Can you fake it ’til you make it?

You know how it goes. You’re anxious about a situation, you’re not sure you have what it takes; can you live up to these crushing expectations? And upon confiding in someone about your qualms, you get the oh so reassuring shrug and response: ‘Fake it ‘til you make it!’. But in reality, how feasible is this? And are the effects of it healthy?

I’ve been in two minds about this for a long time and today I think I finally hit the nail on the head. But first, let me explain the two sides of that shiny coin…

1. Yes, definitely fake it ‘til you make it!

I’ve always thought that to achieve this, you need to be extra confident, extra flamboyant, extra-everything-you’re-not. By faking it and putting on a façade that yes- you really are this bubble of positivity, confidence, and power- you’ll eventually form a habit. A health psychology researcher at University College London conducted a study and found that it takes 18 days to form a habit, and 66 days for it to become an automatic behaviour. So you could argue that by forcing yourself out of your comfort zone and mimicking behaviours seen in others, you can slowly adopt these characteristics as your own and be the person you want to be. Hmm.

2. Nope, fake it ‘til you break it…

Faking personal traits to make yourself seem something you’re not is exhausting. I know we’ve all been there. Perhaps it was a job interview: you felt tiny, shy, unknowledgeable… but you strode in, smiled, shook their hand, asked questions, answered questions, acted like you knew.your.shit. Of course, some people are naturally like this! But if you’re not (which is not a bad thing), it can be hard to pretend to be this way even for a short while. Eventually, you may lose track of who you are, what you’re doing, and yup… break.

Faced in situations like this- job interviews, networking events at university and so on- I’ve struggled a lot. I’m not a naturally hugely extraverted person, but in the right frame of mind I can put on a good show. But equally, there have been times that I’m too tired and anxious to even try and push myself to act this way. And the outcome of this is so much worse than if you didn’t bother faking it and were true to yourself in the first place!

And that’s when it clicked.

Maybe where we are going wrong with the whole concept of ‘faking it ‘til you make it’ is that we skip the stage where we manifest it within ourselves. Instead, we jump straight to a stage of trying to project it onto other people. It’s never going to work! How can we ever make a story believable unless we believe in it ourselves?

If you have a vision of how you want to be, to perform, or to present yourself to new or influential people, I think it is so important not to merely fake it before first communicating it to yourself. If you want to be more confident, it might not be the most successful tactic to rock up somewhere and force yourself to act this way, when you have no strategy of how to achieve this. After all, if you knew the answer, you wouldn’t be struggling with adopting it in the first place.

So, how can we manifest these goals within ourselves before blindly stumbling into the world exercising them? Through affirmations. Affirmations are powerful tools for really making yourself believe you can be or do anything. They are good for the ego and utterly empowering. By focusing on one affirmation a day, saying it loud and clear to yourself in all moments of doubt, you’ll slowly start edging towards believing it is true. And once you believe it’s true, I guarantee you’ll have the rest of the World sold too.

Or, you’ll just look awkward. See above for a depiction of ‘awkward’.

So my response to the feasibility of faking it ‘til you make it? It’s feasible only if approached in the right way, and from within. Hence, don’t fake it because you think you should be a certain way or because you want to please other people. Only approach it if it’s something you want to achieve for the sake of your own personal growth, and only approach it if you’re willing to make yourself believe it before inflicting it upon anybody else. Why? Because otherwise, the short- and long-term effects will be excruciating.

Believe in yourself, manifest, self-assure… and you’ll be making it in no time with no faking necessary.

Round Hill Roastery, Radstock

As a relatively last-minute decision, I spent my Saturday morning on a trip to a coffee roastery near Bath. I knew very little of what to expect- or of what coffee roasting even is– but came along with confidence in my love for caffeine. I was, however, surprised by how interesting the whole process is; only now understanding the meaning of the phrase: ‘the art of coffee’.

Round Hill Roastery is based in a relatively small business unit, reflecting the relatively small size of the business itself in terms of workforce (which I think was said to consist of just seven people!). Downstairs of the unit hosted the production grounds, with the roasting machine and sacks of green coffee beans, whilst upstairs was home to a cosier area for tasting etc. I had never thought much into the process of roasting coffee beans, but I didn’t realise the particularity of it either. For the particular batch of coffee I witnessed being roasted, the temperature was heated to a precise 208 degrees Celsius and was tracked on an adjacent computer screen, displaying a graph to monitor the coffee as it roasted. Apparently the three key stages involved in the process is the start temperature, total roasting time, and the development stage (which is the final part when the coffee beans begin to crack like popcorn). It is imperative for these three elements to be correct, for the coffee to also be correct. Who knew such attention and care went into it all!

I think what struck me the most about visiting this roastery was the genuine care for the suppliers and the process. The owner told me that he studied a business degree and then ran his own business by the utter opposite rules; using a business model that initially minimized profit margins for the benefit of higher quality end-products. Not only that, but his aim is to only source coffee from places he has real connections with- usually through travelling to places like Columbia and meeting the local farmers and pickers of the coffee. This ensures he only makes connections with suppliers who treat workers in an ethically sound way, and that the process is done with ultimate care; sometimes with specific and unique methods of dry or wet fermentation to extract natural sugars from the coffee cherries in the best way possible. It also means he develops a sense of care for the suppliers who typically live in poor conditions, which then inspired him to pay them up to 2.5 times the commodity rate for the goods. If that isn’t strong social responsibility in a business, then I don’t know what is.

My favourite element of the trip had to be the chance to taste an array of different coffees, as would be done when perfecting a new recipe. The cups are laid out in a line, which you slurp from using a spoon, and we were shown how to ‘break’ the coffee to release its initial aroma. He also showed us how to use the coffee machines and I think it’s fair to say that I’m not a barrister in the making!

It’s rare to be given the chance to properly look into the operations of something that plays such a large role in so many of our everyday lives, and I have to say it has made me re-evaluate the quality of larger commercial coffee chains much more. Having understood the process and supply chain better, I understand now why more expensive coffee in some independent chains can- in some instances- be worth the premium price.

This has been the start of a new interest in ‘business insights’, trying to extract as much knowledge as possible from local sources to learn more about the business world in all sorts of industries. It was definitely a good place to start- in the heart of what my every morning relies on, coffee! – and I’m excited to reach out to more businesses in the future.

Learn your core values

Currently, I am doing some casual work for my university in the student recruitment process; going into a room for a few hours an evening to call and give advice to offer-holders for the next academic year. Tonight I was told that I could come to my shift earlier than previously arranged if I wished to, but that it was flexible and up to me. Usually, I would jump at this opportunity for two reasons:

1. It would mean earning some extra money
2. I don’t like turning things down

However, I also wanted to go to the meditation session that runs at the uni every Tuesday. I decided to go to meditation, leaving my shift until its original time, and felt quite guilty about it as I headed to the session. However, it was as though I was meant to hear what was in store…

The meditation was centred around core values and how this shapes your being and the way you live your life. What influences your decisions? What feels right? What doesn’t? How can you act in a way that minimises the impact of cognitive dissonance; where your actions conflict with your internal beliefs? This really got me thinking in a way my mind doesn’t usually wander. I’m always so fixated on what I want and when I want it, that I often neglect the intricacies of how I’m going to get there. Sometimes, it is easy to make decisions based on monetary reward: which option will give me the best financial gain? Because, society often makes us feel like success is defined by wealth, right?

Wrong.

We need to focus more on the intrinsic rewards in the decision-making process. As I let the meditative words wash over me, I realised that this really is one of my core values. Money does not buy happiness, and you need to build emotional wealth first. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not claiming that my aim isn’t to earn well and push myself to the most successful career possible. However, coming from a not especially wealthy family, I understand the importance of prioritising mental wealth and relationships first. And, I suppose that this core value of mine was reflected in tonight’s decision; recognising the need for my mind to relax and unravel and choosing this mental wealth over the financial wealth that the extra hours of work would have offered me.

Along these lines, I know that another of my core values are to always reach for goals, as opposed to settling for easy offerings. I try to exploit any opportunities that come my way- particularly ones that aid my long-term aspirations- which is how I ended up involved in things like student blogging. I know that in terms of my career, I will always be pushing myself, juggling, and stretching myself thin to ground, because this kind of healthy pressure is when I best thrive. So, I would like to think that- whilst earning a high salary would be great- this will never be my key motivator.

This brings me to the question: are values fixed or transient? I think it is important to understand the difference between an attitude and a value. Through my eyes, attitudes are malleable and are likely to change heavily under the influence of time and people. Values, however, I believe to be pretty solid. I think values tend to be deep-rooted since childhood, and something that your changing environment either complements or conflicts with. And when our environment complements our values is surely when we are most mentally free.

So the takeaway of this post is to identify, acknowledge and listen to your core values. Don’t be tempted by things which may give more immediate wins or please other people. Follow your gut, your instincts, and take some time to build the best relationship with yourself.

29862 Student Blogger Shoot 22 March 2019. Shots of students in studio for Student Blog web pages. Client: Caroline Thomas – UG Admissions

29862 Student Blogger Shoot 22 March 2019. Shots of students in studio for Student Blog web pages. Client: Caroline Thomas – UG Admissions

The Murderess, Alexandros Papadiamantis (Greece)

Ann Morgan’s TED Talk, ‘My year reading a book from every country in the world’, inspired me. My friend and I decided to undertake a similar project- reading a book from every country in the world- but without setting a time limit on it like Morgan did. We decided to start in Greece, with a Greek tragedy called ‘The Murderess’ by Alexandros Papadiamantis.

I have read one Greek tragedy before, except this was a play. It was the famous ‘Medea’ by Euripides, and I noticed that many of the same themes ran between Euripides’ work and Papadiamantis’. The most poignant of these parallels would be the protagonist and central plot revolving around a woman in insanity, committing murder and crime. Whilst Medea and the protagonist of this prose, Hadoula, are similar in this sense, their motives are very much different. Where Medea murdered her children to cause ultimate pain to her prior husband Jason, Hadoula murdered many unrelated children to save their parents and the world of the pain that a female may cause.

It is apparent therefore, that the time period being spoken of is one before the waves of feminism. The Murderess is centred around a patriarchal society- one in which dowries still played a large role. Having said this, I was shocked upon research to find that these dowries still exist in Greece even today! Although it was cancelled legally in the 80’s, it remains a Greek tradition. This is where a bride, or the bride’s family, delivers property or money to her husband upon marriage. This is what seemed to fuel the majority of Hadoula’s rage in The Murderess. Having a female baby was both a disappointment and a stress on a family, for in the future they would then need to pay the dowry for her marriage. Hadoula was tired of being a slave, as Papadiamantis claimed, to her husband, her children, and then her children’s children too. It was this realisation that led to her first murder; the strangulation of her ill baby granddaughter.

Hadoula did experience guilt, it seemed, following the initial murder. She felt a responsibility to tell her family of her sin (although she never did) and begged forgiveness from God. This, however, begun to act as a justification of her sins. Religion perhaps became a method for the protagonist to justify the avoidance of retribution. Each time she committed murder, she would claim she was aiding the family of the girl by taking her from them, and then would almost counteract the sin by supporting the family through their grievances.

Something I found most interesting about The Murderess was the escalation of Hadoula’s crime. Later in the novella, the reader discovers that many years ago, Hadoula helped a woman abort her baby. Therefore, even before the peak of her crimes, she was aiding the end of a female life. Her actions then escalate to the murder of her baby granddaughter- who has actually entered the world this time- which almost acts as the stepping stone to her future, more frequent and brutal, murders. Even when running from the police, Hadoula continues her crimes- often dancing around their nearby presence- which emphasises her level of insanity and belief in what she was doing. Even the prospect of being caught was not enough to deter her.

The novella is particularly short, yet I feel if it was any longer would lose its touch. I think the shortness of the book reflects the impulsive nature of Hadoula after her early realisation, and the ever-quickening pace of the chapters mirroring this descent. Whilst I found it initially slow, and details being too much retold and emphasised, it became much more gripping with patience.

And that concludes the first country ticked off of my list: The Murderess by Alexandros Papadiamantis: dark, shocking, and as the genre suggests; tragic.

Stacey Dooley on the frontline with women who fight back

I’ve loved Stacey Dooley and her authentic journalistic style for some time now, so how the fact that she wrote a book slipped me by I don’t know. I’m not sure what has drawn me to her all these years- but the closest I can get to an answer is that she’s real. I’m not saying other journalists aren’t, but she doesn’t appear to try and put on a presenter voice or adapt to the traditional style like others do. And the results of this? People listen.

I tried to read her book whilst watching the corresponding documentary with each chapter, and the effect of this was remarkable. Whilst watching the documentaries hit me with the hard-core facts and chilling realities, reading the book gave more of a personal insight: how Stacey felt, her beliefs and opinions, and how the gigs would change these. And my favourite bit about this was that she was honest: she openly said that perhaps she placed negative connotations on the likes of prostitutes and drug dealers to begin with, but that gaining an insight into their lifestyles changed this. Something I think a lot of us can relate to.

The hardest and most shocking parts to read were certainly the final two chapters (best until last, right?) which discuss her time on the frontline in Iraq, learning about the lives of the Yazidi women. Reading about this filled me with anger: and not just because these women were being kidnapped, raped and killed unjustly by Isis. This of course is awful, but I am also angry at us as a nation for not doing more. I know we can’t instantly put an end to things like this, but there’s not even any awareness of it! Have you ever heard of the Yazidi women? Probably not. This is what needs work.

I respect Stacey Dooley so much more than I already did after reading about her time in Iraq. A sceptical part of me always wonders, when celebrities do good, whether their motives are to truly make change or to gain the spotlight. But to put yourself in a literal war zone- risking your life to raise awareness of others’ hardship- simply cannot be down to selfish motives. Not to mention, when you watch a documentary it is easy to focus on the events being discussed and not realise that the presenter and crew are actually there. They must be terrified, yet they believe in the cause enough to go out there and do it.

A few times throughout the book, Stacey talks about some things that utterly changed my perspective. She talks about how lucky she is to be born and living in England, which means that merely through luck of the draw she doesn’t have to endure such trauma. People who are born by chance in a bad place and cannot escape bad things are no less of a person than us. So why do we act like they are? I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this since. As well as this, she often mentions how scared she felt in a place- like Mexico or Iraq- and how she was so relieved to come back home each time. And then, she always follows this by saying she is lucky that she only spends about two weeks there, whereas the people she leaves behind are there for good. I cannot even begin to imagine this. And yet, I’m sure the Yazidi women of Iraq or the refugees fleeing Mexico feel exactly the same way about us. It makes our luxury seem unjust.

Forever I have been saying that I would love to be like Stacey Dooley- to go out there and do good. Yet I have taken no step toward it and I am not sure I would have it in me either. Not in the way she does, anyway. You need to have guts for this lifestyle, you need to have fire, and you need to completely and utterly believe in what you are doing. Reading this book has reiterated it for me: we need more Stacey Dooley’s in this World.

Raising awareness about these global events certainly is the first step to making change; and now it’s down to us.

 

Big lessons from a little person

In the nearly two years since I became an aunt, my heart has grown a lot larger. My niece has a huge influence in my life now, and I’d like to think that I have a big influence in hers, too. Going to University means I spend a lot of time looking at photos and videos my sister sends me of her, and even more time looking forward to when I see her next. But being away from home also means I notice the changes in her as she grows more than ever before. Spending the day together today, I was thinking about how pure children are and how it’s a shame that so much of that is stripped with age. And here are a few things I think we could learn from the little…

1. It’s fair to share

 I know that children go through that stroppy, selfish kind of age, but right now my niece is precious with her sharing. Sat having coffee today, she eats her packet of Pombears and after munching on one herself, gives one to each person around the table and starts again. Likewise, when you are eating something, she will point at each person around the table as an indicator that you should offer it to them as well.

So often I find myself digging into something I’ve been craving and just praying that no one will ask me for a bite. Yet, think of how annoying it is when you eye up someone else’s food and think ‘why aren’t they offering me any!’.

If an 18-month-old toddler who hasn’t fully developed social awareness yet knows it is fair to share, then we should too.

2. Why be lazy?

I can’t talk for everyone, but I will take the car at most given opportunities and moan if I have to walk somewhere even remotely distant. It is true that we get lazier with age! Toddlers are always clawing to get out of their prams and be given the chance to walk, and it’s often tempting to jump in their empty seat. Maybe it’s purely because little people have more energy than us, but they also have little legs which demand a lot of energy for even the flattest inclinations. So, that’s not an excuse… walk!

3. Laughter is the best medicine

One of my favourite things about spending time with my niece is that she is always giggling! Whether that be at a game of peekaboo, whilst chasing her around the house as she screams ‘Catch me! Catch me!’, or even in a sadistic way when you hurt yourself and she finds it utterly hilarious. Whatever the reason, her mischievous smile and gleaming eyes as she laughs away is contagious. Toddlers don’t worry about things, they don’t overthink or stress unnecessarily. I think this is a trait we could definitely all work on.

There is no better feeling than when you are laughing so hard you can’t breathe, or to the point that you forget why you are laughing in the first place.

4. If you don’t ask, you don’t get

Not to be confused with greed (although there is a fine line), toddlers- when not going through the inevitable shy phases- have no inhibitions. The amount of times in the day that I hear my niece say ‘Juice’, see her try and open the fridge, take someone’s food or ask for second servings is uncountable. But it’s rare the answer is no, so something must be working.

I feel that the older we get, the more socially conscious and almost awkward we become. Or maybe that’s just me… Anyway, sometimes I’m making such an effort to be polite that I overthink it and it’s just unnecessary. For example, sometimes I am offered something, and I immediately say ‘no’ by default, but in retrospect I really wanted it.

The point is, if you want something; just ask.

The bottom line?

Toddlers are so easy to influence, and the way you influence them at this age has big impacts for them later in life. But what we often overlook is the way in which they influence us back.

They are sometimes the best models of behaviour in that they aren’t burdened by responsibility, past experiences and emotion in the way that you are with age.

So, it’s time we pay more attention to the big things we can learn from little people.

It’s not all or nothing

I love food. I eat when I’m hungry, when I’m not hungry, when I want to be hungry, and at any time in between. But what I’ve often paid little attention to in the past is what I am eating. I’m not majorly unhealthy, but I do eat a lot of meat. And because of my love for meat, I’ve always said ‘I could never be vegetarian’, and never thought much beyond that.

However, it was only recently that I actually realised what a big difference could be made both personally and socially if I just cut down on general meat intake. And this is the thing! So often, I have experienced people telling me to be vegetarian, or people questioning vegetarians for eating something that goes against these morals. It’s almost as if it has to be all or nothing: utter vegetarianism or utter carnivorous consumption.

But this is not the case! Cutting down on general meat consumption means you are likely to use healthier alternatives and lower your risk of things like heart disease, which has been associated with red meat. As well as this, you are getting less of all the drugs that animals are pumped with before they are killed, saving energy in our concerning climate, and obviously, leading to the death of less animals.

In all this time that I have declared myself unable of being a vegetarian, I have neglected the idea of being a flexitarian; that is, eating mostly plant-based foods but still eating meat on occasion too. The benefits of everyone being vegetarian would be great, but the benefits of everyone merely cutting down if not completely cutting out are also huge! And this is what I now intend to do.

I know that it would be unrealistic for me to cut meat out immediately, because I currently eat so much of it. So, for now, I am going to have two meat free days a week. Slowly, I hope to work up to perhaps even just having one day a week that I eat meat, which would be great! I’m not sure I would ever want to cut out completely though, and I would still feel like I am doing my bit by only eating it once a week (fight me, vegetarian activists) …

With this in mind, I went to my favourite restaurant today: Turtle Bay. Usually I would get their browned chicken which is literally insane (I highly recommend), but with great willpower against the jerk chicken options staring at me, I went for the aubergine curry. And it was so good. If I wasn’t consciously thinking about my meat intake, I never would have opted for something like this. So, I guess that trying this out means I will try new kinds of food in the process, which is just an added bonus.

The point of this post is that when it comes to vegetarianism, it really doesn’t need to be all or nothing! I think the idea of cutting down on meat rather than cutting it out needs to be pushed publicly as I think it will lead to much higher success rates in the long run. It also means people who label themselves as a vegetarian will feel less guilt if they give into meat every now and then, when really, they are still making great contributions!

As today is my first meat free day, it’s hard to tell how successful I will be in my challenge. However, I think it is definitely possible with the small target I am starting with, of having just two meat free days a week.

Here is to a healthier lifestyle!

Ellie-Paige x

Can patience and perfectionism ever be compatible?

Anyone who knows me well will know that generally speaking, patience is not my strong suit. I’m not bad tempered and I like to think I keep level headed in most situations, but I do get frustrated easily. And, the majority of the time, this derives from me not understanding something immediately, or just from general states of confusion. I guess what I’m saying is that I am an impatient perfectionist: I have to understand things immediately and I won’t stop until I do… which sounds like a good attribute but can be quite the opposite. So, I ask, is there a way of learning patience without giving up this perfectionist trait?

Why does patience conflict with perfectionism in the first place?

 As a perfectionist, I find that if I leave something incomplete, or not quite at the standard of my vision, it will niggle and niggle away at me until it gets done.

Currently I am revising for my end of semester exams in my first year of University. As I am in first year, these grades don’t really count for anything more than progressing into my second year, but I have always been someone with an intrinsic drive to do well. So, as you can imagine, I was getting very frustrated this morning after spending three hours staring at my accounting notes and not having a clue what any of it meant. I then met my sister for coffee on her lunch break which would usually equate to a fabulous excuse for procrastination- but instead I just couldn’t get my mind off of the mess that was my (lack of) understanding for accounting.

This is where the lack of patience comes from; being a perfectionist means you need things sorted now.

 Thus, I present you with the flaw of perfectionism…

You want things to be perfect, but you are going about it in an imperfect way. You build this ideal vision in your head, which means that anything else is essentially a failure. But nothing great is perfect immediately! No-one who runs a marathon could run all 42K of it on their first day of training. No author wrote a book in a day, and it is rare that the book that sits on your shelf was their first draft either. And, on a smaller and more relevant scale, only a genius understands accounting straight off the bat. In fact, when I had a little patience and went on a walk for a break, I came back with a much better understanding of everything than I went away with.

So, ironically enough, perfectionism is flawed. A perfectionist who achieves true perfection would understand the need for time to allow great things to evolve. It took me a while to realise this. About a year ago when I was still in sixth form, I remember being in a psychology lesson where we were all working on our individual essays. Our teacher started talking about an ex-student she had who was a perfectionist, and I immediately raised my head in interest (taking pride in being a perfectionist back then, to the point that if you asked me for my favourite thing about myself this would be it). However, she started saying things like ‘a perfectionist is one of the worst things you could be’ and I was confused. She had my attention. She objectively said that being a perfectionist means you waste time, you spend too long on things, you’re inefficient… and all for something you are unlikely to perceive as perfection at the end anyway. And why? Because nothing is perfect!

I’m not saying mediocre is okay, because everyone can achieve more than this. What I am saying, though, is that we need to learn where to stop and accept that this is the best you can do for now.

 So, can patience and perfectionism coexist in a diplomatic way?

 If I learnt how to place realistic time scales on things, and still maintained my perfectionist visions, then maybe I could achieve these goals eventually through time and patience. However, for the most part, I think it is difficult for the two to coexist. Instead, I want to work more on patience, because I know that the end result of anything will be closer to perfect if it’s gone about in a perfect way. And to go about something in a perfect way requires patience. It requires you to accept that it might not work straight away, the way you wanted, but that you can move past it with time.

After all, keeping calm instead of getting frustrated always leads to better results.

Positive thinking, positive outcomes!

Ellie-Paige x

 

Walking into 2019

Every year I tend to make a long, unrealistic set of resolutions that never quite work out and lead to an inevitable sense of deep disappointment. Sound familiar? Or is it just me who is incapable?

This year, I initially made some resolutions on a Word document. But later that day I opened the lid of my laptop, saw it on the screen, and without thinking about it clicked ‘don’t save’. I realised that resolutions, personally, set myself up to fail and lead to unnecessary demotivation. Which is the total opposite of my aim! So, this year, I’m setting some general goals that are less demanding.

…Is there even a difference between a resolution and a goal?

I think there definitely is!

To me, a ‘resolution’ seems like something you have to be consistent with every single day. It feels like the kind of thing that if you don’t do just once, you may as well give up there and then because you’ve ruined the ongoing streak of it all. So, if I set a resolution to ‘eat healthier’, and then I had a day of junk, carbs and chocolate, I would see it as breaking the resolution and would probably just forget about it from that point. Whereas, a goal seems a bit more lenient. It feels like something you work towards gradually, with less strict guidelines surrounding it all. Some of my goals this year include: walking without purpose more often, to pick up a book instead of switching on the tv as often as possible, and to limit myself to only 3 cups of tea or coffee a day. These are pretty basic ones that I think would make a big difference to me mentally in the long run!

I also want to pay more attention to things going on around me. I so often find myself in a whirlwind, or glued to my phone screen, that I don’t really listen to what people are saying to me, or I don’t really see the small but wonderful things happening before my very eyes. Small things like finding my dog looking as cosy as this in the morning, or my niece stealing my dessert and eating it all to herself.

Both of these are tiny things that made me smile today that I wouldn’t have noticed if I didn’t take the time to actually be in the moment.

In terms of larger goals, I mainly want to pick up blogging again and take more time out for writing generally. It’s become something I associate myself with and ‘talk the talk’ but have recently been failing to ‘walk the walk’. Becoming a student blogger at University highlighted this for me; I started writing posts because I knew I had to, but in the meantime realised how much I had missed this kind of thing. The same goes for things like spoken word, poetry, and drawing- I don’t realise I miss them until I do them again… but if I never actually do it then they slowly slip away from me. Not this time!

…And what’s the first move?

The first move for me, begrudgingly, needs to be waking up earlier. I’ve grown to love a good lie-in recently (mainly because I stay up so late talking to flatmates or watching Netflix) but I want to stop wasting half of my day so often.

I’m also aware that I am a lot more productive and in a better headspace if I wake up earlier and start my day right. Afternoon naps are always an option after all! I’m not entirely sure how feasible this waking up early plan is, especially with a university lifestyle, but it doesn’t need to be early… it just needs to be a more normal time. I think 9am is prime.

I think that wraps up my first post of 2019, and hopefully I will be posting a lot more regularly again from here forth.

Happy New Year!

Ellie-Paige x

 

Take a moment

It’s rare that I do nothing. Well, it’s rare these days that anybody does nothing. But it’s REALLY rare for me.

To firstly clarify, I am not saying I am constantly efficient or productive, or pushing myself to my limits. Rather the opposite, in fact. What I mean is that my mind is constantly busy. Any moment I get to myself is a trigger for my brain to ring alarm bells and say ‘find something to do! Anything!’. So maybe I will uselessly scroll through my phone. Maybe I will wander to the fridge. Maybe I will find someone to see or something to do.

But why?

Why is it the case that I cannot embrace the emptiness and the freedom, every once in a while?

Running my bath earlier, I put my phone on the side, didn’t load Netflix on my laptop, or click play on Spotify, and just did nothing. Watching the candle’s flame surf the waters miniature ripples, my eyes followed where it’s light bounced from the leaf imprinted windows; casting its pattern on adjacent walls as its energy burst through the candle’s white casing. When was the last time I paid such attention? I don’t remember.

And for the first time in a long time, I exhaled and watched my stresses dance with the bath’s steam, embraced by its lavender scented fog and taken to a place that was finally not my mind. Hm, I thought. So this is what all that mindfulness stuff is about.

For a while I had forgotten to nurture my mind in the way I would nurture or obsess over my body. But the key thing I had forgotten is that our bodies and minds are bonded in the strongest of ways. I’ve learnt in the past six months that this can be a hard truth to swallow, but once learnt is the medicine to any ailment your mind can concoct.

After taking just 3-4 minutes out of everything, I didn’t feel just more relaxed but more motivated too. I wonder whether taking more of these empty moments each day will teach us to fill the busy ones with more productive and meaningful tasks.

My New Years resolution for 2019?

To set aside just 3 minutes a day to do absolutely nothing.

Merry Christmas!