Category: Mindfulness

  • The power of a quiet no

    The power of a quiet no

    If you want to practice saying no to build your internal strength, there’s lots of ways to do it.

    Sometimes saying it to people is hard. Or harder than other things, like your dog 🤣🤣🦮

    One of the easiest though, and I reckon powerful ways to exercise and build your strength, is go shopping for nothing. Go to your local shopping complex, and preferably visit your favourite stores. Walk in, look at the things you want so bad, then walk out.

    Yes, buy absolutely nothing. It’s your power of choice.

    It’s an exercise of willpower and strength. Walk past every area, shop, food store and whatever else, and quietly say no to everything. Force yourself to walk out empty handed. By the time you walk out, you will have said no thousands of times.

    This strength is just like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it becomes.

    If you’ve never done this consciously, give it a try 😋✨

    There are going to be times in our lives (most of us) where we don’t have any money to spare or we’re saving and we therefore can’t buy anything anyway.
    But the trick is, to go and do this when you do have money. When you can afford the thing you want. But you just don’t buy it.

    It’s a freeing feeling. It builds a kind of power in you that’s different from other kinds of confidence.

    When literally every single person around you is buying something, you do the opposite. That is also a confidence builder. When you’re in a location built to siphon your phone wallet, resist. spend money with gratitude.


    This doesnt mean saying no forever ♾️ of course. We need to live, but practicing your NO in varying situations builds resilience and critical thinking. It forces your mind to assess decisions that may have been an impulse yes.

    Your no, is a lifelong tool for life curation. Saying no to things, makes room for the magical yes ✨

    And your yes, becomes a lot more valuable when it comes after all of the no’s that preceded it.

  • Jack of everything necessary

    Jack of everything necessary

    One of the effects of having to be pretty self-reliant as a child, is that you learn to stop asking for help and just do everything yourself.
    It’s easier, or so we think. The term used to describe it atm is parentification.

    Instead of relying on others, feeling safe and being able to ask for guidance or help, we learn to just learn it ourselves. We become our own parent.

    This, I think is one of the reasons I can do so much today and have absorbed so much knowledge. We build ourselves up into a self-reliant fortress.

    One of the trade-offs is, trust becomes difficult and reliance on others becomes something to be avoided. Over giving to others can also be one of the ways of approval seeking that fills some of the gap of absent love. And as we become parents ourselves, we might be over protective of our children to compensate for our own childhood.

    After doing the inner work for so many years now, I don’t seek the approval of others anymore. But I’ll give freely, I give what energy I can afford to bring positive change to others.

    Eventually we learn that asking for help is a strength. And I love learning from other people when I’m present and aware enough to ask for guidance.

    Physical closeness, gestures of affection and just spending time being present are great ways to rebuild our relationships.

    Some may offer the advice, “you need to unlearn all of that childhood pain”. Maybe. I prefer to think of it as a process of relearning and healing.

    If you have drowned yourself in knowledge and gotten jacked with skills, this may resonate with you in some way. Those behaviours may have been coping mechanisms for survival.

    One by one, putting some things down and letting them go, reducing our knowledge intake and just relearning to breathe and focus on one thing at a time, brings peace and the ability to accept help and love again 🕊️✨

  • Boil the bay leaf

    Boil the bay leaf

    There was a thread I was following that someone posted with a throw away comment about, “what does one bay leaf add to anything anyway?!” 🤣 Valid.

    There’s a lot of recipes that have a bay leaf or two in the list of ingredients but they never really explain much what it’s for or what it adds to the dish.

    When you think about it, there’s a bunch of common ingredients like bay leaves. If we take an elimination approach, we’d cook the dish in halves one with, one without bay leaves. Who can be bothered doing that though! 🤣

    But someone had a clever response to this problem, and that is to cook it on its own.
    Yes, put the bay leaf into a small portion of water and boil (or distill it if you have the gear) it until the water is flavoured by the leaves.

    Smart. By understanding the building block, we can start to comprehend what it brings to the mix.

    So yeah, ima try that experiment on the weekend. I wanna know what the flavour is.

    Thanks internet stranger 🧡✨

  • Plant a smile

    Plant a smile

    There’s a theory that if you smile at a certain location in the world, that the happiness you generate stays in that particular location.

    So one day, a lifetime later someone walks past that spot on the earth and feels the happiness you have left.

    And they smile in turn, and plant another one. It sort of feels like geolocating happiness on the earth’s surface.

    I’m not sure about the theory, I’d like to believe in it. I do know that a smile and a laugh can often influence those immediately around me.

    When lining up at the bar last night, I got talking with a guy who’s son was having his 18th party at another location in the city. His Dad was off partying at another dance event! lol. I firstly found that hilarious and inspiring.

    The people behind us were clearly listening into the chat while waiting for drinks. So I turned up the energy a bit and emphasised how he as a father must be so proud of his son having his 18th with mates, in a sensible way while he partied closeby.

    🥹 boom, a bunch of big smiles 😊✨ right behind us.

    We can use our energy to generate happiness. And I wonder sometimes, how far that happiness carries.

    Planting a smile on the earth, yeah it’s an interesting theory.

  • 5 years of swimming

    5 years of swimming

    I think it’s been at least five years, swimming every (almost!) afternoon after work.

    Years ago I decided to take my physical health a little more seriously. I can’t remember the actual reasons tbh, but I wanted regular exercise that was achievable, practical and not too expensive.

    I tried running, but it just wasn’t me. I can run, but it just feels like such an effort for minimal results. Maybe I’m doing it wrong 😂

    I’m so far, not a gym person. Instead, I use the kettle bells at home and I seem to be able to do most of what I want with those.

    My regular full-body exercise though, is swimming and I love it.

    It’s my switch off after work, it’s a cool down , it’s my mechanism for changing over to my time and it’s great exercise for my whole body.

    It is very cold in winter tho! But I’ve found over the years that I’ve gotten stronger and stronger with ignoring the cold. If the ice water is really healthy, then I’m getting a good dose of it. Recent research seems to indicate few benefits though it seems.

    If you’re looking for regular exercise regimes, what works for you and each person will be different, but I can recommend this combination. It works for me.

    In tough times, or when stress has been high, exercise and art have saved me and kept me sane. Regular physical body movement is the best, especially if you need to get out of your head.