If your life were a storybook and you had a sneak peek at the ending and knew what was going to happen, would this alter how you do everything now?
Would it make you change the way you do things? Would it make you alter what could happen? Would it make you more relaxed or would it make you more anxious?
Continue reading “If you knew how your life was going to be would you do anything differently?”
Achievement is defined as a thing done successfully with skill, effort, or courage. Success is the accomplishment of a goal. Courage is the strength to do something in the face of pain. I believe achievement is so much more courage than anything else. When we think of achievements, it is generally the big wins like achieving your University degree, achieving that promotion, your driving license, and so on. But why do we not put as much focus on the small achievements? For some people today that might be getting out of bed, showering, or picking up their phone to read this. For some people that takes more courage than it does for the person who went for a promotion in the job that they are successful in.
Continue reading “Making note of small achievements”
People say that ‘knowing something is half the battle’. But what does it actually mean and is it really true? Or is it something we tell ourselves to make whatever has happened less impactful on our emotions?
Continue reading “Is knowing half the battle?”
This post will somehow depend on where you are in the world and it is also not a rant, but something that I feel needs to be brought to our attention. From my experience living across three different continents and mixing with many amazing and inspiring women from all over the world, I can still see the underlying pressure women and society put onto themselves. Even when researching this, I got loads of articles about the stresses to have it all as a thirty-something year old and how to cope with your thirties, and surprisingly the majority of the articles were about the pressures to settle down, marry and have kids.
Continue reading “The secret/not so secret pressures of a 30 something-year-old woman”
If 2020 has taught us anything, and if it is something you have not considered yet, it is that nothing always goes according to plan. This year many of us have seen others, if not gone through it ourselves, losing jobs, businesses, wages, connections with others, dreams, holidays, loved ones, and much more.
Continue reading “Plan B!”
It is one of the simplest words to grasp and say. It is one of the top words that babies first learn and understand. However, it is two letters that a lot of people struggle to use or potentially struggle to hear when it does not suit what they want.
I believe from a young age we learn to see ‘no’ as something negative, so in ways, we avoid using it as we see it as something wrong. I have seen so many articles about how learning to say no can improve your life but yet it is a simple thing that we still struggle to use or say.
For sure it is something I am not very good at but then I will have some people say I find it easy to say to them. I wonder why we find it easy in one situation and not the same in another. I think it can boil down to impressions and how we want others to see us. It is not always conscious but more in our subconscious. It can also be a learned behaviour from years of what can be seen as doing the right thing and being accommodating.
That brings another aspect of saying no, when is it seen as being assertive and respectful of yourself and when is it seen as being rude. I guess this will also depend on the person saying no and the other person on the receiving end.
Why saying no is so important for your own health and well-being.
Negatives to not saying no
How to start saying no
One thing that the last six months have shown me, we do not always need to be available for everyone. We also are not needed as much as we sometimes think we are by others (I mean this in a good way). People become reliant on each other when this reliance is allowed to be there, take it away and both will learn to cope in different ways without it. Being able to say no is a learning process, there will be good days and bad days, do not let the bad days hold you back. Give these tips a go and add some of your own and see what difference saying ‘no’ can have on your life. 😊
Over the summer, after I had finished my Certificate in Professional Coaching and a Certificate in Career Coaching, I had the urge, time, and want to continue growing my knowledge. I am not very good at having to read for long periods of time, especially from a computer, but online was the only real option and I had already forked out a lot of money for my other courses. I did not want to spend any more money for the moment anyway.
Years ago, I would get courses in different places like Groupon and other platforms like this. I had looked through them and nothing really interested me at that point anyway, so I decided to look further afield. I had heard about Teachable and Udemy; I am sure there is a lot more, but I am going to base my findings on the ones I have mentioned. Also, to point out, I am not affiliated with these sites and do not receive money from them if you do any of their courses unless it is a course directly linked to me.
You can get certificates from these courses, but they are not certificates from a registered university. For example, if you did one of these online courses on Psychotherapy and received a certificate, you cannot register and practice as a psychotherapist. It will give you the knowledge and an understanding of psychotherapy but not the accredited certification that you would need to be a licensed professional. That being said, it may add to your continued personal development for work and add some new tools to your box.
This is where I feel these kind of courses are really useful and beneficial. Nowadays, more and more people are deciding to change their careers at some point and opting for something very different from what they had originally qualified in. Returning to university can be extremely costly and taxing on your health and well-being, whether you decide to go back full time or part-time, continue to work or give up work completely. It is not easy to return to university or studying. For this reason, you need to be sure that it is the right thing for you. By taking some short and inexpensive, sometimes even free, courses you get to have a better idea of what types of topics you may learn and if it is the right course for you.
If it has been any length of time since you have been studying or partaking in any form of learning, online courses can be a way to help you get back into learning. It may even help to find your new way of learning, as for many reasons you will not be in the same position or circumstances and so will not study and learn the same way.
Some other reasons why doing a short online course can be useful are:
Of course, there are negatives also, they only give a general idea of your topic of choice, sometimes too many courses to choose from can be more overwhelming than anything else amongst other things. But, if you are not doing all the normal things that you used to do, and have more time on your hands, what is stopping you. My thoughts are that yes value courses are the way to go and now is the perfect time to try something new, you may be surprised about what you can gain and anything gained is always positive to me. I wish you the best of luck if you do take on a value course, I do not think you will regret it.
We are 4 weeks into Term 1 of the academic year 2020-2021 and we have had a year like no other. Overnight we have had to adjust and then readjust again everything that we do and Term 1 has brought about another level of readjustments. Looking back at March of this year, we did not expect to still be in the situation that we are in, but we have managed to grow with what has been happening, to our best abilities.
When we closed schools, we told young people that it was because of the virus and to keep us safe, we were all to stay at home. Now even with the cases higher again we have returned to school but with precautions in place. The KHDA, DHA, and MOE have all been looking closely at schools and how they are providing care and support for students to make schools as safe as they can be. We also know a lot more about the virus now as compared to before.
I do not know all the ins and outs of what happens and how; there are other people who work specifically in this area that would know better than me. This post is about what I do know and understand to my best abilities and how to support your own well-being and that of others around you, including your children, at this time.
Some of the precautions or procedures included all staff getting tested before students returned, different entry/exit gates and times for students to avoid congestion, temperature checks every morning, a specific isolation room with a nurse to support students who have a high temperature, grade bubbles, and seating charts so students are in less contact with others and so on. There is a lot more, but we will not get into them all today.
With these procedures, what also comes into play is if there is a student who has tested positive. The reason for smaller groups and bubbles is to limit students’ contact with others and to know quickly and easily which students have been in close contact with each other. It is a lot of planning and effort on the school’s part and very stressful for parents and students as well.
Parents must now leave their children at the gate where they must get temperature checked, wear a mask, keep their distance from others, and so on. Parents are missing out also on the social aspect of meeting with the teachers and other parents in the morning, even if it was a simple ‘Hello, how are you?’. It is challenging to not have this anymore. For parents who are at home, all of this can be more isolating and adding on extra stress if another student in the school or even your child’s class tests positive.
Most parents will forget or not even think about how they are feeling, focusing just on their child and how they are feeling and coping with everything.
Here are some tips on how to help support you and your child with the changing situation.
So, what is rejection – it is basically pushing someone or something away. Studies have proved that rejection can have the same effect on you as physical pain does. I have spoken before about how our minds and body are wired together. But why does rejection have such a big impact on our physical body? I believe the reason it has such an impact is that we do not always deal with rejection adequately and understand the impact it is having on us; so we push it aside, rejecting our emotions and feelings of rejection.
There are lots of different areas that rejection comes into play. For today, I am going to look at 4 areas career/work, social, self, and romantic.
Continue reading “Dealing with rejection – Do we all have past trauma?”
Anyone that really knows me, knows how much I love pets. I do not intend on owning a cat as I do not like them being on my countertops, but I have nothing against them other than that. Growing up on a farm, I have always had animals around me. The last five years in the Middle East have been strange not having a pet but then I am always busy. I have thought about fostering a dog many times but always talked myself out of it. Even 6 weeks ago, until I saw a post for a rescue dog that had an injured leg and who was so scared of people around him. I knew I wanted to foster this dog and that I had, at the moment, the time that he needed.
Continue reading “I fostered a dog, and it has made my year and it has been great for my mental health and well-being”