Woody Wonders

  ... although let's be honest, it's usually not that joyful!  It's cold, dark, and a very, very long time to the next payday!! You know my thoughts on New Year resolutions by now, I'm not a great fan despite the fact that I absolutely love planning, organising, goals, targets etc etc.  However, it's simply not a good time of year to put pressure on ourselves.  Every year we think that something magical is going to happen on the 1st January and we'll morph into super motivated human beings.  I'm not being pessimistic, I'm being realistic and whilst it's brilliant to have the goal of changing something in your life for the better, you need to go about it in the right way. Instead of charging into the new year like a bull in a china shop, use January and February to re-group so that you are ready to emerge in Spring, along with all the other new shoots and things in nature that have been resting and recuperating.  Don't be too complacent though, th...

After the year we’ve just had, the last thing I’m going to do is the hard sell on new year, new you.   Over the next few weeks you’ll be blasted from all sides on how to lose weight, how to find a new job, how to stop smoking, how to survive dry January, how to change your life, how to get fit and a whole host of other things to supposedly find the new you.   You know by now that I don’t believe in setting new year resolutions in that kind of way, so I’m not going to add to your pain.   However, having said that, I do believe it’s always good to have something to focus on and despite everything I do feel like the start of a new year is a good time for a ‘refresh’ .   But hey, let’s take things super slow shall we and not overload ourselves more than necessary this year.   Personally, I’m looking no further ahead than the first month of the year and I’ll be easing myself in gently and with kindness, and focusing very much on those things in my control and that ma...

... or not in the case of January!! Let's be honest, it's not a great month for our budgets is it?  We all got paid early for Xmas and it's now a very long time until January payday.  So how can we survive without having to live on just bread and water and not have any fun until we get paid.  Simples, you just have to think outside the box. First of all, I know the January sales are in full swing and there's bargains to be had but hang fire, it's false economy if you're buying something just because it's cheap and secondly, the prices will come down even further towards the end of the month so if it's something you really do want then you could bag yourself a huge bargain. Take a look around you, what else could you do so you're not having to watch every penny.  Well, there's loads of things you could try, some of which would be really good habits to build as they'll save you money long term and the extra could go towards a very...

How to set your intentions for 2020 As we start another year it's very natural to think about resolutions, goals, ambitions, targets, intentions, whatever you want to call them.  There seems to be an inbuilt need and desire within us to wipe the slate clean and start again.  Brilliant, great, fabulous, love it BUT where most of us go wrong is that we start things in earnest but never follow them through.  This is why it's so important to set out our intentions from the very beginning with touchpoints throughout the year to review what's going well and what isn't quite going to plan.  If you read my blog last year then hopefully one of the things you found most helpful was the quarterly reviews that we did together.  One of my biggest downfalls is that I often take on too much and end up stressed out trying to do everything because I've not built in enough flexibility - we don't have to complete all our goals by the end of January!! Ok, so we...