 Marie Kondo’s magical art of tidying up has taken the world by storm since Netflix released Tidying Up based on the simple yet ingenious idea that if your possessions don't spark joy it is time to let them go. De-cluttering has a powerful impact on your energy and mood so if throwing or giving away the things that no longer spark joy can give you energy and a new lease of life why stop with your living space, it might be time to Marie Kondo your life!
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 In our fast-paced, grief-avoidant society we rush to tick the task of grieving off our to-do list as quickly as possible. We don’t want to embrace pain or suffering or confront the reality of our own mortality and many misconceptions about grief and grieving are born from this. Everybody experiences grief yet nobody wants to talk about it which has resulted in a lot of misconceptions forming. Grief myths can create obstacles to mourning and add to the anguish and confusion of the bereaved.
This 2-part myth-busting series aims to challenge these fallacies and normalise the grief experience by honouring the uniqueness of each loss and the individuality of the responses to them.  Have you heard of the word of the year? The word of the year is a really easy way to create a laser focus on your goals so that every choice and decsion you make is in aligment with what you want to achieve. It´s so simple yet surprisingly effective.
 Do you want to crush your goals this year? Run them through the SMART goal filter and experience the difference.
If you Google SMART goals you will see many different variations of the acronym, all of which yield results. The version I am going to share with you is the one I have found to generate the best outcomes, both by using it myself and with my clients.  New Year’s resolutions are not goals; they are pledges that have an unhealthy dose of the shame and guilt attached to them, and more often than not when you dig a little deeper you’ll find a silent Should lurking in the background. If you´re like most people, your New Year´s Resolutions have already been relegated to the mental drawer of broken promises, that´s if you even bothered to make any. Resolutions usually come from a sense of not being good enough and needing to improve and as if that wasn’t bad enough they end up being another stick to beat ourselves with when we don’t follow through on them, and a whooping 90% of people don’t!! So let’s not bother with resolutions and let’s start setting goals instead, goals that excite and energise you.
Goals, unlike resolutions, come from a place of acceptance. Goal setting is empowering, it says I am perfect as I am and yet I know I can want more, do more and be more and if I even don’t succeed I will learn and grow. Here are some tips to help you crush your goals this year.  Self-care is a word that’s bandied around a lot, but what exactly is it and why do we still put it at the bottom of our list of priorities?
When you hear the term self-care it tends to conjure up images of massages and manicures, eating chocolate, drinking wine and cosy nights snuggled up on the sofa watching films. But it is so much more than that, in fact if you’re doing it right it will at times be uncomfortable and challenging as you throw off the restraints of social conditioning and make some tough decisions in order to make you a priority in your life.  Grief is uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable for those who are experiencing it and often for those who observe it. In our grief-avoidant society we stumble clumsily through our interactions with the bereaved, hoping for a quick escape. Seeing someone in pain makes us shrink back, fearing that the intensity of their anguish will spill over and we won’t know what to do, or that their pain will wake something in us that has long remained dormant. How then can we get comfortable enough with grief so we can show up powerfully when our loved ones are hurting?
 This week as American families everywhere are preparing for thanksgiving celebrations I thought it was the perfect moment to talk about Gratitude. For many thanksgiving, like Christmas, has become a commercial holiday and the focus has shifted away from remembering what you’re grateful for towards a more materialistic display of affection yet despite this gratitude seems to be a word on the lips of anyone with even the faintest interest in personal development. If you search Gratitude in Amazon there are more than 40,000 results, but it is more than a self help buzzword and I invite you to accompany me on a journey to re-discover the benefits of gratitude.
 You have a big goal, a clear vision, and you can see your final destination in the distance, but it´s oh. so. far. away......in the distance. Fear creeps in, bringing with it anxiety, apprehension and a large dose of procrastination for good measure. And boom you´re paralyzed. Welcome to overwhelm hell, where dreams come to die. It happens to the best of us, we get really clear on what we want and where we want to go and all of a sudden we remember where we are and it all just seems too much. We want to crawl into bed, put on Netflix and forget we were so ridiculous to dream such big, impossible dreams.
Before you resign yourself to a life of sweatpants and Netflicks grab a hot beverage, take a deep breath and read on.  When we reach a certain point in our emotional and psychological evolution we realise that the quality of our relationships is far more important than the quantity. Yet in a world where we have more connections than ever it is becoming increasingly difficult to be the gatekeepers of our time and energy. We all have friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances and an ever increasing number of social media connections vying for our attention, and it is easy to lose focus and forget that we are the guardians of our precious resources and that we are responsible for keeping our inner circle sacred.
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Niamh Mitchell
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