WELCOME TO GIN OR GYM

Thinking back to yesterday’s Blog, I was reminded of this quote from Peter Pan. “Sometimes the things that you’re looking for, you can’t see with your eyes. You have to see them with your heart.” Photo taken at Traquair House, Scotland by me! If that’s the case, can “the heart” see through the carefully placed camera of the Zoom call? Can it survive the “new normal” that will exist after lockdown is over? Or will, as one of my friends said after reading yesterday’s Blog, “lif

Funny that this photo should pop up today in my “memories” on a few of my social media platforms. It was my privilege to work with Emma Doyle for a couple of years. I learned so much from her but one lesson always comes to mind, especially in these challenging times, how to switch your thoughts and work with tough life lessons. For example when you are trying to change your language or re word a thought, it’s not moving out day, it is moving on day! Or trying to understand wh

How many times has someone said something to you in passing and it has cut you to the core? How many times have you opened your mouth without thinking and used words that were funny to you but to to others appear unkind? Words and phrases can hurt more and stay with us longer causing doubt, fear, anger and lack of confidence. In my 55 years on this planet, I have often felt rock bottom because someone has said a silly remark that has taken me down the wrong path, diverted my

Oooh potentially contentious blog! “Instinct is illogical” comes from an acquaintance of mine who reads my blogs. K is a maths/science teacher who bases her whole life on the formulas and theories she teaches. There is not a situation in K’s existence that has not being calculated and nothing is ever left to chance. I should say that I am not writing anything she would not say herself. Where most of us would make matter of the heart decisions with our emotions, K is “cold, lo

The gut feeling versus instinct debate rages on. After I published my last blog a friend sent me this. Her example was when, newly divorced, she bumped into her first love at her lawyer’s office. Her instinct screamed RUN but the lurch in her stomach and the butterflies took her back to that first kiss outside the local pub. Yes, they are both older, and in his case wider, but he still had that smile that turned her legs to jelly. Even after she heard herself agreeing to go f

5 am???? Seriously 5 am! My body clock has to be kidding me! It wasn’t even a turn over and go back to sleep awakening. No, it was a get up and get stuff done alarm and the worst part was my brain agreed with my body. They were. for once, in sync at 5 am. 5 am on a Sunday!!!!! Nothing for it but to get up, have a shower and find something to do quietly. I pulled out my to do list and by 7 am, I had started to build a new blog site, answered 13 emails, sorted and composed 10 T

The one problem with making any big change is doubt, that silly little niggle that starts at the back of your head and will not go away. Small things can very quickly escalate into huge fears and worries and the spiral into heightened anxiety can shift up a gear and speed towards the danger zone. How do you stop that from happening? Self belief, remember where the courage came from to make that decision and why! Focus on you, on your reasons good or bad and use them to point

So what do you do when your courage has prevailed and you find yourself back on the job market? The days of your notice are fading away faster than you would wish and there is no new post yet on the horizon. First step is you get your Linkedin updated and your CV tweeked and polished. Then sit down and make out a plan, forget pros and cons for now, I did a mind map of what I would need to do to survive while I looked for what I wanted. It became very clear to me that temporar

Change! A word that scares many of us to heck and back! Why? Is it because we like being comfortable in an environment that is familiar or is it because we don’t like new faces? Perhaps the reason is that even if it is dangerous, we know what to expect from wherever we have lain our hat! Whatever the excuse, I mean reason, a lot of us just will not change what we perceive to be security. Very often it takes drastic action on the part of karma/Jesus/Universe (delete as appropr

This is the start of a very big week for me, after 12 years I leave my job! At present I do not have another one to go to but the next few days are full of exciting opportunities and that makes me happy #change #life #motivation

So what changed ? Why did I suddenly decide a few months later to finish the job? Another bottle of wine? Another fish supper? Actually it is much simpler than that, all it took was someone sending me a text that said “well I believe in you, read this and remember it” So I have thought, believed, dreamt and finally dared! Sometimes you need to hit rock bottom before you can start again, cliche I know but in this case so true. Apologies dear readers but I broke the promise at

I made the mistake of reading back over some of my Blogs yesterday. Big mistake, mainly because I picked the wrong ones to read. I chose to read those full of promises and pacts with myself, 75% of which I didn’t keep or found some excuse to justify the break! We go out of our way to keep promises to others, cancelling nights out to go see family, leaving the pub because we promised we would be home early, why then is it much easier to break that promise to ourselves than it

Simple act eh? You would think! Two little words we say every day, to the bus driver, the coffee barista or the guy who for once doesn’t shove you out the way to grab the last cinnamon roll! Two little words easily said to others but not so easy to say to yourself. This week has been about saying thank you to you! That person you see in the mirror at the end of the day, the one who left the house looking smart and polished but now looks like she lost a fight backwards with a

“I mean, how do people who are single, over forty with no children define themselves?” Believe it or not I overheard this conversation today between two women in a cafe in the West End of Glasgow! At first I thought they were joking but then hearing the follow up to this notion I, and the other diners, realised they were serious. The women were discussing a single friend and were trying to decide whether or not to invite her to a dinner party. Apparently the poor girl had had

Accepting yourself is an extremely powerful thing! Your flaws, your shape, your abilities and your emotions are who you are. So empowering yourself to accept each one is such a brave thing to do and in that we can find the courage to improve the flaws or embrace them. It us up to us! It us up to me! #mentalheLth #life #selfacceprance #gymfitness #goals

Self Acceptance: being brave enough to present that authentic self and not hide behind a mask of sarcasm, humour or a pile of chips. Finding and embracing the parts that need a helping hand to move forward #Fitness #goaks #BreneBrown #Gym #memtalhealth #life #selfacceptance

Lots of challenges this week, with lots of small steps that will seem huge Channelling Arthur Ashe! #ArthurAshe #life

If I asked you what the face of anxiety looks like,what would you say? If you Google it this is what you get Yet the majority of us who battle any kind of heightened anxiety on a day-to-day basis look normal. We don’t sit in corners crying or run down the street screaming, we get on with our lives until that day when it all gets too much. Your whole world feels totally disabled, the simplest task takes about three days to complete, in my case a passport application form, and

A friend of mine is having to make a decision which will no doubt feel like the wrong thing to do but in her heart of hearts she knows it is the right thing. How many times do we face that in life? The difficult decisions to walk away from a  relationship, leave a job we have been in for years for a new one, move home or just decide that enough is enough and it is time to change. The old brain says “look you know this is the right thing” whereas the heart  is screaming”NO!”.