Be Calm

Spring Cleaning HSP-style

spring clean

When Spring arrived,  everyone was talking about spring-cleaning the house, the garden, washing the car, mending the curtains and fixing the fence!  All of that sounds lovely and inspiring and encouraging.  It will make us feel better to put the new paint on the walls, get the old out and make room for the new.

Of course, that got me thinking.  All those make-overs outside ourselves will make us happier and feel more organised, but dear one, what if we take that concept and apply it just to little-old-you!  Have you spring cleaned your life yet?

Yes, let’s spring clean you!  Whoosh that sounds kinda weird, but before you get offended, why not try freshening your ‘self’ up this spring.

Spring may be the perfect time to take stock of yourself and give a heave-hoe to the old stuff and a welcome mat to the new!

Here are 8 challenges that will give you and your life a fresh-air newness.

  1. Challenge your brain.  Make a new routine to your day.
  2. Challenge your emotions.  Create new rituals (not chores) that you enjoy.
  3. Challenge your spirit. Clear your energy by saying kinder things to you and others (get rid of the swearing and cursing, it doesn’t become a queen).
  4. Challenge your perspective. Look for positives in your life and bin the negatives.
  5. Challenge your heart.  Send your outworn styles to charity.  Give some other woman less fortunate the opportunity to feel beautiful.
  6. Challenge your creativity.  Make a beautiful space, even if it’s a little corner or small surface.  Air freshener that makes you smile, candle that calms, colours you love, most classy-comfy armchair to curl up in.
  7. Challenge your self.  Take pictures of yourself and see what others see.  If you don’t like what you see, change her!
  8. Challenge your desire.  Start a piggy-bank for anything you want it to be for.  Keep investing in your dream, who knows when that little piggy will crack!

Remember you need to put yourself on the spring clean list every year, along with all the household cleaning.    What better way to ensure you feel alive and invigorated again.  After all, isn’t that what Spring is all about?

Challenge You.  Clear the clutter and feel the freedom!

Love, The Burnout Queens xx

4 Ways You Don’t Know Something

4 with crownWhy do I always have to know what the answer is!?! 

If you find this question familiar.  If everyone always looks to you to know the answer to something.  And if you don’t want to know something for once in your life…. here are 4 super ways to decline knowing and not feel the guilt.  Repeat after me!

4 Ways to Decline Knowing Something (no guilt)

  1.  BEATS ME!
  2. YOUR GUESS IS AS GOOD AS MINE!
  3. HAVEN’T A CLUE!
  4. NOT MINE TO KNOW!

Put them in your little vocabulary book and the next time you’re exhausted and still someone wants you to come up with the answer, start repeating…

Love, The Burnout Queens xx

(excerpt from The Burnout Queens’ Postcard from The Realm)  If you would like to receive more of The Realm’s wisdom every Sunday and learn to Defy Ordinary in your life, you are invited to join our free global women’s group by registering here. The Realm membership

Ditch the bucket list…get a jar

bucket

I am Fed Up with hearing everyone talk about their ‘bucket list’. This highly sensitive woman is asking you,  “can we have a nicer image than a bucket for our visions, hopes and dreams?”  As soon as I hear that word I have a fingers down a chalkboard moment!  Buckets do not inspire me, nor do they motivate me to make any sort of list.

If you have ‘things you want to do before you die’ then a bucket list is helpful. You can tick them off, say you did them, show the snapshots, hopefully have a good time while you’re doing them.   In my opinion these ‘things’ just add up as a fun to-do list that you can share or competitively compare with your family and friends.

Great for some, not for moi.  I’m looking for something more meaningful and purpose-driven. I’m looking to expand ‘who’ I am, not ‘what’ I can do before the end of my life.  And as a very visually inclined sensitive and creative woman I want it to ‘look beautiful in my mind’ so I get excited and inspired by the notion.

So what’s my alternative?

jar

A Jar.

I can’t take credit for this brilliance (it was suggested in one of my women’s group) but it certainly made more sense and spoke to me in a way a bucket list never has.

Here’s how it works.  As you experience things in your life that involve yourself, other people or occurences that enhanced you, changed you, made life happier, and you became wiser in the long term, then they get written on a piece of paper and put in your beautiful jar (vase, box, whatever place you wish to cherish your bliss).  At the end of the year you can sit down with eggnog, champagne, or cup of tea and remember that your year had times of great meaning, connection and personal enhancement.   You know, your accomplishments.  It’s that simple, and that deep!

To me, a jar of meaningful experiences does more than a list of ‘things’.  Don’t get me wrong, I know some of the papers will have ‘things’ I have done, but I will be remembering them as part of cultivating a well-lived life.  My inner evolution!

Embrace Life, with love The Burnout Queens xx

Abandoning Myself to Pleasure

theatre

When I go to the theatre, I go for the full entertainment value:  plot, costumes, songs, sets.  From moment I enter the lobby, it’s the mood, the architecture, the decor and drinks, that transport me out of my real world and into the world of fantasy.  It’s a lovely way to forget the biz, kids, worries and abandon myself to pleasure.

Sadly, others don’t share my experience and abandonment.  It makes me sad to see them ‘bring their world’ with them, seemingly unable to let it go, even for a moments pleasure.

When they take their seats they look at the tiny screen in their hand instead of the beautiful architecture, or speaking with their companion.  When the lights dim and the curtain starts to part, they are still sending their last minute text, email or photo instead of feeling the anticipation of what’s about to happen.  At intermission they whip out their screens to catch up, reply and browse the world, instead of watching the audience, sipping a drink or enjoying their strawberry and ice treat (this is something I truly cannot comprehend).

At the end of the performance, I walk away having enjoyed myself, having experienced something new, having lived in the moment, having forgotten the outside world.  Their experience is a very different story to mine.

I’ve learned to consciously embrace these moments.   It’s one of the ways I live a burnout-proof lifestyle.  I find it such a shame others cannot do the same…yet (I always hold out hope)!

Love, The Burnout Queens xx

 

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