What if you believed you were PERFECT, JUST AS YOU ARE. 

Not when you have lost the last 5 kilos. 

Or finally cleared out the garage like you have been saying for 18 months. 

Or finished that qualification you have been slogging away at. 

Or made up with your sister who you haven’t spoken to for years. 

Or baked all the cupcakes FROM SCRATCH for the school fete and run the tombolo. 

BUT RIGHT NOW? 

The weight of “who we should be” is a heavy thing to carry around each day. 

Truth is, there is no “should be”.

We are all a permanent “Work In Progress”.

We will never be done, finished, complete

We are perfect imperfect works of progress at all times.

And we wish away so much of our “now” happiness carrying the weight of who we feel we “should be” or how our life “should be”.

Should is one of the heaviest words in the English language and I would like to ban it. It makes us feel unnecessarily bad about ourselves!

Who you are right now is just perfect, you can take that from me.

Put the weight down.

And have a very happy day.

PS. Celebrate yourself here and now with some real self-care action, my book “101 Self-Care Ideas”. Grab it for just $17 NZD / £7.50 GBP!

The post The heavy weight of “who we should be” appeared first on Louise Thompson, Life Coach, Wellbeing Writer and Speaker.

Stop assuming people are mad or pissed off at you in some way. 

Stop attempting to read their minds and adapting your behaviour around that assumption.

Stop trying to manage the thoughts and emotions of others. Those thoughts and emotions live in their heads and their bodies, not yours, so let people be in charge of themselves. 

If they have something to say to you, they will.

If they have something they genuinely need to ask of you, they will.

If they have something to say that truly matters to them that they want you to know, they will.

And if they don’t – it is their responsibility, not yours. 

And just like that, we get to recalibrate. Confronting this one I know, especially if we have been stuck in people pleasing patterns for years, (decades!) but stopping the default assumption of over-responsibility is a sure path to peace, my friend, I promise you.

Have a wonderful weekend, and if you do want to look at doing VIP Coaching with me, I only take 10 clients per year (all sold out!) but you absolutely can join my group coaching programme and get live coaching on your issue and situation each Friday morning. You can check that out here. 

The post Are you being “over-responsible” for how other people feel? appeared first on Louise Thompson, Life Coach, Wellbeing Writer and Speaker.

As adults we somehow expect ourselves to be knocking it outta the park day after day after day after day. Being “On Top Of It” and by “It” I mean All The Things.

Kind of not possible as an expectation, but there we are: most of us have our internal thermostat of expectation set to HIGH every. single. day.

To be clear it is an utterly mad expectation that we will be at 100% on all levels each day.

In fact “Our best” each day can and WILL look radically different. 

That is because, dear reader, we are not freaking ROBOTS.

We will have a natural ebb and flow to our physical energy. Our creative resources. Our patience. Our compassion. Our productivity. And so on.

We are COMPLEX. We cannot be at 100% on all the things all the time. 

Some days just getting through the day at 22% is an ENORMOUS WIN.

Some days we can conquer all and truly dazzle ourselves.

But not every day.

(I am not sure the plethora of permanently smiley seemingly continually productive and “perfect” influencers helps anyone here with our own expectation setting)

Some days just getting through it and not dropping any serious balls is 100% of what we had available in the tank THAT day.

That IS our best.

So I think we should all cut ourselves a little slack.

We are not going to meet every day the same 

And that, my friend, is okay.

What percentage are you functioning at today?

The post Embrace your best: Let’s ditch the perfection appeared first on Louise Thompson, Life Coach, Wellbeing Writer and Speaker.

Where do you give the balance of your attention?

It’s an important question to ask of ourselves.

Especially if life isn’t going super well for us right now.

Because whatever we focus on GROWS

Focus on the love and opportunity present in your life…you will get more

Focus on the drama and difficulty in your life…more will come join it

This isn’t about ignoring or avoiding reality (you can’t, anyway!)

It’s about looking at where you direct your focus once you have taken care of what you need to.

What you choose to water your mind with is what will grow

Water it with thoughts of your own capability rather than worry

Water it with memories of good times if the now is feeling hard

Water it with lists of your achievements or your loves rather than your fears

Yes this is work – directing our mind IS work

Yes this sounds woo-woo. However, does that matter if we feel happier?!

Our FOCUS is really important

Direct it to what you want MORE of in your life

What you focus on is what will GROW

And I want you to have more of the good stuff!

Remember what we choose to focus on GROWS What will you choose to focus on this week?

The post Where should you give the balance of your attention? appeared first on Louise Thompson, Life Coach, Wellbeing Writer and Speaker.

Broadly speaking, the left hemisphere of our brain is where our rational logical mind lives, and our right hemisphere is home to our sense of peace and creativity. At work, we can tend to get stuck in left brain dominance, very task focused and logical: all good things. However, if you want to find a little moment of peace in your day, take 60 seconds to consciously activate more of your right brain. Simply use a few rounds of the Alternate Nostril Breathing that we start class with, OR, you can simply close your mouth AND your RIGHT nostril and breath in and out 10 breaths just through the LEFT nostril SLOWLY to energise the right brain. Take 60 seconds to do this before a meeting and notice how much more calm and focused you are. Spooky.

#2. Relax the face

So much tension can build up in the face, we are sending stress messages to our body just from the determined set of our jaw and our wrinkled brow. Try this great yoga asana ‘Lion’ to release the tension from your face and to send relaxation throughout your body.

You will need to work in an office where you can close the door for this one, or pop to the bathroom to try it unless you have very  incurious colleagues in your open-plan office!

So, sit quietly, put your hands in your lap, then scrunch your face up, tight tight tight, scrunch the forehead, wrinkle the nose, grit the teeth: make a real scrunched old prune face…then…big exhale…do the lion face: open your mouth WIDE and stretch your tongue out, curling its tip down toward the chin, open your eyes wide, contract the muscles on the front of your throat, and exhale the breath slowly out through your mouth with a big “ha” sound. Then just check in with how you are feeling. Better, huh? I know, you don’t realise just how much tension you are holding in your face until you release it. Nice.

#3. Relax the mind

If  you are getting super stressed by a particular task or person ask yourself: how much will this thing, or this person’s opinion of this thing, matter to me 5 years from now? 99% of the time the answer is ‘hmmmm, not so much actually’ and simply, asking the question is accompanied by a release of mental tension. So, just realigning your long-term perspective with this simple question can take much of the emotion and the frustration out of the task or the interaction and make it much simpler to complete. All it takes is 60 seconds to press pause and your body and mind will thank you for it.

The post De-stressing at Work in 60 Seconds 🧘‍♀️ appeared first on Louise Thompson, Life Coach, Wellbeing Writer and Speaker.

Be. Kind. To. Your. Mind.

Find something that works for YOU to switch it off.

Might be baking

Might be running

Might be one of those meditation colouring books (so not just for kids!) (that’s why I include a new design each month in the Coaching Academy!).

For me, nothing breaks the chatter in my head like smacking the boxing bag. Real hard! Everything else just melts away. 

Whatever your thing is, engage in it with enthusiasm and consistency and (crucially!) without guilt.

The post Be kind to your mind 🧡 appeared first on Louise Thompson, Life Coach, Wellbeing Writer and Speaker.

What to do, what to do? 

There are TWO important strategies for you to get unstuck: 

1. Create increased MOMENTUM in an area of life that is going WELL, where there is NO confusion. Take a step forwards or up or just any kind of simple positive action to AMP UP what is going WELL. Make what is going well go even BETTER. 

Why does this work to get you unstuck on the OTHER thing? 

By UPPING your focus in a positive direction you naturally REDUCE it on what is negative. This can unlock what is not going so well as you have stopped trying to FORCE a solution to something you haven’t been able to solve. You get in the groove of what’s going WELL and that positive energy creates a ripple effect that helps the OTHER thing start to solve not you are not poking at it the whole time. 

2. Take ONE SMALL STEP towards resolving THE THING that is stuck. You don’t need to see HOW THE WHOLE THING will solve or work out or fix itself. You don’t need to see 3 years down the track and how it will all unfold. Just take one small step, one tiny action on it, that feels even just slightly like relief or lightness. Just take a TINY STEP. Don’t think its pointless because it’s small, do it anyway. 

Why does THIS work to get you unstuck? 

Firstly because you will feel a tiny bit of relief from your tiny step, and relief is always good. Secondly, and more importantly, you will gain a NEW PERSPECTIVE from the place just one tiny step further on that you may not have seen. Think of it like a fiendishly hard 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle. Putting in ONE puzzle piece doesn’t seem like its really doing anything, drop in the ocean when there are still 946 still to place, BUT, that one clicking into place makes just one of the others make a bit more sense, you can see just a hint more of a pattern than you could before which unlocks the next tiny step and tiny piece of the puzzle. Each piece CHANGES THE PERSPECTIVE AVAILABLE to you of the NEXT one. You don’t NEED to see the whole thing to take the next small step, you trust that one will start to REVEAL the other.

(Image credit: wonder_doodles)

___________________________________________________________

While you’re here I have a question for you.

Does overthinking keep you awake at night?

Does this lady provide an accurate representation of how you often feel?!

If so, I would love to help you.

Join me in July 2024 for

The 30-Day Shrinking Overthinking Bootcamp

Stop negative spirals and make your mind a nicer place to live in 30 days.

Join me in July 2024 to learn 6 powerful techniques to manage your mind and reduce anxiety.

As someone who overcame extreme burnout, I’ve helped thousands of women stop overthinking.

Now, I am looking for 50 women who want to learn how to reduce stressful loops of overthinking, stop negative spirals, declutter their mind and feel more in control, to join me for this 30-day challenge inside my Coaching Academy, from 1st July 2024.

It’s £39/month | Risk free | 30-Day Guarantee | Cancel any time!

Click here to learn more.

The post What to do when you don’t know what to do appeared first on Louise Thompson, Life Coach, Wellbeing Writer and Speaker.

If you are anything like me I expect you do a bit each day…put this and that away, unload the dishwasher, wipe the surfaces, pick up that towel (that only I seem able to see ) and so on…

Why? Well again, same as me I guess you do a little bit of a tidy up each day for the same reasons:

If you leave it more than a few days it’s just so much harder to sort out, mess seems to breed mess!

I can’t RELAX in a messy space, I don’t work well, but I also don’t relax well either

  I just feel better if I keep on top if things

Same, yes?

So, that’s what we all do to keep on top of our living space, to ensure it’s a clean and tidy place to live, rest and work. Somewhere we enjoy spending time. Enjoy connecting. Enjoy hanging out. 

Now then {first_name}, what if I asked you the same about your INTERNAL SPACE? Your brain and mind .

How do you tidy THAT each day? 

How do you ensure that you do a little and often to keep your internal space (your mental health) clean and ordered so it’s a space where you are happy hanging out and spending time? How do you clear up so small issues don’t become big ones because they have been left ignored in a pile or swept under the carpet? Do you feel relaxed and connected in your own mind?

Much tricker question, yes? 

We are so much better at prioritising our EXTERNAL living space, to our INTERNAL living space, and yes…and yet…the one that has the biggest impact on our mental health? INSIDE OUR OWN HEADS! Remember, we take that space everywhere with us! It’s at home, at work, in the car, at the airport, at the dentist’s office, at the concert, in the supermarket…we are IN that space every waking moment of every single day. It’s actually our MOST IMPORTANT SPACE. 

Given that’s the space we actually spend the most time in – how do we make sure we keep that clean and clear and that it’s a nice place to be?

___________________________________________________________

While you’re here I have a question for you.

Does overthinking keep you awake at night?

Does this lady provide an accurate representation of how you often feel?!

If so, I would love to help you.

Join me in July 2024 for

The 30-Day Shrinking Overthinking Bootcamp

Stop negative spirals and make your mind a nicer place to live in 30 days.

Join me in July 2024 to learn 6 powerful techniques to manage your mind and reduce anxiety.

As someone who overcame extreme burnout, I’ve helped thousands of women stop overthinking.

Now, I am looking for 50 women who want to learn how to reduce stressful loops of overthinking, stop negative spirals, declutter their mind and feel more in control, to join me for this 30-day challenge inside my Coaching Academy, from 1st July 2024.

It’s £39 | Risk free | 30-Day Guarantee | Cancel any time!

Click here to learn more.

The post How often do you tidy the house? 🏡 appeared first on Louise Thompson, Life Coach, Wellbeing Writer and Speaker.

When a whole new decade is bearing down on us we seem far more likely to ask ourselves if our life is all that it “should be” by this stage. Are we hitting the milestones we had always privately set for ourselves at this marker? Life can be thrown into sharp relief by contemporaries around us ticking past the same clock and the same milestones.

A change of decade can be the most incredible kick up the pahootie to refocus and get serious about what we want to achieve in the next decade, harnessing that natural motivation can be all powerful. But I also see it as a time where more regret will also surface as a result of the reflection. 

Of milestones not met or exceeded, statuses not reached. 

The trick here is not to get sucked into a whirlpool of regret, but to take any relevant lessons and use them to push forwards once again. 

To not look sorrowfully at the time that has been “lost” but focus all that is to come. To take it as a clean fresh page and begin again. Start anew. Double down. Make it happen. 

The quote attributed to C. S. Lewis says it best “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending”. 

We have the power to write ourselves a new ending any time we choose. We can do it whenever we take the time to reflect and refocus: not just when the year reads “9”, or a day of the week starts with an M. That no matter what is past, we get to say how our story will end. Starting now.  You can write yourself a new ending, starting today. 

The post Write yourself a new ending 💞 appeared first on Louise Thompson, Life Coach, Wellbeing Writer and Speaker.

It’s this one:

It’s a Chinese proverb which says “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.” 

So good, yes? 

When was the best time to take up yoga, and keep up your practice every day? Well, twenty tears go, but the second best time is NOW. 

When was the best time for you to have started that amazing skin care routine? Well, twenty tears go, but the second-best time is NOW. 

When was the best time for you to have started saving extra for retirement? Well, twenty tears go, but the second-best time is NOW. 

When was the best time for you to stop eating sugar/start doing 10000 steps a day? Well, twenty tears go, but the second-best time is NOW. 

You get it. 

Anything seriously life-enhancing benefits from longevity and the benefit of compounding returns. From it becoming so routine and such a habit it just becomes our natural baseline of how we take care of ourselves. 

The same goes for taking care of our mental and emotional health. 

“The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”

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