New Age
How To Stop Procrastinating – 7 Tips
Things are changing pretty dramatically for me at the moment -and i’ve been using that as an excuse to put off all the things I’ve been wanting to do. But today I am calling myself on it – and that my friends in internet land – is the first step. The strange thing is – i’m putting off doing all theses things I love and filling the time with endless hours of Netflix and taking up more little hobbies (I’m currently learning how to speak spanish and speed read). Useful and fun hobbies all the same – but leaving things undone and unfinished has left me feeling negatively about myself and henceforth must stop! This week I have taken action and put the old productivity action plan back into place and I’ve already noticed a massive difference. So without any further ado – here are my top tips to stop procrastinating.
- Get a planner and actually use it daily.
I love to use a physical paper planner with a week to a double page so I can see a snapshot of my week all at once (currently using this sexy Moleskine planner) Also I’m a bit of a stationery geek and love me a good ol’ ergonomic fineliner in a colour that makes me feel good about writing with it. - Make a daily to do list.
Put the name of the day on the top line and write down all the things you want to accomplish that day. You’ll feel better about yourself once you start physically ticking things off the list. Make sure you put things on there that you will realistically be able to accomplish on that day – you don’t want to overwhelm yourself. However, if you miss a few things just move them on to the next day and try to remain focused on what you have achieved rather than what you haven’t. - Set a time to get shit done.
Tell yourself “I’ll just do this for 15 minutes” remove all distractions and go hard at your list for that whole time. Most likely you’ll get into a groove and not want to stop at the end of your allotted time. - Don’t work where you sleep/watch TV.
Okay – so sometimes you don’t really have a choice. But if you’re lying on the couch in full Netflix mode trying to finish writing an article. Chances are you’ll be ever so tempted to have a “little break” that will inevitably turn in to you binge-watching your latest TV show of choice or having a rather lengthy nap. If you’re able to – create yourself a work space and leave the distractions away from that space. I have a no phone on the desk policy for myself. It helps me to stop endlessly scroll instagram and actually focus on the task at hand. - Realise that perfection is impossible.
Don’t put things off until next year when the timing is better ; don’t hold your work back from the world because you think you can do better. Nothing is ever absolutely perfect and as I’ve said time and time again – we are our own harshest critics. No matter what you do with yourself you would definitely progressed from what you were doing when you first started. I look back at my first articles and cringe at some of the things I wrote – but it shows progress and development. You’ll never get any better if you don’t keep on keeping on. Get back on the goddamn horse and be proud of your work and it’s imperfections. It means you’re doing something and you’re brave enough to share it with the world. You can always revisit old ideas once you’ve developed your skills further – but the important thing is to just do it. - Make yourself accountable.
Find your motivator, reward yourself for small victories and celebrate the big ones. If you’re still struggling chat to a friend and get them to check up on your progress from time to time. I use this system for longer term projects to help keep me focused. It’s also helpful to have someone to chat it out with when you get stuck or start to loose your inspiration. Good friends make great ass kickers. - Create a vision board.
Collate pictures and poems and post it notes – anything that inspires you and put it somewhere you look at every day. Keep your vision board of a reminder to why you’re working so hard. It will help keep you motivated and inspired and that my dear friends is half the battle.
Hope you’re all bossing your lives and staying true to your paths.
Big love as always, JW x
Tweet me @jessicaswander or see what I’m up to on instagram @jessicaswanderlust
What is Sustainability?
We live in a world of excessive consumption, unnecessary production, that is completely full of man-made waste. Currently we are taking more resources from the earth each year than she is able to reproduce which means that sustainability has never been so important as is it right now.
So what does sustainability really mean?
The dictionary defines sustainability as the ability to be sustained, supported, upheld, or confirmed. In environmental science sustainability refers to the quality of not being harmful to the environment or depleting natural resources, and thereby supporting long-term ecological balance.
It’s currently estimated that 50,000 different plant and animal species will become extinct in the next decade – the destruction is so relentless that 60,000 plant species could be lost by 2025! Just to put that into perspective for you that is 25% of the worlds total plant life. Just imagine the effect that will have on the individual and interlinking ecosystems around the world. Not to mention the erosion, pollution, lack of food, quality of water… I could go on.
I believe we all have a responsibility to act in a sustainable way – take sustainability into consideration every day of our lives – because it affects our lives in every way – think about it when you eat – when you drink – when you travel to work – when you take a holiday – when you shop… because I know I want future generations to be able to enjoy the beauty of this world – the diversity – the people – even the food and unless we all start to shift towards living more sustainable lifestyles that just isn’t going to be possible.
I’d love to speak with you about sustainability and hear your thoughts – so please leave a comment below or tweet with me @JessicasWander.
Peace and love wanderlusters x
Stargazing – Our Amazing Universe
I don’t think there is a person on earth that doesn’t look up to the night sky in awe. It’s just one of those things. It’s beautiful, haunting, unreachable, enchanting and mind boggling. I know I’ve often spent hours and hours just staring up at the stars and thinking just how mind-boggling it is.
We are on a tiny little planet rotating around what is comparatively a tiny ball of burning gas suspended in nothingness. We look out to billions upon billions of other stars – some of which have their own planets and moons rotating around them. We do live in a very small world. We can travel it all quite easily and see the world at our leisure. We’re all connected by this modern technology and it’s as easy for me to contact someone in Semporna as it is for me to contact someone in Australia. There are people who view my blog that are from countries I’ve never heard of before – but somehow we are all connected. That much I can grasp in my mind – but when we look to the stars we realise just how small this world is.
When we look to the stars and think of the hugeness of the universe it makes me think of the earth as a whole – no countries, no boundaries, no races or religion. We’re just one.
Chew on that thought for a while Wanderlusters. x
Russell Brand – Love is all that matters
I just had to share this because it’s just so beautiful.
Russell brand is just incredible. What an enlightened human being and I couldn’t agree with him more…
Love is all you need.
7 Princicals of Health
Video Posted on
Just passing on some knowledge nuggets from the incredible Don Tolman. The man is a genius! He’s the Indiana Jones of whole foods medicine…. get on it…
x
FIND DON TOLMAN HERE: http://www.dontolmaninternational.com/
Discovering my bliss video update.
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Thank you to everyone who has contacted me in regards to my initial post about discovering my bliss.
Hope this answers some of the questions.
Have a beautiful day,
Jess.
Discovering my bliss
For a very Long time I believed that I just wasn’t one of the lucky ones. I didn’t believe that I had the talent, wisdom, upbringing and so on to chase my dreams and live a life of wonder. I truly believed that I was not smart enough, not good enough, not pretty enough, not tall enough, not funny enough, not charismatic enough, not dedicated enough… the list goes on and on.
As it turns out I was one of the lucky ones. I was lucky to come across some incredible people who saw in me what I didn’t see and encouraged me for the first time ever to pursue my dreams, my goals, my ambitions and create my own wonderful life free from my conditioned beliefs of what I could achieve. Problem was I didn’t really know what they were.
Two years ago if you’d asked me what I love doing I wouldn’t know how to answer you. I was way too busy worrying about everyone else in my life and what they wanted to do, what they wanted to achieve and how I could help them do that. I tried to do the “right thing” and tried to progress in my safe and secure job. Truth is that deep down I must have known that I didn’t really want to follow that path. I was the queen of self sabotage when it came to things that really didn’t mean much to me (I mean I got the grown up job wasn’t that enough?).
When I finally realised that all of my “problems” were just the result of my crappy self-image and conditioned beliefs that I’d taken on from people close me I changed. I no longer hated myself for being different from everyone else. I embraced my oddness and now I own my own “special brand of crazy” as I like to call it. This life is mine to create as I wish and I am smart enough, I am good enough, pretty enough, tall enough (I haven’t physically grown I’m still a short 5”4 ½), funny enough, charismatic enough and dedicated enough and everything else that I choose to be.
I’m still figuring out what it is that I want to do in my life and think I’ll always be exploring new ways to be happier and truly live my bliss. I’ve grown so much in the past few years that I hardly recognise myself now. I’m far more confident and outgoing then I’ve ever been, I can actually speak to people I’ve never met before at a normal volume (as opposed to mouse volume) and without going bright red and fumbling over all my words. This blog for me is sort of like medium for me to discover what it is that I truly love and to be able to share it with the world.
One of the best things I’ve done so far was to play the wish game. This utilises the law of attraction and Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques to break through anything that is holding you back from your wishes. The first time I played this game Gary the facilitator set me a task to do when I got home. He had me write down everything that I liked doing down in a big list. Initially it was really tough I only had about 5 things on my list and one of them was “secret one woman dance parties” which let’s be honest really isn’t something to build a new life around. But as I went on in the next few days I managed to build a massive list of all the things I loved, from there I decided to expand on that and created another list of all the things I wanted to do in my life and yet another list of all the places in the world I wanted to see. So effectively I wrote myself a bucket list. I knew that I could do everything on that list and more if I really wanted to but it gave me so many things to aim for and be excited about which was something I’d never experienced before for myself.
Now that I’ve ticked lots of things off my list and added so many more in the process I feel incredible. I still have moments of self-doubt and sometimes I temporarily revert to being every bit that awkward, embarrassed, nervous, quiet person that I once was but now when that happens I just gently remind myself that being like that is just not productive for anyone and if people don’t like the oddball that I am then it’s not really a big deal. What matters is being authentic to who I really am and if other people don’t like it then that’s fine. I’m not on this earth to please everyone as I once thought. I’m here to be me and experience my life as I want to, to share the love I have for the world with the world and live my bliss.
Since starting my journey I’ve discovered that so many people are silently going down a similar path as I was and believe that a wonderful life is just for the select few who are privileged enough to have been born with brilliance and clear goals. The truth is that everyone has their own challenges to face and their own demons to battle. I really hope that through sharing my journey I can inspire other people to really own their own experience and live their bliss by discovering what it is that they truly love.
Namaste,
Jessica.
xx
Please comment or email me if you have any questions or for more information on the wish game.
jessienicole30@hotmail.com
This is a card from that I picked up during the wish game.
Beauty in Pain
Recently I’ve experienced the end of a relationship that I treasured. This caused me to experience some intense emotional pain. It did hurt and I was sad for one whole day but then I decided that I wasn’t going to try to push away my emotional pain and I was going to really live this experience and be present with the emotions I was feeling.
I felt so alive! How wonderful it is to know I have such a great capacity to love others, how beautiful it is to have emotional connections to each other and the world. I feel so blessed to be so in tune with my emotional body and because of that I really have attracted some incredible souls in to my life.
Emotions are powerful, they are life energy in motion, it’s how we know when we’re on the right path and if you really experience them even painful emotions can be truly blissful. Even though I was experiencing this emotional pain I knew that I had made a great decision and that I was on the right path. I had no other reason to believe it I just felt it in my body and in my soul. This sense of knowing and appreciation for the emotional experience then led me to think of all the wonderful things to be grateful for in this instance.
I realised that I had so many wonderful and beautiful supportive relationships in my life. People who truly love me and I love them wholly who were happily there to support me and lift my spirits. It was through this incredibly high vibrational love frequency that I experienced that I was able to make some exceptionally exciting life decisions.
Big things are coming,
Feel it in your soul,
Namaste
Have an attitude of gratitude
Aside Posted on Updated on
Practicing gratitude can be really powerful. Your thoughts are things. What you focus on manifests so if you’re taking time each day to be grateful for the things you already have in your life then naturally you’ll find more and more things to be grateful for.
Each morning when I wake up I think about the things in my life that I’m gateful for. This allows me to start every day on a positive note. I then do the same thing before I go to sleep. No matter what is going on in your life you can always think of something to be grateful for.
In the morning i’ll usually think of things I’m doing that day to be grateful for. For example this morning I was grateful that I have a day off to soak in the bath and write blog posts and catch up on my cooking for the week, I was grateful for the friend I was catching up with that day and how much I value their friendship, and I was grateful for having the opportunity to educate others on health and nutrition through a phone consultation that I had scheduled in for the afternoon.
At night I’ll focus my gratitude on things that happened that day. So tonight I’ll be grateful for being able to share the gift of gratitude with you, I’m grateful for my grandpa for coming to visit and being his silly self, I’m grateful to have wonderful friends and I’m grateful that I’m able to be here for them to speak to when they need me. I’m grateful for the post man for safely delivering me some new books to read. I’m grateful for the knowledge I’ll gain from these books. I’m grateful to the authors of these books for their shared knowledge. I’m grateful for the cuddles I’m about to receive. I’m grateful for a warm bed and I’m grateful for the good nights sleep thats about to come my way.
Some people find it easier to use a gratitude rock. All you need to do is to find a rock, a pebble, or even a crystal. In the morning when you’re getting ready for your day pick up the rock and when you pick it up take a few moments to think of all the things you are grateful for and then put it in your pocket if you touch it throughout the day thing of something you’re grateful for, and when you get home, empty your pockets and hold your stone and think of something to be grateful for.
Namaste,
Jessica
11:11 what does it mean!?
Ever since last year I’ve been seeing 11:11 everywhere! It’s not just me either, I find quite a few people I know have also been experiencing the same thing and it always results in the same discussion. WHAT DOES IT MEAN!? So I decided to do some research…
From the conversations I’ve been having people seem to have lots of different theories on what 11:11 actually means. Some of the most common have been good luck, a spiritual awakening, guardian angels, a glitch in the matrix, warning of something bad about to happen, warning of something good about to happen, something to wish upon (like a shooting star), a reminder to think of all the good in your life.
The number 11 is thought to be a “master” number in numerology where it is also said to represent impractical idealism, visionary, refinement of ideals, intuition, revelation, artistic and inventive genius, avant-garde, androgynous, film, and fame. It is said to carry psychic vibrations and is a sign of psychic awareness and sensitivity. The negatives of 11:11 are treachery and betrayal from secret enemies.
Others believe that 11:11 is sent to us by “lower angels” who are there to guide us to leading a more spiritual life. They believe that constantly seeing 11:11 means you are genetically capable of two way contact with celestial beings, that you are prepared to be guided by beings that measure their IQ in the thousands, that you are fair in your dealings with others, and what they cite as being most important is your Thought Adjuster which is your “spirit self” is urging you to get involved with 1, 111, or other celestial beings.
Whatever it means I definitely find it re-assuring. To me it gives me time to think about the path that i’m on. It’s like a sign that I’m on the right path.
I’m always interested in what other peoples thoughts are on the 11:11 phenomenon so please comment if you want to discuss it, otherwise you can email me at yorhealth_jessica@hotmail.com
Have a wonderful day,
Jessica
Jessica's Wanderlust 