Amaranth Lloyd

Did You Know: Santa's sleigh is pulled by a team of Mighty Girl reindeer!

In fact, there's even a beautifully illustrated picture book told from the perspective of a brave little doe named Dasher for ages 4 to 9 at https://www.amightygirl.com/dasher

For more Christmas books starring Mighty Girls -- including ones about Mighty Girl reindeer -- visit our blog post, "Christmas is Coming: 60 Mighty Girl Christmas Stories," at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=10380

For our top toy picks for 2022, our Holiday Gift Guide features hundreds of high-quality toys for babies, kids, and teens. To make it simple to find the perfect gift for the kids in your life, it's sortable by six age groups and eleven different themes, including science toys, arts & crafts, building toys, games, coding, dolls & action figures, and women's history.

To browse A Mighty Girl's 2022 Holiday Gift Guide, visit https://www.amightygirl.com/holiday-guide

One of my most common practices, so helpful.
Mystic Soul )0(

❤💙💚🧡

Some interesting thoughts on why Zoom (and other video conferencing) may be leaving you feeling exhausted.

Four Reasons Why Zoom Can Be Exhausting A new paper explains why videoconferencing exhausts the mind and body and how to protect yourself.

Around 80% of what I see as a medical doctor is in some way related to our collective modern lifestyles.

Most of my patients actually don’t need a pill - they would benefit far more, from help in making small, sustainable changes to their lifestyle.

However, I want to make it really, really clear - I am NOT putting blame on people. I understand that modern life is tough, especially right now. There is a huge amount of pressure that many of us face. We have competing demands - work and family - advertisements and media messaging telling us that more is better, social media showing us each day how much ‘better’ other people's lives appear to be compared to ours etc.

Many of us are stressed out, under-slept, undernourished with wholesome food AND undernourished with loving relationships. This creates the perfect storm for ill health.

But the good news is that small changes done consistently really DO make a difference. For me personally, it has been a slow and steady process over many years to change my lifestyle and I am always building on existing habits and adding in little tweaks where I can.

One of my keystone habits is to have a morning routine as soon as I wake up, that does not involve my phone. If I get this done, it leads to all kinds of positive ripple effects later in my day. What is the most impactful thing you do for your health? Let me know below.

I need to remember this . . . frequently!

DAILY REMINDER 👇🏾

I shared this quote in a recent Friday Five email - have you signed up to my newsletter yet? If not, head over to the link in my Instagram bio and click subscribe.

Drop me a ❤️ in the comments in you’re feeling this quote too and, if you’ve signed up to Friday Five, let me know if you’re enjoying the emails in the comments below!

A small change in language can make such a big difference.

Kids need to know that when they have difficult feelings that there are things that they can do to help. Making an emotional first aid kit with ideas that they think will work gives kids options so they don't feel helpless.

More information on my blog

https://www.thetherapistparent.com/post/make-an-emotional-first-aid-kit

Take a break from “I should be” and focus on “I am”

Image: https://instagram.com/beckiebeans

Happier January - Day 10: Thank someone you're grateful to and tell them why

www.actionforhappiness.org/january

I'm speaking to several parents who's children have become terrified of going to school because they don't want to bring the virus home to their family.

Take this opportunity to connect with each other, to learn life skills and support each other. Don't put pressure on yourself or your child to be the perfect parent/teacher and child/student.

For those doubting themselves this afternoon... Tnis! A million times over, this!

Via Mother Pukka

Sometimes life is hard - and you’re allowed to say so

Image: https://instagram.com/therubydoodles

How many will you achieve this month?

Although we’re facing difficult times, we can still take positive steps and find reasons to be hopeful 🌈

Join us for with daily actions to boost happiness for yourself and others. Let’s get 2021 off to a happier start 😀 www.actionforhappiness.org/january

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I hope you are all having a peaceful start to 2021. At this time of year, many of us turn our attention to our health and wellbeing. I am passionate that improving our health and happiness is not as hard as we think it is. Nor is it the preserve only of the wealthy in society.

There are small things (that are completely free to do!!) that can have a huge impact on the quality of our lives when done regularly. Here are 6 that you may want to consider.

Relationships: Time and time again the research shows us that the quality of our relationships determine the quality of our life. Yes, the restrictions in place across much of the world can make it more challenging but it is not impossible. We can use modern technology to help connect us with loved ones.

Having some solitude each day is so important for tuning in to how we feel and is something I prioritise every single day.

A short lunchtime walk can help you manage stress, get natural light which can help you sleep better, and will make you more prodcutive and creative when you get back.

Learning to not to take things personally can be tricky to do but is definitley worth working on. Even if you make small improvements in this area the knock on effects for your overall wellbeing can be immense.

Judging others less (and judging yourself less) helps you engage with the world in a much more compassionate way.

And, simply acknowledging one thing you are grateful for each day can do wonders for your mental health and general sense of wellbeing.

Let me know what you think below and why not start the year by tagging some of your friends who you think will enjoy and benefit from this post.

Happy 2021!

Don't battle stress ... befriend it!

Get yourself a cuppa and take 15 mins to consider these ways to build a healthier relationship with stress.

The On/Off Trick and Other Best Hacks for Handling Stress - Nir and Far Stress comes from anxiety about future problems and the lack of control over them. This article introduces a few surprising techniques to handle stress.

Ooh, now this one is thought provoking.

The Covid Vaccination programme starts tomorrow. Some will choose not to have it, some will eagerly await their opportunity to be vaccinated. There may also be a group of people who, need or want the vaccine but who find the fear of injections prevents them from having it.

Hypnotherapy can help you manage those fears, so you can make your choice to have the vaccine based purely on whether you feel it is the best option for you or not.

https://www-bbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-55175483

Covid-19 vaccination: Needle phobia - it's the jab, not the vaccine, some fear Up to one in 10 of the population are anxious about injections - so what can they do?

Are you giving yourself enough self care?

“Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing.

It is making a spreadsheet of your debt and enforcing a morning routine and cooking yourself healthy meals and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction a solution.

It is often doing the ugliest thing that you have to do, like sweat through another workout or tell a toxic friend you don’t want to see them anymore or get a second job so you can have a savings account or figure out a way to accept yourself so that you’re not constantly exhausted from trying to be everything, all the time and then needing to take deliberate, mandated breaks from living to do basic things like drop some oil into a bath and read Marie Claire and turn your phone off for the day.

A world in which self-care has to be such a trendy topic is a world that is sick. Self-care should not be something we resort to because we are so absolutely exhausted that we need some reprieve from our own relentless internal pressure.

True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.

And that often takes doing the thing you least want to do.

It often means looking your failures and disappointments square in the eye and re-strategizing. It is not satiating your immediate desires. It is letting go. It is choosing new. It is disappointing some people. It is making sacrifices for others. It is living a way that other people won’t, so maybe you can live in a way that other people can’t.

It is letting yourself be normal. Regular. Unexceptional. It is sometimes having a dirty kitchen and deciding your ultimate goal in life isn’t going to be having abs and keeping up with your fake friends. It is deciding how much of your anxiety comes from not actualizing your latent potential, and how much comes from the way you were being trained to think before you even knew what was happening.

If you find yourself having to regularly indulge in consumer self-care, it’s because you are disconnected from actual self-care, which has very little to do with “treating yourself” and a whole lot do with parenting yourself and making choices for your long-term wellness.

It is no longer using your hectic and unreasonable life as justification for self-sabotage in the form of liquor and procrastination. It is learning how to stop trying to “fix yourself” and start trying to take care of yourself… and maybe finding that taking care lovingly attends to a lot of the problems you were trying to fix in the first place.

It means being the hero of your life, not the victim. It means rewiring what you have until your everyday life isn’t something you need therapy to recover from. It is no longer choosing a life that looks good over a life that feels good. It is giving the hell up on some goals so you can care about others. It is being honest even if that means you aren’t universally liked. It is meeting your own needs so you aren’t anxious and dependent on other people.

It is becoming the person you know you want and are meant to be. Someone who knows that salt baths and chocolate cake are ways to enjoy life – not escape from it.”
-Brianna Wiest

[Illustration: Yaoyao Ma]

Want to know how to keep our older loved ones as healthy as possible. I think this has been on our minds even more so this year so on the show today is Dr Kate Gregorevic   a geriatrician and internal medicine physician. She works in both acute hospital medicine and community settings and has completed a PhD looking at the impact of positive psychosocial factors in the development of frailty in older adults.

Lifestyle medicine is a core feature of Kate’s clinical practice, and nutrition, exercise and sleep are integral to developing plans to optimise her patients’ health. Her approach goes beyond physical, by working with people to identify their own priorities and values, and always centring these in any management plans. Squats, plants and purpose is the message!

On the show today we talk about:
- How we balance the need to change health behaviours to improve longevity with the need to enjoy today
- Why we should focus on creating health in the present, as something that is valuable in its' own right and helps us engage in life, rather than something for the future
- The importance of including social and emotional wellbeing in any definition of health
- Sarcopenia and how to prevent this
- Your prescription for healthy ageing (Squats, Purpose and Plants)
- The impact of loneliness and how it activates a stressor response
 
Please do check out Dr Kate's book - Staying Alive - it's a really great read and has some fascinating information

You can listen to this weeks podcast on or wherever you can find podcasts 🙌🏽 let us know what you think of this one

Here's my prescription for the weekend . . . as long as its administered in line with Covid Restrictions of course!

Have a lovely weekend 🥂🍷 even though we can't share our wine with friends 😢