Hello, my name is Alex and I’ve become unfit. It’s upsetting to admit that, I’m very pro-exercise. I could give excuses (some valid, some questionable) but ultimately I didn’t prioritise my health as I should.
It would be fair to say I’ve been negatively affected by this in a few ways. It’s hurt my mental health, I’ve gained weight* and my general physical health has been impacted. At this point you would think the internal motivation to exercise and look after myself would be higher. In reality, right now, I find my motivation to be at its lowest.
*I just want to point out here, I’m body positive & believe we should love the body we’re in. I’m also one to advocate sensible eating rather than dieting. My current weight-gain is down to unhealthy choices, ultimately affecting my level of self-worth and how happy I feel, which is why I’m addressing it. However, my focus is on regaining my self-worth not on losing weight.
Unfortunately, autumn is that funny time of year (with the days darker for longer & the weather getting colder) where unless we’re already on a committed wellness path, we’re unlikely to begin to tread one. New starts usually come in January, don’t they?
But the right time of year to look after ourselves & our wellness is RIGHT NOW. Especially in the current climate when protecting our health & well-being is paramount. I realised my motivation needed to be kickstarted somehow.
Campaigns such as STOPTOBER (to encourage quitting smoking) and Sober October (to encourage lower alcohol consumption). These are great campaigns with loads of health benefits on offer for those that try them. They made me understand that a concerted effort with some form of accountability is what I needed here.
So for each day in October, I’m committing to consciously work on my wellness. I’m not deferring action until January, I’m going to improve my health & self-worth now. I’m going to challenge myself daily for the next 31 days!
And then I thought, perhaps I’m not the only person who will feel like this? Perhaps there are others who would welcome a wellness push at a tricky time of year? Which is why I’ve created a 31-day challenge sheet to encourage you to focus on your wellness every day throughout October too. Hopefully, it will be a kickstart (or reboot) of your own wellness journey.
There’s nothing quite like losing yourself in a good book. Especially if that book has been written with increasing your well-being at its heart.
My own well-being journey has involved implementing plenty of helpful & insightful tips learnt through reading such books. It would definitely be fair to say I have my own little well-being library – although I’m waiting on my husband to put up the bookshelves! Still, I keep them close by as they’re great to dip in and out of.
At times, certain parts might not apply to me but it’s a comfort to know they’re there when my journey takes an unexpected path or I’m in need of a moment of reassurance.
With this in mind, I wanted to share 5 of my favourite well-being books, in the hope they’ll provide you with as much insight and increased well-being as they have offered me.
Truth time: I had never heard of World Gratitude Day before. However, it’s a genuine day celebrated each year on September 21st.
What is World Gratitude Day? It’s a day dedicated to being thankful.
As you may know, I’m a big advocate of gratitude and firmly believe in its positive effect on well-being. I’ve personally used all of the activities I’m sharing with you, and the first one helped me during a particularly difficult time in my life. Truly, it was what kept me going, and I’ve continued with it ever since.
The founders of World Gratitude Day also recognise that making time for gratitude, appreciation & positive reflection improves our well-being and makes us happier, more contented people1.
So, in honour of World Gratitude Day, I’m sharing 3 powerful activities to kickstart (or enhance) your gratitude practice and help you move forward on your journey to living happier!
One of the first activities I had to complete on my well-being course was a questionnaire designed to identify my signature strengths. It was explained to me that I would need to use this information as part of a weekly challenge designed to increase my happiness levels.
Understanding my own personal strengths was not something I had considered as a way to feel happier. ‘So what?’, I thought. ‘I work out what I’m good at, pat myself on the back and carry on as usual – what does knowing this information really add?’
Luckily, I allowed myself to be more open-minded because as it turns out a lot of research has gone into this area with pleasingly positive outcomes. And thankfully, I too had a positive experience undertaking the activity, which is why I’d like to share it with you here.
Before we look at why knowing your signature strengths is helpful, how to go about learning what yours are and ultimately, how to use them to feel happier, let’s first understand…
Stylpro Easy on the Eye cleanser is brilliant! OK, I know I should technically leave my verdict until the end of my review, but I just had to say right from the start, how fantastic I find this cleanser to be.
Disclosure: The product featured was sent as a PR sample. This post contains affiliate links. I may receive a commission if you visit a link and buy something on my recommendation. Purchasing via an affiliate link is at no extra cost to you, but does contribute towards the running of this site. All opinions expressed within are my own. For more details see my disclaimer here.
Ready to find out why I rate it so highly? Well, I’ll gladly tell you!
Mental health isn’t something I tend to write about, not because I don’t see it as valuable or something that needs to be discussed, but more because I view it seriously and haven’t felt qualified to give advice.
However, I’m a person prone to anxiety. Not a little spot of anxiety every-so-often but the type of full-blown panic attack, heart palpitation anxiety that has been known to leave me as a big sobbing heap on the floor.
A number of people have spoken with me either about their own experiences or experiences of friends and loved ones. And it made me realise that perhaps I do have something helpful to say. Absolutely not as a medical professional, but simply as someone who can relate to people who experience anxiety too. After all, we’re really not alone in our experience, even if it feels like we presently are.
I also understand that the majority of the suggestions I’m making here are already widely recognised and so for some, what I’m saying is nothing new. Although, I do believe that sometimes – especially when you’re anxious – you need to hear a message a fair few times before a spark of ‘maybe I should try that’ is ignited.
In order to keep something in good condition for years to come we need to look after it. This same sentiment can be applied to our skin. That means feeding ourselves a nutritious diet, keeping hydrated, getting enough sleep and maintaining an effective skincare routine.
I hope you sit somewhere comfortably in the middle. For me, the key isn’t how much you do, more how effective what you do is.
I can’t emphasise enough the benefits of implementing and maintaining an effective skincare routine. And unless you’re absolutely in love with what you do right now, chances are your routine can be adapted to be more effective.
How to truly love yourself! Sounds a bit self-centred, doesn’t it? It makes me picture myself standing on a table in a middle of a crowded room shouting ‘I love myself’ and receiving the response ‘Wow what an ego, how did she fit her head through the door’ before the crowd erupts into laughter and general trolling.
OK, maybe that’s a bit extreme but I guess we as a society (and perhaps especially we as women) are pre-disposed to feel uncomfortable making any type of self-love declaration.
And look, the type of ‘love yourself’ I’m advocating here isn’t a request for you to stand on a table declaring it – plus how ‘crowded’ are rooms nowadays anyway! It’s more of an encouragement for building a better relationship with yourself – cultivating a healthy and empowering appreciation, sounds reasonable, doesn’t it!
It’s really not about arrogance, narcissism or negative self-inflation, more feeling good about who you are and how you operate.
I’m guessing, you could love yourself a lot more – I know I could certainly learn to love myself a lot more too! We’ve no doubt spent many years learning to un-love ourselves and it’s time to take action to reverse that process for good.
Everyone’s talking about self-care nowadays, aren’t they? Sharing their self-care tips & ideas. To be honest, I’m all for it. Self-care is a fundamental component of increased well-being. It’s essentially a way of making time to care for ourselves. And I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you the damage that can be done – emotionally and physically – if we allow ourselves to burn-out.
So today, I wanted to share with you my own self-care tips. Tips to make any self-care practice you undertake more effective. These tips don’t require any additional effort or cost to implement, which is what I’d call a double-win for your well-being!
Social media is both a blessing and a curse. It has provided us with a free way to connect & share, to promote & educate, to create community and to be well, social. But there is a negative side. It can be divisive. It can leave us feeling inadequate and unhappy. And actually potentially more disconnected and alone than we did before we even downloaded one of the apps.
The platforms themselves have been designed to become addictive to us. Many apps have implemented a ‘reward’ pattern (post something, receive praise in the form of likes, follows, comments, shares) in order to keep you as engaged as possible. It’s a dopamine hit for our brains and we keep coming back for more. Really we need to pause and examine the true cost to ourselves and our well-being.
It’s known as social comparison and we can’t help ourselves – it’s just something we naturally do. How we believe we fare when we make those comparisons directly affects our self-esteem. And if you hadn’t already guessed, social media platforms are virtual breeding grounds for social comparison.
A 2014 study by Vogel & colleagues concluded social comparison on Facebook had a significant negative impact on participants self-esteem. Interestingly, even when the participants were comparing themselves to people who were relatively worse-off than them, their self-esteem levels didn’t increase, they just stayed the same. In effect, there was zero positive impact on their self-esteem when using Facebook. Quite revealing findings, right?!
There you go I’ve said it! I understand that’s a controversial statement, but the evidence is weighted in favour of this. It is better for your well-being not to use them. However, I appreciate that for many this won’t seem like a viable option (myself included!) so thankfully, there are a few things you can do to look after your well-being whilst using social media and I’m going to share them with you now.
Inspirational quotes are brilliant! Especially when these pearls of wisdom speak to you at exactly the right time. I personally find them very powerful in boosting my mood & uplifting me. There’s something comforting to know you’re not alone in your experience, that someone has been, survived & most likely thrived regardless. It provides hope, doesn’t it?
I’ve been sharing inspirational quotes from the very beginning of Living.Pretty.Happy – I hope to be known for a few of my own one day! Anyway, I usually share these on social media, but I wanted to pull them together here and give some of my favourite inspirational quotes a permanent home.
As a side note, I haven’t elaborated on any of them as I believe meanings are personal and completely open to your own interpretation – that’s the beauty of them, isn’t it? I hope they inspire & uplift you, as much as they have me!
My work often leads me to learn simple yet proven techniques to help improve my sense of well-being. Things like good nutrition, regular exercise, meditation, journaling to name but a few. All valuable practices to adopt, but even with this knowledge (and the best of intentions) I still find I can struggle to change my behaviour in certain areas. Which is frustrating because I know what I need to do, so why can’t I just go ahead and do it already or at least do it with some consistency?
Laurie Santos, a professor at Yale University describes this as the G.I Joe fallacy: “the mistaken idea that ‘knowing’ is enough to change behaviour”. In actuality, to change our behaviour, we have to change our habits. Which is easier said than done really, isn’t it?
At the moment I’m undertaking a course on well-being (run by Laurie), part of which involves actively trying to incorporate a specific wellness activity into my life, giving me the best chance to build it into a productive habit.
I’ve definitely benefited from the tips & techniques I’ve acquired as part of this and I want to share them with you now. So if you’re ready to convert a good intention into an established good habit, read on!
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. I receive a commission if you visit a link and buy something on my recommendation. Purchasing via an affiliate link doesn’t cost you any extra, and I only recommend products and services I trust. All opinions are my own. For more details see my disclaimer here.
One of my true passions in life is beauty. It completely fascinates me. I’ve been interested in it for as long as I can remember, always eager to try new products and expand my knowledge.
When I launched my website it was a no-brainer for me to include a beauty category; it feels natural to share what I’m very passionate about. Recently I’ve begun to approach beauty from a more holistic point of view -in posts such as embracing makeup-free days. I truly advocate beauty should be about embracing yourself. I’m still fuelled by a desire to share with you what I discover and all that I love, and I hope I encourage you to love it – or at least enjoy it – too!
Beauty should absolutely feel more like a treat than a chore. I personally view it as a form of self-care investing some precious time in yourself. And as part of this, it’s important you’re happy with the products you’re using.
At the moment, I’m using some fantastic products delivering on what they promise to achieve. I appreciate not all products work for all people, but if you’re currently on the lookout for new skincare products or are thinking about making a switch then these are the products I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend.
I’ve just entered into a new partnership! One that I’m pleased to say my husband is quite open to – well mainly because it has nothing to do with our marriage, and everything to do with my success. Yes, I have gone and got myself an accountability partner.
It’s somebody who helps you fulfil a goal through regular meetings to check your progress. It’s a reciprocal, committed partnership, based on trust & a shared drive to succeed.
