What to tell your inner child

Recently I seem to be reading more and more articles about wisdom people wish they had as a child, teenager or younger adult.
I get it, I do. But I also think 'I'm not dead yet' and 'it is never too late to learn'. With this is mind, here are some lessons I would like my 'inner child' to learn.

Do yourself a favour, learn this now.

• You can ALWAYS choose your response.
• Kindness starts with you.
• Don't think to avoid acting, don't act to avoid thinking.
• If it is important, be consistent.
• Be a friend.
• Don't empower your inner critic.
• Know what you are good at.
• Do what you are good at, so long as you love it.
• Don't be put off by 'the hard yards'.
• Foster your optimism.
• Be gentle with other people, everyone has their own 'stuff'.

There is so much to know and so much wisdom in the world, but you have to start somewhere. Just as soon as my inner child has a handle on these points, she can do up some flash cards for me.

Starting now, what wisdom would you like to have on board?

Humour Me :)

'You can't force funny.

But you can choose when you laugh. '

Recently, I went for a job interview, quite unexpectedly as it turns out. A 'casual chat' with a potential employer very quickly turned serious and probing. Yikes!
Mid interview, I remembered some advice from my husband, which went something like this....

 'Don't try to be funny.'

Good advice indeed for a job interview, but it got me thinking, what exactly did he mean by 'try to be funny'? One aspect of my personality I have always been confident in is my sense of humour and up until this point no one has seen fit to disillusion me on this front. Yet I was getting the sense that my life partner was trying to tell me something.... something I maybe did not want to know.

Rather than be deflated by the thought that I was not bringing the funny on the home front, I decided to work harder to make the man LAUGH. Obviously he must have been experiencing too much stress at work.

Here were some of my more inspired ideas:

The laugh list:

• Dress as a 1950's housewife and offer slippers and whiskey when Hubby arrives home. (Then remembered I already tried this and it freaked him out... a lot).
• Plastic wrap the toilet seat...... wait I would have to clean this up. Far too gross. Also very cliched.

Ummm.... that was my whole list.... and it was pathetic.

As usual when trying to teach someone else a lesson, I learnt a lesson myself. You can't force funny.

But you can choose when you laugh. 

Why was I so worried about making someone else laugh or whether they thought I was a comic genius? In terms of a better life, perhaps looking after my own giggles is more important.

I have decided to not torture my husband into laughing at my jokes, instead I am planning my humour resurgence in a different way. I am looking at the lighter and brighter side of life more often. It is a choice that is increasing the laugh lines around my eyes but leaving my forehead smooth.

Gut Feelings

"....a link between my brain and my gut, call me crazy, but that seems about right."

I am always surprised when it occurs to scientists that there are odd and unexpected (to them at least) relationships between various ailments, symptoms and even treatments. For a significant length of time it has been evident to me that for better or for worse, various parts (if not all) of our bodies share a relationship. Indeed in the Chinese Traditional Medicine world, the idea that the body is a system of interrelated parts and processes has been assumed for longer that many countries have been in existence!

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The spark for this train of thought was an article I read today linking various mental ills (such as depression, anxiety etc) with irritable bowel syndrome.

Hmmmm, let me see, a link between my brain and my gut, call me crazy, but that seems about right. Even popular culture seems to endorse this one, ever have a gut feeling? Ever feel sick to your stomach about an upcoming (scary) event? Ever get the shits with someone? Have you ever had a sad day and just felt 'crappy'? Okay, maybe that is enough poo references for one post.

As a person who has struggled both with anxiety and irritable bowel I am actually really impressed to have a link confirmed outside of my own suspicions (never trust someone who is both suspicious and anxious).

To me these links are clues to follow to eventual freedom from these ills.  Like a two for one offer, perhaps if you can improve one aspect of your health you will gain other less obvious wellness benefits.

As a direct result of this snippet of health gold, I am revisiting previous posts to regain motivation to improve my digestive health and perhaps reap other FABULOUS life rewards as well.

Check out these other diet related posts... I will be :)

Hunting the Cave Man
Step 1: What can I Eat?
Mark Sisson's Masterpiece

The Best Week of my Life

In my family there is a history of second sight, communicating with the spirits and other general oddness.
Unfortunately I do not have any of this supernatural trickery up my sleeve, but you can believe me when I say that I have seen into the future. What I have seen is for my immediate future is the best week ever... starting now.
I only know this because I have come up with no less that seven actions to make it happen. I am creating for me, the BEST WEEK EVER (read with drum rolls in place).
Here is my plan;

Best Week Plan

• Write creatively daily, use a short story contest as inspiration. 
• Listen to my children when they speak with me, don't multi-task my parenting!
• Be unexpectedly nice to my husband. Might make him suspicious, but what the heck.
• Be outside with my Camera, alone. 
• Make sure I always have music on when I clean. Dance cleaning is so much more fun than silent cleaning.
• Start a diary, no more getting caught out! (I am always getting caught out forgetting things).
• Get my daily groups of 30. 30 minutes exercise, thirty minutes playing, thirty minutes writing and 30 minutes working on my business.
• Make sure I gut laugh every day. Seek out opportunities to really laugh, include my family in my laughing. 

If this list were a colour it would be a nice optimistic yellow, if it were a drink it would be champagne (with no hangover, just the 'special occasion' vibe), if it were a time of day it would be eleven am, just in time for a cuppa and a piece of cake. It is a smiley, feel good list, thus I am assuming it will make for a smiley and feel good week.

Have you even planned to increase the 'joy quota' in your life? What did you do? Did it work out?
Happiness, joy and optimism, like anything worth having in life, require nurturing and work. Let me know your strategies to nurture your own 'upside'. 

Be Inspiring

Inspiration is a tricky and transient beast. It's visits can be frequent, but too often brief.

What good is inspiration that is short lived? What good is a start without a middle and where appropriate an end? More importantly what good is an inspiring start without an equally inspiring ongoing journey?

I love the feeling of being inspired, it is exciting and motivating and uplifting. It promotes optimism about the future and action in the present moment.

It gets things started. Think Harry Potter, product of a moment of inspiration on a train that spawned an empire for author J K Rowling and kick started a love of reading for millions of children (and adults) the world over. Inspiration, with follow through, can produce big results!

Harnessing and using this super power is a secret that is understood by few and used by even less. 

So how can we inspire ourselves and what could we achieve if we could maintain our inspiration for longer?

Here are a few ideas to get you started on the track to an inspired life.

Inspiration: Action, Joy, Optimism

• Do something you are good at EVERYDAY. Not only will it make you feel great about your day, but you are increasing your chances of inspiration to strike where you can make a real difference.
• Identify what makes you feel optimistic, do it! For me I feel inspired and optimistic by reading words authored by inspiring people.
• Set some small achievable goals, get them done. Don't bite off too much, just get into the habit of succeeding. 
• Look after your health, or as Stephen Covey puts it in his book "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People', 'Sharpen the Saw', you won't be ready to embrace inspiration if you are falling apart physically. Of course this one might be the subject of one of your little goals.
• When inspiration finds you, examine it and if appropriate embrace it. Give yourself the chance to be inspiring. This is such a kindness to yourself. 
• Be prepared that motivation around your inspired life will wax and wane, preparation means you are in charge of kick starting the motivation  and inspiration again. That's right, you are in charge.

I'm tackling these ideas at the moment and I am feeling optimism and motivation and can do-ability. I even feel confident enough to start making up words:)

Good luck with your own inspiration, please share your own tips and tricks for inspiring yourself and others.

Broadening my blogging Horizons.

Moving ahead

The more I write this blog, the more I realise that I don't want my writing to be purely about migraines. Although migraines have shaped the way I live my life and how I feel about myself, I don't necessarily want to give them power over my future.
I want to write and think about enjoying my life (with emphasis on the word 'joy'). This does include dealing with migraines and the sneaky thought patterns that they have engendered, but, come on, there is more to my life and my health and my identity than just being a migraine sufferer. Ironically however, I think writing about my migraine experience has been instrumental in helping me move past this sole focus to a more inclusive view. With this is mind I encourage anyone who is dealing with chronic health interests to at the very least journal about it, the impact on your own power is incredible.
As a result of this thought process, you will find the scope of my posts will broaden, but the intent behind them, to live fully and in a healthy and happy way, will not.
I. Can't. Wait.

Got Sleep?

One of my most reliable migraine triggers (can a bad thing be reliable?) is lack of sleep.
I have been quite lucky up until recently, I have been the person who climbs into bed, stretches, shuffles around and then promptly falls asleep.
In the last month or so however, something has changed. For some reason, as yet unknown, I find myself tossing and turning into the wee hours of the morning with no sleep in sight. Aside from an increasing sleep debt (which only so many afternoon naps available), I am worried about the impact on the frequency of migraine attacks. In the usual run of things, increasing fatigue has been the pre-cursor to increasing migraines.
Being the proactive person that I now am, I have taken matters into my own hands (or in this case someone else's hands) and looked into solutions for my growing insomnia.
This week I have tried to work on the 'comfort' of my body. I have noticed that I am finding it hard to get comfy in my bed. My shoulders and hips ache, my neck and head hurt and even my jaw seems to be piping up with complaints.
In response to this I decided to take harsh action.... and get a massage! Monday morning finds me sitting in the the local Chinese Massage Therapy establishment with a lovely young lady call Viv doing her best to work out the knots in my shoulders.
Let me tell you Viv worked hard! Solidly pummelling and kneading my neck and shoulders for half an hour, only pausing to comment 'That must hurt' or 'I heard that muscle crunch'.
I bravely endured this treatment until the desire to fall asleep overcame the desire to be massaged further at which point Viv called it a morning.
I tell you, I left that appointment walking on air, confident that for the first time in weeks my relaxed body would not drift but plummet into deep sleep. Ha!
I am sure this would have been the case if my shoulders did not gradually develop the feeling of having been beaten with a phone book (leaving no bruises) over the course of the afternoon. Who would have thought that deep tissue massage could have as painful repercussions as say, going 5 rounds with iron Mike Tyson?
Oh well, next on my list to try is binaural beats, at the very least I am expecting no extra discomfort! I will keep you posted.