Awakened Conscious Conversations
Healing the world one episode at a time by offering realistic solutions to the journey of life. Both self hosted ( By The Gentle Yoga Warrior) and guest episodes.
Many of our guests have overcome significant obstacles and transformed their lives.
Rich with deep talks and solo endeavours, often offering tips on living a more conscious life.
Many episodes include a bonus optional meditation!
Awakened Conscious Conversations
January: Finding Hope, Balance, and Productivity
We journey through the challenges of January, focusing on how to turn post-holiday overwhelm into a series of small victories. By emphasising practical strategies and self-compassion.
Starting a new year can feel like a daunting uphill climb, but what if you could tackle January with a renewed sense of hope and purpose? Join me as I share my personal journey of self-discovery and motivation, enhanced by the calming sound of flowing water. January's post-holiday pressures, financial strains, and dreary weather often leave us feeling overwhelmed and unmotivated. Together, we explore how breaking down our goals into small, achievable wins can lighten the load, setting the stage for a fulfilling year ahead. I'll discuss how to be kind to ourselves and why realistic expectations can be the key to navigating this tough month.
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So you can hear water flowing behind me as I record this, but I think it adds to the ambience of this particular podcast and I'm about to embark on a great journey. More things will be shared on this great journey in the next few weeks. However, there will be a short break from this podcast, but it will reconvene in February and I hope to. I need to kind of bring some more life into my why, and that's what I'm going off to explore and hopefully, via me working on myself, I'll help you in your quest across this lifetime.
Speaker 1:And January, I think, in some ways gets a bad name Because there's a lot of people returning from the holiday season and it can feel overwhelming as you open your inbox and there's so much work to do. And then perhaps, uh, the way, the pressures of the holiday season you have less income than what you'd normally have at this time and the weather main. It might be lovely where you are, but it in some places it's gray. And, again, not everyone can see the beauty in the weather, regardless of what it is, and I completely understand that, because people relish the heat, whereas I find the heat too much. I know that sounds strange, because most people chase sunshine and love it, and I don't get it at all. There's nothing better than a sunny morning or a late sunny afternoon. I'm just a little bit of a wimp when it comes to that kind of like heat, that intense heat when the sun's at its highest and it's very hot. Um, possibly because I'm not used to it. We're all different and we all like different temperatures and weather and things like that. But this January terrain is we kind of. And then the pressure, because it's like it's the number one month. So it's kind of like the fool card in tarot. It's like number one, where you're kind of you've got that drive, but at the same time it's like you don't know exactly what you're doing or you feel tired, all these external factors which can make the start of the year feel overwhelming.
Speaker 1:So what is the antidote to this and how can you find ways to help yourself through this? First of all, be kind to yourself and secondly, small wins. So I'll repeat that, small wins. So if your vision is to build an empire, don't, frankly, do everything like a headless chicken and achieve nothing in january, when everything falls apart because you can't, you've set yourself unrealistic expectations. Instead, can you set yourself some small wins, and your small wins for this month would be to get through your, your daily tasks, try and inject a bit of joy into it via being present and calm breaths and kind of slowing down. But equally understand it's a time of fast pace. But the small wins would be to come up with some sort of plan for the rest of the year and then break it down by months rather than trying to do it all at once.
Speaker 1:I have done some other podcasts in the past. If you listened to the podcast that I did last January I can't remember which one it is, but that will have a good plan of a lot of detail of how to kind of find these small wins. But just on a very basic level, what's one thing that is achievable that you would like to achieve this month? So it's better to go for something small to start with and then build upon it than try and do kind of too much. It's just from experience. I've got years of experience of life and I just know that generally, unless you're exceptionally different to everyone else, that it's not always the best course of action. But instead, is there something small but powerful that you can achieve this month? And when you do, you just want to give yourself a great big pat on the back.
Speaker 1:It could be anything like writing a plan for the month. Could you spend like five minutes a day writing the plan for the rest of the year and then count the beginning of February as the start of your new year? And how can you put up with the weather if you're not enjoying it so much like it's going to have to rain some days, some days it's going to be grey. But it's the beauty, like I always think. The birch trees look very beautiful at this time of the year because they're. They stand out a lot in the landscape. Especially we get the really old ones that are a bit gnarly in places.
Speaker 1:They look really beautiful and like people might be a bit miserable with post holiday season blues. But is there someone nice that you know that you can talk to? Is there something nurturing that you can do like? I went to someone else's class the other day and it was so nice. It was kind of in an old school kind of sports center and I just felt really nice to kind of go to a class there and I found it really nurturing for my being.
Speaker 1:Another way I was doing this I was doing some admin work earlier and I had planned to spend the whole day doing admin work. But it's really not in line with how I'm feeling right now and it's not a case of me procrastinating. What I decided to do was to put a good couple of hours solid work in of that kind, and I did that and then I broke break. I can't speak. I've broken it up with doing some creative things like producing my podcast today, and then I've got some more kind of like mathematical things to work out later and then I'm going to structure my day like that, because I'm lucky enough today to have a day that I can do that. Tomorrow I will have to be heavily on the admin and then create stuff the following day, etc. Etc. But it's kind of working with my energy. So if I was not listening to myself I would force myself to do the same task all day, but then it would kind of not work with the energy. Now I feel like I'm because I've got like a small win out the way, like two hours of this admin stuff out the way. I feel like I've got this massive burst of energy to learn put into this creativity. But if I spent the whole day doing that, then perhaps that creative bubble when evening time comes for me isn't always the most creative time. It just depends on time of year. But I digress but it's you knowing what works for you.
Speaker 1:Obviously, if you're in a full-time job, then you you kind of you've got to do the work in a particular order, but you can find ways to structure the day where it works better for you. So my partner always says is that there's a saying I think it's called eating the frog or something, and it's basically doing the tasks that you least want to do at the start of the day and then kind of the rest of the day feels easier. Equally, if it's something that's really hard you need to build up to what task? Can you build up to do that task maybe in the middle of the day and then do kind of more gentler tasks as the day goes on? And obviously there's always element of surprise and things that we aren't expecting as well. So we can plan, plan, plan, but there's always things that kind of get in the way.
Speaker 1:But how can we bring our spirituality, whatever your beliefs are, into this? Firstly and foremostly, please, if you haven't already and if you've tried this and you've failed many times, then just keep trying again. And remember, always leave a meditation at the end of the show. So if you really struggle to sit and meditate, why don't you listen to this meditation at the end of the show, at the start of your day, at the end of your day or a time where you won't be disturbed and I purposely make them short, so then you have more time to be and do that, because the reason the meditation's going to help you kind of.
Speaker 1:Just think, right, you are on a choppy sea and your mind is the boat on that choppy sea, and then some days the water's going to be calm, some days it's going to be choppy, some days it's going to be buff. What the meditation is. It's like giving your mind the little oars and sails to kind of like, kind of direct it. And if we're filling it up too much, it's just like if you filled a glass of water and you kept filling and filling and filling it until it was over full, it would overflow and then everything would just like flow out. So in a sense, in a very abstracty way, meditation is kind of like steering you into the present moment more, and we all kind of like have triggers or things that take us out of the present moment. But it's the awareness. So you're never going to be perfect, and why should you be? We're all unique, wonderful and fantastic as we are, and my beautiful international listeners I know you in all corners of the the world and I really appreciate you for picking this podcast out of the millions that are out there, um, and it's because of you that I keep going.
Speaker 1:But with the meditation it kind of gives you that extra like support to navigate through these things, because if, the more we can kind of stay present, even when our triggers might come in and something might bother us, we're more likely to kind of come back from that quicker, like just say, like someone's being rude to us, it's made us on the bus and we feel unhappy. We're more likely to be able to recover back from that quicker if we've, if we've got a meditative mind where we stay present and, hard as it is at times, try not to take things too personally. Sometimes it's other people's stuff and no, they should not offload it onto you. But do people do that? Of course they do in so many ways. So sometimes people want you to help them through their lives. They don't take responsibility. Other times people can befriend you if they have an agenda. Many times we have friends that are just lovely friends and that is great.
Speaker 1:And it's not to go through life feeling completely guarded, like you can't open up and be around people. But the more present we can be, I feel it attracts more of the people that are kind of in alignment with us. But equally, when we have a friend that we really care about and they care about us, you kind of learn to love them unconditionally. Not to say that you take rubbish off people not at all but it's kind of like learning the humanness in every single one of us. Like I know, partners can criticize partners because they want them to be a certain way and the thing is, everyone is who, who they are, and of course, there's things like conversation, which is very helpful to to help people have to understanding, but at the end of the day, you're responsible for responsible for who you are and how you react. You can't change other people. You might inspire other people. That's different, but a person's going to be there the way they are. They're going to navigate through life the way they are. So the person that you can work on and change is yourself and by honouring yourself, having boundaries. So you it's not to say that you should let people walk over you. You have boundaries on yourself try and communicate from your highest self, and the highest self I use as an instance of when we communicate from a place where we are in touch with whom we are, via meditation, and then this year has got a possibility of kind of flowing more than previous years.
Speaker 1:If you take my advice, it's January, this is not the time for doing great big things. Of course, if you've thought, yes, I want to exercise instead of hitting that exercise and controversial this is but from, in my opinion, obviously you do what you want. Never listen to anything I say blindly, but try and set realistic things, like if you're going every single night for a week and then you stop, that's not really going to help your cause. But if you think, actually I've got quite a busy life, but I want to keep this up, for the first month I'm going to go, just say, once a week or twice a week, and then the following month maybe you can fit in three times a week, but fine, and then you can build from there. But find a way that can work for you. So it's more about kind of consistency rather than like, um, also, when you do everything at once and then it all falls apart. So find things that work for you.
Speaker 1:It's like with the meditation. Most people aren't going to be able to do half a round of meditation every day, and if you're achieving that, totally ignore me. But if you find it hard, start with five minutes a day. I'm sure that everyone can find five minutes a day. I'm sure that everyone can find five minutes a day. And another thing that's of great help is if you can, maybe once or twice a week, just take out a notebook and just write a few lines of what you think you've learnt over the previous day. For example, man on bus was rude, but give the example man on bus was rude and you could put um instead of reacting. I didn't like the way they spoke to me. However, I saw the bigger picture. Just an example. Like it's a very it depends on the circumstances, of course, and this is just a fictional example that I'm sharing with you, but that is something that you could do, so I hope this was of help to you this January. I'll be back in a few weeks, but if you miss me, that's really kind of you. There is how many years we're in 25, so there's over five years worth of material. So just go and listen to some of the back episodes and I will be back February, vibrant and full of life, with a new lease of life to help inspire you.
Speaker 1:So, as always, here is today's meditation, inspired by today's show. Top tips for the meditation is either sit nice and cross-legged on the floor with a nice, straight back Always nice to sit on a block or a cushion or, if that's not available for you, you sit in a chair with the back nice and straight. The important thing is you're not slouching and if you're doing something that requires a little concentration, all you need to do is just pause this and you can reconvene the meditation at a time that is good for you. If you're doing the meditation, let's begin. So we're going to do a meditation that is inspired by pramayama, but it's a meditation rather than pramayama.
Speaker 1:So we're going to close our eyes and we're going to inhale mentally just through the right nostril. So inhale, pause, and then we're going to exhale mentally just through the right, and then we're going to inhale mentally through the right and Exhale mentally through the left. So we're going to continue doing that for three more minutes. Don't worry if it doesn't come naturally. Just feel as if you're inhaling positive energy through one nostril and then you're exhaling it out with the other, and then you take some fresh positivity from the nostril that you've just exhaled out of and inhale back through that side and back to the other side. So we'll stop the three minutes now.
Speaker 1:I'll talk you through a few rounds, then I'll be silent and then so inhale through the left positivity, pause, exhale through the right, let it all go. Inhale through the right some fresh, positive energy, pause and exhale through the left, and we'll continue doing this, and this is balancing both sides of our brain and helping us be in the present moment. So inhale through one pause, exhale through the other. So you're just doing this mentally Inhale through the side you just exhaled out of and then back to the other side, bring in positive energy through both sides. So, thank you, and then slowly breathe through both nostrils, exhale through both nostrils and gently and calmly go about your day. Just remember one thing that you love about yourself, the first thing that pops into your head.
