Making gentle changes

22 Apr

Hello there and Happy Monday! I hope you had a great weekend. Mine was a pretty busy one!

My Mum retired on Friday (YAY) and my big brother turned the big '40', so we had a couple of family shin digs over the weekend to celebrate. I still managed to head to the beach for an afternoon walk with my boys, stretch it out in a yoga class on Saturday morning and catch up with some friends I haven't seen for ages. But, as a result I'm feeling a bit exhausted today and it's only the start of the week, so I'll need to be gentle with myself over the next few days, me thinks!

Being a Mumma and running a business to support our family, has been leading me to really evaluate my ethics lately and to find ways I can still be both, without burning the candle at both ends.

Have you ever found that during busy periods, it feels like there's not enough space to fit in restful, recuperation space as well? Oh, the Martyrdom! I'm learning that in fact, these are the times when it's more important than ever to be gentle on ourselves.

I've been on this self-nurture path for a while now - mostly because I'm getting tired of bouncing between feeling good and feeling completely over stretched - but also because it feels so effing good!

I'm doing this really great year-long course for Creative Entrepreneurs, where we get together once a month and are mentored to grow and flourish in our creative businesses. One of the things I see us all struggle with, is juggling time, so this last session looked at revolutionary ways to do this. Here's what I picked up, in a nutshell:

So many of us spend our days and weeks doing the 'jobs' we have to do first and if there's time left over, then we will reward ourselves with play ... So, how about starting with the fun stuff first, to get ourselves energised for the day ahead?!

This may sound totally upside-down, and it requires some dedication and planning, but how true is it, that when we start our day doing something we love, we can completely rock-it-out for the rest of the day? SO true!

So this week, I've decided to do something really radical - I'm going to factor time into my diary each day to look after myself. Can you believe it?!

This means that every day I come into my studio, I'm not starting my day checking emails, I'm starting my day painting.

Instead of busting my arse to come up with a newsletter each week to inspire people, I'm just gonna go ahead and inspire myself first, then make my mail-out fortnightly, so there's more time for me.

And I'm going to go to yoga twice a week, so take that Inner Martyr!

My Art Courses and upcoming E-courses are all about accepting and backing-ourselves and our dreams using art as our tools, so it's up to me to walk the talk I'm sharing, you know? How can I best help others? By helping myself first. Then there's loads of the best of me left over for others.

So I'll finish this little self-pep-talk with a piccy I took on my afternoon walk on the weekend - A tree I found, hugging itself.

I hope you can find time in your week ahead for a big ol' self hug too.