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Grateful everyday (PLUS Your free 2015 Happy List is here)

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Reindeer

So winter is finally here in England. The dark nights are setting in early and log fires are flickering to warm our homes. I’m going to keep it short today – we just got back from a short trip to Copenhagen, where we had lots of fun and started to feel very Christmassy. The 40ft Christmas tree in our hotel lobby, and the magical lights of the Tivoli Gardens Winter Wonderland probably helped with that…

Anyway, after my recent post about having had a tough time these past few weeks, it was a brilliant way to relax and forget about everything except spending time together. I felt grateful many times on that trip – grateful that our little girl is such a good traveller; grateful that we have such beautiful places just a couple of hours away; grateful for my lovely family, who know just how to make me smile.

I’m also grateful to our brilliant team, some of whom joined us for a fun team day at the Brighton Cookery School recently. You can see what we made, and what surprising lessons we learnt, in this blog post by our editor Rachel.

If you want to take more notice of the things that make you happy in the months ahead, please feel free to download our Happy List – it’s completely free, and it’s a simple interactive PDF which allows you to note one thing every day that you are grateful for. Thousands of people used it last year and really enjoyed noticing the small and big things, and having a record to look back on. You can get yours here:

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I hope you manage to find some time for yourself over the busy holiday times ahead to appreciate all that is good in your life, and that you stay warm if you are somewhere cold like us!

Beth

 

Shop small – not just for Christmas!

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Tomorrow is a big day for small businesses. The UK is hosting its second ever Small Business Saturday, a government-backed event aimed at celebrating and boosting small business and independent retailers across the country.

With just three weeks to go before Christmas, this shopping weekend is expected to be one of the busiest of the year, so it’s the perfect time to help fuel our local economies by supporting the businesses we love.

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Do What You Love Interview – Jan Scott

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thebiginterview12

Today we are delighted to bring you an interview with yoga teacher and spiritual bathing practitioner, Jan Scott.

I was blessed to meet Jan at one of her idyllic retreats in southwest France. It was perfect. I spent the week savouring local food and wine, shopping at flea markets and brocantes, cycling around sunflower fields and beautiful countryside, doing art, making new friends, expanding my yoga practice, rediscovering my senses and reconnecting with my soul. However one thing I’ll never forget was the spiritual bath I had. I booked this experience with Jan because it sounded intriguing and I was keen to cleanse my body, mind and soul. I had no idea what to expect and I was incredibly touched by the time, thought, energy, love and intention that Jan put into every part of the process. My healing treatment was extraordinary – magical, spiritual, and completely transformative. If you ever get the chance to have one yourself, I can highly recommend it. – Rachel

Aubs Avalon Shower October 18, 2014 - 02

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Food for thought

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Brighton Cookery School - front

Celebrity chefs, cookery shows and recipe books… everywhere we look there’s advice about what to eat and how to eat it and yet how often do we stop to listen? How often do we take the time to plan a meal, gather the ingredients and prepare them with love? And how often do we sit around the table with family, friends, or just by ourselves, and savour every mouthful?

All too often we find ourselves grabbing fast food, eating on the go, or opting for quick fix ready meals to fuel our busy lifestyles. Yet food is nourishment, not just for our bodies and minds, but for our souls too. So last week, in order to help us re-connect with food and rediscover our passion for learning, cooking, and eating, the Do What You Love team went to cookery school!

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Curl up this winter with our FREE Winter Writing Workshop!

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Do you have a secret dream to write a book? Or publish a blog? Or pitch to write for a magazine? Or do you simply want to get into regular writing in your journal, or create poetry, for fun? Then join our FREE Winter Writing Workshop with seven days of prompts and inspiration to help you to discover your inner writer!

Here in England the time between Christmas and New Year is often quiet, after the hustle and bustle of preparations and the chaos of the festivities. It is also cold and dark, so we thought this would be the perfect time to get cosy next to a roaring fire, journal in hand, to write. We invite you to join us, whether you are a seasoned writer or just starting out. (And if you live somewhere hot then of course you are still welcome – perhaps you will sit out in the sun writing?)

We have teamed up with Frances Booth, author of The Distraction Trap, to bring you seven days’ worth of writing exercises, so by the end of the week you will have made real progress on whatever piece of writing you choose to commit to.

Each day you will be emailed a short note from professional writer Frances, along with those daily writing prompts, writer development exercises and some special tips from well known writers. At the end of the series you will also receive a PDF of 100 writing prompts to keep you writing all year long.

The workshop runs over the New Year period, from December 29 – Jan 4 and is the perfect way to kick start your writing for 2015.

It is completely free, and is our Christmas gift to you!

See https://dev.dowhatyouloveforlife.com/www for more details and to book your place. Please tell all your friends too!

Beth and team

Do What You Love Interview – Shane Weisfeld

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thebiginterview1

This week we’re excited to bring you an interview with screenwriter Shane Weisfeld from Toronto, Canada. Shane is the co-writer of the feature film Freezer, a one-location crime-thriller which was released on DVD earlier this year. He became a produced writer for the first time at the age of 38 after years of rejection. He says: “It’s taken over 16 years for me to get to this point but I’m glad things happened for me this late because I cherish any success all the more knowing what I’ve put into it.”

Shane talks screenplays, stamina and shares the lessons he’s learnt along the way…

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Add more play to your day today!

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The Do What You Love team is off to cookery school! We can’t wait to learn new skills and enjoy the process of creating (and of course, eating!) our delicious three-course meals.

How are you going to play today? This week? And at the weekend?

Whatever you do, have fun and enjoy!

Why next year has to be different

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Rain walk
My little family – well again after a month of sickness telling us we need to slow down

In many ways this has been the most precious year of my life. In others it has been one of the hardest. With the birth of our baby girl on Christmas Day 2013 came a world of new priorities, warped time, new responsibility and so many distractions. At the same time our business grew exponentially, and a lot of exciting opportunities came our way, which we kept saying yes to.

The result? Burnout. For the entire month of October our whole family was sick (hence the unusual lack of newsletters from me!). We experienced every parent’s nightmare of hospital visits and paramedics, were exhausted but couldn’t sleep, needed nutrition but were too tired to cook proper food. It was really hard. And I think it was a massive lesson to us. Looking back now everyone is well again and all our big deadlines have passed, it seems like the universe was literally shouting at us to slow down.

I’ll admit – and not at all proudly – that this is something of a pattern for me. I work and work until I can work no more, take a break, refill the well and get re-inspired, then go 100 miles an hour putting all my new ideas into action. But this last month has told us that even if it sort of worked before, it is not sustainable with a new baby.

And so we have decided to take December off – no classes, no deadlines, no stress. A delicious month to slow down, enjoy the Christmas festivities and recharge for 2015 (which is already shaping up to be an exciting year). Our team will be running a few short programmes, including a free winter writing workshop (details coming next week!). But generally we will mostly be having a merry time with family and friends, hopefully laughing and sleeping a lot.

I have given myself the gift of saying no this December, because it’s OK not to do everything, all the time. And I really hope you will do the same, if that’s what you need.

This time of year is a good time to step away from the day-to-day and reflect on the year gone by, and make plans about you want from the year ahead. I am going to be using our New Year’s Revolution 2015 toolkit to help me do this and I’d like to offer it to you as a gift to do the same.

This completely free toolkit will help you work out what you really want from the year ahead, and then plan how you are going to get it.

We have updated and expanded this resource based on feedback from some of the thousands of people who downloaded it last year. (If you were one of those who gave us feedback, thank you. The feedback givewaway winner was DEBBIE BERNA)

Download your free New Year’s Revolution Toolkit here and start planning to make things different next year.

I know I need to take this really seriously and put things in place to be less frantic and less overworked, to create space for more adventure, more opportunities, and more fun. I hope you will too!

Beth

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Do What You Love Interview – Jo Klima

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thebiginterview12

This week’s interview is with Jo Klima, an Australian designer and artist who’s passionate about exploring creative projects which support our desire to live a beautiful and authentic life. Jo runs The Darling Tree, an art and design studio in Brisbane, where she spends her days creating stunning websites, custom art and pattern designs for amazing women, businesses and products.

ProfilePhoto by Carter & Rose Photography

I was introduced to Jo a while ago and I loved her work so much that I commissioned her to overhaul our branding and website. She’s one of those incredible people who has an uncanny knack of just ‘getting’ what you are trying to communicate and coming up with ideas that truly represent the heart and soul of your brand.

It’s been a while since our last interview so I thought it would be nice to catch up with Jo and find out about her blossoming business and exciting new product range – leggings for darling legs! Don’t miss her generous giveaway at the end of this interview!

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