Positive Pause – 1st January, 2017 – Choices

ChoicesHappy New Year!!! Choices

I choose to send you all the joy and happiness, love and light that you deserve for 2017.

New Year is the quintessential time to examine where you are in your life and what new habits you want to establish, what old ones you want to break and also what goals you want to set for yourself both professionally and personally.

I love this time of year because it provides the opportunity to focus on all of the above. Having a vision for the year ahead is something that makes my dreams and aspirations more concrete and realisable especially when I commit them to paper.

For many of us, writing down our goals and dreams is the easy part but implementing the necessary changes is where it can get tricky!

In these situations it is imperative to remember that we have a choice in whether these changes come about or not. Choice is the crucial word; you always have a choice – a moment when you can decide which thought, action or behaviour will serve you and those you love best. However, when you are tired, fed up or feel that a situation is out of control it is easy enough to forget that you have a choice.

On one of the last days of our fabulous trip to Australia we made a second visit to the Art Gallery of New South Wales which, as many of you may know, has a huge and interesting collection. On this particular visit  I was mesmerized by ‘Manifesto’, a video installation by the German artist Julian Roselfot.  It features Australian actress Cate Blanchet  in different personas in a series of thirteen videos.

At the core of the work is the idea that all art is essentially “fake”. Blanchett performs a series of monologues using the actual words from various artists’ manifestos which is an interesting idea.  However, what really struck me was the variety of roles that Blanchett plays, ranging from a school teacher to a homeless person to an egocentric ballet director. You see her play three of these roles at any one time on three different screens in each room. Watching her (an actress, I know) adopt these diverse, totally different characters  amazed me and it raised the question of  how many of our choices are conscious and how many are merely conditioned responses?

The clothes you wear, the way you carry yourself, the gestures you use, your tone of voice, the work you do, the people you spend your time with, the thoughts you have and the way you behave are all your choices.  Realising that they are choices is where your freedom lies.  Choosing to show the innate goodness that exists in you, choosing to reach your full potential, choosing to love yourself and show compassion to yourself and those around you is what I wish for you in 2017.

Right now, back home in Ireland day has once again become night, summer has become winter and 2016 has become 2017.  All of these external facts don’t detract from my choice to focus on my resolutions for 2017 which are to help more people.  The more people I help, the more I also flourish.

Finding your focus and purpose is one of the keys to success. Don’t be afraid, don’t hold yourself back, choose to unleash onto the world all that is special, incredible and unique about YOU!

Thanks for all your wonderful feedback in 2016 and I look forward to sharing more, giving more and hopefully helping you more every beautiful Monday morning in 2017.

The Positive Habit continues to receive five-star reviews and is helping people every day.

If you are considering signing up for the course, today is the day to register.  The special limited price of €69.95 will increase to €99.95 tomorrow, January 2nd at midnight.

Positive Pause – 26th December, 2016 – Homesick?!

homesickHappy St Stephen’s Day!

I hope this email finds you well and that you had a wonderful day yesterday. Personally, I love Christmas but have to admit that this year I struggled to feel “Christmasy” under the baking sun. No amount of cheesy music and Santa hats could convince me it is normal to be wearing a bikini on Christmas eve!

Last week saw its ups and downs in the land down under! The “up” was climbing to top of the viewing pylon of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The construction of this enormous bridge is a testament to what people are capable of when they put their minds and physical power to it!

The “down” came the very next day when my nine-year-old son, Luca, developed a bout of extreme homesickness. He had gone off camping with his cousins for a full week leaving myself and Ciaran, my husband, in Sydney, for work reasons. The problem in this case is that  “home” (Sydney) for Luca happened to be a 7 hour car journey away!

I’m sure we can all recall, as children, the horrible feeling of being homesick when moments feel like hours and days like weeks.  This is different from loneliness and hits you right in the pit of your stomach.  Luca is already very far from home (Ireland) but it was his parents that he really missed, so perhaps homesick is the wrong word as it’s really the people we love that we miss.

Remembering this feeling from my own childhood, we decided the best thing to do was to go and pick him up as he seemed inconsolable. Just as we were about to set out on the long journey to collect him, Ciaran decided that chlorine needed to be added to the pool to keep it clean while we were away.  In his rush a splash of the toxic chemical got into his eye despite him wearing sunglasses.  Not usually prone to the dramatic, Ciaran came running though shouting he had been blinded! Our attention had now swayed from our distraught son to getting Ciaran medical attention as suggested by Dr Google. Many hours later and a few hundred dollars down, Ciaran was told his eye was fine! In the meantime, Luca had had a 360 degree change of heart and decided to stay at the campsite and told his auntie to tell his parents that if they hadn’t already left, not to bother! Throughout the day, as things changed from moment to moment, I found myself taking a big step back and my ability to trust the sequence of events showed that everything worked out just the way it was meant to: no long car journey needed and Luca more time to play with his cousins.

What I didn’t expect was to wake up on Christmas morning suffering my own feelings of “homesickness”. I hadn’t slept well and the thought of my parents and sister at home getting ready for our annual Christmas Eve party coupled with echoes of Christmases past, missing relatives now long gone came up and the tears started to flow.
Christmas provides us with a window in which the everyday business of life comes to a halt and our focus turns to what’s more important – love of our family and friends.

I’ve said it a hundred times and I’ll say it again, when an emotion swells up, please give yourself space to really feel it. Repressed emotions lead to ill health in both the body and mind. If you feel homesick, sad or lonely at any point, then embrace these feelings. In my case, I let the tears flow and allowed myself to reminisce for a while. After a while everything settled, the sun came out and I had one of the best, most unique, beautiful, loving Christmases I’ve ever had and I didn’t even mind the fact that I was wearing a bikini!