Your 40’s, 50’s and beyond (midlife) can be a time of great change in a woman’s life. Children growing up, ageing parents, menopause and other changes brought about by the ageing process are just some examples of changes that can occur which can all affect

We hear a lot of talk about confidence, increasing our confidence, boosting our confidence but what does that actually mean? The dictionary defines confident as “feeling or showing confidence in oneself or one's abilities or qualities” and as “feeling or showing certainty about something.”

.I used to compare myself a lot but through reaching a place of confidence and self-acceptance this had greatly diminished. However, over the last couple of months I found myself comparing to do with my coaching business. Not constantly but on a few occasions. Was I comparing myself to people at the same stage of business as me – no – but to people who have been doing this longer than me – even if only a year or 2.  .What does comparison actually achieve?

There is a lot written about the importance of self-love but the idea of loving yourself, loving your body can seem unreachable to some people.  If you feel you cannot love yourself yet, can you like yourself just a bit more?

Start with liking yourself a bit more.

Whilst love is the goal how about starting with appreciating yourself a bit more, accepting yourself a bit more, reaching a point of feeling neutral, if necessary just tolerating yourself a bit more – a first step.

So why do so many of us struggle with a lack of confidence?

Whether that be confidence with our bodies, Confidence over what other people think of us, how we’re perceived , meeting new people, showing up online. First off it’s not our business what other people think of us – so long as we’re not running around the world being a complete **** we have very little control over it.

Many of our actions or behaviours are formed from habit.  They’re just something we “always do”.  When we’re trying to change a habit or behaviour pattern it’s so easy to self-sabotage. “I always do that” – first off the language we use can reinforce our behaviours or actions.  By saying we always do it, it becomes what we expect ourselves to do and implies an acceptance of what we do.

So why you really don’t want to diet - dieting and restriction don’t work.  At least not in the long term.  For a while most of us seem able to follow a meal plan, cut out certain foods, limit other foods, count macros, count calories – until we can’t anymore and give up.

It may be that in this time of isolation & stay at home you are finding yourself reverting to old habits as regards eating. First off this is fine and not uncommon at times of uncertainty which we are facing at the moment world-wide.

So what is self-love? Self-love is when we take care ourselves in totality – our minds, bodies, health and emotions. Why bother? We start embracing and respecting ourselves as individuals, we grow in confidence and self-belief. We rely less on external factors to determine our self-worth and this all serves to improve our relationship with the world and people around us too.

The problem with the stories we tell ourselves is that they can be restrictive.  They can have us believe things that aren’t necessarily true.  We always look for the evidence to back up what we believe, to support them rather than evidence that contradicts. 

I’ve been taking part in Mel Wells Academy and one of the tasks we were asked to do was to write a letter to our bodies. I thought I would share mine on here as you may be able to relate to how I used to feel and also to give hope that this can change.

A Letter To My Body

Does self-love mean we cannot want change? Some of what we see on-line can make it seem as if self-love and body acceptance are destinations. They’re not. You don’t suddenly wake up one day and you’ve made it

re there things you’re waiting to do until certain conditions are met? Are you waiting to be happy? I was reading a Chrissy King article talking about how we often say I’ll be happy when, when I lose X pounds, I can wear a size x, I’m smaller etc

The effect of the words we use, on our sub-conscious, can have a significant effect on how we feel about us. I love words, I love reading, I love word-games and recognise how they can be a powerful tool in many situations.

Reaching your goals set isn’t always easy. There are certain questions I ask myself along the way. One question I’ve started to ask myself is “does this support the life I’m trying to create?” Trying to get clearer on actions I take is to ask – does this take me nearer to my goals?

So what is all the fuss around self-love? It seems to be a bit of a catchphrase at the moment. But why?

This week I’m taking part in Mel Wells, Self-Love week. It’s a great way of remembering to take actions just for us. Actions that honour us, that value us.

One of the hardest things about leaving the diet mindset behind was to stop dieting.

It was something I had been doing for so many years: – Weight Watchers, Slimming World, Atkins, calorie counting, You Are What You Eat, eating clean, even Slimfast (YUCK!) not giving a stuff!

Life can become busy & hectic. Therefore, anything I can do to reduce this I do. The principles of nourishment, self, consistency and simplicity lend themselves to a much less stressful and more chilled living experience.

What has strength training done for me? It’s a bit like the Monty Python sketch “what have the Romans ever done for us?” So many things – the obvious and the unexpected.

Frequently taking the first step on a project, whatever it may be, whether personal or business, can be the hardest. You may have in your head a vision of the end result, identified the steps needed but be struggling to start on the road to achieving it.