Today I have my first formal gym session with my trainer.  I’m a bit nervous to be honest.  I feel he will be horrified at my lack of ability and wonder why I ever thought I could get ready for a half marathon in just 4 months!  Well, he may not have seen many people so determined to succeed!

I have also set up my Just Giving page this week and I figured if everyone I know donates even one pound I would raise a considerable amount!  So please consider donating, any amount is a great help towards a very worthy charity and the more who give even just a little the bigger the final pot will be.  My chosen charity is East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices.

You can visit my page here: Mandy Allen’s Just Giving Page.

I will be 50 in 2012 and many of my friends have completed momentous tasks in celebration of their 50th (and other) birthdays.  I hadn’t really thought about doing anything terribly challenging to celebrate (I was thinking more about canal trips and parties!), but recently I read about a North Norfolk Marathon being held at Holkham, just down the road from me.  A good friend of mine, John McNally, is a seasoned marathon runner, and his partner has taken it up too since meeting him.

A soon as I read about the event I felt I wanted to give it a go, although I’m erring towards the half marathon.  Since then I have started to think more seriously about it, and now I am writing about it I know I have made a commitment to this challenge.  So today I am contacting my friend for advice about a training programme, even though the weather has turned colder and I don’t feel at all like doing anything other than curling up on the sofa in front of the fire!  I have also submitted my entry, paid my fee and ordered my t-shirt!

I’m quite sure I will benefit greatly from this challenge and will post updates on my training efforts.  I will be raising money for the East Anglia Children’s Hospices as well and will post more about that at a later date.

2012 is going to be a very good year!

So here we are in a brand new year.  Your life can be so different if you want it to be.  Make a pledge to try to think differently about something that you know is pulling you down.  Change the way you think about yourself to a positive view.  Look at the things around you and concentrate on those that work firstly, then work to change those that don’t.  This does not have to be a new year resolution if you feel you always fail at those, but make a serious pledge to make 2012 a year of personal growth for you.  You will feel much better for it.

Life is full of ups and downs and sometimes the downs seem to be the main focus of our days.  We need to be able to see beyond those and know that there is something better and more fulfilling around the corner.

One way to create a pathway out of those places is to have a series of steps that you can implement at any time you need them.  I believe that these steps may well be different for each person, but when I find myself overwhelmed or struggling to move forwards out of the mire these are my four steps to certain success:

• Fresh air.  It works every time.  I make myself get outside and do something physical in the fresh air.  I might go for a walk, or do a job in the garden, but the combination of moving myself and getting outside is a powerful thrust in the right direction.
• Change my eating habits.  I often find that when I am having a down day (or days) my eating habits get very bad indeed.  I can make a positive impact on the way I am feeling by looking at what I am eating and re-introducing the good habits whilst cutting down on the bad habits.  I also make myself prepare meals and sit down properly to eat them.  No more snacking on whatever is quick and available, that’s a bad habit.
• Positive affirmations.  Now I know a lot of people don’t really ‘get’ these, but they work for me, and always have done.  The idea is to choose a phrase that is positive and addresses the areas you want to create a different energy around.  You repeat the affirmation, ideally in front of a mirror, each day, and feel the energy changing as you say the words.  My ebook is all about positive affirmations, you can see it here: Power Up Your Potential, Top Tips For Change.
• See people.  One of the best ways up is to be with others.  I find I often shut myself away when I’m in a slump, and know that being with other people brings me out of myself very quickly.

Enjoy the journey.

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Experience shows that success is due less to ability than to zeal.  The winner is he who gives himself to his work, body and soul.  Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton

Z is also for zigzag, and if you zigzag it won’t matter how much zeal you have, your success will be much longer coming, and quite possibly not come at all!

Z is also for zest, and whereas zeal means earnestness or fervour, zest means a keen enjoyment or interest.  So whatever you do it would pay to have an equal helping of the two, and no helping of the zigzagging.

As Norman Vincent Peal said:  If you have zest and enthusiasm you attract zest and enthusiasm.  Life does give back in kind.

Through zeal, knowledge is gotten, through lack of zeal, knowledge is lost; let a man who knows this double path of gain and loss thus place himself that knowledge may grow.  Buddha.

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Yesterday is very much a part of who we are.  We can learn so much from the experiences of all our yesterdays, but it does not do to dwell on those experiences too much.  Take what is useful from them and place the rest at the back of our memories.  Often too much time can be spent going over and over things that have happened and no good is achieved from it.

As Jane Seymour said: Live each day the fullest you can, not guaranteeing there’ll be a tomorrow, not dwelling endlessly on yesterday.

You cannot have a fulfilling today, or tomorrow, if you spend all your time thinking about yesterday.

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X appeared to be a difficult letter to get to grips with,  I toyed with other ‘x’ words but kept getting drawn back to xenophobia, an acute dislike of foreigners.

Not necessarily of other cultures, however.  We seem to be very tolerant of the cultures we like to embrace, whilst at the same time disliking the people from those cultures.

What we must realise is that we are all descended from the same source.  We are all inextricably linked by our ancestors, no matter what we may look like in our generation.

For the whole of eternity people have been transient, they have moved from coast to coast and if we were all able to trace our lines back far enough in time we would find those people we may fear now are our forefathers.

Xenophobes, you should be more afraid of someone exactly like you.

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Many people mistakenly feel that the only definition of ‘wealthy’ is having lots of possessions.  They believe that in order to be wealthy one must have lots of money and ‘things’.

To be truly wealthy you do not need money or possessions.  You can consider yourself a very wealthy person if you possess wisdom, peace of mind, friends and family, a lifestyle you are happy with, a spiritual awareness, a belief in oneself; any or all, and much much more, are attributes that enable you to consider yourself wealthy.

As Garth Brookes once said, ‘You are not wealthy until you have something that money cannot buy’.

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Do you believe that truth can do more harm than good? Oscar Wilde once said, ‘the truth is rarely pure and never simple’.  And Denis Diderot, ‘We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter’.  Truth will out, as Shakespeare said.

Honesty is the best policy.  A frequently used phrase that was also actually written by William Shakespeare, and it continues, ‘If I lose mine honor, I lose myself’.

Thomas Jefferson said ‘Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom’, and Spencer Johnson: ‘Integrity is telling my self the truth, and honesty is telling the truth to others’.  We often sacrifice truth to our vanity, comfort or our advantage.

So, how honest are you, with yourself and with others?  Do you find it hard to be veracious?

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