Inside My Wardrobe

In this episode we are joined by my friend Tanya Leary, co-host of Feed Your Fabulous and author of “Time For Bed Baby” a bed time book in 2 parts for both reading at bedtime to the child followed by a self care section for the parent. We talk about how the sudden death of Tanya’s father when she was just 7 years old has impacted her life; how she copes with holding that sadness whilst also experiencing the joys of parenthood whilst at the same time, also keeping her head above water having suffered depression on and off throughout her adult life, so navigating self-care, prioritising and mental health. You can click this link to buy Time For Bed Baby on Amazon Or contact Tanya directly for a personalised copy, also if you want to listen to her podcast, it is called Feed Your Fabulous, available on Soundcloud

The health implications of loneliness are shocking and the greatest irony is that in a world so connected, we are feeling increasingly disconnected. It’s not about the quantity of friends we have, it’s all about the quality. Last week I touched on this ever so briefly and I think it warrants a longer conversation so I wanted to dig under the surface a little bit more as this week there’s been a huge amount of activity everywhere trying to bring the subject of loneliness to the fore and discuss the whys and wherefores to it with the campaign to end loneliness I have to say I was really challenged by the Ted talk that I told you about a couple of weeks ago, it was called “what makes a good life” by Robert Waldinger, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical school and one of the stand out things to me was that the quality of your relationships in your 50s has a direct impact on the quality of your life in your 70s and 80s – so with my 50s approaching the year after next, I’m not going to lie, I felt really cha

It's been quite the hectic week so having literally just finished editing an interview with one of the most influential authors on family life, the fabulous Steve Biddulph, I'm reminded of the importance of balance! Setting goals is all very well but if we don't give ourselves the chance to rest and recover, we will burn out - I'm saying it to myself too!! So, here we go, hamster wheels, 2020 and sunshine!!  If you want to take a listen to any of the episodes on The Parenting Podcast, just click here We need to look after our mental health as much as we do our physical health!! 

Well due to having this horrid virus and not being able to record a podcast at all last week, I’ve had a good bit of time out and a few little revelations along the way which I thought I’d float by you in this week’s episode. Handily, just this morning I heard about a 75 year Harvard study on happiness which echoes exactly my thoughts – not that my thoughts are ground breaking of course! We talk also about slowing time down, how hurry is the enemy of love and how perfectionism can be the enemy of life. If we want to manage our mental health and quality of life, we need to simplify, slow down and switch off a bit more. We are all guilty of either over working or being over busy, over eating or over drinking, over cleaning, over obsessing, over thinking, over pleasing - the snowball effect causes us to feel out of control so pulling back, breathing and reconnecting with ourselves and each other, grounds us and brings us back to now, to living in the moment - not rocket science is it?  Here’s the link to Robert

No matter how hard we plan and prepare, things often just go in their own direction and if we aren’t able to flex, we break! Learning to lean IN to rest and lean ON one another is vital, besides, I heard a rumour once that humans need connection – funny that! So here’s a wee chat on rolling with the punches and setting time aside to flex, breathe and maybe sing a little song! Remember to join in our Facebook page Inside My Wardrobe or find me on social media via my website 2:30 Needing permission to stop and watch TV 4:10 Gail Porter BBC documentary 5:50 self harm and eating disorder 06:35 Choir in a pub 09:10 Borderline personality disorder 10:25 Importance of breathing deeply 10:35 Anxiety and shallow breathing 11:00 Singing for therapy 12:10 Benefits of singing together 16:20 Self sabotage 17:02 Self doubt 17:55 Leaning on someone is not a weakness 18:02 Brene Brown talks about the importance of vulnerability 19:32 Planning for when things go wrong 20:03 Flexibility 20:31 Be good to yourself 21:00 Space f

This week we are talking about planning, the value in setting goals and creating space for rest in our busy worlds so that we can look after our mental health, as well as our loved ones! I do new year resolutions slightly differently these days, I wait until after January 1st and then take the entire month to take stock, evaluate and plan – I find it’s a much less frantic way to map out the year ahead and always proves to be far more likely to succeed when I do it this way. So here goes, in a nutshell…. GOALS Wheel of everything – PLEASURE AND PURPOSE - how satisfied are you with your relationship/work/social life/spiritual life/home/connection with kids. By breaking down each section of our lives, we can see what’s working well and not so well. Taking each section that we want to improve, we then put some thought into how to improve it over time, without knee jerk reactions or unreasonable intentions. Consider the things that have stopped you until now, what else needs addressing at a deeper level for exam

I've clambered back into the wardrobe for a quick catch up before silly season kicks off! Remember to take a bit of time out for self preservation over the festive season, as Claudia Hammond suggests in The Art of Rest, try sitting on a chair with NOTHING to do for 15 minutes - I'm going to give it a go too, minus the optional electric shocks! I hope you have a wonderful time with family and friends, look after yourself and remember you don't have to please everyone ...its your Christmas too xx

I do hope you enjoy this episode half as much as I have whilst putting it together! It turns out that recent neuroscience research has discovered some quick and specific activities that can alter our physical and emotional state – and you’re going to love them! Laughing (even pretend laughing) and singing can help people with depression, can reduce the feeling of loneliness and help you feel relaxed, happy and connected! It’s so good! Besides, who doesn’t love a good laugh or a good sing? So tell me, how long has it been since you’ve really laughed or belted out your best Celine Dion number in the shower or car? We don’t just feel good because of the thing that made us laugh in the first place, or because we are enjoying the song we sing, we feel good because of the chemicals released by the action of these activities. It’s a fascinating scientific process that goes on in our bodies! When we laugh, even if it’s fake laughter, within 45-90 seconds, the body starts to flood with chemicals, positive neurotransmi

Once trust is broken it's so hard to rebuild again. It's important to recognise when to put that time and effort in and when to let go. Trust starts with knowing who we are and in this episode we talk about how to recognise and help ourselves know which way to go.

Words that a friend wrote to me once have stuck with me forever "we change the world by first changing ours" and so this week we talk about finding joy on our doorstep. When we start to reconnect with what actually matters and invest relentlessly in that, we can be part of the bigger picture and change the fabric of what is going on around us.  "You Make It Happen" ..it is not enough to just like a post that says #bekind instead we need to put it into action, every day, with every thought, every word and every deed - then together, we might just see things turn around.

Whizz and I went for a walk the other day along an old railway line and whilst I was admiring the gorgeous reds and golds of the leaves turning, it struck me how beautiful something can be when its dying. We so often look at loss as a negative, however the seasons of nature are necessary in order to make room for new life just as the seasons of life are necessary for us to grow. It’s not always easy but the reality is that seasons come and seasons go and with that in mind, life goes on. There is no escaping that life brings pain and that is exactly the point of finding joy. Not after the rain, but during the pain. Even if it’s looking up and finding a beautiful cloud, or seeing a bird hop about on the ground, smelling a beautiful fragrance, appreciating a hug, eating a bacon sandwich or smiling at a stranger. If we can let go of needing everything to be ok all the time, we can take hold of peace in the midst of not understanding what is going on. In the midst of having no idea of what is ahead, peace helps us

Codependency is a really important one as when it comes to taking back the power and our place in life, we can so easily find ourselves in relationships where we relinquish who we are in favour of propping someone else up – it’s a clever little monster as it sneaks up on us and masquerades as true love then before you know it, you’re crushed, exhausted, and you’ve completely lost direction, you’ve no idea of who you are any more and you have no sense of self, you’ve chosen to sacrifice yourself by taking responsibility for someone else who can’t or won’t, often for very valid reasons, take responsibility for themselves. So, what is co-dependency? It can be defined as any relationship in which two people become so invested in each other that they can’t function independently anymore – and whilst you might think that's isn’t necessarily a bad thing, when it means one person has got lost, or when it means that one person props up or facilitates abusive behaviour, or addiction, or locks you in a severely dysfunct

Care too much? Running around ticking boxes and meeting needs, getting things done, being there for other people? Hurt easily by someone’s reaction to something you said or did? Sometimes we need to stop caring about the things that just don’t matter. Weirdly, as I sat down to put this week’s podcast together, Transvision Vamp’s Baby I Don’t Care was playing in the kitchen which I thought was a rather apt soundrack for exactly this – stopping people pleasing, comparing, keeping up and box ticking but instead, embracing the seasons of life, letting go and allowing the leaves to fall at times.  “I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me.  I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at

Sometimes the word no is far more powerful and identity giving than the word yes, so continuing with the series Sorry Not Sorry, taking back your life and finding the freedom to be who you are, this is about boundaries. Knowing when to say yes and knowing when to say no. And knowing that no, is ok – it’s more than ok, it’s necessary in order to know who you are and be who you are. So if you regularly feel burned out, resentful of certain relationships, or perhaps you battle with finances, anger, exhaustion, or perhaps you feel that somewhere along the line you have lost track of who you are, or you find yourself constantly running around after everyone else, meeting everyone else’s needs and find that you are left with nothing in the tank and no one even cares - you might need to connect with the ability to see where you need to say no. Sorry not sorry, this one is about boundaries, knowing when to say yes and knowing when to say no. Here's the link to the official site for Boundaries Books and the work of D

This week is a cheery 22 minutes on balancing what's on our insides with what's on our outsides and trying to get them in sync with each other. Seeing as it's London Fashion Week, we go into the wardrobe literally in every way and talk about how to find joy, how to rekindle our love of our clothes, and how to discover freedom in fashion by balancing who we are internally whilst being able to reflect that person to the world externally - I hope you enjoy!   

What are you waiting for? It's time to get in, take up your oars and start rowing! It has been said that successful people have a limited wardrobe because they have realised that we have a finite amount of decisions we are able to make each day and they don’t want to waste a single one of those decisions on what they are going to wear – the same can be said for our energy – we have a finite amount of mental energy each day and if you spend all of it complaining about what’s not working, there is very little left for doing anything about it. We all have these people in our lives, who complain day in and day out, the circle the same drain, they look only at the problem, never the solution, they blame the world around them for what’s not working and wearing their problems as a badge – we don’t want be that person. Moaning and complaining says, I have no power over this situation but even worse, it admits that you aren’t going to do anything about it, you’ve given the power away. Venting, moaning, complaining

If you feel like life is consuming you, that you're stuck on a hamster wheel, existing permanently in fight or flight mode, always ready to react and being on the defence then this is for you.  We have become so used to stress that we've lost the art of BEING, so this week we talk about rather than feeling the need to be apologetic for our existence, how to find validation from within and connect with who we are, what matters and where we are heading. Slightly longer this week (59 mins) in fact, so much so that there is a part 2 coming next week - this is about finding and owning your space, next week is about rewriting the rulebook - boundaries and codependency.  

How do we love ourselves? What does that look like? Do we FALL in love with ourselves romantically or is it something else? With all this talk about self love and mindfulness we scour book shelves and read articles endlessly trying to cram in some new practise so we feel better about our lives but I wonder, would we need all this if we truly loved ourselves? And if we did, how would that look?   So we embark upon a journey together in this 40 minute episode via knitting, a broken bone, a playground rhyme, bricks in back packs, neighbours, Shakespeare, a favourite wedding reading, imposter syndrome, Emma Willis, eschatological realism and snakes and ladders – this is a whistle stop tour around what love is and how we can love ourselves as we love others ….. Loving ourselves is surely accepting ourselves for who we are. Isn’t that how you love your partner? Your kids? Your friends and your neighbour? You’re not trying to change them, you love them as they are, where they are in their life, foibles and all –

They say everything happens for a reason, but do you actually think that is true? Is everything laid out in the stars already or do we have a choice? Do some get lucky or is life what you make it? With GCSE and A Level results all out on the table now, we are fast approaching September, the season of new beginnings - the question is, do those new beginnings stop once we leave the education system or can we keep growing and learning until the end? Should we bother, particularly if it's already written in the stars! And Dick's footsteps? Yes, Dick Whittington, he didn't hang around to see what was written in the stars, instead he took complete control in order to create change in his life and off he went!  The last questions is this, where are you heading?

I have been inspired by all your comments after my recent make up tutorials on IGTV. It is such as minefield as none of us NEED to wear make up but many of us do and for lots of good reasons. The industry is laden with messages that tell us what we need to look like or what products to use so it takes real confidence to find our own groove with it. The key for me is in understanding our relationship with make up and also in discovering whether it is aiding us in being ourselves, or whether it is encouraging us to hide and hold back. Firstly, there is no right or wrong, one of my best friends NEVER wears make up, its just who she is and that’s brilliant. Make up is there for enhancement if we so choose to wear it ….which got me thinking, why do we choose to wear it? So using the opening lines of the famous monologue from Shakespeare’s As You Like It “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players…” I’m taking a theatrical turn on this one. My take on why we wear make up is that it offers to u