General Well-being

General Well-being, Mental Health, Uncategorized

Sure, we are all in this together!

18/04/202018/04/2020 denise

In the midst of COVID-19, we are seeing everywhere that we are in this together and yes we are all in this world epidemic together, living every aspect of it, together. But really we are, each, living it, very, very differently. When I decided I wanted to write a post about the new norms of social distancing and isolation that we are experiencing at the moment, I had thought about writing about the different groups in isolation, single, with a partner, as a family, elderly, and single parents. The more I looked into different articles about this topic, I realised that there is so many more, and I am probably only taking in some of them.

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General Well-being

Learning a new language as an adult

11/04/202018/04/2020 denise

As a child growing up in rural Ireland, in primary school we were thought English and Irish, when I reached my final year of primary school as a pilot programme, we were offered the opportunity to learn French. I really enjoyed it and it was the first time the teacher complimented me, I still remember how happy it made me. I then started secondary school or high school. I continued to learn English, Irish and French. The French was the same I had learned the previous year, so, I got lazy and didn’t do much as I already knew it. When it came to the point that I had to learn I had the same teacher for French and Irish which made it hard to learn either.

The story goes on and I studied French for 5 years and came out of my final exams with a mere pass. In university I took up Spanish, I did enjoy learning it but did not fully grasp it. Fast-forward a couple of years and I wish I had paid more attention in my language classes and invested in them, Irish included. So about a year ago, I decided to take up learning a language as it is one thing that personally annoys me as a native English speaker, we expect the world to accommodate us, this may not be the case but it how I feel about myself anyway.

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General Well-being, Uncategorized

Positive in failure!

04/04/2020 denise

Collins dictionary describes failure as “a lack of success in doing or achieving something”. Two questions you can ask yourself, are we meant to always achieve what we want? And why is failure a bad thing anyway?

If we always achieve what we want, how do we know if we actually deserve it and if it is what we want? When we talk about failure, we talk about the lack of success. But every situation has different angles to look at it. For example J.K. Rowling, widely known as the author of Harry Potter, one of the best selling authors of today, had her first book rejected by 12 different publishing companies. At the time, she was living on benefits and did not give up at the first hurdle of failure. She is now a millionaire. So, although the first 12 times she didn’t achieve what she wanted, she kept going. She believed that her time was coming and that sometimes you need to fail to succeed. One of the main skills I believe she displayed during this time was resilience.

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General Well-being

The secrets of being happy!

03/01/202020/03/2020 denise

There are so many books out there giving us all the magic formula of how to be happy, but what if you have tried it and it failed, does that mean that you cannot be happy? NO, it means that you haven’t found the formula that fits you, and maybe there isn’t just one formula that fits you, that you need to take parts of different ones and stick them all together. Then what if the formula you have tried and tested just isn’t working this time then what.

That is a lot of questions in an opening paragraph and I am sure you are wondering where this is really going. I believe everyone wants to be happy they just may have been wearing the wrong size shoe to take it on or are scared of what then if they do become happy.

So here are my steps to be happy for now, take them as they are or change them to suit you, if everything was black and white we wouldn’t have rainbows.

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