Hi ladies,

Happy last Monday of November! I hope everyone is doing well and keeping warm!

This week, I'm going to start talking more about connection in my WhatsApp group so please join there if you want to learn. Connecting with yourself can be especially helpful this time of year as it helps you cope with stress better and also helps you set boundaries (whether those be financial, with family/people, work or with yourself when it comes to food/booze/money/going out...).

'What exactly do you mean with connecting with yourself?' was one of the questions someone emailed me recently.

Being connected to yourself simply means that you listen to yourself first before anyone else. Before you make any decisions or take any actions, you're aware of your inner wants, needs and feelings, and you respect those. This applies to everything in your life. Too often we just follow the crowd and do what we think is expected of us/what you're supposed to do in life or what is in right now (especially with diets/ fitness) without giving much thought to what we really want and what would make us happy.

Let's say you want to change careers, most people would start looking online for ideas, maybe get seduced by one of those 'become a 6-figure coach' ads and/or speak to friends or notice articles in papers about people who love their new careers. Then they'll pick something that makes you excited because of the promises of success and happiness - this is just like diets, same mentality and chances of success are as low as with diets.

When you're connected to yourself, you first go within and ask yourself what is it that you want, what do you enjoy, what fulfills you. If you don't know this, that means you've been disconnected from yourself for quite some time (this is most people) so you first have to spend some time to get to know yourself. When you have an idea of what it is, then you can go online and research, e.g. careers in nutrition. This way you remain in control and true to yourself.

99% of people are completely disconnected from themselves thanks to our lifestyles. It's almost impossible to stay connected to yourself these days.

We connect/disconnect from ourselves in 3 ways

• From our bodies
• From our emotions
• From our authentic selves (you can call this your heart, spirit, inner child, inner self...)

We disconnect because we're too much in our heads, always listening to others, experts, thought leaders, teachers.... if you think about your day, you probably don't even have many chances to hear yourself. Every moment is filled with noise, someone demanding your attention. It doesn't help that we value information/knowledge too much and give very little value to wisdom.

Some of the signs of disconnection include

• anxiety
• stress (inability to cope with stress)
• addictions (food, screens, shopping, alcohol, gossip, TV, social media....)
• lack of motivation
• low moods/depression
• emotional eating/over eating
• indecisiveness
• overwhelm
• and more...

While we often do things like binge eat or drink or spend hours on our phones because we are disconnected, we also can do these things in order to disconnect - it's a complicated cycle.

Why would we want to disconnect from ourselves? Because we don't want to deal with some thoughts and emotions that we know are waiting to come out - e.g. anxiety is felt in the stomach so it's natural that we eat in order to suppress it. Obviously this is subconscious. Emotions such as anxiety and fear always seem far bigger and scarier to the subconscious mind when they're suppressed within - when you let them come out, in most cases, you'll be saying 'was that all; was that really what I was worried about?'. I see this happen all the time and I've experienced it.

The only way out is in, so it's worth mustering up the courage to connect with yourself and see what you carry within. For some reason most people have a subconscious fear that you'll find something awful but that is never the case - you'll find happiness and love; you'll find yourself.

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Like I said, I'll post more on this subject in my WhatsApp group his week and a little less on Instagram as well, so please join me there and please send me an email if you have any questions! I have some coaching slots available normally €80 per session but mention this email and it's €70.

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Have a great week

Tina x