Love You!

According to my google search, the synonyms for self love are: conceit, vainglory, vanity and narcism. Am I right in saying that most of us wouldn’t chose to describe ourselves as narcissistic? I wouldn’t think so anyway, as much as either of us would depict ourselves as conceited or vain.

But self love could not be further away from these negative synonyms, and yet If I openly expressed to society that I loved myself, well I would probably attract some funny stares and judgmental comments.  Why are we suspicious and critical of people who love themselves? Surely to love oneself is the ultimate goal we all strive for? Why can’t we shout about it too?

Because before you can love yourself, you sure as hell aren’t capable of loving anyone else. If you are filled with anxiety and keep punishing and hurting yourself, you are effectively wasting energy and leaving no room to love anyone else too.  How can you expect to be in a healthy, thriving relationship if most of your thoughts are governed my self hate and pity?

When we give in to bad thoughts about ourselves, we are hurting ourselves and inflicting unnecessary pain.  When I start to criticise myself, well I stop smiling, my eyes go dull, my energy levels drop and my motivation to do pretty much ANYTHING is down the pan. It’s a downward spiral of misery, who would want to spend time with someone like that? I know I wouldn’t!

If we treat ourselves with love and care and only think positive things about ourselves, that’s when we smile, that’s how we become happy. It really is that simple! When we only have love for ourselves, we are capable of loving others. Our happiness manifests and we attract healthy, loving relationships.

Which brings me to the question, why does self love hold such bad conotations? If by loving yourself you are effectively doing the number one most important thing in spreading more love in a world where it’s clearly needed, why the bad press?

We need to accept that loving ourselves is not just acceptable, it’s essential! And the sooner we can confidently say ‘MAN AM I AWESOME’ without there being anything negative about it, well the sooner we can live in a happier, more peaceful world.

Job Joys

I recently started working again after spending six months unemployed. The weeks and even months leading up to now have not always been easy and I have been frustrated with myself for worrying about money and income.

Despite not having a regular income, the past six months have actually undoubtedly been very prosperous for me.  I was fortunate enough to live in Barcelona where friends and family and my other half visited me. I lived in Tenerife for a month learning Spanish and made new friends.  I went to two music festivals and got to see some of my favourite music artists.

Louise.L.Hay says that there is an ‘inexhaustible supply in the universe’ and when you are ‘grateful for what you do have, you will find that it increases.’ This could not be more true for me. I was always grateful when my parents and my grandmother generously gave me money, which led to them giving me more money.  When my other half came over to Barcelona and paid for everything, I was so appreciative and knew that it was because he loved me and wanted to share his money with me as I would with him.

Now I have a job, and I am very happy with where I am. Because I am happy I am good at my work, and because I am good at my work I believe it will lead to even better opportunities.

I am grateful for my bosses who are so nice and are already showing me how they believe in me and want me to be a part of their business.

I am grateful for my co-workers who have all been so helpful and welcoming since I joined them.

I am grateful for the customers who are extremely generous in tipping and allow me to be more prosperous.

I am very happy that my piggy bank is filling up with money, and I am excited to enjoy that money with my friends and family like they have done with me.

Meditation Exercise: Me and the Universe

Do you ever just stop and think where the hell the universe stops and how mind boggling it all is… life that is?

I rarely do, but sometimes It happens and I am just dumbfounded about it all. Like today, It started off last night when I watched Interstellar again (Man I LOVE that film) and then today I decided to spend 40 minutes watching a documentary on black holes on YouTube. I just thought, ‘Fuck we really are tiny in comparisson to everything else out there and my problems are TINY too.’

I recently did this really effective meditation exercise which is useful for when you are worrying about personal problems. It’s only a five minute exercise, but it really shrunk my anxieties.

Sit down comfortably or lie down, however you prefer to meditate is fine. Now visualise yourself from the outside, see yourself as through the lense of a camera looking directly at yourself. Zoom out with the lense until you are at the far side of the room and you can see your whole self in the frame. Breathe gently and now switch the camera position so that you can see yourself from a birds eye view. Zoom out again until you can see the whole building you are in, you can see each room in the building now including yourself in the room you are sitting in. Zoom out again so that you can see your neighbourhood and the little speck that is yourself. Keep zooming out until you can see your city, your country, your continent. Zoom out until you see the vast world, the oceans and the land. Zoom out until you see the moon, mars, the sun. Zoom out until the sun becomes a tiny star amongst millions of other stars. Realise how small your problems are compared to the immenseness of the Universe. Hold that thought and then start to zoom back in, back past the sun and the moon until you find earth again. Zoom back in to your continent, your country, your city and your neighbourhood. Find your house and your room and zoom right back in on yourself.

Your problem isn’t so big now is it?

My first experience with LSD

On the bank of the hill overlooking the lake and surrounded by happy revellers I saw myself as others see me, I was filled with love for myself and for the first time,  I felt completely at peace with myself. I held my strong slender legs and saw the blood running through them and thanked them for carrying me places for 22 years. I led back on the grass and saw a bird fly through the sky in slow motion. I smiled and let the LSD take me to the heaven I didn’t know existed.

My experience with acid was a positive one. After being curious about the drug for a long time but always too scared to try it, at a festival in North Wales I trusted my surroundings and company and decided to take my first tab.  Drugs is an ambiguous issue for me, I don’t like to condone the use of them and need to stress that despite my personal experiences I am not a chemist or a scientist, and I cannot guarantee my own safety is sure.  However, I would like to share my personal experience with you.

LSD is a psychedelic drug and it can take you to heaven or to hell, depending on your surroundings and who you are as a person.  For years, I have downtrodden the love I should have always had for myself. Too often I have annihilated any chance of true happiness because of an unfading hatred for my body and a negative mind that never ceased.

Negativity is something many of us encounter every day, and most of the time subconsciously.  Changing the way you think is not an easy task, it takes dedication and educating yourself. The negative thinking patterns that ruled my life were ingrained in me, and where hard to change. But realising that a change needed to happen was the turning point in my happiness, and when I started to change these negative thoughts.

When I took LSD, for me it was a spiritual experience. I reached my heaven. What I had been trying to change in my thinking for so many months prior suddenly vanished and I was left feeling at complete peace with my mind and my body.  Although I knew that this was because of the illegal substance I had taken, I still knew that the feelings and thoughts I had were real.

What was amazing for me was that I knew I could reach this level of self-love without the drug too, and I knew that when I got there my life would be much better.  It’s been about four weeks since I first took LSD, and no I do not feel completely changed since then. What it has left me with however is an increased desire and willingness to reach that state of mind again and to stay there.

To live a truly happy life, free from self loathing and guilt, well surely that’s what every one of wants to achieve right?

I have no intentions of taking LSD again in a hurry, but neither will I say I will never take it again.  It was a positive experience for me and one that allowed me to feel what true happiness is, and why we should all be striving for that.

Me, Myself and Glastonbury

I often find that the most impulsive and spontaneous decisions turn out to be the best.

Last Monday I decided I was going to Glastonbury festival.  The only person I knew going was a guy I’d met two weeks earlier, I had an exact £100 to my name and I wasn’t entirely sure I even had a tent. All I knew was that it was a wonderful opportunity that could not be missed.

The next day I was up at 6am, about to embark on an exciting trip to one of the worlds highest regarded festivals; Glastonbury!

My friend of two weeks could not have been friendlier. We both sat in the front of the minibus driving down the M4 munching away on fresh pastries and discussing which acts we were excited to see.

Within seconds of arriving at the campsite I was sat down with four new friends. Robyn, an actor from London and a whiskey enthusiast handed me a spliff and a plastic tumbler filled with bourbon filling me with confidence that it was going to be a great week.

And I did. I had an amazing week! I made some real friends whom I will definitely see again.  I had fun working on the bar serving cocktails, I ate a tonne of delicious festival food, danced all night to my favourite DJ’s and cried to Chet Faker in the daytime.  I got high and drunk to mungo’s hifi, laughed until my belly hurt with complete strangers and danced in a hidden irish bar.  When it got cold we sat around campfires at stone circle, we watched the sunrise across Glastonbury and we drank bloody mary’s at 8am.

I saw grandma’s dance to pharell, ate chocolate crepes for lunch, trudged around in the mud and bought a whole new outfit from oxfam. I danced under a giant spider that breathed fire, meditated at midnight and smiled at every person I saw.

I haven’t had so much fun in a long time, and truth be told I have never felt quite so myself in a long time, which made me wonder why?

It didn’t take a lot of guessing. I had delved in to the unknown head over heels. I had no expectations, no routine, no stress. I was open to anything, I made real friends because i was acting and behaving like my real self, and that was the best feeling of all.

Try it yourself. Buy yourself a festival ticket and just take your pop up tent and a positive attitude, because from my experience, that is all you need to have a good time. (And maybe a pillow and sleeping bag!)

Gaining Perspective

As a young person, I can’t deny that there must have countless occasions where I took out the unhappiness I felt about myself out on others.  We see this happening all around us, people are usually irritable or ‘snappy’ when they are feeling unhappy within themselves.  Most of us don’t even question this, we think about those people as grumpy and we tend to avoid them because of this, after all… Who wants to spend time around someone who is constantly creating a bad atmosphere?

Well recently I haven’t been able to avoid this situation.  I met a lady who is in my Spanish class and I have spent every morning with her, five days a week for four weeks.  Not only have I noticed this woman’s negative behaviours and had time to think about why she is acting in this way, but I have also had time to reflect and think about how I have reacted to these behaviours and how I have made judgements about her in my mind and subsequently taken a disliking to her.

In almost every lesson, Val has something to complain about. She becomes sullen if the teacher corrects her and she is rude to the other students if they interrupt her (despite it being a class discussion…) She dominates the classroom and often makes small remarks if she’s unhappy about something.  She is a retired woman in a classroom with three twenty-year olds who seem to me much more mature, which makes me question what it is that makes her this way?

I came to the conclusion she must be deeply unhappy with something in her life, why else would she feel the need to complain about the most unnecessary things? I know myself that when I am worrying about something big, or when I’m angry about something, I usualy take it out on something or somone completely irrelevent.  It makes no sense, but at the same time it makes all of the sense.

My initial response to Val was of dislike. I could not help but roll my eyes and feel annoyed when each time she kicked up a fuss about something.  It was when I realised how unhappy she must be that I stopped feeling irritated.  Instead I now feel pitty towards her.  This sixty year old woman is filled with bitterness, and she has never learnt how to cope with it or challenge it. That must be a tiring and unfulfilling life, I thought.

Which is why I am so grateful, and so glad that I am challenging all of my negative thoughts as soon as they pop in to my head.  I don’t want them to stay there and become engrained in my mind.  Happy thoughts breed happier thoughts, and I only wish more people would realise this so they too could be free from bitterness and negativity.

When someone is happy it is so plain to see.  When someone is unhappy it’s also plain to see in the way they talk about themselves and to others, their actions and their opinions all stem from unhappiness, which is a dangerous slippery and hazy slope guys.

I am twenty-two, I’m not claiming that I know everything, but what I do know is that age isn’t what makes you wise. What makes you wise is knowing how to live a happy life, and how to be the truest, happiest, best version of yourself.

Happy_Lows

Affogato good you were!

For those of you who are unfortunately unfamiliar with the affogato, it is:

Rich Italian espresso poured over soft vanilla gelato.

It’s a classic, no frills no fuss dessert for the coffee lover and ice cream devotee. I’m an affogato purist and if ever I see a wafer or a drizzle of chocolate tarnishing my favourite after dinner treat, it just won’t be Affogato.

It’s simplicity is what makes it so deeply satisfying.  And yet, the affogato is a layered dessert.  The first bite is always a surprise to the senses with the hotness of the espresso against the ice cold gelato. Towards the end, the creamy gelato has melted and combined with the rich taste of the coffee, leaving you with a frappe of sorts, which is my favourite bit.

If you have any coffee/ice cream specialities I may not have heard of then please let me know.  It will however be difficult to beat this particular Italian delight.

“Wear Sunscreen”

My friend sent me this video tonight and It’s definitely struck a chord with me.  Please don’t be put of by it’s 90s style! It’s worth watching and the message isn’t one that will ever become outdates anyhow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwVVpwBKUp0

Such a simple concept, but one that is hard for many of us to follow. This same advice has been given to us by our elders, by journalists, spiritualists, strangers and even our friends and families.  Live young, do what makes you happy and live a life full of laughter and love. There really is nothing else to it, nothing is more important than that, nothing. Not your bank statements, A-Level grades, waist measurements or hair length!

‘I’m going to get my life sorted’ and ‘When my life really starts’ are things I hear myself say far too often and my friends. Our life has already started, now it’s time to make sure we live it the way we want, fulfilling our deepest desires.

When you set out on a journey of happiness, everything in your life improves immediately. Everything will improve for the people IN your life too, carry them with you and spread your positivity to every single corner of the world. That is my objective.

Happy_Lows

Bikini Ready!

Because worrying about what you look like in a bikini or that it’s may and you still aint bikini ready just wastes precious time and energy.  The truth of it is, nobody’s going to give two fucks if you’re a size eight or a size six, if you five pounds heavier or five pounds lighter, if you’re a bmi of 18 or 20, if you had that extra glass of wine last night or not.

People are naturally self absorbed.  That’s how humans work, it’s survival of the fittest, look after no.1

So buy that bikini you’ve been eyeing up, put it on and realise you have never been more bikini ready. Then go and treat yourself to a piece of your favourite cake that you’ve been denying yourself all week. That’s what I did anyway!

NOT READY FOR A BIKINI ONLY MEANS YOU’RE TOO COLD. Everyone is bikini ready!

Why An Obsessive Mind Is Not Always A Bad Thing

When channeled in a positive way, an obsessive mind can be very impressive.

But what is an obsessive mind? And how do you know if you have one?

Obsessive thinking stems from our irrational belief that we need to control all of the happenings in our life.  This constant worry of losing control manifests in to many aspects of our lives and is detrimental to our happiness and success.   These negative thoughts and worries can become so embedded in our minds that the person thinking them feels they have no way out.  Brain studies have shown that obsessive thinking is linked with a neurological disfunction that actually FORCES these thoughts into repetitive loops! So quite literally the persons mind is like a broken record playing the same negative belief over and over.

I have absolutely no idea about neurology and I’m not going to pretend I do. I have no idea if this disfunction can be cured from a scientists perspective, but what I do know is that there is a positive side to obsessive thinkers.

You just need to channel your energy to another place

Finding your passion might be the cure you need and the answer that an obsessive mind is not necessarily a bad thing.  I know from experience that ‘finding your passion’ sometimes brings more negativity than positivity. We start telling ourselves we aren’t good at anything, we are uninteresting, too old to start a new sport, we don’t have enough money, we’ll just fail anyway…. The list of lies we tell ourselves is endless.

Even if it is hard, the first thing I suggest you do is sit down and think back to when you were a kid. What did you  really enjoy doing? Make a list of all the things you think you used to enjoy.

Think about what that little, tiny voice inside of you always wanted to do but was too scared to ever voice it, learn to dance? learn a new language? whatever it was, write that down too.

Make a list as long or as short as you want, just make sure you put something down. Now look at your list and make a promise to yourself to try each one of them out. If it’s painting, go to a painting class or buy a paint set. If it’s cycling, organise a bike ride with friends! Whatever they are, just try them out and even if you hate it you can cross it off the list and you don’t have to try it again.

Chances are, you’re going to enjoy one of them. One of them is going to make you’re heart beat and you’ll feel alive again.

Which brings me back to obsessive thinking… Channeling our energy, a lot of it (but not all of it!) in to a new hobby can be the cure you need to stop the negative thoughts.

It’s been a week since I started Spanish lessons. It’s very intense and after a full week of using my bean, Yo Soy Cansado! But I also feel energised and I haven’t had a single bad thought all week.

Weird eh?

Nah not really. This is just what living feels like.

Happy_Lows