BRB - new website coming!
Hello everyone - how are you doing? I wanted to let you know that the blog is going to go quiet over the next couple of weeks because very exciting things are happening behind the scenes and a brand new website is going to be coming your way in January! Blue Jay of Happiness launched on January 1st 2017 and as it approaches its third birthday I’ve decided it’s time…
Seedling Ep 10. Creativity as an act of self-care
On the podcast this week I’m talking about creativity - how it benefits our mental health and how it can become part of our self-care routine. I share some science behind why creativity is good for us, how it can get tricky when your job involves being creative and how to make creativity a bigger part of your life. If you always struggle to make time for creativity or don’t…
5 ways I make life easier
After I graduated from university, I worked in a tiny shoe shop. I was promoted to manager pretty quickly and vividly remember one day when I was doing a stock take with my area manager in-store. After looking at my method and my numbers, my area manager said “You do like making things difficult for yourself, don’t you?” and then proceeded to show me a much simpler way of doing…
Seedling Ep 9. Self-acceptance - how to like yourself more
This week I wanted to talk about the radical act of liking yourself and self-acceptance. It can be incredibly hard to find self-acceptance, and in this episode I talk about why it’s so hard, but also why it’s so, so worth the work. Here I talk about how things changed for me when I left school, why fashion had a role to play and how I managed to change my…
How to have more good days
A couple of months ago I had a period of pretty low mood. I was unmotivated, exhausted and feeling ‘meh’ most days. Thankfully, I pulled myself out of that funk (and wrote about it here) but when I look back at it, coming out of it started with one good day. I remember waking up without a headache for the first time in a couple of weeks (I was cutting…
Seedling EP 8. Wellness, self-care and everyday joy with Tamu Thomas
Today on the podcast we have the very first conversation on Seedling! My aim with these conversations is to shed light on subjects that as a society we *need* to talk about in order to grow. My first conversation is with the lovely Tamu Thomas who is a life coach, podcaster, speaker and writer. I met Tamu at one of her podcast events and loved listening to her thoughts and…
Monthly mindscape - kids
Another month has come and gone as always in the blink of an eye. I always start feeling reflective at this time of year, looking back at the year and thinking how much has changed, or indeed how much has not changed. This idea of looking back is, I believe, going to come through in this month’s flash fiction piece. For the image prompt, I picked something a little different,…
Seedling Ep 7. Mental wellness - how to take care of your mental health
On the podcast this week I’m talking about mental wellness and how we can take a more proactive approach to our mental health. I don’t feel like this subject gets enough air time, for many of us the term ‘mental health’ conjures up images of people at crisis point, but the thing is - we all have mental health, and we can all take steps to help ourselves before we…
How to find motivation for life again
Ooft, this is a bit of a dramatic title isn’t it? But I think all of us can have those moments when motivation for anything is lacking. Maybe work isn’t firing you up like it usually does, or life admin is getting on top of you. I’ve been there (pretty recently actually) and know how it feels when you want nothing more than to stay in bed and hide under…
Seedling ep 6. The difference between counsellors, coaches and mentors
This week I’m wading through the murky waters of the coaching and counselling industry… I’m sharing an analogy and some questions to help you understand the difference between the professions, talking about qualifications, guidelines and laws and also shedding some light on the term mentor. Finally I offer some advice to help you know which counsellor/coach/mentor is right for you and some considerations to keep in mind as a client. I’m not…