GRATITUDE + CONSCIOUS LIVING Page 3 of 26

It’s never too late to follow your dreams

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“When we start to live our own story, that’s when we really come alive, that’s when we really start living.” ~ Kathy Sparrow

Maybe in the course of bringing up your children or earning a living, you’ve put your own hopes and dreams on the back burner. It’s easy to get sucked into “life-as-usual” as you spend your days busily running from one thing to the next.

If you’ve been distracted from doing what you love, diverted from taking the path that leads you towards your dreams or have no idea what you really want to do, now could be the ideal time to think about how you’d like the next chapter of your life to look.

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Follow your dreams and create more magic in your own life, and in the world!

Need help, support and inspiration? Start by making more time for yourself today…

Today we invite you to be present for everyone, including yourself. Making time to do the things you love is one of the kindest gifts you can give yourself.

So join us for 31 days of making time: 31 days to learn how to look up and rediscover the small wonders out there that make you happy, 1 day at a time, 1 minute at a time.

Our Making time daily prompt series is completely FREE and it couldn’t be easier to get started. Click here for  information.

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Motivate yourself unafraid

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Did you know that we are only born with two fears? The fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. Both are engrained in our DNA and are there to protect us and ensure our survival. Every other fear we have has been learned. Which means we can also un-learn it. How? By facing it, by daring to believe, by taking risks, by overcome failures, and by doing it all over again.

You might not always feel it, but there’s a huge amount of courage deep down inside you. You just need to unlock it.

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“Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.” – Marianne Williamson

 

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The importance of self care {video}

Self care is a real work-in-progress for me, but know that when I practice it, everything is better. And so I made a little video for you, and also for me, to remind us all that when we take care of ourselves we can better take care of others, as well as having more energy and access to creativity to explore more of what we love. Here you go…

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Treasuring the chaos

Treasuring the chaos TTC WILDLING1I am writing this at my kitchen counter, glass of wine in hand, dinner dishes stacked high in the sink waiting for some attention. A voice in my head keeps reminding me that my large travel bag is still lying on my bedroom floor, in the exact spot I left it there on Sunday after arriving back from 19 days’ travel in the USA. The floor by my feet is strewn with children’s toys – an open jewellery box with a sleepy ballerina, done with pirouetting for the day; a plastic teapot ready to serve a tiny tea party, a slowly wrinkling balloon. Mr K is catching up with one of his superhero programmes in the next room, and the girls are sleeping upstairs. As I cast around my home, I could not be happier to be here.

Travel is amazing. Adventure is life-enhancing. And yet today, after so many days away, there’s nowhere I’d rather be than right here, in the middle of the chaos of home. As I count down to my 40th birthday on Saturday, and look at the ‘state’ of my life, I’m feeling grateful for all of it. Even the wrinkly balloon bobbing around my feet. (You can read my personal essay on ‘Treasuring the chaos’ in the utterly beautiful Wildling Magazine here, for free)

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It’s funny how sometimes the chaos can be a source of stress, and yet today it is a source of comfort. It all depends on how you look at it, and what else is layered beneath.

Whether or not you have children, I would like to encourage you to take a moment this week to find a way to treasure whatever chaos is going on in your life. Because mess births beauty. Chaos is progress.

BethXx

Please vote! We’ve been nominated MBS Blogger of the Year in the Kindred Spirit Awards!

Please vote! We've been nominated MBS Blogger of the Year in the Kindred Spirit Awards! DWYL BK KSAWARD 4 800X400PX LR

We’ve been nominated for Mind Body Spirit Blogger of the Year in the Kindred Spirit Magazine Awards! We LOVE this magazine, so this is a huge honour, and I am so grateful to the whole Do What You Love team, who works so hard to bring you fresh and inspiring content every week.

If you appreciate our blog please take a moment to vote for us here (under award number 3). Thank you so much!

PS Kindred Spirit are entering everyone who votes into a prize draw so you might even win a prize!

What we can learn from birds to navigate life

[Health warning: There’s an AMAZING story in this video which might just blow your mind…]

Throughout the ages birds have been seen as a supernatural connection between humans and the gods. We have stitched their feathers into our folklore, and attached spiritual significance to their behaviour and movements.

Birds were on the earth long before us, so primitive humans looked upon them as powerful. Many early tribes and clans took a bird, whose characteristics they admired, as their totem.

And personally, I had the experience of birds appearing as signs in all sorts of guises (actual flocks, feathers on my path, feather jewellery, avian tattoos etc) while I was writing Freedom Seeker. When Hay House sent me a mock up of the book jacket to photograph, I discovered it was wrapped around a book by Teal Swan. Birds everywhere…

And it makes sense, for a book about freedom. But it wasn’t until I actually started researching and writing that I discovered some fascinating parallels between the mechanics of bird flight, and the human psyche. I even consulted an Oxford University Professor on the subject, who said he’d never seen those parallels recognised before, so it was all pretty exciting. You can read about those discoveries in Freedom Seeker, but for now I wanted to share a few thoughts on what we can learn from birds to help us navigate life. In this video I share a mindblowing story of someone I met on my travels whilst writing. I think you will love hearing it…

PS Monday is the LAST DAY to get the bonuses worth over $300 when you pre-order Freedom Seeker. Get yours here: www.bethkempton.com/book

We’re having a party and you’re invited!

We're having a party and you're invited! dwylhq1

As you may have noticed, I wrote a book, so it’s only right to have a big celebration when it launches very shortly! As a beloved member of my community I would like to invite you to the launch event. Below you will find details of the in-person main event in case you happen to be within visiting distance of Southampton, UK, and also of the virtual online party for everyone else! I really hope you will join me and celebrate. (Did I mention there will be lots of giveaways?)

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In Real Life launch party: ‘How to be a Freedom Seeker’
Wednesday April 5 2017 at Mettricks Guildhall, Southampton, UK, from 7.30pm

We’ll have live music and a whole lot of inspiration. I’ll be hosting, and signing books, and I’ll be joined by three inspiring Freedom Seekers from the book, sharing their stories in real life.

This is a FREE event but you’ll need a ticket. You can get your ticket here.

Please share with anyone who might like to come along and meet other Freedom Seekers, get inspired and have some great conversations!

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Online launch party – Tuesday April 4 2017 on the Do What You Love Facebook page from 8.44am PST / 1.44pm EST / 4.44pm GMT

Freedom Seeker comes out on April 4th, which is also our 4th wedding anniversary, so it seems only right to have the party kick off at 4.44pm GMT! I’ll be online from 4.30pm so we can do a countdown. Mark your calendar and come and join me!

If you haven’t pre-ordered the book make sure you do that now to get your bonuses – worth over $300! All the details are here, and you can start connecting with other Freedom Seekers right away. Don’t miss this!

Thank you so much for being part of this amazing journey of life!

BethXx

Be your own soul friend today

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Last summer I went to Santa Fe to take a workshop with the very magical Gail Larsen. At the end of it, she invited us to write love letters to each of the people we had shared the workshop with, and to prompt us she played a song which captured the essence of that person. It was a beautiful exercise. When it came to my turn, instead of playing a song, she played a spoken word piece by John O’Donohue, reading aloud a passage from his breathtaking book Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom.

The coincidence didn’t escape me. Just a few weeks before I had discovered the same book by chance when researching my own book Freedom Seeker. In Anam Cara I found a paragraph that was almost word-for-word the same as something Mr K had written in an early love letter many years before, although he had never even heard of Anam Cara. It made my spine tingle.

In Celtic wisdom ‘anam cara’ means ‘soul friend’. It reflects the idea that our souls need love like our bodies need air, and this love can awaken new dimensions of ourselves. According to John O’Donohue in his beautiful book of the same name, an anam cara recognizes the real you without any pretence or disguise. Theirs is a deep spiritual friendship unaffected by geographical distance or time. Your anam cara understands you in a way that makes you feel you belong together, with your destinies intertwined. If you have an anam cara, take good care of that person, as they are precious indeed.

And whether or not you have an anam cara right now, I invite you to be your own. You have to practice self-love on an epic scale to feel truly free. You have to counter the negative voices in your head and hold your own hand through it all. In the end your free self is your greatest ally and truest friend, so treat them well.

This week I challenge you to do something kind for yourself, and be your own anam cara.

Much love

Beth

Strollers, strangers and serendipity (+ meet me in London!)

Strollers, strangers and serendipity (+ meet me in London!) DWYL BLOG GREATESCAPE 650X250PX LR 1

Last March I got on a train to London, to get myself some inspiration at Hay House’s flagship event ‘Ignite’. It was a fairly straightforward journey – one train ride to Waterloo Station, then a quick hop on the Northern line of the Underground to Euston.

I took along my then eight month old baby in her pushchair, which suddenly seemed like a really bad idea when I realised London Waterloo has a very steep escalator down to the Underground, and no working lift. As I approached the top of the moving stairway wondering how on earth I was going to get us down safely, at the exact same moment three friendly-looking women approached. You know the kind – a small group of friends happily chattering away, all clutching takeaway coffees, with glossy hair and lovely bright clothes, the kind you see and want to be friends with. Yes, three women like that. All three of them turned to me at the same time and said, “You want a hand?” Ahh bless, they were nice as well! “We’re all mums. We know what it’s like.”

And so with a series of swift moves, one was holding all the coffees, one all the handbags and the other two of us holding onto my precious cargo as the steps carried us down into the belly of the Tube.

“You look like you’re having a day out,” I guessed. “Where are you off to?”

“We’re going to an event,” the one with the shiny brown bob said. “Near Euston station.”

“Not ‘Ignite’ by any chance?”

“Yes!” “No way, me too!”

Over 250,000 people pass through Waterloo every day. I met the three who were going to the same place as me, on the other side of the city.

And so we travelled across London together, nattering fast, learning about what each of us did, and why we had all been drawn to ‘Ignite’.

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Those lovely ladies were Sam Reynolds, former PA to Daniel Craig, and three-time cancer survivor who runs SamSpaces, a network for people finding their way after cancer, Caroline Udall (founder of The Company of Mums – check out her fab vlog), Jo Ferrone, founder of Wrapped Up Admin (a team of working mums who provide admin, sales & marketing support to small businesses.)

We had much in common and have stayed in touch. In fact, I was so blown away by Sam’s story that I ended up interviewing Sam for my book, Freedom Seeker, and was wholly moved by her strength and light.

And then there was the event itself. I was so inspired by the speakers – all Hay House authors – not just by what they were saying, but the way that they spoke. They told their stories with such power, and touched everyone in the room.

And so it is with so much gratitude and excitement that I can say I’m going to be on that very stage in just a few weeks’ time! Ignite is back and I’m going to be joining six other speakers, many of whom have been a huge inspiration in my personal journey. They are leading lights in the fields of spirituality and personal development – Sonia Choquette, Rebecca Campbell, Carrie Green, Charlie Morley, Sandy Newbigging and Mel Wells. What a day it’s going to be!

I would LOVE to see you there! I’ll be talking all about Freedom Seeking: How to live more, worry less and do what you love. You can register for Ignite 2017 here.

It is in flying free that we fulfil our true potential, and in this talk I’ll reveal how to escape the pressures of modern life, and find the keys to living the life you want. I will share highly relatable and moving personal stories to illustrate the gifts of freedom seeking, and a number of simple but powerful techniques to help you unlock a deep sense of personal freedom. As you begin to use these in your daily life, you will immediately feel more uplifted, happy and free.

The event is on March 18th, and although it’s a couple of weeks before my book is officially published, rumour has it that there will be early copies for my first ever book signing! Which means, I get to meet YOU and hear about your own journey of freedom seeking too. So if you can be in London on March 18th, please come, and gift yourself a thought-provoking, perspective-shifting, inspiring day of talks. (PS May I politely suggest you take the Tube to get there, you never know who you might meet…)

You see, it’s all about people. Love and people. Real love and the right kind of people.

Much love,

Beth

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What would you do if you were losing your sight? This woman’s response blew me away…

What would you do if you were losing your sight? This woman’s response blew me away… dwylhq1

Something extraordinary happened last week. One of the graduates of our Do What You Love e-course shared her story on our blog, revealing publicly for the first time the impact Usher Syndrome has had on her life. Essentially it means Kate Morell is losing her sight.

“As I lose my sight, travelling from light to dark, I am still finding this journey is harder than I ever thought it would be. Using a cane feels like I am wearing an invisibility mask. My self, my identity, my story, completely erased, replaced with the mask of that of a blind girl and nothing more. Is it just me who wonders about people and their stories, especially those with visible differences? I often wonder if anyone else ever wonders about their story beyond their differences.”

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Kate took the course in October and saw a dramatic change in herself:

“I began the course feeling a little bit depressed, but as I worked through it my mood lifted. I got a little carried away listening to many of the suggested books while tidying and de-cluttering my house, making time to be offline, and spend more time doing things that light me up. By the end I was a changed person, so much so that I went back to the beginning to start all over again.”

But that’s not the extraordinary thing. During the course Kate had an a-ha moment – an idea for a new passion project called ‘Sunsets for Kate’. Sunsets are what she’ll miss most when she loses her sight completely. Kate realised that if she goes blind by the time she’s 50, and is fortunate enough to live until I’m 90, she’ll miss out on over 16,275 sunsets. So she started thinking about how cool it would be to experience a lifetime of sunsets in the lifetime of her sight by asking people to post sunsets for me on social media.

And guess what happened? When Kate shared her story on the Do What You Love blog, it was noticed by photographer Matt Lawson, who corralled his community to submit sunsets. Within 48 hours they had gathered over 2000 comments and sunsets! You can add yours here.

Amazing what can happen when the inspired becomes the inspirer!

After six years of running the Do What You Love e-course it never ceases to deliver transformational experiences for participants, who really do find ways to love their life in the present, whilst setting themselves up to do more of what they love in the future. The January class starts TODAY, so if you want to be part of it, REGISTER HERE and dive in with us. (PS did I mention I might be doing a few Facebook Live chats in class this time round? Exciting!)

Have a great week

Beth

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