All posts tagged: coaching

License to Be

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A doctor just gave me three days off to recover from a stomach virus, with instructions to rest as much as possible and eat cooked vegetables and crackers with chamomile tea. Now I’m sitting here at home, realizing how difficult it is just to Be. Even with a sore stomach and zero energy levels I feel quilty. Thinking about everyday life I realize that the hours outside the nine-to-five life are pretty fully booked. I’m either on the yoga mat, planning the sequence for the next workshop, hunting for the good morning light to photograph a dish or working on illustrations for the next blog post, and then posting it. Then meditation through the headphones on the tram, or surfing the internet on the phone to look for inspiration or the latest news of the wellness world. The evenings pass by quickly by experimenting with new recipes, writing, photoshopping, meeting friends, working on some assignment for a course I’m taking at the moment, reading related literature or self-development books. And of course the house needs …

The 5-Minute Trick to Getting Stuff Done

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I’m sure we all have plans, things we would like to do for one reason or another, but only too often we push them to the near future. “Tomorrow I’ll start the diet”, “Tomorrow I’ll start exercising”, “I’ll do this in the evening”. It can be doing yoga, going to the gym or for a walk outside, or washing the dishes or ironing that pile of laundry, finishing that assignment or organizing the wardrobe. And you know that you would feel so good about yourself when you got this thing done, but when the alarm goes off in the morning it’s so easy to hit the snooze button instead of putting on your runners and think: “I didn’t get a good night sleep, I’ll go tonight, or tomorrow, definitely!”. But in the evening you’re tired, hungry and you hear Hallelujah accompanied by a heavenly orchestra when you look at the couch, not when you look at the pile of dishes. And so the tasks and activities get postponed by another day… (Trust me, I’m speaking …

falling in love …with the One

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OK, I’m not a big Valentine’s Day person, but no better day to talk about Love since today it’s on everyone’s mind anyway, right? With all the paper cards, expensive dinners and cute presents as well as the feelings of exclusion and disappointment felt today if you’re not in that perfect relationship it’s easy to forget that One True Love that we all have and often fail to celebrate: Ourselves. So I decided to gather my tips to Falling in Love with Yourself, and I hope you will all live happily ever after. Be Your Own Best Friend Imagine that your best friend is trying to lose some weight. She puts on a jumper that is quite tight on her and asks you, full of frustration: “Don’t I still look like an elephant in this?” You would probably encourage her, pointing out how you already really notice the change in her and that by the summer that jumper will fit perfectly. Or would you tell her that she is right, she looks huge in that? …

eye test

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You know those mornings when you wake up and you feel so tired that you have to double check that the alarm clock didn’t go off in the middle of the night? Again an early start on a dark morning, again another day of work ahead. Looking back at you from the mirror is a tired face with red spots and obvious indications of a bad hair day. You can’t fit into any of your clothes and you’re running late for  work. In the tram/bus/metro you see all those weird people looking fed up with their lives. It starts raining and everything outside looks so grey and miserable. “Great, just what I needed!” you think to yourself. Let’s rewind: You wake up in the dark room. You watch the silhouettes of trees dancing in the early morning darkness and you curve into bed for just a moment longer as it’s so nice and cosy. But you want to get up as you feel blessed to wake up to this new day, which will be a …

05:30

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This passage from Simon Hartley’s book Could I Do That? Really hits home on these dark mornings when my alarm goes off for an early morning practice. In it Hartley talks about his own challenge: “There is an interesting little conversation that goes on between my ears when the alarm clock goes off. It’s 5.15 am on a cold and dark December morning. My training schedule says ‘cycling’, which means an hour in the garage on the turbo trainer. I don’t know about your garage, but mine isn’t the most luxurious place on a wet, cold, dark winter’s morning. There is a temptation when that alarm clock goes off to hit the snooze button, or to switch it off or throw it across the room. As I hear the beeps, my brain starts to ask annoying questions. ‘Do I really need to get up? Could I do this later in the day? Is this session vital? If I decided to stay in bed, would it really make all that much difference?’ It is in these …