33 Ways To Be Gorgeous Happy and Free (Or: My Birthday Self-Help Reminder List!)

October 2, 2012

It’s my birthday!

And, as I do, I’m doing some writing. Journaling. Letting the mind detox do it’s thing. I think I’m going to finally create a vision board today, something I’ve meant to do for YEARS and just constantly put off. And I’m going to do some writing about what I want to create in my life in the next year; what it will mean focusing on but also letting go of.

Part of that, part of bringing to mind the truth about what I want in my life; who I want to be, is checking in with the stuff that I know makes me most alive. Most happy. On purpose. Joyful and fulfilled and all of that good stuff.

So, I wrote a little list.

33 ways to be a little bit more awesome.

I wrote it for me but I think you’ll love it as well.

1. Get up early, before the world wakes.

Even 10 minutes before. Start the day on your terms, with time to think and reflect and breathe, and if you like to caffeinate then you can do it in a calm and still way rather than in a frenzy of trying to get out the door.

2. Clean your body, clean your mind.

Journaling of some kind is essential in the same way that bathing of some kind is essential. You can skip a day here or there, but skip a few and you’re going to start to notice it. Other people will notice as well. If you don’t regularly detox your mind you’ll live wit agitation, frustration, a sense of not quite understanding yourself or your purpose or your dreams. A sense that time is running away from you and you can’t stop it.

Journaling can be written, recorded, videod. Walking and thinking is helpful but not as effective as actually getting it out in words.

How to do it? Just start. Just allocate a few minutes quietly to yourself and write. Start with “I’m only doing this because Kat thinks it’s a good idea. Blah blah blah I don’t know what to write this is silly I feel silly blah di blah.”

Just start, and I promise you the words will come. And they will set you free.

3. Smash your greens.

If protein is King then greens are definitely Queen when it comes to eating clean and getting lean.

Nutrients and fibre in seasonal organic green veggies help you detoxify fat, have better digestion, sharper mental clarity and better moods. Eat enough greens and you will feel light, fresh, uplifted and lean. Fail to do so and you will feel heavy and sluggish and struggle to get results. Probably in large part because you are overdoing the protein and fat, no matter how good quality it is.

The best and easiest way to get a high amount of varied greens each day is via a Fat Loss Green Smoothie.

4.Train tough, train like a demon.

Train like you want to wring out every last bit of sweat you have to give and like you’re on a record-breaking challenge of lung-busting ferocity.

Going through the motions while training is maybe better than nothing but for me it just make me feel miserable and a bit agitated, as I walk out of the gym with this sense that I didn’t really give it my all as well as with the memory of all the years gone by when I used to truly smash it and just about vomit and die (in a good way) every single time.

Yesterday I kicked my own butt using one of my own Look Great Naked Training Plan programs in a way I seriously have not done all year.

I’ve been busy, distracted, tired, whatever – just out of the habit of giving it my all to be honest.

Well, no more. After my workout yesterday I felt amazing – empowered – free. And I want more. Bring back the puking sessions!

5. Let go of stuff.

There is always going to be more stuff on your list than what you could possibly do. If you’re not careful, it will control, overwhelm, consume you. The list will eat you alive and all that will be left is a hand-wringing jaw-clenching shadow of your former self. I know this because I’ve lived it. It’s possibly part of the reason my training sessions have been so comparatively average to what they used to be when I felt relaxed and free, when I actually had free time. Made free time.

So let go.

Look at your list and cross something off. Anything that makes you go meh. Just delete. Do it!

There – how easy is that? And you just saved yourself some time you can now use to find who you really want to be. Speaking of which –

6. Make space for your dreams.

If you know you want more from your life, if you know there has to be a better way and that you can live a more awesome life but if you just can’t quite put your finger on the specifics of what that might be, you’re not making space for your dreams.

When you live life at the speed of a cannon just set loose, it’s impossible to get a real sense of what you actually might want instead. And you’re not going to just wake up one day and know what your dreams would entail, or what your purpose might be.

So make space for your dreams.

Start today. Or else it really will be too late one day.

7. Do the one day stuff now.

One day I will sleep in and lie in bed with my child for morning cuddles.

One day I will take up running again.

One day I will go an a real adventure!

One day I will get my house in order.

One day I will make time to work on my relationship.

One day might never come. And it certainly won’t come if you keep projecting it off into the future.

Make one day today.

8. Eat with intent.

This means – listen to your body. Think about the outcome that you want. How you want to feel after your meal or snack.

But also – what emotion are you eating out of? There’s a difference between a single gourmet chocolate enjoyed over coffee while journalling, and a fistful or more of sweet stuff eaten in private. The ‘how it makes you feel’ emotionally as well as physically has a significant impact on how it actually makes your metabolism and hormones respond.

So eat right, eat like this, but also give yourself those occasions when it’s okay to loosen the reigns. It stops the whole system crashing down later.

9. Honour your time and your worth

Set boundaries about what you will and will not do.

Will you give everything you have of yourself away, often with not even a thank you in return? Will you allow others to expect more and more and more of you because you give it?

Will you try to do everything, be everything, have everything just so and all at once out of fear that if you don’t people won’t like you or that you won’t be successful or get ahead or be a worthy woman?

Or will you stop?

And really think about what’s important. How you want to live your life. What you are willing to do, and where you need to put up some gates.

10. Get enough sleep.

It really does matter.

And it’s kind of a one day thing as well, isn’t it? The concept that when life slows down or when you finally catch up that you’ll be able to afford to rest enough?

Do you know how ridiculous it is, at a physiological level if nothing else, to push and push and push yourself to check just one more thing off at the expense of your health and your sanity?

Sleep. Rejuvenate. Be calm. Believe in time abundance.

11. Put yourself first.

It’s all part of the same thing, really.

Putting yourself first is saying ‘I’m worth it’.

‘I’m important’

And –

‘I want to live my best life’.

So say no to things. Do stuff that makes your heart sing. Eat well. Train hard. Stop.

And get some damn sleep 🙂

12. Know your values

Values are the inner rules that guide your life. Live by them and you feel happy and in flow. Fail to do so and you feel agitated, grumpy, more likely to go off track; eat crap, think bad stuff and just generally dislike yourself and your life.

If you don’t know your values, see the earlier point on making space for your dreams.

One way to get clearer on your values is to draw a series of circles inside each other.

In the inner circle you write the most important stuff, the stuff you consider non-negotiable. And then you gradually work your way out, with each next circle highlighting the ‘next most important things’.

Notice that the stuff you probably spend most of your time on currently is often in the outer circles.

Change that.

13. Those NNTs? (Non-negotiable things)

Act as if they actually are non-negotiable.

For me it’s journalling, eating well, training hard, time to stop and think, time with my daughter to engage, time in nature, spritiuality, financial and time abundance.

Not in that order.

What are yours?

14. Drink amazing coffee and eat amazing things.

Life is too short to be perfectly picky all of the time.

But eat right 90% of the time and you can easily afford the indulgences the other 10%. Interestingly the more you eat right the more your ‘treat’ foods tend to become healthier versions of what they once were.

15. Cloud gaze.

It does wonders for the soul. And can very often prevent a bout of stress-eating or otherwise sabotaging behaviours.

16. Create true joy.

Food addiction – to sugar – often comes out of a lack of true joy in your life. The sweetness is a false pleasure.

Think back to when you were a child, or even to 5 or 10 years ago.

What did you used to do purely for fun and because you loved to do it? Maybe go to the movies, go to the beach, shop just for fun, have a sleepover party or at least a girls night, plan for and look forward to a special occasion, do fantasy play, come up with new ideas or enterprises, creative ways to make more money, get people involved in your ideas or entreprises, sell stuff, run with the wind in your hair, lay on a banana lounge reading a novel all afternoon.

Those are some of mine.

What are yours?

17. To hell with the housework.

I don’t mean never do it.

But don’t start the day with your busy work, or your life will become one big mess of busywork.

Same applies to your work or business.

Do the stuff that makes a difference first.

18. Get a mentor.

I currently have 4 coaches. I love being mentored and coached; I’ve worked with coaches since I was 17 and hired my first PT.

Now I have a money coach, a belief coach, a strength coach, a business coach, another business coach and a life coach.

Whoops, that’s 6.

I don’t speak with each or even any of them weekly.

But they are my team, my support, they help me figure my craziness out and stay streamlined with my goals. I know who I need to go to each time I’m having a shift, and I can directly attribute financial and personal successes to my coaches in different areas.

Who is on your team?*

19. Stop, and look around once in a while.

It’s okay to stop.

It’s important to be still.

The whole enterprise will not in fact collapse if you take 10 minutes out.

20. While you’re at it, stop worrying.

When in your past has anxiously worrying about or beating yourself up over something ever actually impacted the outcome?

And isn’t it true that most if not nearly all of the things you’ve worried about have not in fact ended in the debacle you thought they might?

Like right now I’m worrying that my points are getting shorter than the earlier ones. But I’m also worrying that if I keep them long the post will get too big.

Can’t worry about both of those things.

No point really in worrying about either.

Besides, worrying stops you from being –

21. Present. Mindful.

When eating, eat. When walking, walk.

Just focus on this moment right now. It’s easier said than done.

But it’s infinitely rewarding.

The way to be mindful and present is to stop and think. To mentally visualise what is to come each day or week. To imagine it all playing out just right. And then to commit to only doing what you can do, which really is to control each moment and perhaps not even that.

Practice letting go. Practice just being here.

If you want to finish reading this post, just read it. And then do the next thing.

22. Buy yourself something purty.

Not just if it’s your birthday!

But when you show the universe that you are worth nice things, more nice things and abundance will come to you.

Don’t be stingy unless you want more scarcity, and that rule applies to how you treat yourself not just others.

I don’t mean blow all your money. But I think you get it.

23. You make time.

Stop saying you don’t have time, or that time is not on your side, or that it’s running out.

Decide right now that you make time. That there’s always enough for what you need. That everything is just as it should be.

Keep calm, and sparkle 🙂

24. Bless that which you want.

Jealously or criticism toward something you want in your life will ensure you never get it. It’s very simple. So bless that which you want. Admire it. Even write a letter to the person in question!

25. Visualise, and dream.

When you do your journalling, or when you’re scanning people’s pics on Instagram or Pinterest, do some serious visualising and dreaming.

Write about or pin pictures (make a vision board!) of things that you’d love to create in your life. You get what you focus on yeah?

26. Be grateful.

If I could bring it all down to 2 rules for an awesome life it would be gratitude and visioning. Envisioning the life you want, ‘feeling’ it being real, and then being grateful for what you already have as well as being grateful for what is still to come.

Write ‘I am so happy and grateful that …’ … 10 things a day. Include 5 things that are still coming that you’re already grateful for.

27. Set a big huge scary goal for yourself.

Something you have always wanted to do. Just put it out there, commit to actually giving it a go finally. How exciting!

28. Do something freaking scary towards that goal.

Take an action, now. Make yourself accountable as well; that might be the scary thing. Like publicising your goal. And then –

29. Write a list of how awesome you are.

List out 10 things that are just awesome about you. Boost up that confidence! Another idea, if you really get stuck, is email 5 close friends and ask them to send you 3 words or things about you to boost your confidence; 3 things they love about you. This is very empowering!

30. Stop with the stuff that doesn’t serve you.

Does it really make you feel good to snack in bed after dinner? It seems like you might enjoy it but really you feel annoyed and like crap, and you don’t sleep well. So take a real look at the daily habits you lean on, and whether they serve you.

Let go of the ones that don’t.

31. Book and lock in your next day trip or holiday.

Don’t just plan to plan, actually book it in and pay a deposit. Non-refundable. So you can’t wuss out on making time for yourself; on escaping the fear of being busy and ‘on’ all the time.

32. Sneak out of your normal day now and then and have a walk-in 60 minute massage.

One of the best every ways to clear your mind and let clarity come. I’ve had many a massage table epiphany leading to massive shifts in my life.

Remember, you have to make space for your dreams.

33. Be you.

When all is said and done, it’s not about how many emails you answered or how much people liked you or respected your busy-ness.

It’s not about doing everything you should do, about following the rules to get to a certain outcome, or making choices about your career or your relationship or even about what time you get up each day based on what you think must happen.

What it’s about is being you.

Doing the stuff that makes you more you.

What is that stuff?

For me it’s everything on this list, and probably a lot more. I don’t do all of it every day.

But I try.

It’s getting up early, it’s writing from the heart, it’s putting off the admin and busy-work, it’s communicating authentically on social media or through my blog rather than for marketing or growth purposes. It’s letting go of the stuff I’m not great at or that I just think I should do.

Sometimes it’s tidying the house and tidying my life and other times it’s saying to hell with it, and jumping on the trampoline with my daughter and having a chocolate with my coffee.

It’s living in response to my values and to what truly drives me.

It’s saying no to fear and guilt and overwhelm.

It’s doing just one little thing – or more – each day to feel gorgeous, happy, free.