The Big Peace

Join a Big Peace group

I've just discovered there is a Big Peace group i.e. a group that are all doing the big peace process together online. Click HERE http://www.43things.com/things/view/1833499/take-part-in-the-big-peace if you want to join them.

The writing diet

I haven't had chance to read it yet but have to share!!! I've just received Julia Cameron's new book The Writing Diet. I am a HUGE fan of Julia Cameron and her 12 week course The Artist's Way. It is one of the most life changing books I've ever read.

So with my baby weight hanging around my hips (he's now 5!) and with my absolute refusal to diet, am so thrilled to receive Cameron's new tome - a weight loss programme, which directs reader to count words instead of calories and to learn how to treat food cravings as invitations to evaluate what they are truly craving.

Genius!

I will let you know how I get on!

Suzy x

How to have a crap 2008

JANUARY: SET YOURSELF UP TO FAIL. Tell yourself that you’re going to give up wheat/coffee/wine/going out forever and sign up to a really expensive gym. January 1oth go out and pig out on pasta, drink too much wine and never go to the gym for the rest of the year. Fall into pit of self loathing.

 FEBRUARY: STRIVE TO BE PERFECT

It’s Valentine’s month and remind yourself at every occasion that you've got to be perfect or you will never be loved, included or respected.

MARCH: COMPARE YOURSELF TO OTHERS

By judging yourself and others, you'll either get to feel smug or

crap (but how often will you really allow yourself to feel smug?)

APRIL: MAKE HAPPINESS CONDITIONAL

Constantly tell yourself and others: 'I'll be happy when.....I'm

thinner/richer/more successful" etc.

MAY: START DIETING FOR YOUR SUMMER HOLIDAYS. Diets don’t work. 98% of people who diet will put all the weight back on and some.

JUNE: SPEND ALL YOUR TIME AND ENERGY TRYING TO MAKE SOMEONE ELSE HAPPY.

Some of the time perhaps? Notice how much energy you

spend focussing on other people's lives - mind your own business!

JULY: FOCUS ON WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOUR LIFE. And talk about it endlessly.

AUGUST: COMPARE YOUR BODY

with

the bodies of celebrities who work out 3 hours a day and have personal trainers and dieticians.

SEPTEMBER: SPEND TIME AROUND PEOPLE who don’t love or respect you.

OCTOBER: TRY TO PROVE THAT YOU'RE SOMEONE

by pretending to be someone you're not .

A great strategy for constantly proving to yourself that you're not

good enough as you are.

NOVEMBER: LISTEN TO YOUR INNER CRITIC and lead your life

according to his rules.

DECEMBER: WRITE YOUR 2009 LIST OF ‘SHOULD’ GOALS – all the things you know you should do if you want to be happy, healthy and successful and force yourself to do at least 10 goals per week.

I'd like to thank......

I've just been doing a review of 2007 and what struck me is how many people I have to thank. I've been writing a few cards and emails to tell them how fantastic I think my team/family/friends are and I have to admit it probably makes me feel as great as it makes others to hear it. ONe of the daily missives from the Big Peace was all about gratitude. And it really is right...

"A study at the University of California by two psychologists found that 'counting your blessings' does work.

The results of their study indicated that daily gratitude exercises resulted in higher reported levels of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, optimism and energy.

Additionally, the gratitude group experienced less depression and stress, was more likely to help others, exercised more regularlya nd made more progress toward personal goals.

According to the findings, people who feel grateful are also more likely to feel loved."

Try it.  Usually, my inner pessimist always moans on at this time of year - about how tired, stressed (and hungover) I am. But this year, my inner coach got in first and I have been embarassing myself and everyone else by my thank yous. But I don't care. It makes me happy.

Thank you for you too - for reading this blog, by participating in The Big Peace, for listening to me drivel on this year.

Happy Christmas everyone. I wish you lots of love, peace and fulfillment in 2008.

Suzy x

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Wild Love

You see, I told you it would make me into a slacker! A week has gone past without a post.

To be honest, have been engrossed in a book by Gill Edwards called Wild Love. And it's a real blow your hair back read.

It seems that she is on the same journey as us - wouldn't you know it?

And hurrah, Edwards, is encouraging us to be 'wild' versus good. Or rather encouraging us to love wildly. "We've been taught how to love sanely," says Neal Donald Walsh (author of the Conversations with God books) who wrote the forward. " we've been taught how to love safely, how to love appropriately, primly, properly , limitedly. We've never been taught how to love full out."

This book promises to teach us how.

Can you see why I'm engrossed? I will report back.

slacker's guide to happiness

Just a thought but if we really do embrace the non-judgement idea and accept ourselves exactly how we are - we can become slackers and it will be OK.

If we stopped trying so hard, knew our own value, embraced the bad with the good - what would the rest of this week look like?

what would my dreams for 2008 look like?

Time for a nap, I think!

I lost my voice

A frustrating thing for a coach that works purely by telephone....I lost my voice.

Horrible cold turned into a voice snatching monster and there I was mute (except for a few squeaks).

I had no idea how important my voice was until I lost it. We use our voice in some many ways - for speaking up, for speaking out, for expressing our needs, wants, ourselves, for shouting 'no' very loudly at 4 year olds and anyone else who is practising light sabre skills of a Jedi knight with my head.

If like the Little Mermaid, you lost your voice, how would you express yourself in the world?

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Committing to ourselves

It was half term for me last week and my husband is away on tour so I had all my girlfriends come to stay over the week so we've had a busy week entertaining kids by day and scaring them on the haunted hay rides (halloween in the country) and then getting petrified kids in bed by 7 and us mums then eating yummy food, drinking too much wine and putting the world to rights.

And - dare I say it.... moaning about men! I kind of enjoyed this for a bit. We women do bond beautifully regaling each other about what you men have or haven't done. But after about the second day, we got really fed up with hearing the same old moans....we want them to commit to us, we wanted them to give to us, we wanted them to delight and spoil us......With my coaching hat perched on the end of the sofa, I realised that we were definitely on hiding to nothing (technical coaching term there). We give all our power away when we ask others to change. All we can do is change the way we think or act.

So being the brilliant, superstar women that we are, we turned it around in Byron Katie fashion (www.thework.com) and asked ourselves how we could commit to ourselves more, how could we give to ourselves more, how we could delight and spoil ourselves more....so we have spent the rest of half term asking ourselves these questions versus moaning about our men and you know what? I FEEL FANTASTIC. What does real commitment to myself look like? I asked myself. For me, it definitely about more creativity and writing and new projects...and allowing myself the space and time to do that versus trying to cram it between school run and bedtime.....It's that extra yoga class, it's heading down to the gym for an hour and sitting in the jacuzzi and 'working' out some new ideas.....

I can spend so much energy grizzling about my husband - it feels so much better to spend that energy creating something lovely for myself.

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Thinner Peace

I've just found the funniest, most profound and wonderful book by Martha Beck (Oprah's life coach). The 4-Day Win.
I've always been her greatest fan....she's very irreverent - and her latest book The Four Day Win promises to change the way you think about your food and your body in just 4 days!

And I couldn't resist buying it especially after my last post about creating some healthier habits. Will power is not my greatest strength so I loved the premise of this book - Martha doesn't believe that losing weight has anything to do with willpower but the key is to adjust our behaviour patterns and the way we think about food. so far, so good.

It gets better - it's the funniest self-help book I've ever read. And so applicable that even slackers like me might lose a few pounds.
But the chapter that's made me laugh and think the most is the one on 'the most important weight-loss skill in the history of the universe'....and this is finding your 'thinner peace'.

Want to find your thinner peace? Let's do it now.

"First, hold your right hand, palm up," say Beck. "Imagine a 2 inch tall version of yourself in military uniform with a whip in one hand and gun in the other, stomping around your palm, shrieking deeply personal insults and commanding you to lose weight. This is the Dictator. Now hold up your left palm and picture your Wild Child here: 2 inches tall, dressed in skins and bark, covered in scars, waiting for an opportunity to escape or subvert the Dictator's brutal control. Watch until you can see them both clearly in your mind's eye.

Now, while watching these two mini-yous, I want you see that as dysfunctional as they both are, both of them are essentially good. The Dictator wants you to be healthy and beautiful. It gets frantic about your weight for the same reason you might freak out if you saw a beloved pet wandering into the traffic....

On the other hand, the Wild Child is the part of you that evolved to avoid starvation and captivitiy. It panics when the Dictator berates, shames and trieds to control it. It know the Dictator is planning to starve it. So it's not surprising that the instant the Dictator is weakened by stress, hunger, or environmental chaos, the Wild Child leaps into action and eats like a junkyard dog.

Think through the well meaning motivations of both your Dictator and your Wild Child, until you really understand that withink their limited perspectives they're doing their very best. Then offer them kindness. One useful method is to silently repeat these phrases fro the classic 'loving-kindness' meditation: "May you be well. May you be happy. May you be free from suffering."

Visualise until you can feel compassion towards both sides of yourself, says Beck. And when you get there, ask yourself this:

Who are you?

The only reason you can 'see' and offer kindness to both Dictator and Wild Child is that you're not either one of these. You've moved into a third realm of consciousness , which resides, literally in another part of the brain. Beck calls it the Watcher. "While both the Dictator and Wild Child make you want to overeat, your watcher self is not nearly as compulsive," she says.

In fact, according some medical psychologists, it's physiologically impossible for your mind to stay locked in a war of control when you're engaging its ability to generate compassion and appreciation. Beck calls this the place of 'thinner peace"!

Now here's a result....you can find your inner peace and have thin thighs too.

This is a really fantastic book for anyone who has ever struggled with issues on food and knows that diets don't work but didn't know what else to do.
Have a love in with your Wild Child and Dictator tonight.

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Sick

I ate something dodgy for lunch yesterday and have been feeling awful. I've been up all night - sickness and the rest....I won't go into the grim details.

Today I feel about 20% of my normal self - a bit weak and weepy. I know this probably sounds obvious....(and perhaps shows how much i take my physical wellness for granted) but it really has rammed it home how my physical state affects everything - how I view things, how I cope with life, how I interact with others.

At this period in my life (apart from the dodgy prawns yesterday) I generally feel fit and well. And I'm wondering if I could turn up that dial so I'm not just 'fit and well' but physically in my prime? I wonder what it would be like to look after myself at the highest level (currently I probably drink too much coffee during the day, too much wine on a saturday night perhaps?)

I love that word 'Prime'.....what would I eat/drink/treat myself differently to be at my prime? What would you?

I don't want to end up drinking those horrible smelling teas and smugly showing off my six pack at the school gate but I definitely could work on creating some new habits to give me more energy. Will it make me more peaceful? Well, without sounding all '70s about it....it would be very much be about self-love versus jump-starting myself into action with a bucket of coffee. (old journalistic habits die hard)

I feel a new gentle regime coming on. I want to up my game...a few notches...a few baby steps in the direction of 'prime'.

This is my 'prime-time'.

What does yours look like?

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