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- Authentic woman
- Authenticity
- Boundaries
- Confidence
- Empathy
- Gratitude
- Meaningful Life
- Mindful relating
- Resilience
- Rest/Stillness
- Self-acceptance
- Self-awareness
- Self-care
- Self-compassion
- Self-empowerment
- Self-forgiveness
- Self-Kindness
- Self-love
- Trust
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- Vulnerabilty
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- Worthiness
I want to thrive not just survive
Do you ever feel like you are going through life merely surviving rather than truly thriving? I spent years feeling like this and some days, even some weeks I can still feel like this.
Be authentic. Be yourself, whatever the emotional cost. Pain goes away, while regret over a life lived trying to be a plastic version of yourself does not
When I read this quote, it reminded me of when I first heard of Bronnie Wares book, Top 5 regrets of the dying. Her research found they were…
After all those years as a woman hearing ‘not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not this enough, not that enough,’ almost overnight I woke up and thought: I’m enough
I LOVE this expression of the revolution from within.
More than ever before it is important we remember who we are
Yes. Times Up. Times up for the crumbling Patriarchy. And, Times Up for Us. It’s time for us to find the courage to say ‘This is who I am’. In our full gloriousness and our human messiness.
I was once afraid of people saying “Who does she think she is?” Now I have the courage to stand and say ‘This is who I am’
It’s interesting, I came across this fabulous quote by Oprah a couple of months ago and decided not to write to it at the time. If I am really honest with myself, and you, I didn’t write to it because I still fear this.
Imagine being an Authentic Woman, a woman who…
How does it feel to imagine yourself as this woman? Perhaps feelings of calm, joy, empowerment and connection arise. Perhaps feelings of futility, loss, sadness and confusion…
What does it mean to be an authentic woman?
We’ve been deeply touched by your more than 200 responses to our question: ‘What does it mean to be an authentic woman?’
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
May my working with all of this, with as much self-compassion and self-love as I’m able to call on in each moment, support all women to turn to themselves with more compassionate self-awareness in their hardest times and find…
If you want to find true happiness, true joy, and true inner-peace, then start your quest by looking in the mirror
The word ‘true’ feels important to me as a I read this quote. And I believe it could be replaced with the word ‘Authentic’…
Your dreams don’t have to be lofty; they just have to be lived
Are you living true to your dreams? Are you clear what they are? These were the questions that arose within me as I read this quote.
Your problem is you’re too busy holding onto your unworthiness
This quote reminded me of the poem by Marianne Williams which often inspires me to face my fears and step out of my unworthiness…
Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognise how good things really are
It’s an incredible gift to share my life with this circle of women and a number of others. To practice truly being myself. To practice authenticity in all its messy, scary, vulnerable imperfections.
I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do
I’ve recently begun to feel as though I am at a crossroads in my life and, as a result, have been feeling very uncomfortable. There isn’t one particular aspect of my life that I can put my finger on that wants changing and yet…
Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it is about learning to dance in the rain
Do you ever have those days, those week, those times in your life when you feel like there is so much going on, that you are not sure you can handle just one more thing happening? I notice that when this happens for me I tend to focus on the future.
I have met my self and I am going to care for her fiercely
In some ways I think fiercely caring for myself is about becoming a compassionate mess – we can all do this, we can’t get rid of the messy parts entirely but we can all become a compassionate mess and…
Don’t trade in your authenticity for approval
When I look back over the last 47 years of my life I have spent SO much time and energy trying to gain other people’s approval AND most…
Turn Your Wounds Into Wisdom
I have noticed my reticence to share my own story, my own feelings, to claim my truth and ultimately when I got really curious about that I realised it was still about shame and fear.
#metoo #ibelieveyou
Authentic Woman stands together and deeply respects the brave women who are speaking out to change the culture that colludes with this behaviour and questions the actions of the victims, rather than those of our attackers.
Inner peace begins the moment you choose not to allow another person or event to control your emotions
Now this I find challenging! Not as much as I used to. Not all the time now (and it used to be challenging all the time!), but it does feel like the ultimate practice, the ultimate mastery of my emotions and thoughts.
When you enter a new experience, all that requires healing rushes to the surface . . . you have to pause
Let me give you an example, this past Sunday morning, my partner seemed irritated and sulky, and I figured he was punishing me because I had wanted to stay in the night before and he…
When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you
It’s taken me a long time to realise the magnitude and impact of the enemy within me. To appreciate just how profound this proverb is. If I rewrote it in my own words I would say ‘when there is no inner critic or self-judgments within me, nobody else can really hurt me’.
You are not supposed to be happy all the time. Life hurts and it’s hard. Not because you’re doing it wrong, but because it hurts for everybody
Self-kindness asks us to turn towards our pain which simply isn’t how the reptilian part of our brain is wired, it’s wired to…
Slow down. Happiness is trying to find you.
Slow down. Slow down. Slow down. Happiness is trying to catch us. Slow down. Slow down. Slow down. Stop. Breathe.
Once we belong thoroughly to ourselves and believe thoroughly in ourselves, true belonging is ours
This is a profound quote for me. I remember the relief I felt when I first read that my desire to belong was ‘normal’, human, that it is an innate primal desire that we all have.
One of the greatest tragedies in life is to lose your own sense of self and accept the version of you that is expected by everyone else
Not surprisingly I began to feel more whole AND more confident.
You get your confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your own side
It’s so interesting, the process I sometimes go through when writing these Authentic Woman posts. I have been looking at this quote for days, wrestling with it, resisting writing to it. That little voice in my head saying…
If we really want to live a joyful, connected, and meaningful life, we must talk about the things that get in the way
I can feel a subtle holding back, something sitting in a shadowy corner refusing to show up and participate fully in joy, connection and meaning.
Feeling compassion for ourselves releases us from the self-hatred that prevents us from responding to our life with clarity and balance
For many in the group the idea of self-compassion was remote, self-indulgent or even self-pitying. It struck me that…
Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves
When someone in my life was feeling sad or disappointed, in the past I would feel it was my responsibility to make them feel better…
You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one’s own self
Enter pain and hurt. Can I allow this to be followed by self-compassion…
Joy is the best makeup
I smiled when I read this quote by Anne Lamott, how true it is. Have you ever seen anything more beautiful than a person experiencing pure joy.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do
I have made many mistakes in my life. I have done things I am not proud of. I have hurt and disappointed myself and others. And I have been hurt and disappointed by others. There are things I wish I had done differently.
When a woman becomes her own best friend life is easier
How exactly do you become your own best friend? In the early days of forming this truly life-changing relationship with myself, I found three practices particularly helpful and powerful.
May you have a deep understanding of your true value and worth
This quote is from a passage that goes on to say…
Trust yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to trust yourself to get anything done in this world
One of the biggest shifts towards building trust with myself has been becoming my own best friend. Being kind to myself has in surprising and powerful ways increased my inner self-confidence.
The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely
My first response when I read this quote was, “No way, there are a lot more terrifying things than that for me!” But the more I sat with it and reflected on it I really got how true this is. Total and complete self-acceptance is where true freedom lies.
I’d love to skip over the hard stuff, but it just doesn’t work. We don’t change, we don’t grow, and we don’t move forward without the work
Opening up also isn’t easy because, just like you, I’m wired for survival. Meaning my biological survival wiring is to avoid threat, avoid pain – when my survival wiring is activated vulnerability feels like weakness.
Sometimes it is OK if the only thing you did today was breathe
Really? How hard would it be for you to truly accept this? I am very good at being busy. Very busy. And it is fair to say I have a fair bit to be busy about… as do all of us.
Authenticity: Knowing who you are and being brave enough to live it
The practice of being authentic and living an authentic life is an incredibly courageous one. And in my experience it is one of great vulnerability. I often feel like…
Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance
These days I’m happy hanging back a little, piecing together all that serves me from the…
Beauty is what you feel about yourself not about what you see in the mirro
Slowly, gently I have re-orientated my focus away from it being about how I look on the outside, to focus on who I am as a human being.
Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow
It’s fascinating to catch that moment of choice where I have enough self-awareness in the moment to know I can either continue this train of thought or I can shift it AND it really is my choice.
You are never more fully yourself than when you are still inside
On rare occasions I’ve had a sense of this peacefulness open in me, vast and without dimension…
Freedom is a state of being on the inside
I choose to free myself from my self-inflicted limitations. I choose to believe in myself, in my partner, in my son and in the life we are committed to creating, no matter the obstacles.
We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions
Oh how I wish this was not the case :). I spent years numbing my emotions. Not consciously but it was often what I was doing.
You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection
And THE most important part of self-love for me has been self-compassion, which comes into play not in my triumphs but when I’ve blown it.
We are always getting ready to live but never living
There are lots of things I talk about doing, think about doing and yet don’t do, sometimes for good reason and often out of fear.
Accept where you are, accept what you have, accept who you are
Resistance shows up as blame, criticism, numbing, and denial…so many ways to choose from in order to resist feeling something I don’t want to feel.
Gratitude is peace
Aaahh..and so it is. I only wish I didn’t forget this so quickly and easily! :-). I have talked before about how excited I was when I first learnt that our brains actually have a negativity bias.
Perfection is self-abuse of the highest order
I consider myself a recovering perfectionist. And over the last week I have watched myself slip back into some of these old behaviours and thought patterns.
How you love yourself is how you teach others to love you
Rupi is a 24-year old poet and artist from Canada who for me stands out as a woman speaking authentically about many tough themes – rape, violence, alcoholism, and trauma.
There is you and you. This is a relationship. This is the most important relationship.
“As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth. Today, I know, this is “AUTHENTICITY”.
The most important relationship you have is with yourself…
One of the most confronting things I have learnt about myself is, as an adult, I can sometimes still feel and act like a victim. I do everything to make it seem like I don’t, but when I am really honest with myself I know that I do.
Loving ourselves through the process of owning our story is the bravest thing we will ever do
Hustling the expert feels especially stressful when I’m asked to figure something out on the spot or support Jo figuring something out in the moment, my expert wants to…
You’ll never know who you are unless you shed who you pretend to be
While I was instantly drawn to this quote as someone who is hungry to be an Authentic Woman, I found myself reading it over and over, slowly uncovering what it really means for me. It points me to learning about, to becoming more compassionately aware, of who I am NOT.
Be kinder to yourself. And then let your kindness flood the world
Only in recent times have I learnt the power of self-compassion. Research now tells us that self-compassion is profoundly more effective than self-criticism & self-judgment.
Inspiring women to truly be ourselves
We believe we’re not meant to do this alone and women are at their best supporting themselves and each other…
What’s in a name?
We’re changing our name from Conscious Woman to Authentic Woman. We love the change even though it came about from forces beyond our control, aka trademark issues…
Don’t waste your energy trying to change opinions. Do your thing and don’t care if they like it
I’ve come to understand that my resilience comes from a balance of a good dose of self-compassion, my ability to soothe and comfort myself in moments of pain when there simply isn’t…
Once she stopped rushing through live, she was amazed at how much more life she had time for
But it’s not easy. I’m on holidays at the moment and one week in I notice I have only just really started to fully slow down…
I am obsessed with becoming a woman comfortable in her skin
But over the last few years I have really been letting go of that. In fact last summer at 46, I started wearing a bikini again as I…
Loving yourself isn’t vanity, it’s sanity
The self-love comes when I allow myself to be imperfect after making a mistake…
My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to find peace with exactly who and what I am
My incessant worrying is often very subtle; I have struggled to even bring it into my conscious awareness at times. It shows up more in my behaviours, my reactions, and my choices..
The only person who can pull me down is myself, and I’m not going to let myself pull me down anymore
If you’re anything like me, one day you can be on top of the world, loving every minute of life and completely content with who you are, and the next, you can be steeped in doubt and worry and…
Everything you need, your courage, strength, compassion and love; everything you need is already within you
When I can hold this attitude, especially towards myself, everything changes and life naturally becomes more easeful. This is where the freedom is.
I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself
I’d often wonder how things got to be like this, how I’d arrived at a place where I felt disconnected and uncomfortable in my own skin.
Worrying won’t stop the bad stuff from happening, it just stops you from enjoying the good
I felt my anxiety go up, my sense of self felt a little wobbly, I had a few tears. I noticed that my habitual worrying wanted to kick in.
Lighten up on yourself. No one is perfect. Gently accept your humanness
So, what is the difference between perfection and excellence? It’s quite subtle I’ve found, but they feel very different…
So many years of education yet nobody ever taught us how to love ourselves and why it’s so important
Imagine a woman who believes it is right and good she is a woman. A woman who honors her experience and tells her stories. Who refuses to carry the sins of others within her body and life.
My mind is a neighbourhood I try not to go into alone
My mind can be the stage for so many different characters. Take love for example. There’s the one who…
We accept the love we think we deserve
I put up with outrageously disrespectful behaviour and abandoned myself over and over again.
Don’t forget to fall in love with yourself first
You see I have a little magic trick I use when I’m feeling tired or down or grumpy or my day simply feels too full to fit my morning ritual in.
Finding your passion is about finding your authentic self. The one you’ve buried beneath other people’s needs
I’ve often felt pressure to have a passion and always avoided answering the question ‘what’s your passion?’ as ‘I don’t have a passion’ somehow felt like failure.
Live Authentically. Why would you continue to compromise something that’s beautiful to create something that is fake
Its sounds so simple doesn’t it. So obvious. So freeing. But in my experience living authentically is not easy.
We have to dare to be ourselves no matter how frightening or strange that self turns out to be
I’ve always been someone who has felt pressured to be on the move. It’s hard to be still when I’m pulled by goal setting, self-development, and the pursuance of my passions.
If you’re not careful your whole life could be ‘I’ll be happy when..’
Oh, this is SO me at the moment. I am glad I am learning to kindly laugh at myself when I do this, because it is pretty often.
You’ll never know who you are unless you shed who you pretend to be
I pretended to be shy. I’m a natural introvert, certainly. But at the same time, being shy was very convenient for me.
You’re not alone
Often when I’m struggling with something in my life I can make up a story that I’m all alone in my struggles, that nobody else will understand. And yet when I find the courage to be vulnerable, to share my experience, I often get met with a ‘Oh, you too!’
I am too full of life to be half loved.
It was one of the most painful experiences of my life when I could no longer deny that I needed to leave my relationship AND I was still in love with my partner.
I want to thrive not just survive
Do you ever feel like you are going through life merely surviving rather than truly thriving? I spent years feeing like this and some days, even some weeks I can still feel like this.
I know my life is meaningful because…
My latest journaling prompt is this one: ‘I know my life is meaningful because…’ I think I could write to this prompt for the rest of my life and perhaps I will.
Self-respect, self-worth and self-love all start with Self. Stop looking outside of yourself for your Value
Do you ever look outside of yourself for your value? I sure do! Even though I have learnt that is not where I will find it, I often fall back into the trap of looking for it out there.
Embrace the glorious mess that you are
Being messy can actually be a short-cut through feeling pain.
What makes you vulnerable makes you beautiful. There’s a word for it. Authentic.
What makes you feel vulnerable? Perhaps the biggest for me, is letting down my defenses and getting deeply honest, with myself and with those I love. And really letting those people see me in all my messy imperfections.
Vulnerability sounds like truth and looks like courage
The more I talked and he listened the closer I knew I was getting to the truth and as I was getting closer I could feel my whole body tighten up and energetically pull away, the fear was building as the truth began to surface inside of me.
Your greatest treasure hides behind your self-loathing
It’s hard to admit that I’ve used self-loathing as a way to motivate myself. I’ve literally hated and doubted myself into trying harder.
You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful.
Reading this makes me take a very deep breath in and out, relax a little more, give myself a break. “oh yes, that’s right, I’m not meant to be perfect”, “I’m not meant to always get things right”, “I am not meant to be the perfect mum, friend, partner, colleague etc’, “I am a human being, I never have been perfect and I never will be”.
When you need something to believe in, start with yourself
It’s about giving myself a break when I mess up, because everyone does. It’s about acknowledging how hard life can be sometimes when I’m having a pressure cooker of a day.
I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened
Do you ever worry about anything? :-). Feels like the story of my life sometimes! And I have really put the spotlight on my worrying recently.
Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves
That doesn’t mean that the feelings go away. I might still feel the anxiety, but it doesn’t have a death grip on me anymore and I’m far less likely to struggle to make things different.
When you accept yourself the whole world accepts you
I need to be reminded of this daily. To practice both accepting myself and accepting all that life brings. The wonderful and awe-inspiring and the challenging and deeply painful. All parts of being human.
When we give ourselves compassion, we are opening our hearts
I could feel the pressure building to get more and more done. Everything starting to speed up, the multitasking kicking in, auto-pilot switching on and by the end of the day I was exhausted.
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it
Do you ever feel stuck? Like you are not living the life you want to be living, but you don’t know how to change that?
It’s not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?
I’ve been putting the busyness of my life under the microscope for a few years now and made some interesting discoveries.
I can tell you that what you are looking for is already inside you
I have spent much of my life searching outside of myself, only to find what I wanted was already within me. When I finally stopped and looked back I was not even sure what I thought I was searching for.
You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think and loved more than you know
For me this talks gently to the quiet unworthiness that so many of us experience within ourselves, which can chip away at my sense of self & my inner confidence.
You owe yourself the love you so freely give to other people
I used to think that self-love meant self-indulgence and I believed I wouldn’t get anywhere in my life if I was self-indulgent.
Self-care is about valuing and respecting yourself
I can spend a lot of time wanting to be valued and respected by others, while I am not actually valuing and respecting myself.
One of the greatest regrets in life is being what others would want you to be
I used to think of myself as being a good, a nice, and a selfless person…
To be beautiful means to be yourself
Self-acceptance arises when I’m kind with myself not when I’m trying to fix myself so that self-acceptance can follow.
Only those who are eager to get lost in the wilderness of life’s beauty can find a meaningful life
Some days I am so eager to get lost in the wilderness, the unknown, the mystery of embracing a meaningful life, of embracing all the uncertainty that comes with it.
Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you
Simply unplugging for a few minutes… This simple practice of just being.
Your relationship with yourself sets the tone for every other relationship you have
One of the most important ways I stay in a positive relationship with myself is with my morning ritual.
Love yourself so fiercely that others know exactly how it should be done
I have been struggling with this over the last few weeks. This is the time I need to love myself even more fiercely. To put my hand gently over my heart and tell myself “It’s ok not to get it right.”
Being heard is so close to being loved
I think of how my heart is healed and how deep my release from isolation is when another person just hears me.
Make time creating the life you want
This quote really speaks to how life used to be for me… I was spending a lot of time and energy dealing with a life I really didn’t want.
Having the courage to love ourselves
The first step was realising the cost my lack of boundaries were having on my life.
Be bold. Be you. Be your beauty. Life your life.
Over Christmas Heather spent time with a lovely young girl called Ava. They went to a Gallery of Modern Art together and there was an installation where you could write a note and leave it in an envelope for anyone to read. Ava wrote this note for someone else to read “Be Bold. Be You. […]
Caring for others requires caring for oneself
Like most people I want to be more compassionate, thoughtful and kind to others. The hardest part for me has been being kinder to myself first.
When you are saying yes to others, make sure you are not saying no to yourself
I’ve learnt that practising self-compassion and being truthful in my relationships means saying ‘Can I get back to you?’
What nourishes your soul and brings joy?
When I reflect on this question immediately the feeling of a spacious life comes up.
When you stop living your life based on what others think of you real life begins
I’ve spent at least two decades of my life in male-dominated corporate cultures. How does a woman stop living her life based on what others think AND work in these cultures?
Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves
When I can see and be kind to my own humanness, my own fragilities, my own imperfection I can then feel compassion for others humanness, fragilities and imperfections.
Female friendships are relationships in which women help each other
I began to imitate a friend who I so admired, hoping one day to be like her.
It is better to be yourself than to lose your soul just to fit in
In the past I would bend myself backwards so people would like me.
Radical self-care is what we’ve been longing for our entire lives
I’ve come to understand that self-care is radical when it runs counter to the messages wired in me.
It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are
It sure does. And in my experience it is a never ending journey! Heather and I often talk about the idea of both ‘waking up’ and ‘growing up’ and how both are equally important for us to create deeply authentic and meaningful lives.
Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves
I tentatively turned towards myself using the same kindness and understanding I would with a good friend who is confessing something distressing or embarrassing.
Radical acceptance is the willingness to experience ourselves and our life as it is
Learning to practice radical acceptance has changed my life.
The best self-help is self-compassion
Self-compassion is the most radically transformative practice I’ve used in more than 30 years of exploring and practising conscious living.
I forgive myself and set myself free
This week I became aware that I have been holding onto two things that happened a long time ago. One when I was a young girl and another 13 years ago. Both of these events were very painful for me. I felt abandoned and betrayed and very lost both times. And for many years I have completely blamed myself for both.
Giving yourself a hard time just trains yourself to give yourself a hard time
It’s taken me years to become my own best friend and one of the reasons was because I had to work with a brain that was strongly wired for self-criticism.
Why compromise something that’s beautiful to create something fake?
On the outside it looked like I had it all… On the inside I was quickly forgetting who I truly was and living a divided life.
I want a society free from trafficking of women and children
Today is International Women’s Day and this year’s theme is #beboldforchange.
Be yourself, everyone else is taken
Over time I have learnt that envy can be a healthy feeling as it can guide me to better understand my deepest desires, my deepest longings.
Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom
I still remember the day that I started to realise that I was not living true to myself.
Go with what feels like Who You Are
My simple daily meditation practice has changed my life and I truly believe it can help anyone find and stay in touch with their authentic self.
Hard times arouse an instinctive desire for authenticity
Despite these hard times, I cannot help but feel that there is a lot of greatness that is emerging from creative and inventive people.
The little moments aren’t little
I’ve just returned from two weeks of hiking in New Zealand (stunning). I had no idea before this trip how much I needed to reconnect with myself in the wild.
When you have a history of self neglect then it is a long journey to learn deep self-care
When you have a history of caring for others more than you do yourself, of self-neglect and at times self-abuse then it is a long journey home to learn deep self-care and self-love.
Perfectionism is the voice of the opressor
There was a time in my life when I really couldn’t do anything unless I knew I was going to do it not just well, but perfectly.
When I accept myself just as I am, then I can change
Instead when I have an attitude of compassion, of care, of friendliness towards the part that’s trying to change…
Gratitude turns what we have into enough
Slowly I have learnt that feeling satisfied is a truly delicious way to live in my life.
How we spend our days is how we spend our lives
Of course, if I do the same things as I always do I will have the same life I have always had.
When we fail to set boundaries we feel used and mistreated
When I feel used or mistreated because I haven’t set or been clear about my boundaries then I’m often quick to set down boundaries from a place of frustration.
It’s not selfish to take care of yourself
It is my job to love myself. To take care of myself and make my happiness a priority.
Beginning the work of being yourself
I am learning that it is my own acceptance and love that I need most.
It takes years as a woman to unlearn what you have been taught to be sorry about
Years and years of journal writing about exactly this, uncovering all that I had been taught about…
Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths
Life truly does rise up in the rest between two deep breaths.
The circles of women around us weave invisible nets of love
Together we inspire and support each other to feel confident, calm and connected.
To be yourself is the greatest accomplishment
I know that only when I began to question what I have been told about myself and my world could I begin to weed out the other voices and find the voice that is uniquely my own.
Authenticity is a collection of choices that we make everyday
The small daily choices to reveal myself, to trust myself, to believe in myself, to respect myself, to speak my truth.
Merry everything and a happy always
Wishing you a season of calm, a season of confidence and a season of connection. And to top it all off the courage and compassion to lead a deeply meaningful life.
Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity
And ‘all’ we have to do is believe in ourselves.
To experience peace does not mean that your life is always blissful
For me it can be as simple as taking a few deep conscious breaths throughout the day.
The meaning of life is to give life meaning
‘Why, when I have ‘everything’, do I feel so unhappy, so dissatisfied, so stressed? Whats the point of all this?’
Talk to yourself like you would talk to someone you love
For me it started with having compassion for my inner critic.
To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance
I have only recently learnt the gift of really getting to know myself, accepting myself and loving myself.
Waking up to who you are requires letting go of who you imagine yourself to be
Becoming aware of our beliefs and then letting go of the ones that are not ours helps reveal our true nature.
Sit down and be quiet for a time by yourself
I really get this is what is needed. Everyday. No matter what.
It is enough to be taken care of by myself
I find this to be such a soft and gentle reminder of the loving care that’s always available for and from myself when I’m able to soften and receive it.
Unlike self-criticism, self-compassion asks what’s good for you
The more I practice self-compassion, the more I have come to value myself in a deep way.
The ache for home lives in all of us
I used to believe that ‘home’ was only a physical place.
Empathy without connection isn’t empathy
Have you ever had someone acknowledge and reflect back to you what you’re feeling so perfectly that it made you tear up?
We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known
I’m learning to love my own soft underbelly and in that it becomes easier to show it to others.
Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it
When I do express my loving gratitude it’s always a moment that deepens the heart connection between us.
All the mistakes I ever made were when I wanted to say ‘No’ and said ‘Yes’
Worried I might hurt someone else’s feelings, or get left out, or that I may not get another chance. And yet I was really abandoning myself.
Have self-compassion, not self-judgement
When I push away parts of myself with judgment, I only dig myself deeper into feeling unworthy.
A conscious relationship is one that calls forth who you really are
I find it both difficult and hugely rewarding to be completely honest about who I am and to stretch myself to let my partner do the same.
True self-esteem is an ‘inside job’
It took me a very long time to work out that true self-esteem, the essence of self-esteem, is actually an ‘inside job’.
To truly be ourselves, we must truly know ourselves
To start living true to myself, in all areas of my life, I first needed to truly get to know myself. My needs, wants, values, strengths and desires.
Meditate as an act of deep warm friendship to yourself
I’d been a regular meditator for decades when I first heard these words. Something deep and fundamental shifted in me, and ultimately my meditation practice, as I took them in.
You want to perform a miracle? Forgive yourself.
I confess that when I was first asked to write a “forgiveness letter to myself” in a workshop I was a little resistant, a little uneasy. Yet after I completed the letter, I actually felt a shift in myself.
Being both soft and strong is a combination very few have mastered
I remember once asking my therapist ‘how do I look after myself and all that is important to me and still be gentle, soft, open and vulnerable’?
Be gentle with yourself
I recently shared this quote with a friend. She asked: “can you give me an example of being gentle with myself?”
You have permission to rest
One of the most important things I’ve learnt about replenishing myself, about taking a rest, is that not only do I not have to wait for ‘permission’ but I also don’t have to wait for a chunk of time to open up to do it.
To be beautiful means to be yourself
Join us as together we inspire and support each other to see our inner beauty. To Truly Be Ourselves. To love and accept ourselves. For me this has been and continues to be a life long journey and the greatest gift we can offer to ourselves and others.
How deeply did you learn to let go?
When I have a deep emotional attachment to an event or circumstance in my life and I’m being asked to let it go, it can often feel like I’m being asked to move on and forget about the past, person, or event that I’m deeply connected to.
Self compassion is simply giving ourselves the same kindness as we give others
I believe myself to be someone who values kindness, who wants to be sincerely kind to others – I find it confronting to clearly see how this isn’t always possible unless I am being kind with myself.
Worthiness does not have prerequisites
There are NO external prerequisites for worthiness. We are born with it. And if we have forgotten, we need to cultivate it within ourselves.
Be kind to yourself
The more I become aware of how I speak to myself and have compassion for myself within that, the more I feel I have freedom over my choices in life.
Take the risk to blossom
For me, my ‘tight in a bud’ can be about isolating myself, out of a need to take the pressure off, when I am feeling overwhelmed by commitments.
My mission is not to merely survive, but to thrive
What would it be like to feel like you are thriving, rather than surviving?
Being soft makes you stronger
I know for too long I really believed that my internal judge played a crucial role in keeping me in line and on track. I was confusing self-compassion with self-indulgence.
Be unapologetically you
Authenticity…there really is nothing more beautiful, at work, home or play. Join us as we inspire all women to feel Confident, Calm and Connected. To Truly be Ourselves – it all begins with Compassionate Self-Awareness.
A moment of self compassion
When we become more aware of our inner critic and can practice moment by moment self-compassion, our entire life can change.
I must seek self-awareness
I had to learn to slow down. To become more mindful. And through this I have slowly learned how to feel self-fulfilled.
Inspiring women to care for ourselves
I can’t be present to another, truly care for another, if my own tank is not full.
Inspiring women to feel confident
I spent so many years trying to either act confident or look for external things or people to try to make me feel confident. And while that is very normal, in my experience, it was not self-sustaining.
It all begins with compassionate self-awareness
To truly be ourselves, we need to truly know ourselves.
Inspiring women to truly be ourselves
Please join us and share with your girlfriends, as together we create a community to support and inspire women to truly be ourselves – to feel confident, calm and connected.