Are you lucky enough to witness the amazing total eclipse this year?  Unfortunately, I’m not since I’m in the UK, but I have been busy making solar eclipse jewellery for everyone else.

Below is a very quick round up of the current eclipse jewellery available in our Glass Charmed Etsy Shop.

1. Total Eclipse from Space Pendant

2. Solar Flare Pendant

3. Personalised Solar Eclipse Pendant

4. Silver Eclipse Dangle Earrings

5. Brass Total Eclipse Studs

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We are taught from childhood that it’s kind to put others first, and as a child, it gives us a sense of purpose and makes up happy. But at some point putting others first causes us to feel resentment.  Here are my 5 damn good reasons you should give yourself permission to make yourself a priority.

1. You can not serve from an empty vessel

You’ve probably heard this phrase before, but not really give it any thought.  Basically, it means while you have been tending to the needs of others, your energy has been depleting and you’ve not had a chance to recharge.  There’s only so much you can do when your batteries are running low. Guess what happens when they run out – you flip, you throw a paddy on how you are sick of looking after everyone else, feeding the kids, cleaning the house.  You resent anyone who asks you to do anything.  The longer it goes on, the more you despise people and the more you crave alone time.  Prioritising yourself isn’t selfish, it’s the same as plugging in your phone to charge after you’ve battered the battery.

Guess what happens when they run out – you flip, you throw a paddy, start shouting how you are sick of looking after everyone else, feeding the kids, cleaning the house.  You resent anyone who asks you to do anything.  The longer it goes on, the more you despise people and the more you crave alone time.  Prioritising yourself isn’t selfish, it’s the same as plugging in your phone to charge after you’ve battered the battery.

2. You will inspire others to take better care of themselves

As a kid I watched my mum serve from that empty vessel, she spent her days looking after us, cleaning the house, biting her teeth with her husband and making lists of all the things she needed to do.  She spent her entire day doing something for the family.  This manic activity seemed honourable on the surface, but deep down she was run down and very unhappy.  She felt guilty about lying in the bath with a book or spending money on herself and I took on those same beliefs in my early 20’s when I became a mum. It took me til my mid 30’s to start to change them.  So I don’t want my own daughter growing up to think that she should put everyone else first, or that time spent in self-care such as looking after her body and her sanity isn’t as important as everyone else needs. I do this by teaching by example.  Such as making my daily meditation practice a normal thing, practising mindfulness while we walk to school.  I’ve even shown her EFT (emotional freedom technique) and stressed the importance of loving and excepting herself just as she is.

3. It’s good for your mental health and self-esteem.

We focus so much on our physical health, but I believe that our mental health is much more important.  Afterall all our choices about food and diet come from our brain, so improving mental health can only improve our physical health. For me, my mental health takes a steep nose dive when I don’t prioritise my own needs. I need quality time with my thoughts, or I can slip into depression even when I’m taking anti depressants.  I get mean, I dislike people, I avoid social interactions and I have the shortest temper known to man!  Self-care, particularly meditation and journaling have been a life saver for me, and it means there have been no dead bodies for me to bury.

4. It forces you to focus on yourself

This goes back to the putting everyone else before yourself mentality being the right thing to do.  For some actually spending time focusing on themselves will be scary, I have been known in the past to focus on all the stuff I need to do to avoid dealing with my slip back into depression. But by focusing on yourself, you get to understand yourself more, you begin to see your wants and desires, find your talents, you find you again.

5. It gives you time to really think

We all think, all of the time, but prioritising you and particular your self-care gives you the permission to slow your thinking brain down and feel less overwhelmed with everything that’s going on.  By slowing down your thoughts you’ll see patterns, easier ways to achieve things, ideas flow and you’ll feel less like you’re putting out fires.

What Now?

Understand the need to put yourself first, but still struggling with justifying it to yourself?

Download my free affirmations (they’re just things to tell yourself every day) to move past that ickiness start putting yourself first.

1.  Sometimes it’s ok if the only thing you managed to do today is breathe!  honestly, it really is.  We all need days to regroup, find our strength just to face the normal day to day stuff. Don’t beat yourself up about the 100s of things that still haven’t been done. Take the time out, you’ll be in a better headspace to tackle them after.

2. Your thoughts shape your vision,  you can choose what you want to see. The information that is received through our eyes is very different from the information we process in our brains.  The visual information is filtered by your expectations, beliefs and your current mood.  Change any of those and you’ll change what you see.

3.  I’m not sure about you, but as a kid, I was always told that it’s polite to put others first if you prioritised yourself it was seen as unfair and selfish and no one wants those kinds of labels thrown at them.  But in reality when most of our adult lives are spent taking care of others.  We really do need to put our own needs first.  Check out this blog post – why being selfish is good for others. If we don’t we simply don’t have the energy to continue.

4. EVERYONE, and I mean EVERYONE falls down, whether it’s in public or private, we all have setbacks, failures, moments of self-doubt.  That’s ok, it’s normal, but the real progress comes from when we decide to look for the lessons and use it.

5.  Sometimes you need the validation of others so here it is.  You are and have always been capable of amazing things.  Your brain does so many things without you consciously giving instructions,  your skin repairs itself, over your lifetime you have unknowingly inspired others.  That’s just the tip of the iceberg.  I challenge you to think of 5 more things that are amazing about you.

Hope you’re feeling a little better 🙂 If this post has helped, then please share with your friends on Pinterest by using the graphic below.

I love cats, I own 3 and I love people who celebrate their crazy cat lady tendencies by creating handmade gifts perfect for a cat owner.  So this week I wanted to celebrate those amazing creatures and those creative humans who share a strong affinity with them by sharing a round-up of handmade cat gifts.

1. Cat Sign*
2. Cat Watch*
3. Cat Earrings
4. Cat Necklace*
5. Cat Mug
6. Cat Keyring
7. Cat Pillow*

Want to see more cat related items made by creative individuals from all over the world? click here:  Cat Gifts – Buy from Creative Individuals

Know your friends on Pinterest would love to see these too? Then share the image before on Pinterest and social media sites.

Any links with an * by them are affiliated, which means get a product via this link and a contribution may be made to livecreategrow.com

Your beliefs affect your behaviour whether you’re conscious of them or not.

They’re like a set point on a thermostat, pass that set point and your brain tries to keep you in your comfort zone.

This limits you in every way imaginable and it’s how these beliefs get the common term of ‘self-limiting beliefs’.

Since your brain likes the familiar (aka your comfort zone) it will attempt to sabotage you unconsciously every time you to try to step out of it.

The reason for this is in our past. Way back when our survival was based on our ability to avoid danger.  The unknown is definitely seen by the brain as dangerous. Even though you don’t like in fear for your life (I’m hoping) our brains still haven’t shaken this behaviour. So we still look for things that will harm us physically or emotionally.

Nor are we ever taught to how to enjoy not feeling anxious and on guard. We are constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. Because we always believe that good things aren’t meant to last. Our brain can’t help but shove negative feelings and memories at us when we start to feel too good.

I wanted to take a look at how limiting beliefs affect your behaviour towards others and towards yourself.

Let’s start with how limiting beliefs affect how you interact with others.

Other people that we meet in our everyday lives can easily trigger the self-limiting beliefs we hold about ourselves. Sometimes a compliment from a well-meaning friend or even a total stranger can be hard to accept because we hold a belief that we’re not worthy of it. We brush off those compliments because it’s hard for us to enjoy the attention, especially if we feel like we don’t deserve it.

Many of us can’t accept help or even ask for it because we hold a belief that we should be strong enough to do it on our own. I admit this is a powerful self-limiting belief for me and something I’m constantly working on. I have always struggled to accept help from others because I felt that I should be able to do it by myself. If I can’t, then there must be something wrong with me. This benefited me in some ways as a child, it made me determined and stubborn to achieve things and I enjoyed the challenge of school. But as I got older, I became aware how this belief became one of my biggest downfalls. I’ve struggled to do stuff because I felt like it would be a failure to ask for help. I’ve reinvented the wheel time and time again, wasting so much energy because I couldn’t bring myself to be ok with asking for assistance and support.

There are too many ways that self-limiting beliefs influence how you interact with others for me to share here. But I’m sure if you take just a second to look back over your day, you’ll be able to find at least one example of how one of your own limiting beliefs has reared it’s ugly head today.

When it comes to our behaviour towards ourselves and own growth, these limiting beliefs become even more powerful in stopping you from getting to where you want to be. They rob you of opportunities to learn, take on new challenges and push past your limits.

It might be that you’re not aware of the limiting belief but more of the consequences which you can see emerging from your own thoughts repeatedly. To compound this problem our brain is looking for evidence to reinforce the limiting beliefs because it seeks familiarity.

Just to hit this point home here’s a few examples that might be familiar to you.

• you feel like you can’t be artistic because you were shit at art in school
• you don’t bother setting goals because experience has shown you in the past you don’t take action on them
• you tell yourself you’re not good at meeting new people because you fear the anxiety that the unknown brings

A limiting belief that I’m currently working on is the belief that I’m not consistent enough to ever achieve anything.  I used it as an excuse for everything, especially when I wanted to learn a new skill.  To explain this belief in other words – I realised that I held a belief that I could never be good at anything because I can’t stick will it! This one belief alone sets me up to fail on everything!

If you hold a belief similar to this, it’s going to stop you enjoying new hobbies, new experiences, new relationships. Let just be blunt, it’s going to cause problems in all areas of your life because your brain is primed to make you fail.

I’d love to hear any limiting beliefs that you’ve uncovered lately, what were they stopping you from doing?

We’re you even aware that you had any, and if there was one limiting belief that you’d love to banish, what would it be?

Sometimes, we just feel stuck! We know we need to make decisions, we know we need to move things forward in our lives but we’re not really sure what the next step is.

We don’t seem to be really drawn to anything or nothing really speaks to us and we just feel blank and stuck.

And I think that is normal quite a lot of the time. Simply because we’ve been conditioned to not put our own needs first. So, we don’t really spend time thinking about what we want and if we don’t know what we want how can we ever move towards it?

So, I’ve put together a list of questions. These are simple questions just to get you out of that “feeling stuck” mood and more into an “I think I might have an idea where I want to go” mood.

So, I think the most important question is, why do you feel stuck?

Maybe something in your self-talk is making you feel stuck.  Reminding yourself that you’re stuck and you don’t know what to do – is actually keeping you stuck exactly where you are.  Your brain is programmed to believe everything you say to it.   Instead of telling yourself that you’re stuck, try telling yourself that you’re excited about the burst of inspiration that’s on it way.

Do you have to make a decision right this second?

Do you really need to know at this very second in time what you need to do? Or would this be easier if you were in a better mood?

It might be possible for now, just for now, maybe for the next five minutes, the next ten minutes, maybe even the next twenty-four hours what others might see as “shoving your head in the sand” might be the right thing for you to do.

Give yourself time to regroup and recharge. Once you’ve cleared your head,  the obvious solution usually appears as an ah ha moment.

Do you feel stuck because you don’t know what the next step is?

Maybe you feel stuck because you obsessing about what the next step is so you feel paralysed.

So Start thinking about what it is you want in the long run.

Do you want to feel better about yourself?

Do you want to have more free time?

Do you want to get better at creating art?

Do you want to get better at, being you?

Do you want to feel more like you again?

Once you start to think about what it is you actually want as opposed to just feeling stuck, you might just get that inspiration you need to get unstuck and the next step will simply flow.

How are your personal beliefs keeping you feeling stuck?

Our parents shape our beliefs. My mother always taught me that I could be anything I wanted, but it made me feel stuck because it gave me too many possibilities. I didn’t know which one to take. I kept thinking “What if I get the wrong one?”  Do you have a personal belief that it stopping you from making a decision?  Was there something you were told constantly as a child that impacts your ability to make one?  A common one that makes people feel stuck is money and if you’ve heard the phrases such as “money doesn’t grow on trees” then many of your thoughts will be influenced by the belief that there isn’t enough money.

Do you feel like you’re not good at making decisions?

Have you made any decision in the past which had disastrous consequences?  This reinforces the belief that you’re not good at making decisions or that you always make wrong ones.  Turn this past situation on its head and take a look at the positives that came out it. Look for them, they are there.

Still feeling stuck?

After asking yourself all these questions, are you able to move to a place where you feel more confident about making decisions?

1. Do the smallest amount possible to start the task, it’s the starting that’s the problem, once you get started you should find yourself on a role.
2. Work out what it is you’re afraid of, do you think it’s a waste of your time, the work won’t be good enough, you won’t be happy with the result – then make peace with that, aim for progress, not perfection
3. Look at the task in terms of smaller chunks, this helps with the overwhelm. You don’t need to plan everything out at once, just the next few steps.  Take baby steps, focus on moving forward, not the speed that you’re progressing.
4. Plan treats. For example, If I write 500 words I can go and throw some paint on some paper for half hour.  I can read a chapter in my book, I can knit 10 more rows of my project.  I can watch the latest youtube video from (insert your favourite you tuber here)
5. Can I get someone else to do it for me? Handing over jobs that you don’t want to do to someone else isn’t lazy, it’s a good use of your time.  Is it worth the stress and anxiety doing it yourself or would you be happier if you could pay someone else to do it?  Sure you’ve got the skills to do it, but do you have the desire?
6. Write a list of things that will happen if it’s not done
7. Watch the TEDx talk by Tim Urban: Inside the mind of a master procrastinator and understand how your brain works and set yourself a deadline.
8. Take notice of your frame of mind or mood and deal with that first, feeling down or depressed has an effect on our brains motivational centre. This doesn’t mean that you can’t do anything and you’re going to procrastinate forever, it just means that you need to deal with the feelings first.  My favourite way to do this is to write in locked notepad.  This way I can write uncensored without worrying about other people’s judgements and whether I’m hurting anyone’s feelings.
9. Give yourself the treat first and wake up the pleasure centres in your brain to help motivate you to action.  For example, sit down with a hot drink and watch half of your favourite tv programme. Once you’ve finished your task, you can watch the remaining half.
10. Get accountable, find someone who will kick your arse for not getting your stuff done.  I’ve personally found this a bit tricky, you need someone who will be brutally honest with you, call you out for not acting on your intentions and still be supportive when you need it.
11. Understand the way your brain works better, a great book is the chimp paradox, the child-like illustrations (reminds me of something my husband would draw) should give you a giggle.

It’s instinctual to look after yourself first, society has turned this instinct into something we should ignore, but how can we take care of others, if we’re low on energy, passionate and lust for life?

We are taught that we should be community orientated, family orientated, that we should sacrifice our own needs to serve the needs of others. Yes, these are worthy traits, they have built us into a progressive supportive species, but these are the things that should only be focused on when we have cared for our self first.

So many of us see the word selfish as a negative thing, it suggests that we don’t care about others, that we put our own need first at the expense of everyone else.

But what if by being selfish, you are more willing to help others, you are happy to dedicate your free time to a community project.  What does the term selfish mean?  It means putting your health and wellbeing first before everything and everyone else.  Does that seem so unreasonable?  If you’re a mother, then you know how draining that role can be, without being selfish how will you find the energy and mental stamina to deal with screaming kids, to meet their constant demands and still be a loving parent.  If you don’t take time for yourself, to remind yourself that being a mother is not your only role then you’ll lose your sense of self and start to resent the life you have (whether you admit it or not).

How about if we interchange the word selfish with self-care? That seems logical, it seems a no-brainer.

It is selfish to spend time creating something that makes you feel satisfied and accomplished? Or is it self-care?

As kids we spend our entire days playing, we learn about the world and ourselves through play but at some point, we decide we’re too old to play.

Being called childish as a teenager was a massive insult, so we stopped doing what seemed like fun to prove to our friends and family that we were fully functioning adults.

We feel like everything we do must have a purpose, we must be grown up, sensible and not waste our time being childlike.

Fun is reserved for once you’ve done all the adult stuff, well that’s what we’ve been conditioned to believe.

The sad thing is we lost something special during our childhood. The urge to play just because we wanted too. To get lost in our imaginations for hours on end and to colour and draw just for the sake of it. To write a story, just to see where it would take us and to paint because we loved how the colours interacted.

If I handed you pretty markers and tell you to colour something. You’d you probably ask why? What’s the purpose? Is it going to be used in some way when it’s finished?

It’s likely you’d tell me you’ve got more important things to do, such as the housework, a family to look after and a job to do.

But wouldn’t you feel so much better doing that “responsible adult stuff” after you’ve had time to play? How rejuvenating would it be to spend an hour being childlike, getting chance experience the simple wonder and satisfaction of creating something?

Allowing ourselves to play with craft supplies or to create something, tells us so much about ourselves. We are often surprised by the things we like, those we thought we’d love, but don’t and the happy accidents that occur along the way. Creative play gives us the opportunity to see “what if” without it having disastrous consequences. If we don’t like what we’ve created, we can throw it in the bin, lessons learned.

My favourite way to find that wonder and satisfaction is to throw paint down on a Gelli plate (it’s a surface you can use to make prints on) I love it because although I’ve decided the paint colours, I never know how much I’m going to love the print until I lift if off the plate and turn it over.

It really wasn’t that long ago, I barely created anything because I wasn’t sure what or who I was creating it for. Was I going to turn it into a card? Was I going to put it up on the wall? Because I didn’t know the answer to this, I never bothered to start. It was only when I focused on the feelings of surprise and satisfaction that I realised that the purpose of creating anything wasn’t the end product, but the discoveries you learnt along with way.