Oh gosh... are you as vain as I am?

This week's Life Clubs workshop was all about shapes and using metaphor to understand ourselves better.

And, the way life in Base Camp (our headquarters) echoes each workshop is that this week I have literally changed shape. This isn't about the diet, see below, (though it has been working), it's because I didn't heed the words of my dentist to have my tooth out. No, I told her I wanted to wait until it really needed to come out and, of course, I got an abscess and have had to have the tooth removed anyway (painful!)

It's not that I'm vain enough to think I'm the most beautiful person ever, but I realised just how vain I was when my son said 'put a picture on your blog of how you look now, Mum', because I am totally out of shape. I didn't want to show that 'out-of-shape Nina' to you, I wanted you to see my normal jaw line - something I always prided myself on - and imagine how it has swollen up beyond belief and understand that I am not myself - physically or mentally.

When we're out of shape in any way it makes us feel different and even unhappy. We want to hide away and lick our wounds. Now, what can I do to get back in shape and bounce around in the world the way I know and love?

All best wishes,
Nina
Founder Life Clubs
PS If you live/work in Notting Hill Gate and are interested in being in a TV series about the area, come to our Life Club on Monday in Ladbroke Grove if you're interested in being in the series (great publicity for any local business) and want to help us publicise Life Clubs.
PPS My new book, How To Get What You Want, looks great. Do have a preview peek.
PPS Next week's Life Clubs workshop is all about finding out what you want from your future. It's easy, fun and unbelievably revealing. Without thinking about it, you will know what your future will look like. Come along and find out. Click 'Now' (the pink post-it above) to find out more... and about following weeks.

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How thin am I?

Being one of those 'I don't want to see skinny role models - my kids need to eat properly' type of mothers, I never thought I'd be blogging about dieting.

But suddenly everywhere I look I read about obesity being worse for our children than skinnyness and, as this week at Life Clubs we were thinking about ourselves from the outside in, Genevieve and I decided to go on a diet.

It's been five tough days. We are two women who love our food and then some. But for the whole of this week our plates haven't looked this dissimilar from the photo - except that instead of arranging our vegetables quite so beautifully on our plates we eat them. We walk around clutching our hungry stomachs and feeling like Julia Roberts... suffering.

But watch this space. Just give us a few months and we'll look like Julia too.

Next week is a brand new workshop, What Shape Am I In? It's not to do with diets, it's to do with metaphor and is great fun.

See you then,
Nina
PS First copies of my book, How to Get What You Want, have arrived. They are fab. Hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

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What's your drawing say about you?

This week I've been feeling like a little mole under a huge pile of leaves.

Totally overwhelmed with 'stuff' and no time to sort it out.

My wonderful five extra days of holiday in Madrid have taken five days out of my day-to-day life and I just haven't had time to catch up with those missed days. It's a peculiar and slightly bewildering feeling. Maybe the little mole wants to hide away.

If I think about what I'd like to feel like, it's more like these beautiful, calm leaves. I don't have to be handmade or embroidered, but I'd like all my leaves flat and pressed and in nice labelled piles so I'd know what they all are: invoices, ideas, articles etc etc.

This week's workshop was all about how metaphors make it so easy to solve your problems.

Now all I have to think... how am I going to get from that pile to those nice, flat leaves in the quickest amount of time?

I know. I'm going to ask for help!

What do your pictures look like?
Hope you have a lovely long weekend,
Nina
PS Our Workshop on Work was FAB. Look at the pictures and join us for our next Workshop on Relationships. Anyone can come - in a couple, single, problems with colleagues, children etc etc. It's on Sunday 16th May in Westminster, Central London.

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Pictures speak louder than words

I took this photo on the beach outside a row of beach huts. I suppose children might have been painting the stones that day - anyway, I thought they looked fun and they reminded me of this week's workshop which is all about using images to solve problems.

I was inspired to write the workshop by a friend of mine. I was extremely gloomy one day and she asked me what the landscape I was mentally in looked like. I described to her that it seemed as if I was in a wide, wide river and unable to swim to the other side. When she asked what would help me I said 'A branch - I could hold onto that branch and not feel as if I was about to drown'. The moment she said 'Who is that branch?' I instantly knew who I had to ask to help me and I hadn't even thought about that person before.

The moment you think visually you free your mind up to the most exciting lightbulbs. Or maybe even to painting a few stones on the beach.

See you next week at Life Clubs with paintbrush.
Nina
Founder Life Clubs

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