achieve in the future. For me, I feel disappointed that I didn’t get to travel today as I love visiting other places and don’t enjoy being stagnant for too long. What have you learned?
*Life can be a bit unfair and certain situations will remind us of that. You never know what’s around the corner. Make the most of the current moment and think of how lucky we are to have it.
Mind yourselves wherever you are.
Say What? That Positive Blogger Story
Over the past few days, there’s been an increasing amount of articles, social media posts and comments about bloggers and the blogger industry. A girl emailed a hotel asking for a discount or free stay in return for publicity of that business and well, this has lead to realms of rants, negative comments and what some would deem cyber-bullying. The way I see it is a self-made business woman (a blogger) at the age of 22 has built a following online, makes money from it that she can fully depend on and while there seems to be little attention given to this, instead the whole industry is being deemed as a load of freeloaders.
Back in 2015, I started blogging. I wanted an outlet where I could air my thoughts and hopefully, inspire people. Since then, I’ve had the liberty of meeting 100’s of amazing people who are in similar boats (some making a full-time living from blogging) and the majority of whom, I find to be genuine and kind people. Sure, they enjoy the perks of going to events, trying products out and the mingling. Like any job, they work hard and offer a service in the form of their writing and posts.
It’s not my job to sit here defending 100’s of bloggers and I won’t be spending my time on that. If you like someone’s content, follow them. If you don’t then well, don’t follow. It’s really that simple. Just do me a favour and acknowledge the fact that it’s taken work and effort.
The point of this post is to share a beautiful story that I’ve taken my time before sharing for no other reason than sheer procrastination.
I attended an event with O’Briens and Bord Bia last September. A Morning with Rachel Allen was a morning with lots of other bloggers. I met people I knew from before and others whom I’ve since become huge fans of. One of those ladies who I ended up meeting in cyberspace after the event was Katia. Katia has a food blog called Proper Food full of tips and tricks from the world of cuisine in Ireland and around the world.
A couple days of days later, Katia posted on the Irish Bloggers Facebook group that she had been gifted a camera. This had lifted her so much that she had decided to give away her old camera for free in the group! Not having a camera myself and really wanting one for my blog, I messaged Katia to ask if I could have it. She then messaged saying I could but only on one condition – that I paid it forward too. I then went back to the thread and pinpointed a lady I could offer a kindness to. I paid it forward to her with the same message – let’s keep it going. Thankfully, when I looked back on the thread in the following days, there had been several other acts of kindness.
Comments of positivity flooded the group as we all exclaimed how pleased we were about the kindness and support being shown.
There’s a whole community that’s been built on support, kindness and good deeds. We pay it forward, offer technical support and meet outside of our general circles so that we can enjoy each other’s company. Sometimes, we don’t even share it on Instagram.
