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...

  Flexible or 'hybrid' working as it's being referred to is here to stay and many of us are happy about that, including myself.  I've gained an extra hour every morning and evening thanks to no commute and I've been using it wisely.  Right from the first day of working from home, I made the decision to use my extra time productively and not waste it by staying in bed longer every morning, or working late every night. BUT , the success of working from home, and keeping sane and healthy, relies on one thing ... boundaries.  Creating those gaps between your work and home life.  Back in the old days, it was easy as you had your commute time to make that transition from home to work and work to home.  When that disappeared, some people struggled to create those same kind of boundaries and things became a little fuzzy round the edges. This topic is particularly important to me this week because in all honesty my boundaries have been smashed to pieces, gates left ...

Do we ever really fail at anything?   No, I’m not sure we do.   Things may not go to plan, you may be disappointed that you haven’t achieved what you set out to do, but we always learn from our so called ‘failures’ so where does this idea of 'failure' being a ‘bad’ thing come from? In a workout situation you train to ‘failure’ but that never feels like you’ve ‘failed’ does it?   No!   In fact, it makes you feel damn proud that you’ve pushed your body and mind to your absolute limit.   It’s a good thing, you’re growing stronger every time you train to ‘failure’ .  When I run in races, and especially marathons, I take something from each race so I'm stronger and better the next time.  I don't feel like I've failed if things haven't quite gone to plan.  So why do we treat 'failure' so differently in other situations? Two of my most memorable so-called failures were just after I left school and these two events quite literally shaped my whole workin...