What does it mean to be awake?

The sharp-eyed among you will have spotted that I changed my strap line (why does that phrase always conjure up visions of leather and dungeons?!) to ‘your friendly wake-up call’.

It’s the result of a long process of trying to explain what it is I really do. Yes, I’m a nutritional therapist; yes, I’m a life coach – but that’s just my toolbox. I wanted to describe what my primal motivation is: why I do what I do.

I wake people up.

I help you see that there is only one life and you’d better not spend it napping.

But what does it mean to be awake?

Here are a few pointers:

Beliefs: You are more likely to believe in yourself than in other people or institutions. You will develop an ability to reflect on and evaluate the ideas you were brought up to see as facts and discover whether they are still true for you; including beliefs about yourself, your abilities and the society you live in. Increasingly you will look to yourself for guidance, trusting your own feelings and intuition rather than relying on duty, rules and tradition.

Relationships: You will be seeking win-wins in all your relationships at home and at work. The positive energy created will make an enormous difference to your wellbeing and enjoyment of life. As you feel more supported and supportive you will be able to ‘be yourself’ – risking more honesty and depth with the people you choose to be with. You will find your ‘tribe’. When that happens you are likely to find extra supplies of energy that used to be buried along with your true self.

Money: You will see money as a source of energy in your life, a way of exchanging value rather than power. As you become more confident in your own value you will be less afraid of money and less defined by your financial status. You may even discover that you no longer seek distraction and compensation in material things as you find more purposeful ways to use your time. Money will regain its natural status in your life – a tool, or convenience – not a way to measure your value as a human being.

Health: You will discover that your body is in a delicate balance that you can either nurture or sabotage. When you understand that you can choose to make healthier food choices more often, from a perspective of empowerment rather than restriction. Your idea of a treat – or a good time – may shift as you widen your definition of pleasure to include nourishing rather than anaesthetising yourself. As your energy increases your need for addictive substances will probably reduce and the substances you used to use as props will become treats again.

Work: You will be clear about why you are here and what you want to achieve. That sense of purpose will be reflected in your work, creating a sense of fulfilment that in turn fosters a natural motivation to look after yourself and prolong your experience of this amazing life. You will understand that doing your work can mean more than paying the bills and keeping you off the streets. Your choice of career is a way to express your purpose; so even if you are employed you will identify strongly with the aim of the business you are working in. If self-employed you will be pursuing a personal agenda based on your own needs, the needs of your customers and society at large. There will be a sense of meaning in what you do. It matters.

When all this happens you will be you, in all your glory, alive and kicking. Awake.

Sound good?

Let’s go.

Are Your Eyes Bigger than Your Planet?

As we drove to the airport to come home from holiday we passed miles and miles and miles of poly-tunnels covering the Spanish landscape.

It’s shocking. Strangely unnatural. Viscerally troubling.

Aside from thinking that it looks like an abandoned sci-fi lunar landscape, my mind was also asking why. Why do we need to cultivate in such intensive quantity?

We broke our journey briefly at a truck stop in the middle of one of the more crowded poly-cities and glimpsed another world. Lorries and vans and labourers and dirt and poverty and not a plant in sight. All under wraps. Even in June nature is not allowed to take its course.

I was just getting over the impact of that experience when I learned, courtesy of Andrew Marr’s Megacities, that London consumes the entire food production capacity of the UK.

Let’s put that another way. The amount of food consumed in the 600 square miles that is Greater London needs a geographical food production area equivalent to 120,000 square miles.

(I’m just going to stop typing for a moment so you can read that again.)

.

.

.

(And I’m not going to write about all the waste that pours out of that equation: the food packaging, the plastic water bottles, the cardboard coffee cups, the sandwich bags, the polystyrene burger containers and the food waste that is probably enough to feed Brighton.)

When I was a kid, if I didn’t finish everything on my plate my mum would say I had eyes bigger than my belly.

Now, I think we have eyes bigger than our planet.

The world is creaking at the seams (along with our trousers).

Our insistence on having it all, eating it fresh, all year round, deliciously enticing, cooked for us, wrapped for convenient eating or transporting, whenever we feel even slightly hungry, all day and all night, is an economic and ecological disaster. Our demand for the latest superfoods to counteract our crazy over-stuffed lifestyles is also part of the picture.

We’re like teenagers who keep on partying and don’t understand the consequences.

So what has all this got to do with being happy, I hear you ask?

Only in the sense that everything is linked. My happiness is your happiness. My greed is your lack. My insistence in living beyond my ecological means is impacting our children’s ability to live in a beautiful world. What goes around comes around.

Happiness lies in having enough and knowing what constitutes enough.  If we all have eyes bigger than our bellies then there won’t be enough of anything to go round – including happiness.

Being where the mood leads you…

When I woke this morning – the beginning of yet another UK bank holiday beano – I realised with a tiny jolt that I haven’t done a second blog post this week. Nor even thought about it.

Worse still, even Monday’s post was born out of ‘What shall I write?’ rather than my normal pressing need to get something down on paper that has been buzzing round my brain.

Strange… posting is normally top of my agenda because I enjoy it so much. What’s going on?

Fears popped up next: perhaps I’m all blogged out, run out of things to say (oh how my husband wishes that were true); I’ll lose my followers if I don’t come up with something interesting soon; and a few others.

Then an urgent, fear-based urge to fill the bloggy silence with something uplifting and enlightening. But no words came.

I looked back at my week – unusually disjointed and routine free, true – but plenty of time for blogging. Some great sessions with clients: real breakthrough with 3 of the people I’m working with. And in between clients – it had been a week of intense introversion. I’ve been having a bit of a sort out, both mentally and domestically: tidying drawers, sifting through papers, organising some things, disposing of others. I can feel ideas are swirling around in my head, waiting to take shape. I feel restless. You know that feeling you get when you can’t find the right word for something? My whole week has felt like that.

I’m aware that, when client work is particularly intense and exciting, a lot of my energy goes in that direction. But for some reason, all of this has left my mood looking inward rather than outward.

And here’s the breakthrough for me: I’m just going to accept it. I’m not going to turn somersaults to think up a blog post just for the sake of it. I’m not going to scour my brain for scraps of enlightenment. I’m going to honour my mood, trust the way I feel, and just wish you all a relaxing and rejuvenating weekend: find some time to sleep well, eat well and be with people you love and let them love you back.

Above all, let your mood dictate. You have 3 precious days of freedom. What do you want? What do you need? What do you feel? What will make you come alive?

Go and do that.