Woody Wonders

I'm late with publishing my blog this week as I had to prioritise other things this weekend, which leads me quite nicely into this week's topics.  First of all, I'd like to tie up the Xmas side of things and then talk a little bit about New Year. A couple of weeks ago I spoke about the build up to Xmas and how easy it is to become overwhelmed at this time of year.  You can only do your best and can only focus on one thing at a time.  What really helps me is keeping some element of routine in my life.  They act like a safety net when I'm feeling like I'm in the midst of chaos.  It's very easy to forget about our usual routines at Xmas and, to some extent, that can be quite freeing.  The downside is that we can end up in a whirlwind of moving from one thing to the next without any purpose.  In my case, the one thing I do without fail is to stick to my exercise routine.  I may choose to do 10 mins yoga instead of a 10k run but for me, exercise is the...

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...

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...