You Are Enough

You are enough. Let those words wash over you. Repeat the following words a few times to yourself:

I am enough

I have enough

I do enough

Observe the reaction in your body. Observe the reaction in your emotions. Observe the reaction in your energy levels.

You don't have to have it all together. You don't have to know it all. You don't have to have more X. You have enough time.

Right now in this moment is enough. It's all enough.

How would you be behaving right now if you really believed it? What would you be doing? What would you be saying to yourself and others?

Maybe now is the time to act from this place. See what miracles occur when you do.

Lots of love

Louise x

Make This Christmas Abundant!

I can't quite believe I am sat writing here about Christmas but it is actually only just 3 weeks away! As wonderful as Christmas is it can also be a time that shines a light on lack in areas of our life. A lack of money

A lack of friends/family

A lack of partner

Missing those who are no longer with us

A lack of sunshine (!)

......and perhaps a lack of achieving what you wanted to achieve over the past year.

If you have been reading my blog for a while then you know you always have a choice in how you are being in every situation and how you think about it.

If you have read much about the law of attraction you will also know that like attracts like so thinking in a lack mindset will create more lack in your life. Thinking about what you don't have only highlights more of what you don't have in your life, as that is what you are focusing on.

So how about changing it around and let's make this Christmas abundant! How, I hear you ask? Let's go through the list above:

Money - instead of saying "I can't afford it" how about looking at what you can afford instead? Or asking yourself "how can I create/find the money to be able to buy/do this?". I can't.....just cuts any possibility off but if you ask your self "how can I..." you are being more open to making it happen. Look at all the things you already have to be grateful for in your life and daily count your blessings.

Friends/Family - Christmas can be a lonely time for some people, instead of focusing on feeling lonely look for ways you can be around people, if that is what you desire, maybe there's an opportunity to volunteer over Christmas? Think about the people you do already have in your life and show them how much you value them in your life. Just 1 great friend can be of so much value compared to lots of acquaintances who you don't really have deep relationships with. Maybe you are in a different country to them, then make the most of the wonder of Skype, they can be in your room in an instant.

Partner - What is it you feel you are lacking from not having a partner? Love, intimacy, connection, someone to spend time with, fun, friendship etc Break it down then look at where you have each of the things you feel you are missing in your life? It's quite an amazing exercise to do.  The funny thing is many single people want to be in a relationship and many people in relationships sometimes wish they were single! So how about just making the most of your single time before you meet that special person (and then wish you were single again ;-)).

Missing those no longer with us - Make this time an great opportunity to honour those that have passed on, on your own or with family and friends. You could share how they touched your life and what you learnt from them. Allow yourself to feel the feelings, to grieve and to be so very grateful that they were part of your life.

Sunshine - this might seem like a bit of a joke but some of us (including myself) really do miss the summer at this time of year. Unless you can book a flight somewhere then make the most of every bit of sunshine we do have, on the lovely winter sunny days get out there and feel it on your face. Winter is also a perfect excuse to have some down time, to be a bit quiet to process all that has gone on through the year, to get your energy reserves up ready to burst out again in Spring. Learning to be grateful for the different energies of the seasons has really helped me to value the winter months.

Achievements - Instead of focusing on what you didn't achieve look at what you did. Look at what you learnt. Sometimes life doesn't happen the exact way we want it to when we want it to but things happen instead to teach us valuable lessons. Sometimes we need to go through unexpected experiences to be fully ready to create what we really want in our life. Sometimes something arise that is even better that what we thought we really wanted! So don't waste time feeling bad about what you didn't do, learn from this past year and then get into action towards your goals right now. Step by step things will start to change.

To to summarise.....when you catch yourself feeling any kind of lack, switch it around by focusing on what you do have, what you are grateful for in your life, and get in to action to create your dreams. WOO HOO!

Happy Christmas :-)

Lots of love

Louise x

Honour Your Values

What is really important to you? That you'd do anything to feel or experience? Love? Integrity? Honesty? Kindness? Family? Success? Freedom? Happiness? Abundance? Health? Spirituality? The list is endless.

It's very easy when caught up with work, in relationships and everything else that life throws at you to loose sight of what is really important to you.

It's also very easy to start to live by someone else's values, to loose track of what really matters to you.

To get caught up in their dreams, their priorities and forget about your own.

Our values are what drive us, what inspire us to make our dreams happen so what happens when we are not living by them?

We can begin to feel lost, confused, depleted of energy and inspiration to create change in our life. We can start to put others needs before our own. We can put our own feelings aside to make sure the other person is ok.

We may be working towards "goals" but are not actually doing much to achieve them. The drive and motivation to get in to action comes from feeling so inspired by the end result that we will do anything to make it happen. However if it's not what we really want (not in alignment to our values) then it's very hard to feel any desire to do any thing about it, even though we still feel guilty when we don't!!!

I speak to my clients a lot about learning to love yourself, to put yourself first, and often they are not even sure where to begin with that. One way is to get really clear about what YOU want, what is important to YOU and make that a priority.

Also self love is all about valuing your feelings, they are just as important as any one else. Avoid putting them aside to "keep the peace", honour them, express then and then release them if they are not supporting you.

If you have no idea what your values are look around you in your life. What do you surround yourself with in your home? What do you enjoy talking about most to others? What is that dream that you gave up on years ago but every now and then pops back into your head? What really excites you? What inspires you in other people?

Just be on alert for these things. Make a note of them when you notice them. Slowly you will begin to create a list of things that are important for you to experience on a daily basis.

Once you are clear on that then you have a check list to make sure that every situation you go into is in alignment with that. For example if you value honesty and have to work/ or have a relationship with someone who is a natural born liar then it is likely not to work for you! Or if you value integrity then  any kind of relationship where the other never does what he/she says he/she are going to do is likely to drive you crazy!

Of course we attract people into our lives who have opposite values to us, this is our opportunity to learn and find ways of how different values can compliment each other. A classic example is in a relationship with one partner valuing work and one valuing family. This can really work where one can use their work values to be able to financially support the partner who values family  and wants to stay at home to look after the children. It can also cause a lot of arguments! It's being in that curious mindset of learning rather than fighting against, and honest discussion, that brings out these insights,

Value yourself enough to take some time to work out what is really important to you, then make time to ensure your life supports that.

If you'd like some help uncovering what your values are then give me a call! 07779 150 886.

Namaste x

Learn To Listen To Your Intuition

How many times in your life have you said, after a situation has happened, "I knew something wasn't right", or "I had a feeling about that". So often we get a feeling, a hunch, about a person or situation but then the mind takes over and intuition can be easily ignored. Later to only wish you hadn't.

Personally I can think of many times in past relationships when I've had had a feeling that something isn't right but ignored it because I didn't want to believe it! Only for it to end painfully further down the line.

How much pain or suffering we could save ourselves if we listened to our intuition.

On the flip side it's also easy to suppress what what our heart really wants to do, maybe for fear of rejection, failure, looking stupid and so on. A momentary flutter of excitement about something can quickly be squished by the mind talking us out of it.

Consider, what would life be like it we just listened to our truth, to what we really wanted and paid attention to the warning signals we are naturally given. Then acted from there, rather than our mind.

It's a brave step acting from intuition, your mind will want to battle it, courage is required. As we know though, we grow stronger and build self confidence by feeling the fear and doing it anyway.

The moments when I have listened to my intuition and acted from there, spoken out or changed my plans have been incredibly illuminating and quite simply have felt right. Things have flowed.

Sometimes it's hard to distinguish intuition from the ever chatting mind.

This is where stillness comes in.

This where noticing how your body is feeling comes in.

This is noticing your dreams.

This is noticing the really quite whispering voice of your heart under the loud shouts of your mind.

It's an inner knowing. Deep down you know what is best for you. It's honouring that and acting from there.

Through yoga I have learnt the more connected I am with my body and through spending time in silence I am able to notice my intuition more clearly. It's not drowned out by constant rushing around, doing doing doing, caught up in my head not really creating space to listen at all to what is really right for me.

I have also become aware of how our intuition is God's way of speaking to us. I realise some of you reading this may not have a belief in God but that's just my experience of it. Since finding faith in a higher energy I have noticed that my internal guiding system, my intuition, has got louder, it's like I am being guided through what is best for me and what isn't so good. Then when I follow that guidance, I feel more connected God and experience a sense of being looked after.

Above all, do what feels right for you. Be aware of others trying to sway you in directions that just doesn't feel comfortable to you. Only you know your truth.

Many blessings,

Louise x

The Power of Speaking Your Truth

  Some people are so good at expressing themselves, standing up for what they believe in and just saying it like it is.

They make it look easy. If something is bothering them they just deal with it straight away and move on.

It's not this simple for many of us though. Letting someone know that they have upset us, how we really feel about them or anything else that is playing on our minds can be incredibly difficult sometimes.

That feeling of just wanting to say it but it feels stuck in your throat, fear taking over of what might happen when you let it out.

Why it's easy for some people and not for others is usually largely due to how self expressed our family and friends were as we grew up. Our childhood conditions us whether we like it or not, but this of course can be changed.

The power of speaking your truth is amazing. It's liberating, empowering and can take relationships to the next level.

I am sure some of you know that feeling of wanting to say something to someone but not. How energy draining it can be, how it can impact the relationship anyway by the way you are behaving, sleepless nights, stress, upset. Is it all really worth that rather than just saying it?

If you are going through this at the moment, wanting to express how you are feeling but just not being able to get it out, here are a few tips:

• Before you speak to them, take sometime to sit still, close your eyes and breathe slowly and deeply. Connect with the stillness inside you
• Once you are feeling still bring your awareness to your heart centre, where your true self resides and connect with how you are feeling about the situation, what is your truth, what needs to be expressed?
• From this place of calm approach the situation. Allow the words to tumble out how ever they do, it doesn't matter if it's not perfectly rehearsed, just speak from your heart. Trust that what comes out is what you need to say.
• Let go of any expectations of their response. You can't determine how someone reacts and remember they have their own stuff going on that will cause them to react in a certain way. Just remember to own what you say, this is more about you simply speaking your truth rather than what happens next.
• What ever the outcome I guarantee you will feel empowered for just getting it out there. Take time to acknowledge yourself for feeling the fear and doing it anyway. It does get easier over time.

Your truth is beautiful. You are valuable and people will benefit from hearing you speak from your heart.

Namaste

Louisex

5 Benefits of Wearing Colours That Suit You

I have been an image consultant for 10 years, it was the first business I ever started back in my late twenties. I was drawn to it through a love of colour, and of course clothes! Having ginger hair growing up made it trickier to pick colours to wear but luckily my mother had her "colours done" when I was about 10 so she was able to help me pick clothes that suited me, as we are the same colouring. I didn't really care about it at that young age but certainly appreciated it as a teenager discovering fashion. As a result I grew up loving wearing light bright colours.

I find that the clients I meet often have one or two colours they stick to or might even just stick to the safer option of neutrals. They want to experiment with colour but are not sure where to start with the vast array of choice in the shops.

There are some amazing benefits of wearing colours that suit you and some disastrous effects of wearing ones that don't....

The wrong colours can:

• Make you look ill, sometimes even jaundice
• Make you look older (God forbid!)
• Completely over power you, so that you get lost behind them
• Wash you out
• Create dark shadows and lines across your face, and highlight blemishes
• Give the world the completely wrong impression about your personality

The good news is the benefit of wearing colours that suit you are:

• You look healthy and radiant
• You feel great and your self confidence grows
• Colour is an expression of your personality so you can really feel like "you" in the right colours, and people will pick up on that
• You look younger (just this weekend I got asked by two separate people at a party if I was studying at uni.....err I am 40 next year!)
• You naturally stand out, not in a showy look at me kind of way (unless you want that and wear dramatic clothes to create that), but in a way that people notice you simply because you look so good. So great if you are single or looking for a new job!

You can learn what colours suit you though a colour consultation. A 1-1 session takes about 1.5hr, we'll be sitting in front of a mirror and I will drape different colours over you. We'll start off by assessing your natural colouring to work out the best types of colours for you and then I'll show you a whole range of colours that will look fantastic. You can wear any colour, it's just what shade, clarity and undertone you pick so don't worry I won't be telling you that you can't wear your favourite colour....unless maybe it's black, which is not most flattering for everyone. I will give you options though on how to wear black in the most flattering way if you want to keep wearing it.

What is really fun is to get a group of friends together to do this. It lowers the cost and you learn from watching each other having it done too.

I carry out 1-1's in the Brighton and Hove area but happy to travel for group sessions, as far as London. Please contact me to find out more! [email protected]

Have a colourful week!

Louise x

It's all about love, trust and faith

After 9 years through my journey of personal development, spirituality, faith and yoga it's becoming more and more clear that it all really boils down to love, trust and faith. A deep love for yourself, which gives you the best open hearted energy to love others completely.

Faith in a loving creative energy bigger than yourself (God is what I choose to believe).

Trust everything is working out perfectly.

You don't have to have it all figured out. Just start by focusing on love and take it from there.

Be loving to yourself

Be loving to others

Do what you love

Explore faith

Have faith

Trust

With everything that is going on in the world right now I think it's so important to use our collective group energy for prayer and sending out positive intentions to people and areas that need it the most. If you are not sure how to do this then a simple Buddhist metta meditation is really easy to do and powerful. Repeat the following as many times and you feel to do:

May I be happy

May I be peaceful

May I be healthy

Sending out love to.....

May X be happy

May X be peaceful

May X be healthy

Sending out love to....

For example:

May the people in Gaza be happy

May the people in Gaza be healthy

May the people in Gaza be peaceful

Sending out love to Africa....

and so on. We can all do our bit even from the comfort of our homes.

Namaste x

Love Yourself First

  How loving are you to yourself....

Do you allow yourself time to rest when you need it?

Do you follow your dreams even when others try to talk you out of them?

Do you buy yourself flowers?

Do you stand up for what is right for you in your heart?

Do you say kind words to yourself when you are down or need some encouragement?

Do you celebrate your victories and your failures?

Do you allow only people who fill you with positive loving energy into your life?

Do you allow yourself a guilt free afternoon nap, slice of cake, indulgent purchase when you feel like it?

Do you fill your body with food that nourishes you?

Do you surround yourself with people, things, environments that make your heart smile?

Do you value yourself and your opinion enough to share it?

Do you make sure you get enough sleep?

It's very easy to put others first and put ourselves down. Our mind has a nasty habit of helping us to do this. This is not our natural state of being though. We come from love and are love.

When we are not treating ourselves with love, how can we expect others to do the same? Like attracts like. So when you are loving to yourself you will send out an energy that encourages others to treat you with love too.

How awesome would it be if everyone was focusing on being loving to themselves, in that space the opening would occur to everyone to be loving to each other, after all we are all connected, one energy. One big mass of love.

Love yourself first. You are not being selfish. You are being love.

When you love yourself, you will find you can't help but extend that love to others too, that's what love is after all.

Lots of love to you all.

Honour your connection in the moment

Sometimes people come in to our lives just for a short time. We might want it to be for longer but it's just not meant to be.  You both have other people to meet along your path. We never know how long a connection will last with another person and it's easy to cloud what you experience in the moment with expectations or longing for more than what its meant to be.

Life can make us feel like when we meet someone we connect deeply with, we want to hold on to them, but this isn't always the purpose for the meeting though. Perhaps it's to illuminate something that's not working in your life, maybe it's catalyst for a new direction or an opportunity to heal.

When you can appreciate a connection with someone just in the moment it is truly a beautiful heart centred experience.

When you are fully present with another, just enjoying each other in the now and sharing your truth, things you could never have imagined are able to open up for you. There are always lessons to be learned and realisations to be had.

I don't believe that meetings are by chance. I believe people are sent to us for a reason, and by being open to this it gives you a chance to explore what that could be.

When it's time to part rather than feeling sad, say goodbye with love and feel blessed for the experience you have shared. Who knows, it may not be good bye for ever, and if it is then you know for sure someone else will soon be coming around the corner.

Namaste x

Choose Ease

In my yoga classes over this past week I have been setting the focus to choose ease. I like to set a focus, an intention, for each class to give everyone a new insight into a way of being. How you are in yoga is often how you are in life, so there are often lessons to be learned. For example if you push yourself in a yoga class you are likely to push yourself in life as well.

For some reason there seems to be a common belief that we have to work hard, and if something is too easy there must be something wrong!

I wonder why that is.

That saying "no pain no gain" seems to haunt us.

Yoga is completely the opposite of this though. If you try to force yourself into a yoga pose then your body just tenses up, your breath won't be as slow and deep and sharp pain is likely to cause an injury then set you back.

How about in life though? If you try to force something to happen does that work?

If it's all hard work and no play, does that work?

How are you feeling emotionally and physically when you are "working hard"?

Does it add to your enjoyment of life?

Instead what would it be like if you were to choose the option that felt easy? That felt joyful?

.....and then drop any guilt around that.

I am not talking about being lazy, and not getting anything done. I mean doing things that get you in the best possible energy to be effective in the area that you enjoy, where you will excel naturally with out having to force it to happen.

Every moment is an opportunity to create how we approach life. Even in the tricky times you can ask yourself that question. There is always an option that feels better than the other.

I am liking this powerful affirmation at the moment:

I choose life to be easy.

Try it on for a day and see what unfolds.

In the spirit of life being easy....if you have been thinking about coming to our Happiness Effect workshop this weekend we have 4 discounted places that have just become available! Basically 4 people have dropped out and we are now offering those two places at the early bird rate we did back in May - £200 instead of £495! This is for 2 whole days of inspiration and exploration into happiness, lunch on both days, a happiness journal and a 6 week happiness ecourse to follow!

Please contact me now if you are interested as they will go fast! [email protected].

Many blessings,

Louise

Eye Gazing - Bare Your Soul

What is it that can be so confronting to gaze into another persons eyes for a long period of time? The eyes are said to be the windows to our soul. To really stop and just look into someone's eyes for longer than just a quick moment can open you up to vulnerability, with no where to hide.

I have done an exercise before where you are asked to stand in front of another person and just look, just stare into their eyes and just be there. It's interesting to watch how a group of people deal with this. Some people giggle, others fidget, create distraction, feel the need to talk, and sometimes cry. After a while though of settling into it and just being in front of someone, fully bare, a great stillness appears.

I've just been to a yoga festival which included lots of conscious dancing, by that I mean not under the influence of any drug or drink. The dances are often guided and there are lots of moments of connection where you dance with people and look into their eyes.

It's not easy at first, especially when you are dancing with a tent full of strangers. There is something deeply emotional and touching about looking into someone's eyes for a long time, really seeing them for who they are with their barriers dropped.

After a while it starts to peel away your barriers. The level of connection with others increases. Your heart starts to feel more open.

We can spend so much of life hiding our true selves from others, comparing ourselves, putting on different faces in different situations. There is something incredibly freeing about allowing yourself to stand open in front of another and look into their soul.

We are all connected, we all share similar fears, we all want love and we are all from the same Source. It's just our bodies that separate us.

So perhaps long eye gazing doesn't feel right for you just yet but experiment with it, see if you can hold the gaze just a little longer, hold your hugs for just a bit more and just be open to showing the world who you really are. Your true self with out all the barriers. You are amazing.

Much love

Louise x

You Are On The Right Path

Sometimes when we hit a bump in the road it can be easy to think we're off track. Things not going our way, repeating behaviours we wanted to give up and being let down can all lead us to feeling back to square one.

When want we  really want in our life doesn't happen quick enough, to schedule, we can question is it really right for us at all.

My message to you today is that no matter what is happening right now, you are on the right path.

Sometimes to get where we need to go we need to struggle a bit first. The hard times strengthen us, they test our will power, they lead us to new insights and to show up in life as who we really are.

Take some time to look back over your life and reflect upon the difficult times you have experienced so far.  Then notice what came out of them, what shifts in your life did they create?

You may be in a dip now. If you are my suggestion is to trust that this is happening for a reason. Maybe the lesson may not be glaringly obvious right now but it is a stepping stone to something new.

Life is not supposed to be easy, if it was we would never grow and we probably wouldn't appreciate the good times as much!

Just trust, you are on the right path, you have not strayed off track at all.

Bring your mind into the moment where life is happening now. Stand barefoot on the grass, listen to the birds, look at the flowers and remind yourself of all the good you do have right now.

Namaste

Louise x

It's OK to feel tired sometimes

  When I used to live in London burning the candle at both ends I used to reach for sugar and caffeine to keep me going through a busy day.

It was like I didn't allow myself to feel tired. The thought of just allowing myself to stop, rest and sleep it off didn't really enter my mind.

The lesson I learnt from that strategy was that it would only make me feel worse long term. My energy was so up and down, once the stimulants had worn off I'd feel even more spaced out. At least once a year I would come down with some nasty virus that would completely knock me out, forcing myself to stop. Even then I didn't like to!

Since learning to listen to what my body needs by; cutting out coffee, just having something sweet as a treat rather than a pick me up and choosing a slow release energy diet, I sleep better and I allow myself to rest when I need too.

There is nothing wrong with taking a nap sometimes!

When I feel tired now I just allow myself to feel tired. I slow things down, I practice restorative yoga, I go to bed early, I eat healthily and just do a bit less. Not surprisingly I haven't had to take to my bed ill for a few years now.

Of course if you are always feeling tired then there is something to look at why, like I did, maybe a diet or lifestyle change is needed but it's OK to feel tired sometimes. When you do just see it as a signal to back off a bit and rest. We all need our down days and that's ok. The more you resist anything the longer it persists!

Life can get fraught with the feeling of wanting more, needing to do more, being more......but we are already enough, just as we are.

People who have come to my yoga classes have told me they like it when I repeat the affirmation:

I am enough

I do enough

I have enough

I love it myself, just repeating it sends a wave of peace and contentment over my entire being.

So next time you reach for the caffeine to avoid tiredness just pause and allow yourself to feel tired. Just be with it, allow yourself to do a bit less that day and rest up when you can. I have found doing this actually ends up giving me more energy anyway!

Take care.

Louise x

How to be more open

  How open are you to receive?

By that I mean do you notice when people smile at you? Do you really take in great feedback? Do you recognise people in the street? Do you acknowledge when someone has made you a cup of tea or let you go before them in the queue?

When life is busy it can be very easy to get caught up in the mind, not really fully noticing what is going on around you. For example I regularly bump into people I know, not just local people but I have met people  I know from my past all around the world. My friends often joke about it and some have said it's never happened to them but acknowledge that they walk around caught up in their thoughts and just focus on getting from A to B so don't really look around whilst en route to their destination.

I coach clients who have a such a way of thinking that they don't notice or really take on board compliments. How often have you heard someone brushing off a compliment, as if they don't really believe what they are hearing? Perhaps you do it yourself.

I know people who even though they have been given really great feedback at work they still don't believe they are good at their job.

When we set intentions, when we pray, and when we repeat affirmations we are sending out into the energy of the universe what we would love in our lives. What ever you choose to believe whether it's God, the universe, your higher power, listens and sends you situations and people to guide you towards your dream.

You might over hear a conversation that is completely relevant to what you are looking for.

You may see a poster for a course that would just be perfect for what you need to learn.

You might bump into someone from your past to be able to resolve an issue from back then and to move forward with a new lesson learnt.

You might meet a stranger randomly who has something to teach you, or you them.

You may even just have a sudden inner knowing about something you need to do.

You may receive some feedback or a random act of kindness that is just what you need to know you are on the right path or simply lift your mood and self belief.

Unless you are open though you may miss the gifts you receive.

How to be more open? A helpful way to become more open to all that you receive is to keep a note of it. Every time you notice a chance meeting, an act of kindness, a sign you are on the right path or a message that seems just for you write it down! The act of doing this will help you to notice all these gifts to you more.

You don't have to have it all worked out, when you have trust in a power bigger than you and are open to receiving help miracles can happen.

Namaste

Louise x