Yesterday I was interviewed by the amazing Sarah Grace from Living Limitlessly.
I have been working with Sarah for a few weeks because over the last few years of working on myself and my self care, and finding balance in my own life, it was time to address and shift the trauma I suffered as a child.
Sarah works with women who have suffered sexual abuse and become workaholics to mask the trauma. I was that workaholic. The problem with that was that I was neglecting myself. Both my mental and physical health. I ignored it in the hope it would pass and thought I could just barrel on through it. I was wrong.
I spent a long time being someone I was not, which also impacted on my mental and physical health.
When my physical health reached breaking point, I knew it was time to make changes. They were not easy and they took time, but they started to embed and now I have balance in my life with work and home, with myself and my past.
It is possible to make changes for yourself. It is possible to recover from trauma and stop using work as a way to avoid dealing with it. It is possible to achieve balance.
I recently did my podcast! I was interviewed by the fabulous positive psychologist and happiness coach, Meg. We talked all things happy and I told my story of how I became a happiness rebel. The link is at the bottom of this blog, please listen and then start your own happiness rebellion!
I am a solicitor and mindful coach. After being a lawyer for nearly 20 years and experiencing the high pressure, stressful nature of the rat race, I chose to choose a different life and my own version of happiness. I retrained as a coach and moved to the Italian Countryside with my husband and four dogs.
I want people to know that everything that is possible when we choose happiness in the most radical form, from the moment I rebelled against the grain of the corporate career by being me, to learning to talk myself into the things that bring me joy.
Radical self-care itself is an act of rebellion and Meg and I invite you to rebel too. Hopefully you will be inspired to stop what you are doing and think about how you can invite more happiness into your life by writing your very own happiness manifesto.
We covered:
How I climbed the corporate ladder I thought I had to, and everything felt just ‘fine’ but ‘fine’ just isn’t enough!
My realisation that time is more important to me than money, or things and how I left my life behind in the UK to in the Italian countryside
How we’re conditioned to think of things that we ‘should’ be doing and how to rebel and do the things that light you up
Why designing your life around the things you love can create huge shifts in your happiness
How to be motivated by thinking of the things that you love doing and never wanting to be someone who said ‘I was going to do that’
How my peers called me the ‘anti-lawyer’ because I didn’t fit the mould of how I was expected to look or act… and how that made me better at my job
Why it’s none of your business what other people think of you
How to give yourself permission about the things that radically light you up
Contact me if you would like to know how to become a happiness rebel or how to write your happiness manifesto!
About happybyme founded by Meg.
happybyme exists to support people to make great things happen by cultivating happiness. We beleive that by supporting people to take control of their happiness, more great things will happen in the world. We do this through our range of training and coaching solutions and our brand new ‘Choose Happiness’ Planner.
I was contemplating joy and celebration this morning. Not about the big things in life, like new jobs, relationships, countries, but more about celebrating what is happening or has happened without the proviso of wanting more. Celebrating the now.
We all have moments of joy. When a friend calls, when you grow your first strawberry, when that dog in the street chooses you for a cuddle. However, that joy can be fleeting because almost as soon as we have experienced it, we find ourselves wanting more of it. Wanting that friend to call more often, more strawberries to grow, more friendly dogs. I find that this wanting more can diminish the joy you found, because we are telling ourselves that it wasn’t enough. We took something unexpected and joyful and increased our expectations of it.
When we do this, the joy starts to leave us because we are busy focusing on how we increase it. Rather than focusing on just bathing in the feeling of joy, we feel it slipping away when we expect more, and before we know it we can be sad about something that made us happy. We are no longer thinking, wow, that was so lovely, we are thinking, why don’t they call more? Why is my strawberry plant not producing? Why doesn’t that other dog want to come and see me? We focus on the negative. We set ourselves up for sadness and disappointment.
Instead we could try to hold onto the joy. We could say to ourselves that we might not speak to that friend very often, but we had a lovely conversation and it made us happy. We might only have grown one strawberry but we grew it, with our love and nurturing and it tastes so sweet. That dog chose us, singled us out as someone they trusted. If we never have those experiences again, it doesn’t matter, because we will always have the experiences we had which brought us joy.
An exercise that can help is to think of a day on which you felt joy. For example, today might be grey and wet, but this time last week you might have been out playing, reading, swimming on a sunshine filled afternoon. Instead of wishing for a better weather day today, think about that sunny day last week, try to bring to mind the joy you felt. Now look around you, see if you can bring that joy into today. What small things are you grateful for, what made you smile or laugh? It can’t always be sunny, but we can always look for some sun.
Find your life’s balance 