I think and talk a lot about kindness - self-kindness and self-compassion in particular. In my blurb about this blog I started 2 years ago, I say I’m on a journey towards self-compassion. Though kindness and self-compassion aren’t necessarily the same thing (google defines kindness as “the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate” and Dr Kristen Neff defines self-compassion as treating yourself with the same kindness, concern and support you’d show to a good frien

I’m having an interesting summer so far this year. I haven’t slid into summer completely burnt out from the flurry of finishing off a semester and academic year, but I have just finished a year-long training course. So while I do need some rest, the process of unwinding feels far easier. For once, I’m not coiled up as tight as a bedspring when reaching this point, and the result of this seems to be I have quite a lot of time to ponder. And what I’ve been pondering is how I’m

New Year – New You! It’s what all the advertisers are shouting about just now, especially those advertising exercise and clothes. There’s also lots of help out there if you want to know to what to do in 2019, this new and fabulous year. A quick google search brings you 52 places to travel to in 2019, 35 most anticipated movies of 2019, 20 new year’s resolutions for better ... (you name it - physical health, mental health, etc.) and numerous other ideas. I’m not sure about you

As you may recall, I’ve spent some time working on simplifying things over the past couple of years. Though I feel like Marie Kondo would view me as a failure because I've cleared out once and need to do it again after a couple of years, at the very least, I am starting to notice what it is that I am gathering. One thing I'm accumulating is books. The other thing I'm accumulating is pens. Now, cleared bookshelves overflowing after a year or two I can understand. Even though

It can be quite a struggle at times, being. Ask anyone I’ve ever worked with before. They could tell you without a doubt that I’m a ‘do’-er'; I’m most comfortable when I have my list of things to do along with the time and space to get things done. So, it may not be surprising that, initially, I found mindfulness somewhat frustrating, as part of the point of it is to take one of out ‘doing’ mode and into ‘being’ mode. It’s actually the same with my yoga class – but that d

I started intentionally expressing gratitude about 18 months ago. I had read quite a bit about coping with stress and increasing happiness and people say that expressing gratitude is good for you in a number of ways (including decreasing stress, increasing happiness and generally improving well-being*). I thought the idea of expressing gratitude fit in nicely with my journey towards self-compassion and the things I've written about so far in this blog (e.g., acceptance, noti

Almost a year ago now I was at a conference in London. Well, they called it a “forum” and it was about improving student well-being in terms of physical and mental health. (What can I say? This is the kind of thing I’m interested in!) Anyway, over the course of the day there were many interesting speakers saying many interesting things about university students’ health and well-being. I came away from this day with a single, powerful take home message that I was determine

It is a time of change in our household. While our household is small, it is usually full – full of love, full of laughter and nonsense, full of food and, my husband would probably remind me, full of shoes and clothes. So, I am lucky. I get it. And yet, recently, things have been changing, likely for the better. But this doesn’t make the change any easier. It started when my husband realised he had a dream. Now, I am all for dreams and following them wherever they take

“Two men killed by ‘only love today’ bracelet. In an ironic turn of events, two men were found severely injured in a town in the west of Scotland yesterday. Police were called to the scene, steps away from a popular chip shop in broad daylight." Above is the imagined headline and article that could have been found in the local newspaper for the area in which I worked a couple of years back. I had been doing everything I could to prepare myself for a new leadership role withi