G Is For The Grass Isn’t Always Greener!

If you are sitting in the comfort of your living room, office or bedroom, reading this that probably means that you are lucky enough to have a roof over your head. Even if the end of each month is a perpetual financial juggle, there are people in the world who would give their right arm - metaphorically speaking - to have a place they could call home.

One thing that has always kept things in perspective for me, no matter how bad things got, was that at any given time, there is always someone worse off than I am. So today, I'd like to cast a thought for the people of Sri Lanka who has lived through 25 years of Civil War.

A war that has bought significant hardships to its people, with an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 people killed during its course. If that wasn't bad enough, in 2004 the Asian Tsunami killed over 35,000 people. Many of these people have lost their land, homes and loved ones, and for them every day is a struggle simply to survive.

So next time you're feeling down because your life hasn't turned out quite as you had planned remember that you would be considered lucky in another part of the world. Sadly there will always be people living through worse than you, just be grateful for what you do have and strive everyday to change the things that you can!

K Is For Kindness Towards Yourself!

Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar

There was a time when I loved myself unconditionally, and although I never claimed to be perfect I was happy with who I was. All that changed when I became depressed, for the first time I hated myself. Hated the fact that most days I couldn't get out of bed, hated myself for being, as I perceived it, pathetic.

It took me a long time to get over that hatred and learn to love myself again just the way I was. One of the reasons was because I could clearly remember who I once was, and I missed that person with every inch of my being. All I wanted was to get back to my old self, reclaim my life and carry on. Like that had worked so well for me!

Then one day I realised that the old me, the twenty-year-old me, the impatient me, the charge ahead regardless me, was gone forever. Not because of my illness but because I was no longer twenty. From that moment, I started the journey of discovering who the forty-year-old me was like.

I learnt to accept that change was just that and more often than not was for the best. Once I'd grieved for the twenty-year-old me and accepted that the thirty-year-old me had battled with the dark side, I set about loving the forty-year-old me. After all she wasn't so bad, she was wiser, more patient and far more in tune with herself.

So please be kind and gentler with yourself. There is only one you, and you can't really expect others to love you if you don't love yourself!