This week at one of my networking groups we had a guest-speaker who is a life-coach, Karen Carpenter. She was such an inspiring woman and shared with us a few tips and tools to use as boosters when we are feeling low in confidence. One idea she shared with us was so uplifting, I thought I might take the opportunity to create it as a blog post, which in turn would convey the idea to you, and you could then also use it as a positivity booster yourself.
For a while I have been wondering how to do a post about myself. Not my anxiety or my mindset. Not my children, or my work-ethic, or any of the projects I am working on – a post just about me. I’ve procrastinated about it for a while – “Me, Myself and I” is a pretty epic theme for a blog post – and no one wants to read my entire autobiography when they’re just browsing social media feeds!
So what I am going to tell you in this post, is three times in my life when I have felt a completely overwhelmingly positive emotion*. The idea of this, is that we think of these moments, and make a list of them. Actually, the life coach suggested created them as pieces that fit together as a puzzle. In doing so, we begin to see the wonderful moments in our lives that have shaped us. Often we remember the negative or traumatic moments, but if we can remember more of the amazing and profound experiences – and focus on the powerful feelings that these experiences evoked – we can increase our positive sense of self, our confidence, our emotional well-being and ultimately start to control how we feel about ourselves – hopefully a more centred, happy self! … So … Here you are:
Meeting Noel
Noel and I have been married for three and a half years, and together for ten. We met at our office Christmas party on December 18th, 2008, when we were both working on different floors, for different departments of the same media content agency in West London. I had seen Noel a couple of times around Shepherds Bush, near where I lived and I had assumed he must live somewhere quite close by. I thought he was extremely cool – too cool for me even to have a crush on in fact – but I thought that I could perhaps say hi to him at the Christmas party and then he would be someone cool for me to say hi to around work!
Well … My colleagues and I had arrived fashionably late to the party as we’d been invited to another party first – so by the time we were at our party I was feeling sufficiently sparkly. Fast forward a few songs on the dance floor and I noticed that this cool, tall, beardy guy (Noel) was hovering nearby and looking at me. With my sparkly confidence nicely in place, I tottered over and went to say hi. Next thing I knew, one of my friends dangled some mistletoe and Noel went in for a full-on snog! After I had gotten over the initial, ‘Oh my goodness, everyone will have seen!’, the rest of the night was a bit of a blur. Noel was a little more tiddly than me, and told me that he thought we would be, ‘A good match’! … Now any young woman worth her classic literary salt would instantly hear the Jane Austen rings in such a statement. What choice did I have really. The coolest guy in our building thought that we would be, ‘A good match’! Well, that was that. The memory I have of that night is just one of sheer excitement and a lot of, “Oh my goodness, I can’t believe the coolest guy in the office likes me!”
Being told that Reynard is a child’s favourite book
As it was World Book Day last week, lots of children all went in to school dressed up as their favourite book characters, with their favourite books tucked under their arms. A friend who had bought my story, Reynard the Fox for her daughter for Christmas, this week told me at our networking group that her daughter had taken Reynard with her – its her favourite story!
There are a few moments in my life where I can note that my heart genuinely swelled in my chest, and that is one of them. I know that this little girl really loves reading, and to be told that your book is her favourite story makes me feel so proud and so happy. I have wanted to write and illustrate books since I was a child, and to know that my book is someone’s favourite makes me genuinely feel like I have achieved something truly magical.
Sadie
Sadie was a dog. Not just any dog, she was the dog. Sadie was the dog that I had pretty much spent 18 years begging my parents for. She was a black Labrador and she was a rescue – probably about 6 or 7 years old when she came to us. It took her a little while to settle in – she did not care for being left alone to begin with, at all. But it did not take long for her to be the apple of everyone’s eye.
In some ways, writing Sadie as a profoundly positive experience is cheating a bit – as she clearly was loved for her whole life with us – but I am choosing to include her as she was the dog that I had wanted forever. And she did not disappoint. When I think of her, I am filled with a love and affection that I don’t think will ever leave me. She left us many years ago now, but I can still remember her smell and the feel of her soft, thick fur when you buried your face in it. To my family, she was perfect (obviously she was also a tinker – what dog isn’t in their own brilliant ways?) But when I think of her, I am simply filled with love. And that is the profoundly positive bit.
Designer Mum 