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I cut my hair way too short today – but I don’t hate it!

I started cutting my hair at home when I was living in Pakistan. Every time I tried to go and get my hair cut there, and asked for layers, the person cutting my hair would declare that my nordic fair, fine hair was too thin for anything like that.

I’d had layers before, so it sounded odd. But when they insisted on cutting hair with tailor’s scissors, it makes more sense.

So, I started cutting it at home, in a shitty bathroom with a triangle mirror that was barely the size of my face.

And I’ve continued ever since with acceptable results. The few times I’ve gone to a hairdresser, they always end up doing things I don’t like or washing my hair with products that dry my hair and scalp out.

Plus it feels like a massive bother to make an appointment and take the time out of my day to go.

It’s just easier to do it at home. The only risk is, that sometimes it gets out of hand.

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10 things you can learn from highly resilient people

Strong people know how to organise their suffering resilience quote

It’s natural to resist change, especially when it comes in the form of challenges and adversity.

Who wants to climb the mountain when you can take the ski-lift and enjoy the view on a leisurely ascent to the top?

But since change is the only constant in life, change is inevitable.

Building up yourself to become more resilient will not only help you survive and bounce back from change, but it will also allow you to thrive even in difficult circumstances.

Think of every person who ever made the best of a bad situation. Who survived the seemingly unsurvivable. Who conquered their own fears and achieved the unthinkable.

They were all resilient. Don’t miss out on these simple things you can do to build your own resilience.

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Never feel overwhelmed or overstimulated again with these 4 simple tips

In dance school, I had a friend who always liked to be at the centre of things. If there was a crowd, she ran straight to it. If there was something happening, she was in the thick of it. She was always on the go – literally spending very few hours a day at home – and she’d bounce from activity to project to life commitment like a butterfly flower-hopping. It was exciting to be around her because it was […]

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If you’re highly sensitive and feel worn out by your job these tips can help you feel better

When I worked full-time, there were days I left work feeling like an 18-wheeler had done a 5-point-turn on over me.

I felt totally drained and exhausted. I came home and wouldn’t have the energy to do a single thing. Still, dinner needed to be cooked and lunch made ready for the next day, the apartment needed cleaning, the cat needed feeding and the litter box cleaning.

Overwhelmed by others’ energy I had very little patience left to consciously offer anything to anyone else. I was completely spent, and that was just by Monday evening.

At work, I spent a lot of time in the bathroom stall, tears silently falling, my shoulders shaking from sobbing, without a clue of what just happened or why I was feeling so lost.

I would come to work perfectly happy and within minutes of entering the building, I’d turn moody and withdrawn. As the day went on, I got angry and then depressed. My emotions flickered like someone was playing with my emotional light switch.

To add insult to injury, without being aware of what was going on, I would regularly create a mental story to explain away all the emotions I was feeling.

I would bring up negative self-talk, old baggage, stories, fights, or even think about what negativity the future would bring.

As an empath, I feel everything deeply. Emotional, physical and mental perceptions affect me strongly. Just going on social media can change my mood in a moment.

Before I was aware of being an empath, I not only felt what others did, but also took on their emotional, physical and mental ailments as my own.

Learning how to manage my own energy and draw healthy boundaries has changed my work from a parade of misery to a much more joyful experience.

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What if you could genuinely comfort someone without resorting to “it’s okay” and a pat on the back?

How to genuinely make someone feel better when they're upset

If you want sympathy, look in the dictionary between SHIT and SYPHILIS.

Sympathy drives disconnection because it is drawing a silver lining around someone else’s pain and dismissing their feelings as no big deal.

You easily fall back on sympathy when you’re trying to protect your own heart (especially when you’re an overwhelmed empath), but acting like you don’t have a heart doesn’t make you a very good person.

How you make other people feel about themselves, says a lot about you.

Empathy fuels connection because it is feeling with another’s heart and seeing with another’s eyes.

Empathy is simply listening, holding space, withholding judgement, emotionally connecting and communicating “you’re not alone”.

Empathy is our way back to each other and it is empathy that changes the world for the better.

Empathy is me always willing to step into your shoes. Unless you wear Crocs, then you’re on your own!

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How are you supposed to ground yourself if you’re searching in the branches for something that can only be found in the roots?

Grounding exercises for empaths

Wouldn’t it be nice to go through life with a deep sense of calm and rarely think about the “what ifs”?

To have a sense of being fully embodied, whole, centred and balanced in yourself and your relationships and having a deeper connection to your authentic self?

Be in complete control of your mental and emotional self and not be easily influenced by other ideas and individuals?

Life repeats itself mindlessly – unless you become mindful, it will go on repeating like a wheel.

Birth is followed by death, death is followed by birth; love is followed by hate, hate is followed by love; success is followed by failure, failure is followed by success. Just see!

If you cling to the edge of the wheel you can get dizzy! Move toward the center of the cyclone and relax, knowing that this too will pass.

In the Native American cultures the wheel represents the four directions in the physical world and each direction symbolises a part of you. The north represents the mind, the south the heart, the east the place of spirit and the west represents the body.

Knowing how to get back to the centre and balance yourself again is an essential life skill.

When you’re grounded, you’re in complete control of your mental and emotional self, and not easily influenced by other ideas or individuals. When you’re grounded life’s small mishaps tend to just roll off you like water off a duck.

This achieving the centre, being grounded in one’s self, is about the lightest state a human being can achieve.

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Have you been told you need to grow thicker skin? Maybe you’re an empath!

Shine like the whole universe is yours

Empaths are emotional sponges who absorb both the stress and the joy from the world around them.

To really thrive as an empath (not just survive), I think it’s critical to learn how to not take on the energy, stress and moods of other people.

To an empath, the world can often seem coarse, heartless and disdainful of sensitivity. I know I’ve been told time and again that I need to be less sensitive if I want to succeed in life.

But I say that there is nothing wrong with being sensitive. Being sensitive to the world around you isn’t a weakness that needs to be stamped out.

I think empathy is the very thing about you that is most right in the world. Rather than “growing thicker skin”, I believe it’s more important for you to learn skills to help you cope with a highly sensitive nervous system.

When you learn to understand your specific needs as an empath, you’ll be able to truly connect with yourself (and others), be your authentic self and shine as an empath.

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Copywriters are only good for writing sales copy. Right?

What does a copywriter do?

There seems to be a lot of confusion about what a copywriter really does. Sometimes, I find it damn near impossible to explain what it is that my job as a copywriter really is.

In a market that exists in parallel – both online and offline – I think copywriters are especially under-utilised, typically used for writing sales copy that is as interesting as watching paint dry.

A good copywriter can almost work magic just with words. A good copywriter will pull a thread from the essence of the brand to the heart of a potential customer and give that baby a pulse, make a genuine connection, create a true fan.

But if we’re so good at communicating, why aren’t our talents put to better use than copy-pasting text from the legal department to the website?

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Did you know these 11 random facts about me?

Like boobs, women are better when they're real

They say knowing a person is like music. What attracts us to them is their melody and as we get to know them better, we learn the lyrics.

Now, this is where it gets tricky because a lot of my favourite music is often without lyrics!

Deep house, electronica and classical is the kind of music that washes over me like an ocean and sets my soul on fire, sparks a cosmic dance in my very being. Back in dance school, I used to willingly drown myself in this type of music in class, letting my soul float off on the tunes like a kite.

The kind of music I happen to like is very sparse on words or the words are limited and repetitive. Or they’re those songs where the lyrics aren’t very clear, so you spend a long time singing them wrong, until one day you look them up and discover that not only have you been getting them belting-at-the-top-of-your-lungs-wrong, the real lyrics make very little sense without more context (so you go back to singing them your way).

My point is: what lyrics you’ll hear as we become the best of friends is really anyone’s guess!

So, what about you? What kind of music makes up the original soundtrack to your life?

Hit pause on life with me for a bit and let’s get to know each other better!

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