What are your views on cheating & affairs?

Could you do it?

Would the guilt eat you alive?

What if he did it?

Would you ever trust him again?

That's my biggest concern here.

Love, and even forgiveness can be won back. But trust? That is something that takes years to build - and only moments to obliterate.

How could you carry on being with someone whom you love, yes. Whom you have forgiven, yes. But who you do not trust?

The anxiety. The isolation. The guilt you would feel.

I couldn't continue on like that. Always on edge. I'd have to end it.

What about you? What are your views on cheating and affairs? Are you a forgiver or an ass-kicker?

xo

How to Wake Up Earlier (instead of leaving it to the last minute)

Back in my 9-to-5 days, my morning routine would look like this:

• Alarm rings
• Snooze button
• Alarm rings again
• Snooze button
• Alarm rings yet again & I realize I have 5 minutes to be out the door
• Frantic acrobatics, out of bed
• Skip breakfast, skip shower
• Barely get enough make up on
• Out the door
• Rush, rush, rush to work

It's safe to say I was not leading an intrepid lifestyle! More like a frantic, stressed out and malnourished lifestyle!

Are you frantically rushing out the door every morning without breakfast? Are you always five minutes late to work? Have you tried to create a new habit of waking up earlier by using affirmations and positive thoughts without any improvement? It's no wonder you're tired and fatigued every day! You're going about this from the wrong angle.

How you do your mornings is how you do life. Your morning state is what sets you up for the day, if you're frantic & stressed, you bring that energy into your day. But if you're well rested and relaxed, your day is gonna go a whole lot different!

When I realized I was NOT setting up my daily zen very well, I knew the best approach was to be gentle and slowly develop the habit of getting up earlier over a few weeks. Here's how you can do it too.

How to Wake Up Earlier

1. Set your alarm every day for the ideal time you'd like to get up. So say work starts at 9:30am and you'd like at least an hour and a half to get ready, set it for 7:30am.


2. Then let the alarm go off in the morning, BUT, don't get up. Chances are your mind will be like 'WTF!?' and you'll just hit snooze and that's fine.


3. Keep doing that every morning. What this does is it's training your mind and your body to switch on at 7:30am even if you don't get up.


4. After some time (maybe a week, two or even a month!) you will naturally start waking around the time your alarm goes off and slowly you'll start finding you have energy to get up at that time. 


5. Create a 'Christmas morning equivalent' incentive to get up. This is my favourite part! Once your mind has caught up and knows when to wake, you can give it an extra boost by creating that excitement of christmas morning. What's something fun you can put into your schedule before work? Maybe it's a fabulously hot shower, a delicious gourmet coffee, an exciting book you're obsessed with atm, green smoothie, yoga, a quick walk to your fave cafe, a hot outfit, a hot boy? :P I find I still have child motivation to naturally wake my ass up at 6am on Christmas morning so how can you make everyday Christmas morning?

This has worked for me time and time again, it's about training yourself to create a new habit and rewarding yourself for committing to it each day. That, for me, is the best way to wake up earlier!

Do you struggle with getting up early? How have you overcome it? Tell me your story in the comments below!

Stressed & Overwhelmed: What To Do When Life Feels Like An Uphill Battle

Just before the weekend began, I was feeling a little flat on ideas for my blog and my new aspirations for a career in travel writing. I decided to head toward my favourite bloggers and online mentors for inspiration.

Within minutes my cup was full of love and I was bursting with ideas and all around goodness. But as I continued to explore and read many tools and concepts I started to feel myself getting drowsy, stressed and slightly overwhelmed.

What started out as a fun inspiration boost quickly turned into paralysis and confusion. I tried to write but too much information was running through my head. 'You have to do this, you have to do that. But what about that? How am I supposed to do this. I don't get it? But how do I incorporate this? I can't do it. I can't do this.'

These thoughts have occurred many a time recently so I decided to try things a little differently just to see if I'd get different results. After all Albert Einstein did say, "Doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result is the definition of insanity." (click to tweet).

Needless to say, what I tried helped IMMENSELY and I know they'll work for you if you're stressed out and overwhelmed.


1 // Limit Your Addiction

It's true, sometimes too much of a good thing can turn into a painful, gruelling and overwhelming bad thing. Since I spent last year reading 51 personal development books I guess you could say I kind of got addicted to them.

But after a while my mind was turning into mush when I'd read one book saying you had to use affirmations or nothing works and another book completely contradicting the last book explaining why you shouldn't use affirmations. I wound up confused, not knowing what to do or believe or understand and I realized I just had to pull back on my 'personal development' addiction and choose only a select few books (like 3 or 4 that I enjoyed) because it was starting to drive me nuts.


2 // Take a Luxurious Break

Sometimes overwhelm can be a sign of working too hard or too much. When it hit me I knew that there was nothing else I could do but take a break... even though I tried to fight it.

Your body and mind are wise beyond your years, they know what they want and what they need. If you neglect their needs for too long they can take over and no matter how hard you try to stay "on form" you will be submitted into chilling out.

When I was forced to take a break I decided to milk the crap out of it. I made my favourite hot drink, Milo. I ran myself a super hot bubble bath with lavender bath salts, I put on some extremely relaxing music and melted away.

This took the stress away immediately and allowed me to feel at peace with myself. It was bliss.

Tina Su of Think Simple Now gives 8 extra awesome tips for overcoming overwhelm that you should definitely check out.


3 // Bless Nature With Your Presence

There are serious health benefits to spending time in nature, no wonder it's one of my favourite things to do. There's a big forest 10 minutes from my house so whenever I'm feeling like a caged animal, I will break out and take a long work in the forest.

It instantly boosts my vibe and also helps me center myself. I come back to the reality of the present moment my incessant mind chatter just melts away.

Sometimes it can be a little difficult to get out in nature due to weather or the fact you live in a concrete jungle. This green meditation music will help you to relax and also will make you feel like you're actually out in the forest.

4 // Do Something Super Duper Fun

I decided to go along with Scott to his inline hockey practise game. It was a reason to get out of the house and to be honest, avoid writing. To my surprise there just happened to be a bouncy castle set up at the rink.

Was it for kids birthday parties? Yes. Did I care? No. It was a freaking bouncy castle!

Once I got over worrying about whether I was too heavy to jump on it, I raced up and flipped into it. Then another flip and another and then pretty soon I was doing all types of acrobatics! I was having the time of my life with a bouncy castle and the thought of writing and brainstorming was nowhere to be seen.

Sometimes with all the brain mush happening you can get a little stuck for fun ideas. These two fabulous posts from The Simple Dollar and Tiny Buddha on 50 ways to have fun by yourself and 50 creative & cheap ways to have will help you with all the ideas you need.

5 // For Serious Overwhelm - Take a Nap

Sometimes we can be so overwhelmed it completely ruins our mood and day. We can almost feel paralyzed. In fact I had that exact feeling when trying to write this post. I just could not get started.

I felt the drowsiness set in and so I decided to give in and take a nap. When I woke, I was literally pumped with clarity and focus and was able to write this post immediately.

There are many benefits to taking naps, when I was in Italy I learned very quickly how the Italians like to use the power of napping to enhance their productivity and clear headedness. I found it difficult to just relax and take pleasure in doing nothing but it didn't take me long to adapt and I found that I had more energy and was 'switched on' most of the time.

But us westerners tend to slate it as a waste of time or believe it's 'slacking off' and push ourselves to our limits to earn that extra buck or have everything 'perfect'. Seems like a pointless exertion of energy really.

If things are seriously stressful and you happen to have some free time, take a nap and reset yourself. You'll wake up feeling so much better and possibly even more clear headed.

In the comments below, I would love for you to tell me your best stressed & overwhelmed tip. What do you do to help yourself calm down, gain clarity or just feel at ease? What tips are you going to tke from this post to help you do that?

Letting Go of the "Old" You & Embracing the "New" You

I happened to stumble across the movie-doco 'What The *Bleep* Do We Know!?' which is about quantum physics (and probably a little bit of the law of attraction) and there was one particular bit of information that stood out to me that I want to share with you because I believe it has true relevance to what happens when we feel like our lives are falling apart.

The physicists explained that when we feel an emotion, what's scientifically happening is our brain releases a chemical unique to that emotion into the bloodstream which then signals our body to respond to that emotion in our own unique way.

In non-physicist terms this means that when we're constantly feeling an emotion over and over again (when we feel like we just can't shake it) like loneliness, sadness or even joy, we've actually become addicted to that emotion.

And when we're addicted to that specific emotion, we will consciously and sub-consciously do everything in our power to feel that way as much as possible. Yup, even if it's depression, numbness or inertia. Which explains why we feel so defeated when we're trying everything to change ourselves and transform our lives.

When I heard that I thought "Well wtf can I do now?!" and then there was a lovely part that explained why having that EPIC melt down or feeling like our life is falling apart is actually really really good for us.

When we start asking those questions of "What am I doing with my life? Why am I here? Where am I going?" or start making those statements of "I don't know who I am anymore, I feel lost, I'm not happy" what we're doing is sub-consciously detaching from the old concepts of ourselves.

In other words we are (consciously or sub-consciously) stripping ourselves of our old identities because we're ready to create a new version of ourselves that is no longer attached to anything from our past. The part where we get stuck is in the addiction to those old emotions.

Because we won't or can't give them up we remain stuck in limbo of clinging onto the old version of ourselves while the new version is happily waiting with it's arms stretched out.

So the question really is, how do we let go of the old and what we're chemically attached to and embrace the new?

Well, from my experience so far I believe you have to release your grips by falling into the darkness. That black hole in your core, that emptiness you feel, that heaviness in your heart is where you begin.

That might manifest as an EPIC meltdown or it could be a simple change of heart. It may show up in your choices, you may do something dramatic or finally allow yourself to do something you've wanted. It may come about in owning your power and standing up for yourself or deciding to part ways with negative people in your life.

I found out the hard way there's no amount of physical action that could ever compensate an internal problem. Fall into that emptiness, embrace the heaviness and go into that black hole. I promise you it's not as terrifying as you think and you'll be surprised with what you find.

"Greatness lives on the edge of destruction." - Will Smith (click to tweet)