The Live Authentic Podcast

A keystone habit is a very special habit. It’s one single powerful habit that touches many aspects of your life. Developing one keystone habit can lead to the development of multiple good habits. They start a chain effect in your life that produces a number of positive outcomes.

A keystone habit is no more difficult to form than any other habit, yet it provides the most benefits. According to Charles Duhigg:

They extend small senses of victory - By completing a keystone "habit loop," as he calls it (cue - habit - reward), we're filled with a sense of accomplishment. It's a small win that we can then build from, acting as the foundation for a successful day.

They act as the soil from which other good habits grow - When we complete a keystone habit loop, we're more inclined to engage in other good habits. For example, when we exercise, we're likely to drink more water, take a vitamin, and eat healthy meals.

They provide you with energy, confidence, and the momentum to achieve more - As the keystone habit becomes solidified in our daily routine, it helps to build momentum. When we see progress in one area of our lives using a keystone habit, it creates a platform to engage in far more.

Setting a keystone habit this year can be game changing for you. Listen more on this episode.

To set strong goals for 2019, I want to offer you a series of questions. They are introspective, and you’ll need to spend some time thinking and then writing the answers down. So for this episode, you’ll need to have a sheet of paper, a pen and a quiet space to work. I want you to take this opportunity to really take stock of your life, get connected with your values, get focussed on your goals and create a plan to achieve them.

Step 1: Make your “I Have Done” list for 2018. Include your accomplishments and the things that you feel best about having done. Remember they don’t need to be typical goals.

Step 2: Using the above accomplishments this year as a guide please write down your top values.

Step 3: Rank your top five values in order of importance to you.

Step 4: What does expressing these five values look like on a daily basis? Brainstorm your values in action.

Step 5: Sit down with your daily schedule and calendar and re-organise your life according to your values. Start with the first 3 months of 2019. Identify specific times every day that you will do the things that really matter most. Add those most important things to your schedule first, and build the rest of your life around them.

Listen to the podcast as I take you through these steps.

I was introduced to the concept of life purpose when I started my coach training in early 2017. In my first training session, I was initiated into the concept of values, meaning and fulfillment. That period had a powerful impact on my life, an “a-ha moment” as we call it in coaching terminology.

It inspired me to ask myself these powerful questions – What hunger am I here to feed? What impact do I want to make in this world? What will my legacy be?

Listen to this episode as I get very personal and offer a glimpse into my life and journey so far. As I get ready to start my Masters Programme in Applied Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology in January, I want to share how three 3 pillars – life purpose, empowering women and mental health and wellbeing are paving the way to my growth and future

I hope this episode inspires you to think more about your life purpose and get curious on what hunger you are here to feed.

I’ve had a challenging few days, handling some tough situations - lots on my mind and some days I've felt really down. So as I opened my laptop yesterday to start getting content in for this episode I was lost.

So I ran this morning as I usually do and really thought about everything. My runs are a great time for me to process my thoughts and often when I need to sort something out I set an intention to work on it whilst I’m running. And today I did just that.

So I’m running and really focussing my run – I’m in flow, the pace is awesome and I feel so connected with my mind, body and I love how present I was able to be. That’s when it comes and the topic couldn’t be more clearer and more relevant – Mindfulness.

Mindfulness is observation without criticism. When unhappiness or stress hover overhead, rather than take it all personally, we learn to treat them as if they were black clouds in the sky and observe them with friendly curiosity as they drift past. Mindfulness allows us to catch negative thought patterns before they tip us into a downward spiral. It begins the process of putting us back in control of our lives. Listen to this episode for more.

Dr Christine Blasey Ford is white, upper middle-class, married and highly educated. She was calm and demure. She was visibly shaking yet steady. She could afford the therapy that helped document her psychological past. She had a support system and the means to hire a lawyer. Yet she was not believed.

Now imagine if you lack even one of these qualities. Imagine if your behaviour or your voice or your face or the life you live doesn’t perfectly match what is demanded of the ideal victim. My question my friends is what would your chances then be of being believed?

I’m angry. I’m angry that victims of sexual assault are not believed. I work in the mental health space and I am angry how every single day people with mental health issues face stigma. I’m angry about gender inequality. I’m angry about gender pay gap. My list goes on. So in today’s episode, I want to talk about anger and see how this emotion can serve us.

My first introduction to thoughts – unhealthy and healthy ones came a few years ago when I started working with a professional to help me with change work. I had assigned a lot of my “failures” to events, circumstances and people in my life. It felt easy to be a victim and blame external situations. The society I grew up in attached a stigma to mental health and change work and when I finally gathered the courage to go and seek resources to help myself, I realised it changed my life. My shifts and breakthroughs motivated me to take responsibility for my thoughts, feelings and actions and to do bigger and better things. It brought me closer to my life purpose of creating change. To quote Barrack Obama – “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” Listen here.

For a large part of my life I had been a perfectionist. I had lived with this self-limiting belief that whatever I do in life I need to be perfect at it. And believe me that’s simply how I had been living.

The older I got and the more I did thought and change work with my coach my perspective and self-limiting belief changed and I started realising that being perfect was just holding me back. I now work with a lot of clients and women in particular where I see them wanting things to be perfect. The result – they are not able to move forward and are stuck.

In this podcast I offer 2 tips that can help us move from being perfectionists to doers and go-getters.

The word self-care has been getting a lot of traction lately. It’s one of the latest buzzwords – we hear about it so often but very few of us actually practice it. When we hear the word self-care our minds automatically go onto images of long baths and candles, rose petals and spa treatments. It's great to make time for the long baths and massages but sometimes its really tough to get that going frequently. Like many of you, I am a working mum, I work for a Foundation, run my own coaching practice and I struggle like many working mums to find time to take care of myself. But mental and physical wellbeing is really important to me. I’m a big believer and advocate of self-care and I’ve been consciously and religiously taking care of myself. So if you want to go beyond the bubble baths and massages and really see how you can make self-care a priority in your life daily, do listen to this episode. I will to offer you 3 simple tips that can change your life. It has for me.

What is passion and how is it connected to your purpose? Passion is a force that awakens you. It blows the lid off your imagination, your capability and your drive. It shakes your mind off from limiting beliefs. Passion is what gives you purpose and is the force that pulls you forward.

The idea of Finding and Following your Passion sounds amazing but seriously following your passion daily is an incredible task and takes some serious balls. Through this episode I will try and put some pieces together so you can move forward daily and get some of your passion into your life. I'll also take you through a few exercises like Peak experience so you can first find out what you are passionate about in life. Once you find your passion I'll offer you useful tips on how to live your life daily from a place of passion.

The word 'mumpreneur' was added to the sixth edition of the Oxford English Dictionary in 2011 - a tribute to the growing numbers of women in the UK who regularly don two hats, one as a business-owner and the other as a mum, usually with young families. According to research released in 2014, the UK is home to more than 300,000 mumpreneurs who contribute as much as £7.4 billion a year to the economy. I'm very much part of this group and so proud to be called a mumpreneur.

There really is no reason why you can’t be a kick- ass, woman boss mumpreneur and an incredibly awesome mother to your kids all at the same time. Listen to this podcast as I offer six effective tips on how you can succeed as a mumpreneur. Even though I’m focussing on mumpreneurs in this episode, I really don’t see any reason why you can’t use these tips even otherwise as a working-woman or somebody just pursuing their passion and growing their business.

Other episodes referenced in this episode can be found here -https://www.liveauthentic.me/podcasts