Month: February 2017

CHANGE: A CURATED (SIMPLE) LIFE

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curate2 kjʊ(ə)ˈreɪt/ verb past tense: curated; past participle: curate To select, organize, and look after the items in (a collection or exhibition). When I realised that I had to get real and get myself and my life together it sparked a whole lot of thinking. As far as I could see, the problem was that I was all over the place in every aspect of my life. The problem was that nothing was broken so I didn’t look at anything too closely. Bank account? Noooooo, I didn’t want to check that – I knew that my latest trip to Karen Walker made me want to avoid that baby for a while. Sort out what I had on that week? I was pretty sure I had double booked myself multiple days, so I was going to ignore that until it was almost on top of me. You get the picture, and that was just scratching the surface! An idea that kept niggling at the corner of my mind was why I had so much cr@p in …

DETOX: DO YOU NEED A DIGITAL DETOX?

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Are you addicted to your phone? Does it make you anxious if you and your precious are parted? What about when you have a moment of down time, do you whip out your device to avoid those terrifying seconds of nothing-ness???? As you read this, do your hands feel clammy at the mere thought of your precious not being with you at all times? Ok, I will stop but you get my point. The real question here, it’s time to put that smart phone away and to remember what it’s like to be in the real world? When you think bad habits and addictions have you ever considered what the impact your digital consumption is having on your life? I want you to think about how the constant notifications make you feel. What about when you are with your friends or family, do you spend more time considering how insta-worthy that moment is instead of being in it? Is the very first thing you do when you wake or go to bed a social media …

HOW TO: CRANK YOUR MOJO

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It can be hard to keep our minds sharp and engaged, especially when we are tired and stressed out. The modern work life is often one that lacks balance with our home life and passions. Being constantly “on” can be hard, but it can be even harder when you can feel that you have run out of gas and are at risk of burning out. If you have lost your spark, your mojo is feeling a little flaky or perhaps you feel that you are feeling like you have run out of juice, here are some of my road tested remedies to get that mojo cranking again! Hit the hay I have put this first as I do believe that this is one of the single most important things that you can do to recharge. Sleep. Sleep is really, really good for you, seriously. Most of us don’t get anywhere near the amount (or more importantly the DEEP sleep that we need – REM) that our bodies and brains need. It is REM sleep that …

MINDFULNESS: MENTAL BANDWIDTH

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One of my pet hates is (insert wail) “There are just not enough hours in a day and it stresses me out!!!”. Before you get mad and tell me just how busy you are being busy, just give me a minute to explain. If you never give your life a mental stock take then it will easily run out of control. This is what I will keep going on about here on Conscious Me. You have to stay on top of your life! Yes it is admin-y work. No, it isn’t as fun as hitting the sofa with a Friends re-run. It is your life though. How important is it to you really? I get it, with work life often bleeding into our personal lives we are faced with a barrage of emails, meetings, phone calls, voice messages, family, friends, life admin – the list goes on. We are all just so busyyyyyy! You tell yourself that you have to take it all on. Sheer frustration may drive you to keep adding more to your …

CAREER: 5 WAYS TO THRIVE AT WORK

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Work gets a bad wrap and we often think about it the wrong way. You know what I mean – answer this honestly, how many times did you make a comment about how long it was until the end of the day. This is pretty crazy considering the amount of time that we spend in our day job. We have a couple of options, if you hate your job that much perhaps it’s time to start the hunt for a new one. If it isn’t that bad, it’s time to quit that negative thinking, seriously it is really not fun to be around (sorry, truth hurts!). But. Not all is lost. You can turn it around and thrive in your 9-5 (see what I did there?). Here are 5 ways that you can make sure that you thrive not just survive at work. 1) It’s time to take a VA-CAAAAY!  It is so important that you take a REAL break from work. This is something that we often get wrong and more often feel guilty …

LIFE: 5 STEPS TO CREATE YOUR PERFECT LIFE

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I love to share the nuggets that I have stumbled upon whilst getting my hot mess self into order. I have obsessively consumed everything that I could on goals, habits, challenges, obstacles and most importantly success. To be very clear, I am not interested in success as a whole. I wanted to really dig deep to work out what my success was. What did I want to set out to achieve (and not what others considered successful!) and then how do I go about achieving it? Like many things in life. It is important to know that nothing is a quick fix. It is about a mind shift and making conscious decisions. Which lets be honest, you are already on your way if you are reading this! Here are 5 things that I have learnt to reset myself… 1. START THE DAY LIKE YOU MEAN IT How you wake up in the morning determines how the rest of your day will go. Think about the mornings where you sleep through the alarm, your race out of …

LIFE: ARE YOU SUFFERING FROM BROWNOUT?

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IT’S THE MINI MELTDOWN BEFORE THE GREAT BIG MELTDOWN! So, you know there is a problem but you can’t quite put your finger on it. You know that you are not ‘burnt-out’. That is pretty bad and usually fairly spectacular. You come to work, you do pretty good too – but not great. You generally feel tired and lethargic. Overwhelmingly, you feel unhappy… Does this sound familiar? You are not alone in this. In fact, this reaction to work has started to become so common that it has been given a name – BROWNOUT.  Brownout, is a term which is used to describe part of the life stage of an electrical power outage and is the stage before a black out. Put into simple terms, if you consider burnout like the flu, then brownout is like the common cold – they both have similar symptoms but brownout is the less vicious. You still go to work, but your heart just isn’t in it. You still talk to friends and family but you start to retreat …

WELLBEING: STRESS AND EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW!

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Stress is an unpleasant reality for most of us. Whenever things start to feel out of control the stress will dial up. The more that you try to ignore it the worse it gets. So, my first tip  – don’t stick your head in the sand because it will not go away. Learning ways to cope with your stress and how to get yourself together to lower your stress levels is one of the most valuable things that you can do in life. For me, over commitment and finances were two of my major stress buttons.  Yep, agreeing to things I either didn’t want to do or knew I couldn’t but didn’t want to disappoint would lead to many sleepless nights. Then there were those, it-was-in-sale-I-had-to-have-it (and I basically saved money it was so discounted!) moments when I KNEW I couldn’t really afford my purchase. The problem was I really deserved it. Plus, because it was on sale it would go soon. Then I would have non-purchase regret. Can you see the problem? Anyway, regardless …