MindHealth by Sara Stevens

We looked in the last blog about saying no to others and making our lives more balanced by the natural tug-of-war of relationships and life. This blog wants to explore the more internal self-desires and limiters to saying no. I think we can all say yes to the fact that, at times, we do things that we really want to say no to but end up doing anyway. This could be eating that chocolate bar, having...

The power of saying no has a tremendous effect on our mental health, as it allows us to value ourselves more. It also helps us prioritise ourselves. This can even lead us to new opportunities that wouldn't have been achievable by saying yes. Also, it allows us to set boundaries with people and over time this becomes a much happier, healthy place for us and all the people in our lives to live i...

I think we could all do with loving ourselves more. In this very competitive world we live in, it is very easy to not feel good enough. If we start feeling this way about ourselves then it will be hard to love ourselves in the ways we should. Self-love is very important because it motivates much of the positive behaviour we can have in our lives, while reducing harmful behaviours and negative habi...

Anxieties, panic attacks, and severe worrying can take time for us to fully recover, and it is important to own this. If we don't acknowledge the process of breaking out from bad habits into new ones, we can get pressurised by our inner thought processes. If we think just after one day, or one week, or one month, that it will be gone forever, then I think we are living in denial over this. Our min...

“Life is for living”, is a saying I am sure most of you have heard before. I agree that this is the case and that we have to embrace life and work to make the most of every day.  I think it is great to look at life from this positive viewpoint and work to make the best of every moment. Living in the moment means trying not to worry about the past, which you can't change anyway, and not worryin...

The last blog was looking at ways to help your mind to be in a place that allows more joy into your life. If we don't have a firm foundation to build things on, then whatever we try and build on top of this could just crumble away without that solid foundational support to hold it up. This is just the same when we choose to form new habits and ways of living in our lives, we have to create a s...

I think it is important to have joy in our lives and find ways to live in these more positive mindsets. If we have more joy and happiness then this can help to boost our inner positive hormones. When we feel joy in our bodies it is because of the release of dopamine and serotonin, two types of neurotransmitters in the brain . Both of these chemicals are heavily associated with happiness. It has be...

I must say I am one of those people who likes to laugh; if you have been a client of mine, you might have noticed this. If you are a family or friend, you will know this about me. I often like to make a joke or just make fun of myself or the situation I might be in, as I think laughter is one of the most precious gifts we are given in life .

I think at times we all have those thoughts about what direction we should take in situations, and we can feel overwhelmed by those more challenging situations, struggling to find a way through things. Life coaching can help you pick things apart and help you properly identify which way forward to go and give you more focus on how to make those life changes that you have wanted to make .

Only about a year or so ago I had a Reiki session, and I thought this is a great thing to do alongside what I do already. I have been able to blend it into my sessions and help my clients have additional healing support in the sessions. Some of you might already have tried Reiki, but for some of you, it might be something you have never heard of. So firstly, let's just have a look at what it is. R...

After I had trained fully to be a Clinical Hypnotherapist, I then continued in my professional development and started doing regular masterclasses to explore different approaches that worked with or alongside hypnotherapy. When I did a course in EMDR it was one of those amazing moments when you just know this is one of the most incredible approaches and just how it can help so many people.  E...

Over 30 years ago I tried hypnotherapy and was blown away by how it made me feel. I had suffered from anxiety for so many years and had a lot of issues I needed help with. I had tried counselling and psychotherapy without much success and was feeling deflated and as if I would never be able to get over these issues. Hypnotherapy back then was quite out there and there was not much research or true...

For many of us we have many chapters in our lives and finding our way to move through these will help us make the most of our lives and give us more time in the now.  It is often very hard to work things through, come to terms with things and take those first steps into a new chapter in our lives. This time of year is the perfect time to give us the boost we need to help us move into that nex...

Over the last few blogs, we have been looking at ways to help become a calmer person by not letting underlying habits trigger internalised anxiety responses. Our minds are black and white and even if we are pretending to ourselves that we feel ok, our inner minds won't believe what isn't true. I am sure we are all at times living in denial about things that are happening in our lives. We pretend t...

Anxiety can be increased within us in many different ways and the last few blogs have been looking at this. Avoidance can be a massive instigator of increased anxiety within you. Your mind is amazing, but it is always looking to protect you . If you are avoiding things then your mind will automatically think that this is something that is super scary and will react in these ways. A few thousand ye...

The last couple of blogs were about worries and anxiety, and how many different habits you might have developed that maybe negatively impact these levels. Moving away from anxiety will not only mean letting go of worries, but it will also lead you to live life in several different ways. One of these things is reassurance, whether it be we are searching for it from others, or we are giving it to ou...

We all get worried from time to time and that is quite normal. But if we are allowing this to take over and become a habit then this will negatively impact how we feel. The thing about worrying is that the more we worry, the more worried we can feel. Also, worries can be impacted by how we react to ourselves and the world around us. If, say, we are worrying about going somewhere and we keep tellin...

We discussed in the last blog ‘Worries’, about these pesky worry habits, plus the way you are living your life which could be increasing your internal worry and anxiety levels. This blog will look at how to fill the spaces, that worry, reassurance, denial, and avoidance, may have left within you. Worrying about things can take up lots of time and if we are choosing to break from these habits then...

Let’s have a look at the things that can be limiting you moving forward, being positive, happy, grateful and being the best version of yourself. You might not have looked at life in this way, but many of us, if not all of us, are following the path of least resistance. This means that you choose to do what holds the least fear for you, you might be saying now, “I don't feel fear” or “I am fearless...

Life is now so competitive, about who we are, what we have, how we look and the lifestyle we lead, if we don’t fit in, we can easily feel inadequate. For teenagers and young adults, life is super competitive and social media is the king who tells us how we should look and be.  With all the social media, we have a window into people’s lives, or do we? Or is it just all the amazing bits and lot...

All over the world, we lived in fear of a neighbour from the beginning of time, to the 1950s and in fact, this might still be the case in some places in our world. We have also lived with another country invading our homes, villages or territory. Slaughtering our friends, family, and community, to take over and occupy our land and resources, or if they didn’t slaughter us, they brought health epid...

Every moment in life is gone by the next moment. How about taking a few days to just embrace as many of those moments as you can? It is a challenge to catch the moment and be present to fully enjoy it. I think we have to remind ourselves to stop and pause to embrace the moment. Being in the now is one of the most pleasurable times we have. When we are in the moment we just forget about everything...

Every moment in life is gone by the next moment. For most of us, we just don't appreciate the moments as much as we should. We can be lost in the habitual mundaneness of parts of our life and then we just get stuck in habit and find ourselves lost to them. This can be fine when we need time to speed up, when we are maybe doing things which don’t bring us as much joy or pleasure. But for some of us...

Why put off something until tomorrow when you can do it today? I bet all of us do this at least once a day and for some people, it has become a way of life. I see lots of people who have stalled in their lives, and they are literally only just doing the bare minimum and even that is a struggle. We all know what we should be doing but we just, at times, are stuck, avoidant and even frozen from movi...

Being yourself is a complicated thing. It’s something that can take a lifetime to achieve, and for other people, it can come so easily. How we are depends on the life we have led and how this has informed our deep unconscious about how we need to be. If our lives have been filled with unconditional love and support, we can often feel that this is how we need to continue to live our lives. Our inne...