Meet the lovely Laly Mille: a talented mixed media artist, dream seeker and wholehearted inspirer. Laly re-discovered her passion for creating when she became a mum and reached a crossroads in her life. She is living proof that when your listen to your heart and follow your soul’s calling, anything is possible. ~ Rachel
Have you ever dreamed of packing up your city life and moving to the coast to start anew? Just over a year ago, Ben Seybold and Louissa Muller did just that.
With their passion for sea, sand and surf driving them to do what they love, Benny and Lou escaped to the country to set up an idyllic camping and glamping site within touching distance of North Devon’s finest beach, Croyde Bay.
A year on, Ocean Pitch has been voted one of the UK’s coolest campsites by The Telegraph and The Guardian and, having had the pleasure of staying there ourselves, we can totally see why. ~ Rachel
This is a guest post by one of the UK’s leading experts in digital distraction and digital detox, Frances Booth, author of The Distraction Trap: How to Focus in a Digital World, A Writer For All Seasons, and more productivity tips. Find out more about her here.
Research shows that many of us procrastinate. So if there’s something you’re avoiding, delaying or sidestepping, you’re far from the only one.
We’re skilled at procrastinating, sometimes so much so that we don’t even realize we’re doing it!
But things can only be put off for so long, and procrastination often saps our time and our energy. We also often want to stop procrastinating.
So here are some tricks to save time and angst when tackling procrastination.
Use whichever strategies resonate with you, or perhaps the ones you feel most resistance when reading:
1. Make a list of what you are putting off right now.
2. We invent all manner of other tasks that suddenly need to be done when we are putting something off. Recognize that this is happening if your diary is filling up with everything other than the thing you are putting off.
4. Are you delaying because taking the next step will mean you have to deal with confrontation, a difficult conversation or feeling uncomfortable? If so, find strategies to deal with these things.
5. Rather than thinking of the reasons why not, list the reasons why.
7. Putting off something scary? Try making it less formal by sitting on the floor, working in your slippers or writing in coloured pen, for example.
8. Give yourself an impossibly tight deadline. See how much you can get done in 20 minutes. Or decide to complete the whole project by the end of the day. When we have a tight deadline, we don’t have time to protest and procrastinate – we just have to get on with it.
9. Watch out for other people attempting to take your time just at the point you’d finally set aside time to get on with your task you’d been putting off. My related piece on Top 10 Ways To Say No And Save Timehas more tips on protecting your time.
10. We give a lot of energy to the things we don’t want to do by procrastinating. Instead, start focusing on the things you do want to do.
11. We often put off large tasks because they seem just too big to ever have time for. For example, you might have ambitions to write a book. Nowhere in your day-to-day schedule will you find the “spare” weeks and months needed for this in one chunk of time as a whole. Instead of putting it off (which could last years), break huge tasks down into manageable chunks. So, in the example above, find time to write a paragraph, or a page, then build from there.
12. Take the task you’ve been putting off, and do it as a draft. For example, quickly draft a tricky message, or scribble down key ideas for a presentation. Telling yourself this is only a draft frees up a lot of the hesitation. If it’s not for real we don’t have the same pressure we often feel when dealing with important or significant tasks. The next day, come back to the draft and send it, finalize it, publish it (or take the equivalent action to make it real).
13. There can be a huge sense of freedom and relief once we tackle what we have been putting off.
14. Instead of completing a task, get it 80% or 90% done. One reason we hesitate is that we want things to be perfect. The final bit of any task can take a disproportionately long time. So, once it’s at 80%, ask yourself if it could be finished, or finished within, for example, half an hour.
15. There are always easy tasks we can turn to to fill our time. We can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks or years on these, staying well within our comfort zone. We procrastinate when things are challenging. But when we do those trickier tasks, the ones that push us beyond our comfort zone, we might wish we hadn’t put off expanding our boundaries for so long.
Credit: North Charleston
We’re delighted to bring you this interview with top baby guru and mum-of three, Annabel Karmel.
Annabel is a truly inspirational role model for women. Having started her business empire from her kitchen table she’s gone to become a trusted and inspiring resource for mums in feeding babies and children. Her success story started out of a passion for creating delicious, nutritious meals for babies, children and families and since launching with The Complete Baby and Toddler Meal Planner in 1991, Annabel has written 40 books in over 25 languages and has her own food ranges, weaning equipment and a vast online following.
Her latest offering is a book called Mumpreneur: The Complete Guide To Starting And Running A Successful Business, in which she shares the secrets of her success along with practical advice and inspiring stories from top business leaders and working mothers to empower other mums to become their own boss. I couldn’t put it down! ~ Rachel
Running away with the circus may be a flight of fancy to joke about. But for Nell Gifford, creative genius behind Giffords Circus, it’s a dream come true.
Nell realised that it was a circus life for her in her teens when she famously ran away from home to join a circus in America. By her early twenties, she and husband Toti, had founded, and were directing, a successful vintage-style circus, complete with a catering wagon and professional chef.
16 years on, and now with their six-year-old-twins Red and Cecil in tow, Giffords Circus is famously known as the West’s most magical travelling circus, wowing audiences of thousands across Gloucestershire and Wiltshire every year in the UK. We caught up with the high flying circus queen to find out more about her life as a ring-mistress. ~ Rachel
Nell Gifford. Photo by Gem Hall
A couple of weeks back I spent a few days at ‘How The Light Gets In’, an ideas and philosophy festival in Hay-on-Wye. I love that events like this are popping up all over the world, challenging our thinking, and connecting us with other people who are interested in deep conversation.
HTLGI was particularly special because of how intimate it felt. One afternoon I found myself sharing tea and excellent cake with one of Britain’s most celebrated pop artists, Allen Jones, the next morning I breakfasted with Jenny Boyd, a former model who hung out with the Beatles in their hey day, married a member of Fleetwood Mac and has had both George Harrison and Eric Clapton as brothers-in-law, and has gone on earn a PhD in Psychology and write a book about how rock stars tap into their creativity. In both cases there were only 10 of us around the table.
I was not expecting the heady combination of Cake + Warhol, or Croissants and The Creative Merits of LSD, but I was grateful for the opportunity!
The whole festival had a friendly, unpretentious feeling, all teepees and delicious local food.
People were invited to get involved in the discussion, not just listen to the speakers. I will be back, and I highly recommend it if you can get yourself there next year.
Here are my top 3 takeaways from this festival of ideas:
(1) There was a moment in the sixties when almost everyone was divided into two camps: War / No War. You could tell which side someone was just by looking at them. You instantly bonded with people on the same side as you, and there was a strange magic in the air borne from everyone caring so much, whichever side they were on. (It’s feeling a bit like that here just a few days before the nation votes whether or not Britain leaves Europe…) These pivotal moments in time are opportunities for us to connect and contribute, and we must not let them past by without playing our part.
(2) The only way to conquer apathy is inspired leadership, and the first place to start is with yourself
(3) Everyone has something of value to offer to the conversation. Sometimes you just have to probe a little to give them the confidence to share it.
This week I challenge you to think in big ideas, and find some interesting people around you to discuss them with. Maybe even book yourself into a festival this summer.
Struggling to turn your ideas into reality? Try our free resource L.E.A.P. which will help you find the courage, commitment and focus to make a major leap this year, and see it through, to get your closer to doing what you love, for life.
Happy ideating!
Beth
PS We announced the winner of our ‘Reach Teach Profit’ e-course mentoring competition last week. The lucky winners were Michelle Lloyd (UK), Claire Eden (Australia) and Victoria Hackett (USA). Congratulations all!
Today we’re delighted to bring you this interview with Gemma Church, specialist journalist, blogger and copywriter for the science and technology sectors. Gemma runs her own successful freelance business and is a mum to two young boys so she knows a thing or two about the reality of juggling home and work life. She also has a pretty cool claim to fame: she appeared on the legendary Channel 4 game show ‘Countdown’ and managed to win one of the show’s elusive teapots!
We caught up with Gemma to find out about what life is really like as a freelance writer…
1. How are you doing what you love?
During my career, I have worked between two of my greatest loves: writing and technology. Now that I work as “the freelance writer who gets tech”, I get to work on both.
I hope this finds you basking in the same kind of glorious sunshine we are enjoying here in the south of England. I am just back from a few days at the Hay Festival (of books), and How The Light Gets In, a festival of ideas and philosophy, both held in the sweet Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye.
My mind was left buzzing so much from the events that I have hardly slept since I got back. Today I’m going to share a few pictures and thoughts from Hay, and next week I’ll share some insight into the fascinating ideas festival.
The Hay Festival is one of the most famous literary festivals in the UK. It pulls in big name authors and crowds of 1000+ people to hear them talk, but it also has smaller intimate events where you can ask your favourite authors anything you like. I went to a wide range of events, from a Q&A with Sarah Bakewell, author of ‘At The Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails‘, to a session with Anthony Lester QC, author of ‘Five ideas to fight for: How our freedom is under threat and why it matters’ and the barrister at the heart of the thirty year campaign that resulted in the Human Rights Act.
As you can see there is a bit of a theme going on here… no surprise that I was interested in talks on the theme of freedom with my own book deadline just around the corner, and freedom on my mind…
All the talks were interesting but the one which really blew me away was Ruby Wax on mindfulness. She was hilarious, powerful, knowledgeable, down-to-earth and very real. If I can ever hold a room the way she did, I’ll be proud! I’m looking forward to reading her book, ‘Frazzled‘.
The main thing I learnt was that it takes all sorts to be an author. The most important thing is to write a really good book, but after that it helps if you can talk about it in a compelling way, with a touch of humour and a bucketload of humanity.
Depending on your view of books, spending several days at a literary festival may seem like a luxury or a trial, but to me it was a fantastic opportunity to think deeply about certain ideas, to interact with authors and have a lot of fun people watching! It was refreshment for the brain.
This week I challenge you to take yourself to some kind of event which takes you out of your comfort zone and pushes you to think differently about something you are interested in.
Have a good one!
Beth
PS: We have another ‘Mastermind Week’ coming up next week in ‘Reach. Teach. Profit. The E-Course Creation Masterclass’ so if you want the opportunity to pick my brain about anything e-course related, make sure you are signed up to class by Monday June 13! You can register here.
Today we’re excited to bring you this interview with Latina media dynamo and women’s empowerment advocate, Nely Galán.
Galán is an Emmy Award winning producer, an advocate for gender equity, a successful entrepreneur, a real estate mogul, an inspiring teacher, speaker and consultant, a mother… and above all, she is SELF MADE.
Dubbed the “Tropical Tycoon” by The New York Times Magazine, Galán is one of the entertainment industry’s most savvy influencers. Through passion, hard work and determination Galán worked her way up to become the first female president of U.S. television network, Telemundo Entertainment and throughout her career she produced over 700 episodes of television in English and Spanish. She was also the first Latina ever to appear on “Celebrity Apprentice with Donald Trump” on NBC showing, on national television, that a multi-cultural woman’s place is in the boardroom.
After becoming self-made on her own terms, Galán has made it her mission to teach women – regardless of age or background – how they too can become entrepreneurs. Her book, SELF MADE: Becoming Empowered, Self-Reliant, and Rich in Every Way, is inspired by the new revolution in women’s entrepreneurship led by multicultural women. ~ Rachel
Throughout May the Do What You Love team has enjoyed listening to the most fascinating talks by leading experts in health, wellness, spirituality, and relationships at The Hay House World Summit 2016.
Given that our theme this month is ‘Never too old to do what you love’ we were especially interested to hear what visionary pioneer and New York Times best-selling author Dr. Christiane Northrup had to say in her talk: Changing the Conversation: Get Out of the Cage of Age. Packed with insights and advice on how to change the way we think about growing older, and tips for getting acquainted with our ageless selves, Dr. Northrup’s lesson was so inspiring that we just had to interview her to find out more. Enjoy! ~ Rachel
1. How did your upbringing spark your passion for women’s health and wellness?
I was brought up in a wellness oriented household. And also on an farm where we raised black angus cattle, chicken, and organic vegetables. We also had a farm pond stocked with trout and bass. My father, a holistic dentist, believed in living foods for healing. My mother made yogurt and my father took it to his patients who were on antibiotics. He also told us not to worry too much about germs. And said, “Let the earth pass through you. Then you will be immune to everything.” His brother and sister were medical doctors. And their lifestyles and philosophies were in sharp contrast to those I grew up with. My father also signed out of the hospital against medical advice when I was interviewing in medical schools. The doctors had mis diagnosed him. He did not have a heart attack. He had pericarditis. He healed at home despite having fluid two thirds of the way up his lung fields. This was a huge lesson for me. Doctors don’t know everything. And nature often heals us. (more…)