Growing Up Is Hard To Do

On quiet nights when there is little to watch on the TV and we have exhausted all the box sets and streamed series’, my husband has taken to watching YouTube. He likes the travel videos. Mostly the ones showing people camping in freezing cold parts of the world that he is unlikely to ever visit. I personally cannot see why. But as he listens through his headphones and watches this on his laptop, it makes for peaceful evenings. I don’t argue and let him get on with it.

One night this week, my husband was watching some form of wild camping malarkey in the coldest part of Alaska (or some such country at the end of beyond), when he put his laptop down and wandered off from our lounge (with headphones on and still connected) into the next room.  Our son appeared and seeing his Dad walking out went and picked up the laptop. I watched on, rather unconcerned. Then, out of the corner of my eye I could see him fiddling with the laptop and tapping on the keyboard.  He very quickly put it down and went to find another seat. From there, with the smallest hint of a smile on his face, he began casually scrolling through his phone.

My husband almost ran back into the lounge, looking rather bewildered with his mouth open and headphones askew.  I didn’t move. After all these years, I have learnt that my husband being particularly confused is not in itself something to worry about. It is now apparent that this is a rather natural state for him to be in.  He looked around, checked his laptop, didn’t say a word and wandered off again.

My son got up and went over to the laptop for a second time.  He began fiddling and typing again. This time he didn’t move and the broadest of grins came over his face. Before I knew what was happening, my husband had raced back into the lounge. Seeing my son sitting with his laptop, he began shouting ‘is that you, are you doing that?’  Now, whilst I know that my husband’s confused state is not something to worry about, him being confused and panicking normally is. I knew at that moment that I would need to act. This was going to necessitate me moving from the sofa.

‘You listen to this, just you listen’, my husband said, thrusting his headphones into my hands.  My son, who could now barely do anything for laughing so hard, typed away on the laptop.  Through the headphones came the words ‘what a chump, what a chump, what a chump,’ repeated over and over again.

This moment of mischief and deviousness, something that happens all too regularly here, thankfully provided a moment of hilarity (and yet another story for us to endlessly relay in years to come) in what had been a frankly horrible week.  Being a kid is great. This week though, I have had to come to realise that the problem with being a kid is that at some point you have to grow up. Growing up then involves taking care of the adults.

My Dad has Prostate Cancer. The doctor’s control it. Dad’s had it for a while. At this point, you will need to forgive me as I must admit to having no knowledge about Prostate Cancer. I don’t want to find out about it or even want to know about it. Yes, I probably should be researching it on the internet so that I have the facts and the information. But I haven’t and actually, I can’t face it. 

If you need help with Prostate Cancer or to find out more about it (because you are braver than me) then you can go to Prostate Cancer UK, who have lots of information.

Dad now needs Radiotherapy.  This started a couple of weeks ago but it hasn’t gone well.  Due to the other ailments and medical problems that Dad has, not to mention the various different drugs Dad is taking (the drugs to control one thing, the drugs to counteract the side effects of those drugs, and then the additional drugs that Dad now takes for the new problems that he has due to the treatment he is having that is supposed to prolong his life), Dad is in hospital with an infection that requires intravenous antibiotics and fluids and bed rest.

My Dad is completely confused and doesn’t know which hospital he is in or what day it is. My Mum is struggling to cope. I knew I was in for problems when she started texting at 6.36am and wondered why there was no response until I had got up and found my phone at about 7.30.

It is not an easy situation as we live some way from my parents. It isn’t possible for me to just hop in the car and pop over to sort it all out.  My sister is in a similar position. We do understand perfectly well that my Dad is ill and as a result he is completely disorientated and angry that he can’t go home.  It is taking time for the antibiotics to work. It is obvious that the infection is having a dreadful effect on him that only time and more drugs will resolve.  In truth, us running over there to see Dad for one hour a day (visiting is very specific; only one person, per one hour) won’t make a lot of difference.

We also understand that this is all very hard for our Mum to try to sort out. It has been very painful watching as she has become so impatient with Dad and what has happened.  She seems to be treating the whole episode as being terribly inconvenient for her.  Inevitably, things came to a head. During one conversation Mum told me that she just didn’t understand why Dad ‘couldn’t make himself content where he was until he got better’ and not be rude to the nursing staff, this being what she would do. I was also told ‘I have no idea of what he expects me to do about it all. If he insists on coming home, I can’t give him antibiotics by injection’.

When I tried to point out that Dad was so ill that (a) he wasn’t going anywhere, no matter what he thought and (b) he probably couldn’t understand what he was doing there, that it was clear he didn’t know one day from the next, that his current irascible behaviour was a symptom of all of this and couldn’t she be just a little more understanding. My Mum accused me of blaming her for everything and not being prepared to help. That put a rather swift end to the call.  Following this, my Mum then called my sister to tell her how inconsiderate and unsympathetic I was. It went on and on and on.  

I know that I am not the only person in this position but I didn’t realise how suddenly it would happen to me.  It has come as something of a nasty surprise. Looking after the people who you thought looked after you is not something that you want to deal with. It has added meaning; that your parents are getting old, that they are coming to a point in life where they cannot cope and need help. It’s also another responsibility to add to the mounting number of things that I have to deal with every day. To all of those people out there who are doing this now, you have my admiration. I know that it is going to be one of the hardest things that I am ever going to have to navigate.  At the moment, I don’t know how I will.

You can find all of our Summer Season Blogs here. Catch up with our Spring Season Blogs here.

The Lizard that Talks to Me (Part 2)

And now you know about the Lizard that talks to me. Before you assume that I have finally lost it, I think I should explain a little bit more.

Sabre-Toothed Tigers lived on earth between 23 million and 2.6 million years ago.  Woolly Mammoths wandered about at least a thousand years after the first Pyramids were built in Egypt.  Us human beings spent our time trying to co-exist and were probably under constant threat of being savaged and eaten.  To be honest, it’s a complete surprise that we got anything done other than run away.  Back in those days, we were just trying to invent fire and the wheel.  Surviving was the priority.  That and finding the odd small mammal to snack on.

I’ve never met a Sabre-Toothed Tiger. I have met a number of managers who thought they had the same qualities, and a surprising number who bore a resemblance to the Mammoths. I imagine it must have been a pretty terrifying experience.  Particularly, if all you were armed with is a rather poorly put together stone axe (think Fred in his leopard skin in The Flintstones).  The problem is that, for those of us living in the 21^st Century, when we experience what we perceive to be a threat, we still deal with it as if it still is a battle between us and the Sabre-Toothed Tiger.  And this is where the Lizard that talks to me comes from.

By the time I had my second child, I’d spent about 15 years working in what are best described as toxic places.  I was constantly worried that whoever I was working for, whether they be clients, customers or managers and employers. I’d be convinced that they were going to find fault.  I could do a great job, the best job, a perfect job. But for some reason it never seemed to be enough.  There was a continuous feeling of wondering who was going to come at you and from which direction.  I had to develop eyes in the back of my head.  The internal politics was horrible.  There was always gossip and rumour.  If you did a good job, someone would find something that you could have done better.

With two very tiny children now in tow and working part-time only, I realised that no one that I was working for looked upon me favourably.  I was now just a Mum in an office, who had to leave at a certain time to get her kids.  The consequence? They stopped relying on me to be competent.  Why? Because I was no longer prepared to give my soul to the people who paid me. They in turn were no longer interested in me.  It sounds outrageous but believe me, this is how it was. 

In 2020, at the time of the Covid19 Pandemic, I realised that the voice in my head got really loud when I was anxious, worried and felt that I was under attack.  As we were all locked down, the voice began to chatter and got louder and finally I joined the dots as to why.  For the first time I really recognised that if I was scared, afraid or under pressure, I had a voice inside my head that began to shout and talk continuously.  

As if by coincidence, one day flicking through social media, I came across a post about a book called “That Little Voice in Your Head” by Mo Gawdat.  Having looked at it, wondered about it, worried about buying it and then not reading it, thinking for a long time that it probably wouldn’t help and generally engaging in endless debate with myself that it might help and it might not, and if it didn’t so what, I could just add it to the huge pile of other self-help books I have and then donate them to charity, I finally bought it.

What I have learnt has finally helped me to understand a little bit about how my brain functions.  I’m going to try to explain it here, probably very badly.  My suggestion to anyone reading this is that, if you want it explained better, you should go and get the book to read for yourself. You can read more about Mo Gawdat, his other books and his mission for us all to find happiness by going to his website https://www.mogawdat.com

Our brains have three parts, the Reptilian Brain, the Limbic (or Mammalian) Brain and the Rational Brain.  I’m going to leave the second two parts for other stories on other days.  This blog is what I have found out about the Reptilian Brain only.

To be clear, you do not have the brain of a reptile.  There is no fear of your inner Alligator suddenly gaining control of you. You won’t find yourself going berserk in your local swamp. What we do all have though is a part of our brain that is primal (and found in reptiles) and completely focussed on our survival.  It controls the body’s vital functions, our breathing, how the blood moves around your body and your heart rate.  It is also triggered as soon as we think we have a threat to contend with.

What I didn’t know during all those years that I was dealing with the stress of work, was that all I was doing was dealing with what I interpreted as daily threats.  Whilst I wasn’t facing death or being threatened with being imminently eaten, my Reptilian Brain treated them in the same way.  Our brains are hard-wired to keep us safe.  Every time my brain sensed a threat, the survival hormones kicked in and triggered the Reptilian Brain response. This included a voice in my head that began to scream that I needed to survive this.  The problem was that, what my brain thought of as impending peril were just difficult meetings. Or phone calls, complaining emails and the employers who were finding things to criticise over and over again.  

Now, having the odd threat of this type to deal with is ok.  Your mind and body has time to recover from it.  When it happens as much as it would to me, you begin to see everything as a threat, even if it isn’t.  The Lizard that talks to me (or Lizzie if you like) is in fact my now over developed Reptilian Brain. It kicks in and yells at me (in lots of different and imaginative ways) of danger, even when there is none.

From reading this book, I have discovered that by allowing Lizzie to talk to me the way she does (Mo Gawdat suggests that it can help to give your brain or the voice a name to help you to quieten it down, apparently, it isn’t weird, honest) that this has led me to become well practised in dealing with every threat I encounter in the same way.  I have without realising learned this behaviour.  What’s sadder is that this learned behaviour is the consequence of not stopping the stress that I was under years ago. I just went along with it, thinking it was normal.  I now know that it wasn’t normal and it shouldn’t have happened.

I’m still reading the book.  It is a good book but it is hard going.  Training your brain to stop behaving in a way that it has done for over 20 years is tough. It takes time.  It’s complicated.  I find it hard to admit that this is the way I feel.  All I can say at the moment is that I am working on it.  I can’t stop Lizzie yet but I will keep trying.

You will find more of our Summer Season Blogs here.

Summer Reading for Kids

For those of you with children, Summer reading for kids is hard to get them to do! Em has struggled to get both her boy and girl to read and learn that reading can be fun. Finding things for them to read is half the battle. Here are a few ideas.

Fancy some Poetry? Try Attie Lime.

Attie writes Poetry for Primary School Children. You can find here website here and you can buy some of her writing here.

You can find more of our book recommendations here.

The Lizard that Talks to Me (Part 1)

This blog is The Lizard that Talks to Me (Part 1). You will find The Lizard that Talks to Me (Part 2) here.

This week the Lizard that talks to me has been chatting away.  It comes when I am worried or when I am under pressure.  The more pressure or stress that I am under, the louder it gets.  It will wake me up at 2.30am, leaving me turning over and over in bed, almost begging it to shut up and leave me alone so that I can go back to sleep.  It’s the voice that is with me when I give up trying and sit drinking tea and eating chocolate biscuits at 3am.  

I’m not sure when I first realised that this voice was there.  I remember growing up and having the talking in my head.  To be clear, the voice is my voice.  It is me talking to myself. As I’ve learnt more about it, I have taken to calling it the Lizard that talks to me but I didn’t always know what it was.  I didn’t think it was strange until my teenage years when you start to understand a bit more about mental health and the issues that teenagers might face.  When I began to understand a bit more about things like schizophrenia and personality disorders, the voice that I had babbling to me began to frighten me a bit.  

I recall asking my Mum if she had a voice in her head that talked to her.  ‘Well, of course I do’ came back the answer.  When I pressed her to find out if it was weird, she told me to stop being so silly.  Mental health wasn’t something she had time for.  We didn’t discuss it again.  I forgot about it and carried on growing up and hoping it was all normal.  

Having done poorly in my French GCSE exam, I was no longer able to do French ‘A’ Level.  This left me with two options that fitted into my timetable; Economics or Psychology.  I wasn’t that keen on either.  I thought that Economics would be boring and I thought Psychology would be a complete of a waste of time.  The only other people that were doing Psychology in my year were the flaky girls who wore too much make up and very short skirts.  It wasn’t me.  I remember being upset and annoyed that my plans had to change.  However, once I had started the course and we had got through the bits on Freud, the Ego and the Id and Jung and his pyramid (seriously, no idea what all that was about) I began to enjoy it.  

So, it was when I was about 17 that I finally found out what that the voice in my head had a real name.  It is called your inner monologue or internal dialogue.  I can remember feeling happy when I found this out.  At long last, a question that I had always wondered about was answered.  I talked to myself in my head and so did everyone else.  Hearing myself talk was not complete madness; it was real and it was ok.  Answering myself back probably was a little unusual but I could work on that.  Not only was I happy but I was also relieved.  Up until that point I had secretly wondered if there was something wrong with me.  Now I knew that there wasn’t.  

I finished my ‘A’ Levels and moved on.  I didn’t think about the voice inside my head much more.  It was enough for me to know that most people had an inner monologue and that I wasn’t entirely potty.  I continued into the world of work and didn’t give the endless chatter in my head much more thought.

Over the years, the more stressful the jobs were that I took on, the more I realised I was talking to myself a lot more in my head.  The majority of the things I was saying weren’t very nice.  They included questions such as ‘why are you so useless?’.  ‘What have you done that for?’.  I’d find me telling myself that I couldn’t do anything right, I was ugly, I was a massive failure, nothing would get any better and that it was all pretty pointless. Oh, and ‘you need to lose weight, be more adventurous, get out more, work harder, put in more hours,’ to boot.  And I’m just writing the clean, polite and unsweary versions of what I would be saying and then arguing with and then contradicting.  

I found that I could have a full blown squabble with myself all alone in an empty room.  Always when no one was looking of course. I was never going to let on that I did this.  I could go around in circles all on my own, either driving myself to anger or to tears.  Afterwards, I used to sit and wonder just how mad I was potentially becoming.

All the time, as the stress of everyday life increased, so did the voice in my head.  It was before kids came along.  I was in my very early thirties.  I was in yet another difficult job.  As part of that I was expected to get out and market my employer’s services and bring in work.  Some of this involved going out and ‘networking’.  Let me tell you, ‘networking’ is no fun.  You have to go out to meetings, have lunch/breakfast or drinks with people that you don’t know, be perky and polite and funny and desperately hope that you can take something positive back to your boss about the endless potential clients that you have made and how this is going to bring in a whole new income stream.  

Women’s networking is hard work.  You go off to a meeting and everyone cheerfully agrees that you are there to support each other, whilst wondering why the hell you have bothered.  However, it rarely brings any actual work.  Don’t get me wrong; I’ve made some really lovely friends this way but it was not all great.  It was at one of these meetings that I met a Life Coach.  

Now, we met lots of Life Coaches.  It was at a time in the early 2000’s when you couldn’t move at networking do’s for Accountants, Organic Beauty product sellers and Life Coaches.  I had big doubts about the Life Coaches.  They said they could change you.  The Life Coaches told us that they could make your life happy.  They said that with their help, you could have the life you dreamed of.  I smiled and nodded along, remaining completely sceptical and deciding not to hand over a well-earned few hundred pounds of my money to them.  

But there was one Life Coach who was kind and seemed very different and genuine.  So miserable and practically crippled by anxiety and depression as I was by the time I met her, that I decided to book a meeting and give this a go.  I figured I had nothing to lose anymore.  After telling her how dreadful I felt, she asked me about the voice in my head. What did I tell myself?  ‘Oh you mean my inner monologue’ I said proudly, trying to show off the little psychology I could remember.  It was the first time (since the days of trying to talk to my Mum) that I had admitted out loud that I had one.  It was also the first time that I admitted out loud to the awful way that I spoke to myself, fought with myself and generally spent most of my time insulting myself.

I laughed it off, telling the Life Coach that it didn’t mean anything.  It was just what I did.  But I think the Life Coach was appalled by how I had been treating myself for so long.  ‘If your best friend spoke to you that way, what would you do?’ she asked.  ‘If your husband told you any of this, what would you think?’  I’d honestly never considered it that way. Wasn’t this how everyone talked to themselves?  Apparently, it wasn’t.  So well practised had I become at belittling myself that I no longer recognised it for what it was.

I met with that Life Coach quite a bit and she taught me some very useful ways of coping with the voice in my head.  Eventually though, I had to stop seeing her.  I became pregnant with our boy and had other things to begin to worry about.  I will forever be grateful to her though for making me realise at that time exactly what I was doing to myself.

However, this is not the end of the story.  The voice in my head remains alive and well.  I still spend too much time arguing with it.  In Part 2 of this blog, I will tell you more about it and how I have since found out that it really is the Lizard that talks to me.

You can find out Spring Season Blogs here. You can find our Summer Season Blogs here.

The Best Things About Summer

According to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, these are the ten best things about the Summer:

• Bumblebees
• Wildflower meadows
• Thunderstorms
• Crickets and wildlife
• Walking Barefoot
• Green trees
• Hummingbird hawk-moths
• Rockpooling
• Stargazing
• Wild swimming

It isn’t a bad list, although I have never ever seen a Hummingbird hawk-moth and I most definitely take issue with the wild swimming.  I do not get into large amounts of outdoor cold water for anything or anyone.  While I may paddle in the sea a bit, it is normally with the aid of a wetsuit.  If you love wild swimming – good for you!  You just won’t find me joining in.

I’m not so sure about the thunderstorms either.  I know we need rain and that the last time that we experienced 40 degree heat was no picnic.  I would rather prefer my Summers to be dry though.  Sitting on a south-western beach in the UK with the wind howling and the rain lashing down is no fun either.

When the sun shines and the weather is clear (and not too hot), the Summer is the best time of the year.  Having lovely long days, where the sun comes up early and goes to bed late is just wonderful.  Of the above list, I totally understand the joy of seeing the Bees and shading underneath the fully leaved trees.  Walking barefoot across the grass (even if it is just your small patch of back lawn) is good for your soul.  If you are lucky enough to live somewhere with little light pollution, seeing the stars on a clear Summer night is an amazing spectacle.

We love a bit of outdoor living, where you barbecue and sit around the fire, wrapped in a blanket as it slowly gets dark.  In the UK, where we are dependent on truly unpredictable weather, there sadly aren’t that many chances to do this, so when we get some, we take full advantage of them, grabbing them with both hands.  Here are my top five things to do during the Summer months:

The sun, the warmth and not having to wear my coat and two jumpers

Or my woolly socks and my shawl for that matter, though both do come in handy on the slightly chillier evenings.  Being warm without the need for the heating being on makes me happy.  Ok, you have to be careful not to burn and drink plenty of fluids but a bit of sunshine (well shaded) is wonderful.  Life just feels that bit better when the sun shines on you.  No more winter woollies and I get to live in my sunglasses. Speaking as someone who now finds their hips are beginning to hurt, your joints don’t ache as much as they do in the cold either.

Long Days and shorter nights

The longest day (here) is 21^st June.  It’s the day when the daylight is the same length of time as the darkness. You can go out for longer, you can be outside doing things for longer, you can spend more time doing things you enjoy together for longer.  You can resist putting on the lights for longer.  The warmth and sunshine (provided we get some) helps to boost your mood and makes you feel happier.

Summer Holidays

It’s the time of year when we try to go away.  Having kids means that we are restricted as to when we do this, so the end of July and August is always looked forward to as the time when we get to spend more time as a family.  We don’t have to worry about routine so much, the time we go to bed and have to get up in the morning.  Things slow down and the stress and strain of the days (even when we have to work) feels just a little bit less.  Some of our best memories are of being on the beach, my son digging his hole in the sand in the hope of finding water (or Australia) and me and my daughter going shell hunting.

Summer Holidays

Think of the summer drinks, the ice cream that you can eat, the fresh fruit and veg.  Food cooked outdoors on the barbecue tastes so much better.  Ok, you get the odd Wasp and you need to ensure that the food doesn’t give you a good dose of food poisoning, but food in Summer is just lovely.  Picnics can be great, depending upon who is organising them.  Plus, is you have grown your own you get to begin to eat it.  Picking your own beans and tomatoes and eating them after the effort you have put in makes you feel proud.

Slowing down and not caring

Having a day off and doing things you don’t get time to do normally becomes a thing in the Summer.  Being able to stop and take time to look around you and be with those that you want to spend your precious time with is something we don’t get enough of.  But when the weather is good, you know you must take your chance and do it while you can.  It is also the time of year that I find that I can wear my oldest t-shirts and shorts without being judged, read real books from cover to cover (actually the only time that I get to read), listen to audiobooks and podcasts and just sit in the garden as the light fades, pondering the possibilities of life.  It makes you glad to be here.

You will find our Spring Season Blogs here. You can find our Summer Season Blogs here.

Pear Walnut and Stilton Salad

This is Milla’s Pear Walnut and Stilton Salad. Salads don’t need to be boring. Adding fruit, nuts, seeds and different dressings can keep them fresh and interesting all year round.  You can experiment. Here’s what we’re having tonight. Apologies for the lack of measurements. As you can tell, I’m not exactly a cookery writer.

Ingredients

Iceberg or Cos lettuce

One firmish pear

Handful of walnuts

Stilton

Cucumber (optional)

Dressing

Olive oil

Raspberry vinegar

Method

• Cut or tear up plenty of lettuce.
• Break the walnuts into smallishpieces
• Dice the pear, skin on
• Cut the stilton into small cubes. You don’t need much to make an impact
• Dice the cucumber if using.
• Add the  pear, cucumber, most of the walnuts and most of the stilton to the letuce
• Make a dressing  (put it in a jam jar and shake it is easiest) that is 2/3rds olive oil and 1/3 vinegar. I make my own raspberry vinegar because I absolutely love it in salad dressings. If you can’t lay your hands on any, use balsamic instead with maybe a touch of honey for added sweetness.
• Toss the salad with the dressing – but don’t do it until you’re almost ready to serve or else it will go soggy. You’ll need a couple of tablespoons. If you’ve made too much, it’ll keep in the jam jar.
• Sprinkle the remaining stilton and walnuts on top. I sometimes add sunflower seeds
• Enjoy!

You will find our How to Roast a Chicken Recipe Here.

The Emergency Chicken – The Summer Sequel!

The Emergency Chicken – the summer sequel – the story continues.

The secret of why there is a chicken in the freezer at all times – just in case – is now out there.  Up until now, it is something that I have done for as long as I can remember.  Since ‘as long as I can remember’ happens to be just before my son was born, that means I have been doing this for at least the last fifteen years.  You know what they say, time flies when you are having fun!

I’ve also realised that not only do I have an emergency chicken in the freezer, I have an emergency packet of puff pastry in there too.  Want to know why?  It’s there because you just never know when you might need to throw together an urgent cheese and tomato tart.  Confession: during the Covid 19 pandemic I didn’t worry about if we had enough loo rolls or milk. I just worried that I might not be able to buy flour to make pastry.  Just in case I had a moment when I fancied cooking a pie.  This from the woman who has put making pastry on her list of Things That Life Is Too Short To Do and tells everyone that she knows that this is a fact.

I’ve never thought of any of this as particularly strange.  But now it bothers me.  I worry.  How do I know when I am trying to be too prepared? And how do you know when it is time to change those habits? Even if those habits have kept you going for such a long time?  More importantly, how do you realise that the habits you have formed are no longer useful? How do you know that it is time to create new ones?

I have spent my life living by the old adage “fail to prepare, prepare to fail”, so it’s a surprise that I can be too prepared.  What about “all things are ready if our mind be so” and “prepare while others are daydreaming”.  Now I’ve found out that there is a thing called ‘over-preparation’.  Who knew?

To find out more, I have turned to the best self-help advice I can find (Google) and I have discovered that just enough preparation is good but that too much can drive you to a standstill.  First, here are some of the great things about preparation.  It helps you to improvise and think on your feet.  It provides you with knowledge to enable you to create coping strategies. You learn resilience and an understanding that even when the worst does happen you can find the way through it.

There does seem to be a line though between not enough preparation and too much.  Too much preparation can paralyse you into not doing anything.  It can make you afraid to make mistakes. What if I have done all of this and it still doesn’t work?  Then you lose all your momentum to do something and the opportunity passes you by. “Over-preparation is the foe of inspiration”.  Apparently.

The habits we have provide us with structure.  Sticking to good habits help us.  “Success is the sum effort of small efforts, repeated day-in, and day-out”.  Think about good eating habits and getting into the habit of exercising every day.  

We are taught that doing things a little and often can really help us.  The internet is full of lists of the ‘Habits of Successful People’ and the ‘100 Things That Successful People Do’.  There is book after book of this stuff.  You know the habits; be organised, attend to your personal care, rise early, make an action list and on and on and on.  How many times have you been given those and tried to follow them?  Even Barrack Obama tells us that in order to help us to make the big decisions that we have to make every day, doing other, less meaningful, things habitually, helps us to increase the head space that we have to think about the big stuff.

What I realise now is that the habits that I have so carefully crafted and that get me through every day have become restrictive. They don’t have a lot of use in my life as it is.  I wouldn’t say that I feel trapped by them but I do think maybe it is time that I found a means of escaping some of them.

When you put my having a chicken and a packet of puff pastry in context, I don’t think it makes me crazy.  I’m not causing anyone any harm to anyone by doing them.  I make sure that I have stocked up the freezer. I don’t have to worry if endless people turn up on the doorstep wanting chicken and tomato tarts.  However, the fact that they don’t turn up on mass wanting to be fed makes me think that it is time to redirect my preparation and make new habits. Habits that are slightly more relevant to my life as it is now rather than it has been for the past 15 years.

It was pointed out to me recently, even if it snows, I am close enough to the nearest M&S Food Hall to walk to it and buy the chicken. I can even get a chicken that is pre-prepared or cooked, no matter who needs to be fed.  My kids are no longer tiny. At a push, can feed themselves beans on toast if they are hungry and I’m not around.  It’s time to face facts. Life has changed and my habits can now get the upgrade I deserve them to have.  As for preparation, maybe it is time for a bit more spontaneity and the odd takeaway. And so The Emergency Chicken – the Summer Sequel begins without a chicken in the freezer….

You will find our Spring Season Blogs Here

Love Food? – Book Recommendations

Do you love food? We love food and cooking it but most of all eating it! too!! How about some book recommendations?

You might have guessed from our Podcasts and our Twitter posts that food plays a really important part in our lives – particularly of course The Emergency Chicken, which is where this all started.

Em has a massive selection of cook books but has realised that really, you only need a few. What she really enjoys is looking at the pictures!

Cooking can be a really mindful and relaxing thing to do. Sharing food with those you love is a great way to stop and remember who you really want to spend time with.

If you don’t have any ideas about what books to try, here are a few from Em’s favourite cookery/food writers and chefs.

You will find more book ideas on our Spring Season Books page.

Stop Putting It Off!!

Our hints and tips to make sure you stop putting it off are here.

Do you find yourself putting things off? Em does.

She finds that if she has difficult things to do, because:

• she is fearful of making the wrong decision

• they are problems that she doesn’t have the knowledge to know how to resolve

• the task might involve having an uncomfortable conversation

• the decision that has to be made might become expensive in terms of the amount of time or money that is required to find a solution

Em will go out of her way to put these things off for another day, most probably tomorrow, when she will feel more able to deal with it.  

Milla however knows that ‘tomorrow’ never comes.

Her attitude is that it is better to get on and deal with things now because it will:

• make you feel better, with no guilt or a feeling of being ashamed

• stop you from worrying unnecessarily about the unknown

• prevent you from creating an even bigger problem from the one you initially had!

Here are Milla and Em’s strategies for nipping things in the bud and stopping your procrastination from taking over.

1. Sort out what is a priority and set your goal

At the beginning of the day, work out what you must do first and then complete those tasks.  Make a list and tick them off as you go.  Remind yourself that once you have done the things that you really aren’t looking forward to the rest of your day will look a whole lot better.  Recognise what achieving this will look like and Imagine how that will feel and how much happier you will be.

2. If you have difficult problems to solve, break them down

Don’t forget that if you have things to do where you don’t know the answers, to use your problem solving techniques (click here for The Do’s & Don’t of Problem Solving).  Break the task down into smaller and more manageable parts and do them one at a time, bit by bit.  This will prevent the task that you have ahead of you from feeling so overwhelming and far more achievable.  You will then become less likely to put it off.

3. Don’t let yourself get distracted

It’s easy to distract yourself when you have something to important to do, but don’t want to do it or don’t know how to do it.  Em is often amazed that, if she has a difficult phone call to make, suddenly clearing out her email box becomes a lot more appealing!!  Go back to your list of things to do and stick with it. The other distractions can wait until later.  Again, remind yourself that once you’ve got the things done that you don’t want to do, you will feel a lot better for it.

4. Be positive – you can do this!

Tell yourself that you can sort out the difficulties, you can resolve your problems and you can take on those tasks and complete them.  Even if you don’t have the answers immediately, tell yourself that once you have broken the problem down and taken the first few steps it will get easier.  Be kind to yourself and don’t give up.  Remember to keep having a positive attitude (click here for our tips for Having a Positive Attitude).

5. Talk about it.

If you are struggling because you don’t know what to do or you have no idea how to create a plan, talk with someone about it. You will not be alone.  Everyone puts things off at some time or another.  Family and friends might be able to help you with the things that you need to get done.  Get them to help you to make a plan and put that into action.  Also, ask them to check on you to see how you are getting on.  By being accountable to someone else can give you the motivation to move on and get things done.  

Procrastination is hard to overcome but do not give up!  Believe that you can work it out.  In a few short steps you can be on your way to getting the things you find hard to do out of the your way and freeing up your time so that you can enjoy the things you really want to be doing.

Spring Season Books

Want some Spring Season Books to read to help with a bit of self-care and self-improvement? Look no further – here are some ideas.

Em loves a self-help book (or two) and has tried to read quite a few of them over the years.  Not all self-help books are great and if Em were to be perfectly honest, she doesn’t always get to the end of all of them.

Here are two recommendations from Milla which, if you are in the mood, you might find useful this Spring.

 

Em has a couple of recommendations too:

Happy reading!!!