One of the most powerful ways to find peace and be ok with where you are at right now, is to learn about what we like to call The Big Guns. The starting point for all change, requires awareness. Without awareness, nothing can change. But once we have awareness, there are three key steps (The Big Guns) that we need to move through to truly learn how to meet ourselves where we are at. In this episode, Fiona will share with acceptance, forgiveness and gratitude with you, and help you understand how to apply them to your life, right where you are, right now. Because where you are is where you are, and where you are now is perfect.

Why do we do the things that we know we shouldn't do, that make us feel bad? Why do we keep repeating the same old habits and keep on experiencing the same old outcomes? We say we don't want to be doing it or experiencing it, and we think we know we are doing it, but in reality, nothing is changing.

Starting to ask yourself two questions will help you to understand why you are where you are, and why you keep doing what you do. Because, even though your might not like what you are experiencing - there is still some benefit in it for you.

Listen in to this week's episode as I share with you two examples for you to reflect on and to think about:

•what am I getting out of this, and

•what is the negative consequence if I change?

We are just about to head into a whole new reality that most of us are completely unprepared for - remote schooling for our kids, while trying to work in a completely new landscape, while also being at home without our normal routines and social outlets.

It's not unexpected that we are going to be leaning on technology and devices and screen time to help us manage it all during this time.

Normal rules have probably flown out the window to some degree - I know that they have at my place. Screen time now for a lot of us is our connection to our friends and family and the outside world, and I am extremely conscious that it is how my kids are maintaining friendships and their support networks throughout this time.

I've invited Martine Oglethorpe from The Modern Parent to come on the podcast to share some strategies around this, and to just have a chat parent to parent about how to navigate this time.

In this episode, we cover:

•Having rules and boundaries, but being flexible, fluid and adaptive

•Being safe online

•Discernment around content consumption

•Managing times for connection

•Being realistic about true productivity and expectations

•Creating time for essential physical activity

•Have some structure and routines but only if that makes your day easier

•Daily rituals can also work well to provide that sense of security and normal

•Do what works for you

•Try not to compare to what everyone else is doing and instead and focus on providing connection, safety and security and maintain your own wellbeing as a priority.

Martine Oglethorpe is an accredited speaker with the Office of the eSafety Commission, has a background in secondary education, a Masters in Counselling and is a mother to 5 boys. Through her personal and professional work with families she recognises the important role technology plays in the social and emotional wellbeing of young people.

Martine is a keynote speaker for parenting and education conferences, presents to parent groups, works regularly with students and provides professional development to teachers. She has a passionate interest in helping families safely navigate the modern world of parenting in a way that offers understanding as well as practical and realistic strategies to empower parents to teach, guide and support their children.

Being grateful changes the way we see and experience the world. Fascinatingly, it is actually the process of gratitude - of choosing to look for the good and the positive - that changes the chemicals in our brain. So when through this process that is already helping us feel better, we find the things to appreciate, we experience a wonderful benefit. We are thinking better and feeling better and experiencing better. Choosing to look for, give thanks for and to appreciate what we do have, instead of looking for and experiencing the lack of what we don't have, can't have or has been taken from us, will help us to experience greater peace, joy and fulfillment and to live a happier and more appreciative life.

Join Dr Linda Wilson and Fiona Redding as they talk about stress, how to manage it, how to reduce it's impact on your life and learn some strategies to prevent it from taking hold in the first place.

How we choose to react and respond to external factors is up to us - and right now we have an excellent opportunity to discover better ways of living and growing through the challenges that we may be experiencing.

In this episode:

•what is stress

•we have a choice between stress and happiness

•living in the present moment, one day at a time

•practical (and fun) ways to immediately shift your energy

•tools to manage stress

•practicing discernment in your relationships, media and social media consumption

•creating routine

•ADAPTability model

•Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)

A Bliss List is filled with all of the things that you love to do, that you are passionate about, would love to do one day, which make you feel positive, great, happy, accomplished, healthy, strong, get my mind of things, that make time stand still when you are doing them or think about them and that fill your cup (e.g reading, exercise, anything creative, cooking, spending time with loved ones, volunteering, playing with your kids, writing, meditating, WHATEVER)

This Bliss List is here for you whenever you need it.

These are certainly strange times that we are living in.

But the reality is, that what is going on, is what is going on.

How we navigate ourselves through this experience is up to us.

We do not need to allow ourselves to be overwhelmed and consumed by fear and anxiety and worry.

It helps nothing, and achieves nothing positive.

The only thing that we have any control over in a situation like this, is how we choose to think and behave in each and every moment.

We always have the ability - even though it might not feel like it - but we do have the ability to choose not to buy into the fear and the panic that is going on, and to be considerate about the conversations we are having and the actions we are taking.

The best thing we can do is to remain as calm as we can. To conduct ourselves with dignity and integrity, whatever comes to pass.

To try and live in the moment.

To try and maintain a real sense of humour. Laughter is such an incredible antidote to stress.

To use this time to reconnect with friends and loved ones and to start or finish those projects that you've been wanting to do for a long time.

To remember that we live in a community made up of other human beings, and to make decisions that are civically minded.

It's in times like these that the human spirit can truly triumph.

We can all choose to be that light for others.

And to remember, like all things, that this too, shall pass.

Love,

Fiona xxx

What we believe and the way we think and feel is mirrored back to us by what we perceive in the people, circumstances and experiences in the world around us. When we can become aware of our beliefs and the way what we believe is determining how we experience the world, then we have an opportunity to start to change our belief systems and the way we think, to create a different experience. Change happens when belief becomes action.

Letting go of thoughts we believe, things that we have had for a long time, been doing for a while, that we feel a connection with or an attachment to - this can be really hard.

But when we hold on to thoughts and things, just because we always have, then we are not allowing the new or the next thought or thing to fully come in. Because there is no space for it.

Letting go of things creates space. Sometimes we have to let things go before we even know what we are creating the space for. But that's ok, and that is as it should be. We are not meant to have all the answers.

In today's episode of the podcast, I'm sharing the experience that I am currently going through, as I let go of The Happiness Hunter walks in their current format. These walks were the genesis for The Happiness Hunter and I've always considered them as the beating heart of the community, and I've been very, very attached to them.

And even when I've been reviewing the direction of the business, the walks have always felt like they were off limits.

But this year, this changed.

It really is ok to let things go.

And to really believe an affirmation that my very wise teacher, Dr Issam, gave us: "I always take the correct decision, and that decision always leads to success".

Listen in to find out more.

This episode is about what it is like to be facing the obstacles and the challenges in our lives, and how we can gain greater awareness and understanding of them - to use the world as our mirror to understand our thought processes and belief systems and what we can do differently to create a better outcome for ourselves.

And when we can honestly do this, then we can start to really work out what it is that is keeping us stuck and map out a pathway to move us forward. To do this, we need to believe it is possible.

To start to truly believe that if it has ever been possible for another person in the history of the world - or even if it hasn't, because we are the creators of our own reality and our possibilities are limitless - then it is possible for me.