Snacking is a normal part of 21st century life and, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it’s estimated that by 2015 the world snack foods market is expected to reach almost $335 billion. So why is the industry growing so fast and why are we snacking more now than we ever have before? It seems that longer work weeks, busier schedules, irregular meal times, and stress are all key triggers, and that we also snack for comfort or to give ourselves a pick-me-up if we’re feeling low, tired, lonely or bored.
Snacking isn’t necessarily bad; it can even be healthy. But it depends on the food you choose. When a snack attack strikes, instead of heading for the vending machine, opt for foods that are high in fibre or protein and low in sugar which will stop your hunger pangs and keep you going until your next meal.
Here are some simple healthy snack ideas for busy people on the go…
This is a guest post by Louise Armstrong. You can read more about Louise here.
In my last two posts I looked at how we can embrace our ever-changing world and evolve the way we live by adopting some simple techniques to help us survive and thrive in the future. Today, in my final post, I wanted to share with you the most powerful technique of all: it’s one that will help you to unlock your own potential and inspire you to make the most of the human experience. It’s the power of imagination.
“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”– Albert Einstein
We all know what it’s like to dream, even if we can’t remember what we actually dream about, and scientists have now proved that dreaming plays a central role in our emotional health, our memory, our learning and as a way to help us find creative solutions to our problems. They’ve also discovered that over half of our waking thoughts are daydreams and that this is when we ‘unthinkingly’ do our best thinking.
In fact some of the biggest inventions of our time came about through daydreams – the Internet, robots, rocketry, test tube babies, the list goes on. All these things were dreamed up by imaginative people; people who went beyond facts and thought globally and synthetically, made serendipitous associations and came up with surprising and novel solutions.
“Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” – Gloria Steinem
Imagination really can change the world because new ideas can change the world and it takes imagination to have a new idea. Imagination fosters empathy – the ability to “walk in someone else’s shoes” – and it also enables us to find creative, innovative solutions to problems. By unlocking the power of imagination for ourselves we pave the way to a life of awareness, fulfilment, freedom and personal power. Imagination is not the product of a gene pool lottery; it’s inherent within us all.
Here are my top tips for developing your imagination:
1. Create space for your imaginationto roam free
“Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.” ― Philip José Farmer
Allowing yourself to dream is like making a statement of intent: you are giving yourself permission to explore the possibilities and opportunities that open up when you free your mind. In our hectic daily lives, we don’t always give ourselves the time or the freedom to dream and yet it’s one of the most valuable gifts we can give ourselves.
I make time to dream in the morning when I first wake up and I write my thoughts in a notebook – it’s fascinating to see what emerges. Sometimes I daydream while I’m cycling to work. It’s amazing what thoughts pop into my head and very often I’ll come up with the perfect solution to a problem I’ve been having.
When do you give yourself time and space to unlock your imagination and dream?
2. Share your future truths
We all have dreams – big and small – but all too we keep them to ourselves. When you put yourself out there and start to share you find that amazing things can happen. Often you realise that other people are dreaming the same thing too! Unlocking the collective imagination goes a long way to counter all the negativity and angst we face in the media.
This happened for me recently as a result of a little project that I started in my own community. The Peckham Coal Line began as a seed of an idea we had to turn a bit of disused railway into a park. The dream was shared on Facebook and then we built a simple website to raise awareness. Before we knew it 50 people in the local community had emailed me to show their support and offer up their time to help. It is still early days but the project is gathering momentum and this is allowing us to talk to the local stakeholders and ride out the collective imagination of the local community. It’s so exciting to see the dream come to life.
A forgotten space: view of the west part of the coal line route from the Bussey Building with the city skyline behind
What’s your dream? Where are you going to share it? It might be a conversation with someone you know, a stranger, or a post on social media – start small and be open to where it takes you.
3. Create a prototype: make your dream a reality one layer at a time
Have you ever noticed that the ‘hi-tech’ communication devices you used to see in Star Trek look just like the early Motorola phones? It’s a commonly held idea that fiction informs reality and film props add that element of believability by making ideas a little bit more tangible.
The idea of developing and prototyping future concepts is widely accepted in design circles – so why can’t we apply this same idea to our own lives by adding layers of reality to your dreams? By experimenting with our dreams and taking small steps to bring them to life, we stop feeling stuck or overwhelmed and instead start feeling excited and that we’re making progress.
One project I worked on this way is IoTA – a space to help non-techy people make use of the ‘internet of things’ technology that is set to grow massively in the future.
The first thing we did was to draw out the idea. Then we described it. And then we made a film about it. We didn’t think much would come of it but when we shared it on social media people loved it. Before we knew it we were running a session with teenagers at a school in Manchester to put the ideas into reality. Being open to possibilities has meant that the project has now won some funding to enable us to develop the ideas further and we’ve created a new company as a consequence. It sounds grand but in retrospect all we’ve done is kept adding more layers of reality to grow our idea.
What can you do to add a layer of reality to your dreams? Maybe you can draw it, paint it, or make a little model. Maybe you can act it out, or do something productive towards making it happen.
4. Be your future, today
We think about the future being far away, and so it’s easy to put things off and tell ourselves that we have all the time in the world to realize our dreams. The fact is the future will be here before we know it so we may as well start living it today!
“The future is radically open, and it is shaped by who we choose to be in the present” – Maureen O’Hara, Dancing on the Edge
You owe it to yourself and to the world to make your dreams come true and sometimes you have to think outside the box and be imaginative in order to help bring your dream to life.
For instance my dream for my future is to feel aligned in my mind and body. To get there, I know I need a better work/life balance. So today I decided to experiment with my work day. I worked in flow with my natural energy patterns and decided to go for a swim at noon, which boosted my creativity, motivation and productivity in the afternoon. Ok, I’m not making huge life changes, but starting small makes it manageable and when my goals are manageable I know I’ll stay committed. I’ll keep experimenting until I find what works best for me, and this will take me another step closer to the big dream of living more holistically.
The big question is: what will you do to unlock your imagination and realise your dreams today?
If you have a business you want to grow, please take a moment out of your day to read this. It could be very important for you.
If someone told you it is possible to start a new business in a recession, grow it to seven figures in under five years, be cash-flow positive every step of the way, and have happy customers in 50+ countries around the world, you’d want to know the secret, right? If someone told you your work could make a real impact, and there was a way to massively grow your audience so you can make serious money whilst making a real difference, you’d want to know about that too, right?
Well that is exactly what we have done with Do What You Love and, in a nutshell, here’s how we did it:
This is a guest post by Louise Armstrong. Read more about Louise here.
In my first blog I talked about how quickly the world is changing and why we need to adapt and evolve in terms of how we live, work and connect in order to overcome the challenges the future holds.
As Albert Einstein recognised: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Of course, while we can never be sure of what lies ahead we can all adopt some simple techniques to help us navigate our way into the future. And the great news is that they don’t cost a penny!
These techniques are designed to unlock innate capabilities within each of us. All you’ll need to do is be brave, be willing to try new things, be ready to embrace new experiences and be disciplined enough to do them all regularly.
You can start today! Here are my five top tips for a flourishing future…
We seem to be getting more and more questions lately about how to create and run an online business, as people are increasingly seeing it as a fantastic way to do what you love on your own terms. We have learnt a huge amount over the past five years, always trying to push the boundaries and stay ahead of the game, and are happy to share that if it inspires even more of you to go for it.
We are working on some fantastic new business resources which we will share over the coming weeks and months, along with links to some of our favourite business websites, blogs, magazines and books. We will also be sharing a number of our most valuable lessons through this newsletter and dedicating the whole month of April to online business – the pros and cons, ups and downs, opportunities and how-tos – so if you are interested in finding your freedom through being your own boss, stay tuned! And even if you have never even contemplated running your own business, try to have an open mind and consider all the possibilities. You never know what might spring to mind…
One of the keys to our rapid growth over the past few years has been our commitment to collaborations. We have built some really strong partnerships with leaders in their field, which have enabled us to grow together, and make more of an impact than we could have made alone. We are grateful to be in the position where we turn down many more partnership opportunities than we take up, but when we do take a new partner on board, it is always from a place of real belief in their work, their approach, their expertise, and the relevance of their teaching for our audience.
And that is why we have chosen to partner with Marie Forleo in the promotion of her upcoming (awesome) online marketing course B-School. You may have heard a fair bit about B-School lately. That’ll be because Marie and her team are the best at what they do. But we have chosen to be a partner because the essence of what they teach – how to get your products and services in front of a huge audience of people who NEED them – is absolutely key to doing what you love in business.
Think about it for a minute – if you get clear on what doing what you love means to you, and you find a way to make that into a business, you have overcome the first hurdle. But if you don’t find the customers who want and need what you are offering, you have no business – certainly no long term sustainable business. And that will just leave you frustrated and sad. Great online marketing is a non-negotiable in this digital age, if you really want to carve out a place for yourself running a business doing what you love. You can have the best product or service in the world, but if no-one knows about it, your dream isn’t going to last.
If you want to find out more, here are two really useful free training videos from Marie, which explain a bit more about why this is so crucial to your long term success:
Whether it’s perfectionism, procrastination, or plain old fear that’s holding you back, there’s help and inspiration at hand!
Are you struggling to make your creative dreams happen? Do you have a great idea but don’t know where to start? Or do you have so many ideas that you end up doing nothing? Illustrator and self-professed procrastinator Lee Crutchley admits that he knows the ‘first blank page’ all too well. He says: “Turning ideas into real things is NOT the easy part. It takes work, and delaying the work does one thing – it delays the work.” In his book, The Art of Getting Started, Lee shares some of the fun tasks, challenges and prompts he uses to kickstart his left-brain and get his creative juices flowing. Be prepared to write, draw, cook, explore, and be impulsive as you immerse yourself in creativity in its purest form and take the first step towards becoming unstuck.
This is a guest post by Louise Armstrong. Read more about Louise here.
With an eye to the future the only thing we can be sure of is change. We are living in a world of flux and often, without us even realising, this alters the way we lead our lives.
I’m excited about the opportunities that lie ahead, but at times it feels like everything I once knew and expected, and the assumptions I had about how my life would play out, are gradually being erased.
Happy New Year! 2015 has dawned crisp and clear, with possibility of adventure and an outlook of hope. We wish you much happiness this year and challenge you to make it your best year yet!
This week we wrapped up our Winter Writing Workshop with the question ‘How does it feel to call yourself a writer?’ Sometimes giving yourself a label – even if it doesn’t quite fit yet – can be a really powerful way of helping you believe in yourself, whether that means calling yourself a writer, an artist, an athlete or whatever.
Passion labels can be motivating and confidence-inspiring. But career labels can be dangerous. Here’s why.
A lot of people tell us that they want to do what they love, but they can’t because of a lack of money. But when we dig down into it, money is rarely the problem. The issue is usually (1) a perception of how much it takes (too much) or how much they have (not enough), or (2) a fear of not knowing their financial reality if they take a leap from something they know, to something new.
The fact is, security as we know it has all but evaporated in the past few years. Jobs for life don’t exist any more. People are being made redundant left, right and centre from ‘professional careers’. Pension pots are shrinking, and the future is more uncertain than ever.
What if it was actually more secure to do your own thing? To take control of your time, of the way you earn money, of the people you spend time with, in where you live, and how you work?
Celebrity chefs, cookery shows and recipe books… everywhere we look there’s advice about what to eat and how to eat it and yet how often do we stop to listen? How often do we take the time to plan a meal, gather the ingredients and prepare them with love? And how often do we sit around the table with family, friends, or just by ourselves, and savour every mouthful?
All too often we find ourselves grabbing fast food, eating on the go, or opting for quick fix ready meals to fuel our busy lifestyles. Yet food is nourishment, not just for our bodies and minds, but for our souls too. So last week, in order to help us re-connect with food and rediscover our passion for learning, cooking, and eating, the Do What You Love team went to cookery school!
Sign up to our newsletter to receive inspiration for doing what you love from our founder Beth Kempton, along with special discounts and early access to new courses
