So many of the articles and memes on this frankly exhaust me just by reading them. You know the ones – they trill something like, “Just 19 Simple Steps To Start Your Day RIGHT!”

It will go something like this: Journal for 15 minutes. Meditate for 20 minutes. Make a delicious fresh fruit breakfast with chia in it. Stretch with a simple 10-minute yoga routine. Take a moment to just breeeeeeathe (ahhhhh!). Read something meaningful that stretches your mind. Have a cold shower to invigorate the immune system. Do something nourishing with essential oils. Listen to a mind-expanding podcast. And so on.

I am sure I am not alone here hearing the voice in my head screaming “Yeah RIGHT!” To make all that good stuff happen I’d need to get up at 3am to start my morning routine!

Those 96-point lists will foster nothing but feelings of inadequacy and guilt. The key is to work with your personal circumstances and personal body clock to optimise what is genuinely realistic to tweak for you. If the goal is not to reach instagram-able levels of perfection, but to start and finish your day feeling a little calmer, a little less stressed, and with more appreciation and ease then keep it simple.

Here are two tiny tweaks you can incorporate without drama.

1 – PHYSICAL. Admiral William H. McRaven, a US Navy Seal, has a great 2-minute motivational talk on “changing the world by making your bed”. A simple but mundane task, it means you have accomplished the first task of the day early. It gives you a small sense of pride and creates the momentum to achieve the next task. As he so eloquently demonstrates, the little things in life matter: when we do the small things right we are more likely to do the big things right. Making your bed is a 2-minute investment (tops, unless you have a serious scatter cushion habit) that will start your day with purpose and discipline.

2 – MENTAL. Use your teeth cleaning time in the morning to anchor in some positivity. This takes exactly NO additional time, but will also set your day off on the right foot. Whilst you are brushing ask yourself the simple question, “What would I like to go RIGHT today?” Actively force your mind to start the day worry-free and focus on all the opportunities for connection and productivity you have coming up.

Take a moment to review your regular morning routine. It might (if you are honest with yourself) be “hit snooze 4 times” (time investment 36-minutes) and “noodle on Facebook first thing” (12 minutes). In which case a quick refresh is in order.

These two tips, one physical, one mental, you can incorporate no matter how busy you are, into start each day with purpose and positivity .

The post Two TINY tweaks you CAN make to start your day right appeared first on Louise Thompson, Life Coach, Wellbeing Writer and Speaker.

​​Your brain defaults to seeing “The Gap” of where you want to be…the chores undone, the emails not replied to, the yoga class not made, the story not read, the kitchen bench not decluttered…you know, The Gap between YOU and Superwoman who is “on top of everything”.

This default perspective is unhelpful. Makes us feel bad. We need to consciously direct our brain to “The Gain” instead. The sore knee kissed better. The midday meeting that got an outcome. The lunch boxes were packed. The kindly Good Morning to the elderly neighbour. The bins put out. The swift lunchtime walk. The dentist appointment booked. The twenty six emails that DID get replied to.

Look. Life is LIFE. It will NEVER be complete til we are

There will ALWAYS be stuff that’s UNDONE.

You can’t use DONE-NESS as your measure of how good your day was.

Train your brain to see not The Gap, but The Gain.

I promise you: you are doing better than you are judging yourself for. 

Remove the unattainable yardstick of “done”, you will never reach it anyway.

Redirect your attention, and your COMPASSION to give your sweet self a break: I promise you, you are doing better than you think you are. 

The post You are doing better than you think 💞 appeared first on Louise Thompson, Life Coach, Wellbeing Writer and Speaker.

Have you noticed how much (especially as women) we tend to over-apologise and say sorry when it’s not actually required?! It’s a weird habit, and one worth revising. Things I am no longer apologising for:

Not always being available (time, attention and energy are limited, it’s not personal, it’s just freaking MATHS)

Prioritising the things that matter (to ME)

Not giving an answer right away (it’s ok to think about it)

  Working at the pace that’s right for me on voluntary projects (it needs to fit in with my life, not the other way round!)

When it’s not actually MY FAULT there is an issue! (why the hell am I saying sorry – YOU say sorry!)

Forget the bubble bath. This. Is. Real. Self. Care.

The post STOP apologising! appeared first on Louise Thompson, Life Coach, Wellbeing Writer and Speaker.

The only thing you have to do is BREATHE. Everything after that is a CHOICE.

Life becomes very different in a very short space of time once we truly grasp this fundamental truth. 

Go through every statement you have made about why you can’t improve your health, or make time for yourself, and substitute the word ‘choose’ for any of the ubiquitous “I should / I can’t / I must / I need to / I have to”.

What I want you to realise is that “I should / I can’t / I must / I need to / I have to” are stories. Stories that you tell yourself over and over and over, that keep you trapped in a place of disempowerment and fatigue.

How are they stories? Well, let me repeat the secret I told you earlier: The only thing any one of us has/must/needs to do is breathe. Everything after that is a choice. What a revelation.

Right. So, let’s see how this works in practice. I just love the power of this exercise. It truly is a life-changer.

The important thing to note here is that after you make your choice, you just move on. Make the choice knowing that this is what is right for you. Choose it and move on, releasing any guilt around it. Fully enjoy that choice and that time without thoughts of guilt. 

State your position and stand in your truth: with your boss, your client, your parents. You can’t control their reaction, but you can honour yourself and stand firm in your truth with clarity over your choice. 

Your highest purpose on this earth is to honour your authentic self, your true emotions and your physical body. You should never feel guilty about making that choice. Sure, someone else might not like your choice, but that is then their choice about how they react to it.

You can choose to work late every night, rather than have one potentially uncomfortable conversation with your boss. But at least be honest with yourself about it. You are choosing it. If that’s what you want, that’s fine. Choose it and move forward with the energy of empowerment, even if it’s not a choice that makes you happy.

The post I have a secret to share with you 🤫 appeared first on Louise Thompson, Life Coach, Wellbeing Writer and Speaker.

As humans, we habitually

a) OVERestimate what we can do in a DAY

and

b) UNDERestimate what we can accomplish in a YEAR

For a QUICK SNAPSHOT of where you will be a YEAR from now, look at your habits TODAY:

Do you have a habit of being busy all the time just racing from one thing to the next?

Do you have a habit of people pleasing and putting your own needs to the back of the queue?

Do you have a habit of starting a healthy habit but very quickly falling off the wagon?

Do you think you’ll sort these things “when there is time”?

That time pretty much never comes

Genuine change is building tiny habits IN THE NOW:

A daily mental health practice that keeps you up and moving forwards.

Purposefully your body daily in some way daily, no matter what.

Being aware of your true priorities for the YEAR and allocation your time, energy and attention in line with that in the moment.

These are all things that are built into my Coaching Academy Wellbeing Warriors* – all you need to do is show up and be amazed at what you can accomplish in a year.  

If you don’t have a structure and a system for making good choices easier and supported for yourself then either join one or create one for yourself. If you want to know how your life will look a year from now…you can find the answer in your tiny choices today

The post Stop waiting to change 💗 appeared first on Louise Thompson, Life Coach, Wellbeing Writer and Speaker.

How about we stop waiting for summer? For the kids to be older. Until we drop the last 5kg. For Friday. For the weekend. Until the exams are over. The reno is done. The mortgage is paid off. The house is bought. The deposit is saved. Until she behaves herself. Until the flights are booked. The work is done. The boss says yes. The campaign is over. The treatment is complete. The project starts. The term finishes. Until we have some space. Until we have some time. Until they sleep through the night. Until he/she says yes. Until we can afford it.

How about we stop with the waiting? If we are not mindful, happiness can be deferred for so many good, and not so good, reasons. Daily life can become a mental ticker tape of things to get done, and days to be got through, before the big ticket milestones fall into place. We can become so focused on the future that we forget to connect to the tiny moments of joy that are inherent in the now.

It is a great truth that, as much as there is always something to appreciate in the worst of times (if we dig really deep, it will be there), conversely, there is always something to complain about in the best of times, if that is where our focus goes.

It’s up to each of us to figure out which way we want to habitually look at the world.

Choosing to stop waiting to be happy can be one of the most powerful choices we can ever make. We can miss so many everyday moments of happiness accessible right now, this minute, when we are in wait mode for the significant jigsaw pieces of life to fall into place.

We can choose to be happy now when we breathe in the aroma of our fresh cuppa. When a small hand slips into ours at pick-up. That we have people to share a meal with at the end of the day. For the nourishing food on our plate. That we have incredible gadgets to clean our home that prior generations spent their whole day doing manually (my granny had a mangle in the outhouse for goodness’ sake!). That we just messaged a friend 12,000 miles away on the other side of the world in three seconds on our phone. That our sheets smell clean and fresh. That we breathe such clean green air and don’t even think about it. That our body is walking, talking and seeing effortlessly. The sunshine on our skin. The breeze in our hair. The smile of a stranger. The unbridled glee of a child at something so small. The dog was so happy to see us home.

When we are waiting for the big jigsaw pieces to fall into place and rushing to the next thing, we can chronically overlook the tiny moments of joy that are only accessible now, now, now. It’s the little moments that light life up.

Look up people, look up. Happiness is right now.

The post Are you missing these tiny moments of joy? 😍 appeared first on Louise Thompson, Life Coach, Wellbeing Writer and Speaker.

Well…it comes from THREE places:

1. From the crap that happens to us in life: unwanted CURVEBALLS force us to grow, whether we like it or not, to expand to cope with whatever craptastic event has come our way.

2. From positive circumstances that come into our life: new baby / new job / more money / OPPORTUNITIES that are welcome but stretch us to meet them.

3. When we CHOOSE to expand and grow as people by CREATING INTENTIONAL personal growth. This might be signing up for a half-marathon, or for a programme of guided personal growth like my coaching Academy. This is where you consciously choose you are ready to EXPAND who you are, and who you are BECOMING.

Notice the first two are largely PASSIVE: we grow by default because of what life throws AT us. It’s a kind of uncontrolled personal growth: it just happens TO us, we HAVE to grow to COPE.

The third option is OUR CHOICE. Its ACTIVE. It’s where we say to ourselves that we are READY for MORE of something in our lives. That we will DELIBERATELY CREATE

CHALLENGE for ourselves in order to grow and become the expanded version of ourselves we can be.

The challenge we choose in order to stimulate our personal growth might be PHYSICAL (learning to windsurf, dropping eating sugar), it might be MENTAL (getting on top of our finances or learning techniques to reduce overthinking), it might be EMOTIONAL (having that difficult conversation we have been avoiding) or it might be SPIRITUAL in terms of personal expansion (developing a meditation practice).

We CANNOT help but GROW through life because life WILL throw things at us – good and bad, wanted and unwanted – all the way through life…till the day we die! That is a fact.

What I find the coolest… is the people with the CAPACITY to SEEK ADDITIONAL personal growth through CHOICE. That they actively STEP TOWARDS expansion and make it happen for themselves through challenge, as well as the inevitable coping with what life brings.

(My Coaching Academy is like a COCOON for CHOSEN personal growth. An incubator for it. A safe, supported space where it can be created in a gradual but irresistible draw forwards. I bloody love that I get to create that for a living.)

However, you get your GROWTH, passively or actively, know that it’s all about a reaction to CIRCUMSTANCES.

Either your GROWTH RESPONSE to meet circumstances that happen TO you. This is inevitable. Plus, your GROWTH RESPONSE to circumstances you CHOOSE to introduce into your life in order to CHALLENGE and change you.

I want you to know, that although crap in your life does indeed make you grow, there are two other ways to do it! I call them the THREE C’s!

So, we have:

1. Curveballs &Crap

2. Challenges

3. Choice

Does this ring bells for you? You can let me know here if it’s a helpful perspective for you to consider! If you are ready for more of Option 3 “Choice” you can see how that would look for you here.

Some of us have done FAR too much of our growth in the first category… this is your sign to re-align those ratios!

The post Where does personal growth come from? appeared first on Louise Thompson, Life Coach, Wellbeing Writer and Speaker.

It’s been a crazy busy couple of months as I race to get two houses moved into one. At the weekend I realised I had rescheduled out all of my own important commitments this week in order to work around various client and family requests. I was more than happy to do it at the time but as I reached the weekend I was aware I was completely frazzled! It was a good reality check for me: I could feel a bad habit creeping back in: the need to please, to not be perceived as “selfish” and the inability to say no!

Rescheduling what’s important to you (your run/yoga session/coffee with a friend) because someone else’s needs require fulfilling has a short-term psychological payoff. We feel like a good person for going out of our way to help someone else, or putting the needs of our client/employer/child/spouse before our own. They are happy: therefore we are happy.

As an occasional thing it’s absolutely a win-win: everyone gains in happiness and our sacrifice of personal needs is balanced by the feelgood factor of helping someone else get what they need. Score!

As a long-term strategy, however, it’s a disaster. If we consistently put other people’s needs before our own then it leads to burnout and resentment. I see many clients who have fallen into this trap. I see it a lot with mums who make time to taxi their kids to 17 different after-school activities but can’t seem to make time for one damn thing for themselves in the week, or the next week, or the week after that. Also, with busy professionals who defer their weekly game of squash, or acting class in order to get that big project at work finished. And then the next week there is another important, urgent work issue. And the next. And on it goes.

It’s faulty thinking. Somehow, we get into the habit of deferring our own perfectly valid needs because other people’s needs matter more. Their happiness matters more. Meeting their needs becomes more important. It doesn’t make sense and here is why. If needs matter, then all people’s needs matter, not just your boss/husband/child, but yours too. Either everybody’s needs count, or nobody’s count.

A wise old boss once put it to me this way: “if you say yes to everything Louise, what is your yes worth?” Being able to sometimes say “no” and stick to it makes your “yes” much more valuable.

It’s your job to stand up for what you need to be healthy and happy, even if that means that someone else doesn’t get what they need (or think they need) all the time.

The opposite of selfish is selfless. And this is absolutely what we get. We are so busy trying to avoid being selfish that we get less of ourselves, less of what matters to us in our lives.

I’d like us to think about being “self-full” instead of selfish. That we can carve out time to replenish ourselves, and we should. When we do this, we have so much more juice in the tank to give to others. It’s that classic analogy of putting on your own oxygen mask first in a crashing plane so you can then help others.

When we have commitments to our own needs in terms of what is a good life-work balance for us, what we need to look after our own physical, emotional and spiritual health, then we have so much more to serve the world.

PS. Want some snappy self-care inspiration RIGHT NOW that isn’t the usual “drink more water, oh and have a bubble bath” yawnathon? I got ya! Download my latest book 101 Self-Care Ideas right here. It’s amazing value, super pretty and…it’s satisfyingly TICKABLE so you can see your progress!

That’s ONE thing you can do for you, right now. You’re welcome

The post Is putting myself first selfish? appeared first on Louise Thompson, Life Coach, Wellbeing Writer and Speaker.

Prisha had a problem and that was – she was veeeerrry burned out. And that a lot of her “I’m fine!”’s were in fact covering up the fact she was utterly overwhelmed and feeling like she was a hamster on a wheel from the moment she woke up to the moment she closed her eyes at night. 

AND because she was already so busy, she absolutely did NOT have time for yet another spendy wellbeing programme or gym membership that would be gathering dust after the first week. She didn’t need more in her life, she was already up to her limit. 

Prisha joined the Coaching Academy as a bit of a cry for help, really. And she spent the first few weeks just checking in with the daily challenges, as she dipped into the Packing Light module that helped her dial down her tendency to overthink. 

Her big breakthrough came in one of the weekly Coach Spot LIVE sessions. It was a question another Academy member had asked about overwhelm in terms of extended family obligations, and as she listened to the advice and tools given on the live Prisha picked up a HUGE ‘AHA!’ moment for herself that changed the way she had been viewing her responsibilities and her boundaries. 

The other woman’s question unlocked her exact dilemma. Putting it into practice with a simple 5-step conversation (in the Better Boundaries module) changed SO MUCH in her office life and at home to create that breathing space she needed. It was suddenly so CLEAR when it wasn’t her wrestling with her own problem in her own head, but hearing someone get coached on something similar just unlocked that situation for her. 

That’s why we do a new LIVE Coach Spot every week inside the WW Academy. 

Those sorts of live conversations and interactions are BAKED INTO THE ACADEMY. I know it’s not just about the tools and resources in the module that month (and they are awesome!), it’s also about the opportunity to have your personal life issues coached.

One new perspective can be all it takes to unlock an issue that you have been wrestling with for YEARS.

I will never cease to be delighted by how much each weekly Coach Spot session helps SO many other members. There is a universality to what bothers us… and being able to see the nuggets of your own solution hidden in someone else’s question and answer is THE COOLEST THING. 

You might be surprised by how much you’ll get out of these weekly LIVE sessions. You don’t need to join me live (although great if you can!) all the coaching sessions are available for replay in a very tidy and indexed hub where you can go listen as you are out walking the dog or driving to work! 

If the LIVE Coach Spot sessions sound interesting to you, they are WEEKLY, and INCLUDED in your Wellbeing Warriors membership, and you can jump in now and enjoy AND beat the price rise?!

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE COACHING ACADEMY, SIGN UP BEFORE 31ST JULY TO BEAT THE PRICE RISE

The post Breaking through from burnout: When “I’m fine” is really a secret cry for help appeared first on Louise Thompson, Life Coach, Wellbeing Writer and Speaker.

So common, and at a very real cost to our mental health.

Much (not all, but a lot) of our stress is (when we step back and evaluate it objectively) self-created. It’s the same thought-loops or stories we have told ourselves over and over about how we are letting someone down / not good enough in some way / something is going to go wrong / so and so will be upset.

These catastophising stories can run on repeat in our heads creating anxiety and stress. It’s all the over-thinking “What ifs” that can drag us down.

A really helpful tip can be getting these endless anxiety-inducing stories out of your head, and into paper.

Once you look at them in black and white it’s a lot easier to slow the over-thinking down, and evaluate them with a more considered perspective:

Is that really true? Is that a fact? Where’s the evidence of that? What’s the percentage likelihood of that ever occurring? If that did happen how would I handle it? When have I handled something similar successfully before? Is this even my responsibility?

The problem isn’t that we are thinking – it’s HOW we are thinking.

Pull out a pen and paper (or use the notes page in your phone) acknowledge that thinking, and then assess that story for truth, likelihood, responsibility and your capability.

The post Over-thinking… sound familiar?! appeared first on Louise Thompson, Life Coach, Wellbeing Writer and Speaker.