Last night I was out and was chatting with some friends/colleagues about my old drinking days. I haven’t had a drink now in 4 years and 8 months and I’m just so used to being out sober now, it seems weird to think that I never used to be able to go out without drinking [...]
Gut instinct. It’s underrated in my opinion. My gut has always been very sensitive and I have strong physical reactions in there to emotional situations. My gut instinct has always been strong and it’s never steered me wrong - when I’ve listened to it. But before I found mindfulness I spent years suppressing it and [...]
I watched this really great video from the In a Nutshell series a few years ago on how the antidote to addiction is connection rather than just denial of the substance/thing we are addicted to. "The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection" Isolation is addiction's best friend. For most [...]
When I left London, moved into my own flat in Folkestone and started working from home, I knew it was important to get involved in the local community so I didn't isolate myself. Making new friends and putting yourself out there can be difficult. I don't know about you but it makes me feel vulnerable, [...]
Jealousy. It’s a nasty little thing, and low self-esteem is it’s best friend. Being envious of others for having something we want and don’t have can lead us not only to harm ourselves but to harm those we are jealous of too. When I feel happy and content with my own life, my own body [...]
We all have things that we struggle to change or make progress with. I’ve done a lot of work on myself over the last few years and one sticking point has always been having healthy boundaries with people. A deep inbuilt need to be liked means I can be a chronic people pleaser and years [...]
Anger is my least favourite emotion. It terrifies me in others and I find it ugly and shameful in myself. Anger takes me right in to self-obsession, self-righteousness, self-pity and crippling fear. For me it also goes hand in hand with overwhelming feelings of anxiety. I feel the adrenaline pumping through my body and I [...]
The other day I watched the documentary I am Maris on Netflix. It’s about a young girl and her journey to recovery from an eating disorder through yoga. She writes a blog on her website and, like many of us with our online personas, when she started out she was writing about all the positive things she was doing [...]
“Sometimes when you’re in a dark place you think you’ve been buried but you’ve actually been planted” Christine CaineA friend of mine shared this quote with me a couple of weeks ago and it instantly resonated. This has definitely been true in my experience and yet, when I’m in a dark place, I almost always [...]
The last few weeks I've been 'too busy' and, as a result, I'm feeling exhausted, frazzled, fuzzy and disconnected from myself and others. We live in a world where everything has to be done NOW. Where we not only have stacks of emails to deal with in our work lives, but also voicemails, Facebook messenger [...]
MindfulViE 