Woke up tired this morning, and had a bit of a lie in as I didn't hear my alarm go off. My body didn't wake me up naturally so I didn't get up till 630. It's amazing how much that extra hour and a half to thaw you behind the day. I started my new book for this month, which is Velvet Rage, a recommendation from Todrick Hall who is an artist I admire.
Kath popped round for a brew and breakfast butty as it was haircut time. She refuses to charge me so I always try to make sure she leaves with something. So I gave her two plants, some greeting cards and a small daily affirmations book.
My Reading Challenge
If you don't want to have to read all this scroll down to the video as it's all explained in there lol.
I set myself a personal challenge in February this year to read 12 books in 12 months because I haven't been reading at all for absolutely years as I always said that I didn't have enough time to read. The first book I read was called atomic habits which explains how you anchor a new habit to an existing one that you already enjoy. I know that I always have a morning coffee every morning without fail at the breakfast bar and I usually scroll into my phone, so I set the challenge to start reading one chapter every day with my morning coffee, I thought this would make it manageable as it's all small chunks and doesn't seem too overwhelming. It's now June and I'm just starting book 10 . Safe to say The Hobbit has well and truly worked. Once I start to read my chapter. It's very easy to carry on and read another when I get engrossed in the book but I am I set myself targets of one chapter that way if I only ever achieve one chapter each day, it's fine rather than up the goal to more chapters a day and then feel like it's too much. This is the advice I would recommend for anybody starting a new habit sometimes starting that first thing is the hardest part. Rather than focus on the end goal right at the end, which seems so far in distance just focus on the next step for examples and I needed to tidy my office and it just felt like a huge task. I thought right today, I'm just going to clear the papers on my desk , then I carried on clearing and eventually just decided, take everything out of the office so that the office was empty and Clare and I could tidy up and clean it and give it a polish et cetera. Then to bring back the bits that belong in the office bit by bit it's just another daily task I need to do once I start the first task. I then tend to do a few of them but I only aim to do one thing initially so it doesn't overwhelm me. For those who read yesterday's blog, here is the video that explains how I am tackling my new habit....
Julie came round for lunch as we haven't caught up in ages and I'm having lunch at home so what better than to have it with an old friend? I made us a chopped Greek salad with Spanish tortilla and mixed leaves. The chopped salad was REALLY tasty if I say so myself. Had lemon meringue with strawberries and plant-based cream for dessert.
Matt posted clip 3 from our podcast interview, recorded back in February. This one touches on my depression and living with my 'Dark Cloud'. You can watch the clip HERE The full interview will be posted this Friday on Mat's Youtube channel HERE
Off to bed now G'Night.