Whats New
This Month?
New content is released each week and will be updated below. But don't worry, all of the info still lives in the Vault section for you to refer back to anytime! Release schedule:
Simplify - First week of the month
Nourish - Second week of the month
Enjoy - Third week of the month
Celebrate - Fourth week of the month
Simplify
permission granted
In this month's Simplify week, as restrictions begin to lift and we all start to create our ‘new normal’, I want to grant you permission to make things easier for yourself.
Are there shortcuts that you feel guilty about making?
Or are you unnecessarily putting pressure on yourself and making things harder when they could in fact be simpler?
During June start looking for shortcuts. Start cutting yourself some slack.
For me - this has looked like Pizza and Movie nights on Friday. It looks like buying a box of cereal during busier than usual weeks with work. It looks like food delivery instead of going to the market or the shops.
It looks like cooking once and eating twice.
SO many ways to simplify.
But you need to be the one to give yourself permission to do so. Is there a part of your identity that believes you have to do things perfectly? Or that healthy means 100% of the time? Or that if you let down your guard all hell will break loose?!
Your first task in this Simplify module is to start creating an inventory around your days - where are you working yourself into the ground or attempting to live up to unrealistic standards? Just jot them down on a piece of paper. And then consider - Is there a shortcut that you could give yourself permission to take?
As always - please share in our group! When we show up and share our ideas we help others.
Much love,
Lisa
Nourish
LUNCHES
Last week I encouraged you to give yourself permission to identify where you might be able to take shortcuts and make life just a little easier on yourself. How did you go with this?
This week is our Nourish week and I encourage you to continue this theme of making life easier by keeping food simple. It’s Small Steps 101, but it’s so easy to default back to making it hard on ourselves.
I never thought that I’d miss doing lunch boxes, but preparing snacks all day long during the lockdown period - I longed for the ‘set and forget’ of lunchboxes!
Keeping lunches easy for me includes:
- Batch cooking snacks and freezing
- Cooking dinners that can also be used as leftovers in lunches
- Preparing wholefoods to grab and go (think boiled eggs, pre-chopped veggie stick and fruit pieces)
- Quality store bought pieces for those days when you need a shortcut!
My go to lunch box inclusions
- Popcorn
- Boiled egg
- Chopped veggies/Fruit
- Sandwich/wrap
And don’t forget OUR lunch is just as important. A short cut here does not mean skipping lunch!!
What I’m loving at the moment - Leftovers heated up. Or quick and easy one pan dishes like this fry up or veggie stack, packed with plenty of greens.
I’d love you to share your go-to lunches in our Facebook group so that we can inspire each other.
All my love,
Lisa x
Enjoy
INTIMACY
I’ve been learning a bit about intimacy recently. The different types of intimacy and how important it is to human beings.
When we have a conversation with someone about our day, when we hug or kiss, when we laugh together, when we have sex, when we cry on someones shoulder - that point of connection is powerful.
I wonder how you’ve felt in the absence of that during our lockdown period?
Sometimes we can be around people a lot without necessarily connecting with them. And if we did, our mood would instantly be improved because our brain releases happy hormones into our body. Not only that, our relationships improve and life generally feels better.
I get it though - especially as a parent of little kids I can feel touched out and just want my own space! I have thoughts of “I’ve got nothing left to give”. But what if we sought connection to fill us up? The kind that triggers all the good vibes?
This week we challenge you to ‘Find Five’. Five minutes of connection with five people you love.
Meaningful connection doesn’t always have to involve ‘in real life’ contact, in fact, I’m missing the constant FB Messenger threads with some of my besties that sustained me through lockdown - as we’ve all gotten back to work and socialising!
Here’s what that might look like:
- Ask your partner for a cuddle on the couch for five minutes. TV off, kids in bed, no talking required - just physical connection.
- Check in with each of your kids - ask them what they would love to do with you for 5 mins and do it with them (no checking your phone, no mentally planning tomorrow). Maybe have a bath/shower with them one night this week??
- Pick up the phone and call a friend to recall a great time you had together. Remember it with him/her in detail - relive that joy!
Or anything else you can think of that creates connection and a point of intimacy.
Experiment with this to see how it makes you feel. I guarantee you’ll get addicted! This stuff is so much more satisfying than chocolate after dinner.
Celebrate
June Outstanding Member - Brook Pietsch
June is busy month of celebrations in our family, with three birthdays in ten days. And this year we celebrated a big birthday for my Dad - he turned 70. You may have seen my FB post here, about how my Mum did things a little differently this year. It was so wonderful to see her able to relax and enjoy this special day.
During our Simplify Week this month, I asked you to consider where you could give yourself permission to make things easier on yourself. This is an ongoing process! Small Steps is a practice of implementing small shifts over time.
Now to the ‘action required’ part of your email. Too often we don’t stop to acknowledge ourselves, and I’ve noticed that there hasn’t been much sharing during our Celebrate week in the membership recently.
So I want you to press reply on this email, or post in our Facebook group - what is ONE thing you are celebrating right now. Big or small, whatever pops into your head straight away and without over-thinking it 😉
I can’t wait to hear from you.
For our member of the month this month, we want to acknowledge Brook Pietsch. Brooke joined us in 2018 and since then has been a powerhouse of supporting others, giving feedback on our Small Steps recipes and offering encouragement to other members, most recently with the sourdough journey many of us are on!! #thesourdoughisthework
Thank you Brooke for being an amazing inspiration to us all that many small steps can add up to big changes.
Finally, our monthly Q&A call is scheduled for this Friday 26th June at 10am AEST so I’m also seeking any and all questions you have for me. These sessions are so much more fun when people lose their self-consciousness and ask whatever is on their mind. Because let me tell you - if you have a question I bet 100 others do too!! So send them through.
Bonus
fun & rest
Here’s an exercise that I completed with my Business Mastermind group on the Gold Coast in February. It is my absolute belief that our lives are a reflection of us and unless we do things to help ourselves feel better from the INSIDE - then our external circumstances will stay the same.
To kick off the retreat I had them fill out a FUN inventory and a REST inventory.
We need to prioritise enjoying our lives and resting enough - right??
So let’s do it! In this Bonus week of the month (and I know many of you are probably in school holiday mode!) let’s complete our inventorys.
What do you love to do? What makes you smile? What, when you do it, brings you so much joy? Record a big long list (don’t just do the superficial top 3-5 things) of ways for yourself to have FUN for the rest of 2020 on a piece of paper.
Then, I want you to consider how often you rest. Do you get enough? Are you able to find small pockets of rest in your day? What might it feel like to rest more?
Fill out ways in which you can REST in 2020 and once again - sit with it for a long time - fill out all the lines if you can. Even if the ideas feel fanciful. You might just come across a gem.
Then go ahead and share what comes up for you after doing this exercise in our Facebook Group! Let’s share ideas!