In April 2009 I bought a house. I wasn’t so much in love with the house as with the surroundings. Commuting distance from the center of Stockholm but set on a beautiful peninsula. Venturing outside the house, a two minute stroll would bring you to a peaceful lake, complete with a petite sandy beach and jetty that stretched out, out into the water towards the sunny horizon. If your legs took you further, a wooded path would take you along the water’s edge, across a meadow and back into the woods.

For lazier moments a giant garden with fruit trees and all-day sun (when Ms Sunshine was out to play) provided a grassy bed for reading and sky gazing.

But this house needed some work. For two and half years it was in varying states of progress. Paint pots. Boxes of homeless possessions while room x or y was being worked on. Dust. Oh the dust! Sometimes it felt pointless trying to be tidy. It never felt clean or orderly no matter how much one excelled at being a domestic goddess.

But now she is finally complete. She is enjoying her new beauty and flirts tremendously well, posing magnificently for photos and batting her luscious eyelids at anyone who cares to glance her way. And I am finding it so much easier to be a domestic goddess. Oh the joy of having decent storage! Oh the joy of living in new, sexy surroundings! And I find it very motivating to keep things clean and tidy for I can easily see the results.

Living in a bit of a mess for 2.5 years is a somewhat familiar feeling as it is how I feel about my body. There have been stages in my life where I haven’t exercised regularly, where I have been eating the wrong kind of foods. Comfort eating. Eating out of boredom. Eating just to feel something! My rationale then was ‘ well I look and feel like crap anyway, another tub of ice-cream / bottle of wine / 3 of Nigella Lawson’s fatty buns won’t make any difference.’

But when I am eating well and working out I feel good. It is so much easier to keep eating well and exercising when I can easily see the benefits and I certainly don’t want to regress to my previous state of a lumpy sack. Sure in the beginning it takes some work to get into the routine (for that is all it is!) of knowing what to eat and planning time for exercise, but after a while it becomes just part of your life. This is what I eat. This is how I spend some of my time. I work out. I am a runner or I go to the gym. I feel good.

Please don’t think I am bragging or looking down at anyone who doesn’t have the pleasure of feeling good. What I am trying to say is that if something is in a good state it is easier to keep it that way! Going from lumpy sack to bouncy goddess may require a bit of a push, but once you get going, momentum grabs you by your hand and pulls you half way.

This is one of the reasons I love coaching. It doesn’t have to be a life-long experience, but many people benefit from getting help in the early stages to find out what they want to achieve and how they can do it, and most importantly being supported by someone who cares so damn much about you achieving it that they will prod, poke and hug you into getting it done!

I have recently been working with a delicious woman business owner here in Stockholm. I helped show her what healthy foods to eat to increase her energy, loose weight, and beat those pesky sugar cravings. Just after one week she was looking so good! After a few months of working together she now has the knowledge and motivation to keep things ticking along the track she wants to follow by herself. Maybe she will want some more coaching in the future when she decides to approach new challenges, who knows! But for now she is looking and feeling so much better than a few months ago!

This is what she says “The advice and help she (Miss Best) has given will be priceless to me for many years to come and will help me to continue growing in both my business and personal life.” Read her full testimonial here!

If you feel that you need some help, encouragement and guidance to getting your momentum going to grab your life and business by the hand and dance in the direction you want it to go (rather than the other way round) then please feel free to get in touch! You don’t even have to live in Stockholm to work with me! Email: hello@miss-best.com

Have a fantastic weekend!

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As I mentioned in my previous blog, I have been going through some pretty exciting major life changes recently. Naturally, the need to create a new path didn’t just happen over night, but in my case, it certainly made itself heard overnight. Or rather, I suddenly heard it overnight…and boy by the time I did hear it, it was SHOUTING!!

It actually happened one weekend in March on a visit to the UK. That weekend I had met up with my lovely friend Rosanna and met, for the first time, another delicious girlie, called Blanka. The lovely Rosanna is a fab and funky yoga teacher and the beautiful Blanka is a goddess of the raw kitchen.

I had no idea that this highly delicious weekend would so dramatically crank up the volume of my inner voice and launch me into a dynamic period of change (as well as the amazing energy of the girls, I swear Blanka’s raw chocolate cake had something to do with this…seriously!). But I easily sensed that the seed of an exciting project was about to germinate. You know that feeling, when something just clicks so nicely that it’s impossible to not turn ideas into action?

Since us three girls have a similar love of funky, healthy, energetic things, we decided to pool our knowledge and skills together to put on a rather delicious workshop to help and inspire other self-employed women to boost their energy, re-ignite their passion for their business, meet like-minded ladies and generally show them a good time.

And so our workshop ‘High Energy for Entrepreneurial Women’ was born. We are holding our first one in London on 27th November 2011 and would love, love, just love you to join us for a day of energizing yoga, delicious vibrant food (all raw!), inspiration for goal setting, a talk on energizing (raw) food plus tips on how to boost your energy.

We are ridiculously excited about this event. During my recent trip to the UK, I had a reminder of how fab these girls are by attending a couple of Rosanna’s yoga classes and sampling more of Blanka’s amazing food (raw vegan cheese and crackers, and raw banoffee pie lingers seductively in my taste bud memory).

Indeed, we are so excited about the possibility of you joining us, we are offering an early bird discount on the price of a ticket, so that you can save a yummy £40 to spend on other things. So scoot on over to this page and check out this event. Make sure you secure your place before Sunday 14th August 2011 to slurp up the special price!

In the meantime I shall do my very best to sample as many of Blanka’s desserts as possible, just to make sure that the perfect selection is made for you. Perhaps some more of that life-changing chocolate cake would be just the rocket fuel you need…

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I have been a bit quiet recently. But just on the blogging and newsletter front. You see there are huge, huge changes going on in my life right now, so there have been other priorities in my head. I would really like to share these exciting experiences just because I am learning so so much from them and my developments are just a living proof that with the right knowledge and support we can emerge from something potentially crushing simply shining, empowered and hugely excited about life.

Before I start, I would like give myself a little high-five for being so publicly open about my personal life in this post. A few years ago, I was too shy to even register on a forum let alone leave a comment, or write a blog post or anything like that. I’ve not always been this brave, but boy, is life fun when you start pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone!

Basically my whole life has gone upside down, inside out, side-step, tango, waltz, fox-trot and jitterbug.

Since April I have done the following:

- amicably ended a very lovely 8.5 year relationship

- changed my ‘day job’ (I quit an unfulfilling job in finance and now work part-time in Business Development for an inspiring company that works with personal development and leadership training and I will soon go on to facilitate workshops and coach individuals)

- finished renovating my house in order to put it on the market

- thought long, long, long and hard about where I want to live in this world (I’ll keep you posted on my decision!)

- re-homed my beautiful dog (heart-break city!) as I wont be able to give her the attention and time she needs to thrive after my house is sold

- started doing fun but brave things such as Dj:ing

- expanded my social life in Sweden and UK by about a million % (which takes quite a bit of coordinating actually!)

And at the same time making exciting progress with my company:

- qualified as a Vegetarian and Vegan Nutrition Consultant

- launched my coaching services and seen some amazing results with a fabulous client!

- joined up with 2 lovely girls to plan a fab High Energy workshop in London in November 2011 (read all about it here)

When writing this it just feels like a list of things, but it when you are actually in it and living it, it really is incredibly intense and challenging. And I am sure that if you have ever done any of these things you will appreciate just how much they can impact your life…let alone when all happening at the same time in the space of a few months!

The most amazing thing I have experienced is that by applying all the things I learned over the years, I have not only managed to survive this incredibly turbulent time, but I feel that I am leaping from it full of love and life and zest for new exciting things.

Here is what has been the key to keeping me sane, happy and healthy:

1. Raw Food
I have been really motivated to keep as high-raw as possible simply because I immediately notice the positive effects. Cooked food does not give me the clear mind and the super high energy that I have needed for this period. Having a clear mind means that I am able to analyse my feelings much better and make sensible decisions. It has also prevented me from comfort eating and numbing any pain with things like refined sugar or heavy comfort food like toast! Working through these feelings is far more progressive and healing I find!

2. Avoiding stimulants
Staying clear of coffee, refined sugar and alcohol has also reduced the risk of feeling any extra anxiety and keeps my blood sugar stable. If I feel I need pepping up then I will either go for a run, or have a little nibble on some raw chocolate instead, which does not shock my body like coffee does. If I need the relaxing effects that alcohol can give, I do some yoga or exercise and make sure I take a few deep deep breaths. I have also been very kind to myself and when I do really feel I need time out, I will take it. Sometimes that means saying no to some people and commitments, but in the long run this ’selfish act’ is a great investment and actually makes me a nicer person to be around!

3. Exercise
This has really been a saviour. Exercise relieves stress tremendously and there is nothing like a good work out to release mood-elevating endorphins. I am also finding it really fun to set myself physical goals and challenges which offers a great respite from the emotional ones I have been experiencing!

I have also found that I have stayed away from comfort eating rubbish food or binging on booze (like I have done in previous years when facing a challenging time) because moderate exercise makes me feel a lot better. And since I know how good working-out makes me feel, it means that I don’t want to feel hungover or sluggish from comfort eating and therefore refrain from eating and drinking naughtiness.

4. Positive supportive and inspiring people
I am so in love with the people that I have in my life these days! I find I tend to stay away from people who deal with their unhappiness by trying to bring others down with negative remarks and energy. At a time when you need to be really brave, you need people who support you. Even if you don’t personally know people like this, reading inspiring books and blogs, or connecting with others on the internet or by attending inspiring events is a true gift!

5. Coaching
I draw on the wisdom I get from my coach and from my own knowledge of coaching. This is such a powerful tool for personal growth and bursting through challenging times. Becoming aware of why we think and act in certain ways is hugely empowering, and mastering the skills of breaking things down into small achievable steps is so useful . Oh, I could go on and on about this, but I wont. But it really has made the difference between crumbling into a heap of despair and rising out the ashes like a glorious, sassy phoenix!

So, dear friend, that is what my life has been the past few months. There are lots of exciting and challenging times ahead, but I am learning so much and am actually feeling pretty bloomin’ spectacular.

I really hope this post inspires you to see any challenging period you experience as an opportunity to grow and do brave things. It really is quite amazing!

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As you may have heard, at the end of October Kate Magic held a talk and workshop here in Stockholm. It was a true pleasure for me to host Miss Magic, and a real honour to get to spend a few days with her.

We had a really good turn out with very high quality guests, and I really look forward to getting to know my new raw friends from the events.

I would love to share with you what I learned from the talk and the workshop, but I could probably fill a whole book with the inspiration and information I gained, and seeing as though Kate has already done so, I recommend instead that you read Kate’s book Raw Magic and/or go to one of these events if she comes to a venue near you. Check out her events page here >>

There are, however, three things that I can summarise:

1. Going to events like Raw Magic will bring you more than you can imagine. It’s not just about information, you come away with a new spark of passion, a perky boost of inspiration and a pocket full of phone numbers and email addresses for like-minded people in your area
2. Sneaking superfoods into your food is actually pretty easy when you get the inspiration. Maca, for example (a powder made from maca root that is a great energy booster and helps balance the body and hormones) is not very tasty on its own, but a little spoonful in a raw mayonnaise for example will bring some potent power without the taste.

   And I am sure that not many would disagree when I say that eating a little superfood-laced raw chocolate cake is a rather heavenly way to increase your nutrient intake! I believe it’s just about getting into the habit of pimping up the nutrient content of your food with potent superfoods. The Raw Magic events and book really help you get into the habit!

3. When you need to boost your body and mind into overdrive without burning yourself out, raw food is really the premium choice. The week of Kate’s visit was pretty intense (especially as I had been organizing everything while working full time on other projects) with late nights and early mornings, but I felt really focused, and each morning I woke up thanking the power of raw and superfoods that my energy levels were sustained despite missing meals and being on the go all the time.

   It can be easy to get used to the benefits of eating a high raw diet, and sometimes I take it for granted. When I compare how I felt during that week with previous times before I discovered raw food, when I used to work with organizing conferences, for example, having enough energy to actually enjoy the event rather than being burned out just from the organization is a true gift. My recovery after this intense period was also a lot quicker!

It’s been three weeks since the Raw Magic events and I am happy to say that the magic remains, and my witchy intuition tells me that it’s going to lead to some great things for many people.

I have another exciting event in mind, so watch this space for some more inspiring events and raw cake! (If you don’t want to miss out on future announcements, make sure you sign up for my e-zine!)

Thanks to Hedvig for the great venue for the workshop and the lovely images!
http://www.pudlarpelargoner.blogspot.com/

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I have just finished re-reading ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ by Elizabeth Gilbert. God, I love that book. And I know the film is going to be gorgeous. I get excited shivers just watching the trailer.

It’s a beautiful sunny day today, and I want to turn my deceased window boxes into a herby heaven rather that sit at my desk for too long by explaining just what turns me on about this book. Before I go and get all soily, I just wanted to share with you this passage, which I adore. It’s about happiness. Since life is a complex inter-woven state, I feel I cannot separate happiness, contentment, (indeed emotions in general), success and fulfillment from the food we eat, and the way we treat our bodies and minds. Our bodies, minds, lives can either be as lifeless and somber as a deceased window box, or they can be as lush, fragrant, life-giving and tasty as a healthy herby heaven. I aim for the latter. It’s far more fun!

Enough about me, this is what Gilbert writes:

“I keep remembering one of my Guru’s teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you’re fortunate enough. But that’s not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel round the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don’t, you leak away your innate contentment. It’s easy enough to pray when you’re in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.”

Of course, praying does not have to mean praying to a specific God in the traditional sense, if that does not suit your beliefs. And happiness is not a selfish thing to pursue. As Gilbert continues:

“ The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.”

So, please, on this beautiful day, allow yourself some happiness. Eat well, and enjoy other people!

Thinking of you

xx

Extract taken from ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ by Elizabeth Gilbert © 2006

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As you know I love to share my recipes with you, and I usually blog about food that I have recently been eating. Since my last blog, however, I have been eating – or rather drinking and slurping – mostly green smoothies and green raw soups. I am not going to share those with you today as I have done so on a few occasions and I do rather believe there is more to life than smoothies and soups, even if they do make me feel satisfied, energetic, zingy and balanced.

I would like to share, however, a little of what I have been feeding my mind the past week or so. Christoffer has recently bought and devoured the book ‘The 4-hour work week’ by Timothy Ferriss. On his recommendation, I too gobbled it up as quickly as I could and found it most helpful and inspiring.

As the title suggests, the book provides helpful, and often humorous, tips and case studies of how to make your work days more efficient to advance towards the ultimate goal of working just four hours a week, but with at least the same – if not higher- relative income and preferably from remote locations, to enable you to travel the world (if you so wish), or do other fun things while still either working as an employee or as an entrepreneur.

What struck me while reading the book are the similarities between this approach to working-life and Life-Loving food. The initial similarity is the goal. For the 4-hour work week (4HWW) it is to free your self from spending most of your days having to earn money to have instead the time, energy and love to do things that bring you and others joy, such as traveling, learning languages or a new sport, helping others, spending time with your family, or spending your days doing what you are really passionate about e.g making music, art or gardening. To love life.

I have had the pleasure of briefly enjoying the life Ferriss describes while we were in Costa Rica. For a few weeks, Chris and I worked remotely/freelance. We spent a few hours a week working from the hammock in the above photo and the rest of the time learning Spanish, snorkeling, chilling, drinking from fresh coconuts, and planning our lives. I can certainly recommend this as a life-goal!

(If you want a great place to stay in Costa Rica, go to Cashew Hill Jungle Cottages in Puerto Viejo. This is where we stayed for 5 weeks, and had the best time thanks to great owners of this establishment.)

The goal of bringing more Life-Loving Food into your life – apart from the obvious fact that it tastes amazing – is to bring you health, energy and joy. If you spend less time (or preferably, no time) feeling tired, ill, depressed, moody, bloated and blurgh, then you will have time, energy and love to do the things that are actually fun, like the examples in the above paragraph.

Ferriss introduces/reminds us of Pareto’s law. Vilfredo Pareto (1843-1923), a ‘wily and controversial economist-cum-sociologist’, demonstrated the highly uneven distribution of wealth in society where 80% of the wealth and income was possessed by 20% of the population. This 80/20 principle, as it is also known, can be found almost everywhere and in business and even our lives the ratio of output to input is (roughly) 80/20.

Therefore, Ferriss encourages us to look at our businesses to see where the majority of the income comes from. Some may find, for example, that 80% of revenue comes from 20% of their customers. The remaining 80% of customers can be high maintenance and un-profitable and so Ferriss encourages us to spend as little time as possible on these customers, and to certainly not spend money and effort marketing towards them.

It would be interesting to analyse our lives and our health with the same principle in mind. What foods bring me the most energy? (And by this I dont mean calories. I mean energy left over after digestion that can be expended doing other things.) I believe our health (and indeed our lives) reflect not just what we do or eat but what we don’t do or eat.

For example when it comes to physical ill-health (a negative output), someone may find that they are mostly eating healthy food e.g 80% but if they are still filling up on steak and chips, bread (gluten), booze, coffee and dairy products for the remaining 20% they may find that 80% of their discomfort stems from the 20% of the unhealthy foods they are eating. The solution? To cut out those 20% of foods that you may feel you ‘need’ but which don’t actually serve you. It’s amazing that even though we feel that ‘it’s only one cup of coffee, or one bacon sandwich’ how much of an effect it can have on our health; even it is just for one day. I know myself, I have done the same. One cup of coffee out of a whole day’s intake of food and drink (5%) can make me feel 95 % crap! Which is I why I will never drink more than the very occasional sip of coffee.

Similarly we may find that 20% of the people we spend time with (family, friends, partners, customers, bosses or colleagues) bring us 80% of our joy and well-being, while the remaining 80% may be high maintenance people who don’t bring anything positive to your relationship. Surely it is better then to avoid those 80% life-suckers and invest our time and love in the life-enrichening 20% and have time left over for other pursuits!

Something else that struck me as similar is other people’s reactions to both goals. Many people are suspicious of both the 4HWW and Life-Loving (vegan/raw) Foods. ‘Surely if it were that simple everyone would do it!’ I have come across more than my fair share of skeptics who refuse to consider the link between diet and life style with ill health. And not just that, many don’t believe that we can feel fantastic in our body and minds if we give ourselves the chance.

And I myself have been victim to the conditioning that the only option in our work lives it to trudge away putting in all your waking hours in a job you don’t much care for, with retirement as the final goal to bring joy and free time.

Both Life-Loving Foods and the 4HWW are long-term investments in your life, but both can produce immediate results which is both encouraging and motivating. By adding healthy foods to your life and cutting out unhealthy ones (even in small amounts to begin with) will bring some immediate positive results. Likewise, if you go on one of Ferriss’ proposed email diets and ensure you only check your mail twice a day, for example, you will immediately free up both time and mental energy.

In addition, even if you don’t feel you can incorporate 100% Life-Loving Foods in your life, or structure your business or working life as an employee according to the 4HWW, you can still benefit by adopting just a few healthy foods or tips from Ferriss.

So today, I encourage you to look at your life and see what brings you 80% of productivity, good health, love joy and laughter. Focus your energy and time on these things and see if you can make a start to cut out the offending 80% dead weight.

I for one will be dissecting my life to see how I can make it more efficient so that I can do more pleasurable things like writing e-books, and developing other fun things to help others love their lives. Speaking of which my e-book ‘Loving Life – Loving Desserts’ will be available for sale in the next few weeks’ I am super excited and will let you know when I have a little preview for you! In the meantime, have a great weekend!

Check out ‘The 4-hour work week’ by Timothy Ferriss here >> and here:

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As you probably know, I am in the process of writing a recipe book. To be honest I had hoped that it would have been finished by now but during the past few months I have been feeling some big shifts in my development which I haven’t been able to put on the shelf for later.

When I first launched Miss Best I wasn’t totally sure of my direction. I knew what my passions and skills were (food, design, writing) so I felt that in order to take the first small steps towards working with things I love, I needed to just start somewhere, even if from an external eye it didn’t look very focused.

Over the past couple of months, I have really felt the pull to focus on sharing my food and recipes and knowledge of health related topics with others and have been spending a lot of time working on getting clear in my head what exactly I have to offer so that I can communicate this to the world with more clarity.

Well, I am extremely excited to finally reveal my new focus to you today. This is what’s new:

Loving Life – Loving Food – these are the words that reflect what Miss Best is about.

I believe that what we eat is closely linked not to just our physical health but indeed to all areas of our lives. To be able to love your life you need to be well and healthy and feel clear-headed and balanced. You need to love your food and your life, and your food needs to love you and your life. It’s about Life-Loving Food! Read more here.

I have finally named my first recipe e-book and can reveal that it is called…*drum roll*… Loving Life – Loving Desserts. I really love this name as it represents so much of what my food is about. Again, it’s about loving life and loving food (desserts) and it’s about food that loves life: Life-Loving Desserts!

My website has been updated to reflect my new focus and I would love you to go visit and let me know what you think. I have also used some of the beautiful photos that will be appearing in Loving Life – Loving Desserts. I am super happy with them as I really do think they represent my food well!

I will shortly be sending out a monthly newsletter to bring you yummy recipes, links to my weekly blog posts, super helpful tips, interesting facts, inspiration and exciting news. You can sign up for my free newsletter on my site.

You can also sign up for email updates of my blog posts. Just fill in the form at the top right hand side of this page.

Of course, the Miss Best site is a work in progress and I haven’t yet added all the information and tips that I want to, so please pop back again for another visit sometime soon.

In the mean time I wish you a wonderful weekend and would like to share with you this yummy recipe for a creamy, tasty healthy drink. Serve it in cocktail glasses and join me in a toast to my new adventure and to yours.

Love and chocolate-dipped strawberries,
Miss Best xx

Creamy Frozen Melon Drinkie
Serves 2

This shake is 100% melon but it’s so creamy it’s hard to believe there is no nut milk in there. Make sure your melons are nice and ripe! (oooh-er!!)

2 C honeydew or cantaloupe melon
1 C frozen honeydew or cantaloupe melon

Blend together and serve in decadent glasses.

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I plan to write a blog post someday soon that tells my story. My life isn’t any more noteworthy than any one else’s – I haven’t been kidnapped by pirates, or walked across continents – but I do have a story that routes where I am today.

I haven’t always been transparent about my life. Not that I have lied about anything, but I haven’t really been very open or public when times have been dark. I just didn’t think that it was worth mentioning at the time. Everyone has their own issues.

But over the years I have come to the conclusion that we do need to tell our story, and be transparent about our lives.

One reason is so people can get a real perspective of who you are, what you are experiencing and how your life is. I have had a few people say to me over the years “Oh, you are so lucky”. And yes, I am blessed – we all are in some ways. But what they are envying by saying ‘you are so lucky’ wasn’t something that was handed to me on a plate, and not chewed without choking or burning myself.

I remember one time a friend had said something along the lines of ‘you are so lucky, I can’t imagine you having any problems’. She was at the time lacking self confidence about her physical appearance and perhaps wasn’t in the best place in her life for that moment. I had met her in a coffee shop and I was looking unusually sharp and well dressed. I was on my way after our meet-up to sign over the house I had bought the previous year. It had been a tough few months: I was living in a town I didn’t fit in, my dear sister (also my best friend) had recently moved back to the UK, leaving me almost alone in that foreign town, my darling cat had unexpectedly died, my house had been broken into twice, and I was going through a major shift in my life that left me feeling very alone and misunderstood. That day I had decided to pick myself up, put on a suit and start a new chapter. But she didn’t know that!

By being transparent (and by that I mean open, and not boring people to death with constant moaning without action to remedy your problems) not only can people learn from our experiences, but it also helps them feel less alone. They are not the only ones suffering, or finding life a challenge. And if they admire your life, they may feel inspired to see that you have actually had to work to get where you are at. Not just ‘born lucky”. Which means that they too have potential for great things.

A great example of this was when I read the blog of Selma Melngailis, co-author of Raw Food Real World, and owner of Pure food and Wine restaurant in NYC. Looking at the book, one can be led to believe that gorgeous Selma has a good life, with her equally gorgeous boyfriend/business partner, working with things she loves, surrounded by healthy raw food (and therefore has no problems with sticking to a healthy diet). But Selma’s blog revealed that her life was not quite like that. And indeed people had said to her ‘you have the perfect life’, not knowing of the issues she faced and the challenges she needed to overcome.

I certainly do not rejoice in other people’s suffering (far from it) but it is encouraging to know that we all have challenges to overcome, and that people we perceive as highly successful are still human. They do still have issues to deal with, and despite their success they can still be unsure of themselves and do appreciate to hear positive feedback on the work that they do.

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