This was not the post I was going to write today but it is the post I want to write after checking my e-mails from work, which I hadn’t checked since last Thursday, the day I told anyone who wanted to hear that I can’t keep doing what I do as I do (academic research). As I shared in a post right afterwards, the meeting went pretty well and I felt heard. On that very same day, however, I apparently got an e-mail asking/requesting whether I would be happy to submit and prepare an abstract for the very next day (Friday). Today, Monday, I got another one. Both with careful words, but still with in-built pressure. I used to like my research and I used to like the idea that my research could make a contribution to the world of work, but I became so disenchanted that I don’t get any dose of happiness from the hypothesis of going back to conferences to present my findings. That actually saddens me – not being able to be happy about something that I once saw value in.
Continue reading “Depression, Anxiety and Stress Are Not All On You”
Couscous With Caramelised Onion & Vegetables
As I promised on my instagram this week and as I mentioned on one of my previous posts, I’m sharing here today a different version of a vegetarian meal from my cooking e-book “Healthy Recipes for Wellbeing”. You can have it for free if you download my Free Wellbeing Kit, which contains a few more goodies to support you on your wellbeing journey.
The Truth Always Sets You Free
Bad looking, smelly, and clearly looking like someone who hadn’t had her beauty sleep, that’s how I showed up on campus. I had only one goal so I didn’t care at all about the way I was looking or the chance of bumping into people who would possibly see the worst version of me. Screw that. If I could, I would have had a good night’s sleep and a good, warm shower.
Do I Still Have Time?
If you missed my last blog post, I am currently spending the night at Gatwick’s airport. I love this kind of thing, because it always gives me a story to tell. After the bag mystery being solved, I moved to the second floor and I have been observing. Well, I have been reading and catching up with WordPress as well. While I was scrolling, a young girl with a huge backpack sat next to me. She seemed so young, wild and free. She was everything opposite to what I am feeling – old, grumpy, and locked.
A Night At Gatwick’s Airport
When I realised there were no buses or trains to Canterbury by the time I would arrive to Gatwick, I felt very pleased with my decision of returning to Lisbon. No, I’m not in Lisbon right now, I just arrived to Gatwick’s airport where I will spend the night until the next available train to the end of the world. Lucky me I get to experience one of those British movie scenes in which someone leaves an unattended bag in a seat and there are at least five people from security looking at the bag and whispering “don’t touch it”. Exciting times.
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Sensitivity, Extreme Empathy and Psi Phenomena
It was 2am when a Facebook Messenger notification showed up on my laptop screen. It was M., one of the very first people from whom I learned about Spirituality. Back then I didn’t know I would go from an atheist to someone who has her own connection with God, Source, Cosmic Energy, whatever you really prefer to call it. I didn’t know I would find out that the way I perceive reality is indeed peculiar. I didn’t know I would find a niche (three, actually) within Psychology that describes many of those peculiar experiences and I also didn’t know I would find so many references in Buddhism, Hinduism, and even Alchemy that back up the existence of a very subtle energy field which connects us all. Since a very young age, I have always had this thought: there is nothing new to be found, everything is already explained in very, very old texts. The more I grow and the more I explore, the more I confirm that thought. The fun and exciting part of wandering around libraries and hanging out with old, dusty books is exactly this: finding valuable information about our human experience that no one or very few people teach in the so called “Western World”. Those old, dusty books have reassured me that there is nothing wrong or abnormal with the way I (and many of you, I believe) perceive or feel.
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Life Update: Am I Downgrading or Upgrading?
I wanted to briefly say what has been going on and what is the current state of life on this side of the screen. I started adding “PS’s” one after another on my last blog post and each one of them were getting bigger and bigger so I decided the best thing to do was to copy/paste all the information and create a new post for it. So, simply put, that’s what this post will be about… a life update after my anger bursts.
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A Different Conception of Love
Whenever I have taken the Strengths and Virtues questionnaire, “love of learning” always comes within the first top positions. “Love” per se shows up, in general, closer to the bottom of the list though. The test is not about telling you whether you have “love”, “wisdom” or any other positive characteristic. We all have those in way or another. The extent to which we express and embody each one of the 24 strengths and virtues does, however, change as a function of our development and context.
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Attachment, Wellbeing & New Age Crap
Maybe this week is a week to get mad about everything. Maybe this week is a week to push me beyond limits. Maybe this week is a week to let my anger explode and rock the boat. If I can rock the boat with grace, that is something I will have to meditate on.
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To Come Back, Or Not Come Back
“When do you think you might be ready to come?”
That’s the question G. posed me. A question I don’t know the answer to. I can’t even identify what I feel. It’s a mix of everything. Anxiety. Panic. Anger. Frustration. Sadness. Abandonment. Desperation. It’s all compressed inside this body which got sick again over the weekend. Since last September, I have been with some sort of cold at least once a month. Before I would get sick once a year, worst case scenario. Now I don’t remember what it is like to live healthy for more than a month.
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Going On A Self-Retreat
January was tough. I’m still catching up broken pieces of glass and cutting myself here and there. I don’t feel great everyday, but there is an inner knowing that reassures me I’m on the right path. To honour this path, I decided to review here what happened so far this year and why I will be giving myself a time to retreat during the upcoming New Moon (February 4th).
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We Need A Different Kind Of Management
I don’t know if I’m totally aware of the consequences of letting you know that I feel grateful for all the silent replies and horrid recruitment experiences that I have had. Looking at my own experiences and other people’s stories, I would that companies are not exactly interested in Talent. In other words, all the talk about Talent and maximising potential is a big pile of bullshit, because what they are looking for is people who will get the work done without too many questions. No one can deny that the Quest for Talent looks good on a piece of paper though. Conferences and forums are created annually, for instances, to discuss how to identify and recruit the most talented individuals on Earth. When we go back to reality though, we face the same old resistance to change, which is nothing more than our good and old human tendency to conform to what is known and to base our decisions upon heuristics. The momentum created in the expensive (and often luxurious) events rapidly fades and the Talent rarely hired.
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My Everyday Makeup Look
First of all, I would like to start saying that this post was inspired by Erica’s blog and instagram. Erica is the author of weareglamerus.com and she is probably the only Beauty Blogger I follow regularly. And one of the reasons I have been following her is because she reviews drugstore beauty products as well, which are much more purse-friendly and a great start to anyone who doesn’t know much about beauty products. Second, this is totally not my usual type of post, but we are in 2019 and it’s time for me to open my door a little bit more and talk about other wellbeing-related topics. Beauty is one of those topics and women like myself who have put brains over beauty all their life shouldn’t feel ashamed to talk and share about beauty.
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Starting A Business From The Bottom
I just sat my bum on my comfy and warm bed to share with you what I have been up to these days. I was having a lot of difficulty with structuring a business where I can have the freedom to be the consultant, the academic, the campaigner, the change maker, the creative and the leader of a more conscious way of generating wealth and wellbeing for all. I basically didn’t know whether I should narrow down my entrepreneurial vision, or simply wait for some lightbulb moment.
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When You Feel Bad, But Your Life Is Changing
Yesterday night when everything became silent I found myself wanting to cry. Do you know those moments in which you think you are over something that happened, but you are not totally there yet? I think that’s what was going on with me last night. I suddenly missed people who are no longer in my life but who used to make me smile, laugh, and be healthily silly. As it has been my practise, I let myself cry. I stayed with the feeling and I did my best to own it. When this happens, I always remember a memorable scene from the movie Eat, Pray, Love, in which Richard from Texas advises Liz to own her feelings and let herself miss her last crush. He tells her to miss him, to send him love and light, but then to drop it too (I did a recent video about these two magical words – “drop it”!).
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2-Months Recovery From Binge Eating
- This blog post is about my progress and recovery journey from Binge Eating, an eating disorder characterised by over-consumption of food as a coping mechanism
3 Strangers, 3 Wise Teachers in the City of Canterbury
I lived 3+ years in Kent and walked around the streets of Canterbury quite a lot. I would either walk to keep myself physically active or to mitigate what I will call now sadness. Canterbury is a very medieval-alike town. It’s funny how before I moved there I said “this is the perfect place to hide for three years, but afterwards the princess will get tired of her castle”. And so she did, not due to boredom, but because life altogether became really unbearable. You can become quite bored too, nonetheless, since Canterbury is a very small, student town. The best walking experiences were those in which I had too many thoughts inside my head and I would then bump into some stranger who would start talking to me out of nowhere. In this post I will tell you about three different occasions in which these strangers taught or brought me some sort of special message. These were a Buddhist Monk, a Street Performer, and a Refugee from Iran.
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When the Way You Love and Seek Love is All Wrong
I always said there had to be something wrong with me because my relationships were pretty much like a storm in the desert. You know what was the speech, right? “No, there is nothing wrong with you, they are the ones who did wrong…”, but now I recognise and I admit that in fact there was something very, very wrong with me. To attract so many unavailable and emotionally abusive men into my life, I have been at least 50% responsible for that to happen. There was never a time in which I probably didn’t act from a place of need, unworthiness, or low self-esteem when already involved with those men.
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How to Create Your Life Vision
Your Life Vision is the reason why you should be waking up everyday eager to build and work towards what matters most to you in life. My sincere take on depression and other “mental illnesses” is pretty much based on the idea that people need a “Why”, they need dreams to follow, a meaning and a sense of purpose in order to live mentally healthy. In a society where dreams are seen as foolish fantasies, and living your purpose as a total act of irresponsibility, no wonder that 400 to 500 million people throughout the world are currently diagnosed with some sort of mental health problem. So I thought today I should share with you my personal and professional notes on how to create a life vision for yourself.
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A Full-Week’s Work On Codependency
God, I’m exhausted. What a crazy ride. I’m grateful I’m now writing this post surrounded by a warm, fluffy blanket. I can feel the tiredness deep in my bones, but I also feel my body’s tight muscles starting to relax. Slowly, very slowly, I’m entering in that state of connection where time becomes elastic and breathing the most fantastic human experience. Breathe with me…
The 7 Pillars of Wellbeing
In literature, different definitions and wellbeing models have been proposed, tested, and talked about. In the small section dedicated to Positive Psychology here on the blog, I described one of those models – the PERMA model, which suggests that our wellbeing is a function of our positive emotions, engagement, relationships, sense of meaning, and accomplishments. I like this model, but I honestly prefer to use a more holistic and structured approach based on eastern psychology.
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3 Precious Love Lessons From Eat, Pray, Love
- In this blog post, I will share with you three lessons on love that I took from the movie and book Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
This week I reviewed one of my non-fictional favourite movies. It might have been the third or fourth time I watched, but it is amazing how we always find different nuggets of wisdom each time we watch or read something again.
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Watch me Getting Busted by the Police + 500 WordPress followers giveaway
Yes, you read it right – click on the video to WATCH everything and also know e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g about this special giveaway!
PS: Thank you for being part of this adventure!
PS2: I will announce the winner on January 30th so you have until there to participate on the giveaway 😉
Action in Spite of Negative Emotions
- a short video on how to keep moving forward in spite of negative emotions
Walk & Chat: What’s Coming Up?
- A short video to update you all about what’s happening in my life and what’s coming up next!
Grit Is What It Takes To Make Dreams Come True
I have been listening to a lot of episodes from The Life Coach School Podcast, created by Brooke Castillo and which talks about entrepreneurship, coaching, and Positive Psychology. There was one particular episode that really hit my brain and heart. It was an episode about grit, our ability to persevere and work towards a specific goal while also keeping our passion alive.
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How To Find Your Life Purpose
People always hold something within themselves that they wish it could come true. In youth, we usually know what that looks like. Everything seems clearer in that regard and everything seems possible. We dream a lot, we travel within our limitless imagination and we are not afraid of doing so.
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The FAT Girl Strikes Back
I’m not sure where to start and I don’t even know how to name this blog entry. It’s the first one of this year and I had a different expectation of what I would be wanting to write about.
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The Best Christmas Present Ever
My Christmas has been pretty dull for… decades. It is scary to say decades, because it makes me realise I’m turning 30 in a couple of months. As a sensitive kid I learned early that some families are tricky, or at least mine is. I became aware that people in my family would smile to each other but also dissipate a passive-aggressive comment whenever they could get a chance to. Just like a sponge, I would absorb not only the comment but also the invisible threads of hard feelings.
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5 Great Ideas To Celebrate Winter Solstice With Family
Note: This wonderful and inspiring blog post is brought to you by Annette, author of the blog Little Autumn Cottage. If you love magic, cozy, and hygge as much as I do, you will love to visit Annette’s blog!
Winter Solstice is only one week away! It falls on Friday, December 21st this year and marks the first day of winter. Being the longest night of the year, everyday after the Solstice will slowly grow lighter and lighter. It’s a time to celebrate that it won’t stay dark forever!
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Walking for Gender Equality One Step At a Time & How You Can Help Too
I recently recommitted to Charity Miles, an app that tracks the distance you make – either by walking or running – and then transforms it into donations to a cause of your own choice. The app is totally free and the way we contribute is by keeping ourselves active and on the track.
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What Are We Doing To Our Sensitive Kids?
Being sensitive is not just being emotionally more vulnerable. Being sensitive is a specific way of perceiving and interpreting the world through both the heart and the mind. It’s an overwhelming experience in this post-modern society as we have spent centuries in our mind and pretty much disconnected from our body. The result is an overgeneralised mind-body split and an incredible amount of human suffering. We don’t know anything about feelings and we spend most of our time terrified about them.
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What Does Your Perfect Day Look Like? | Questions to Fall in Love | Q4
I recently started a new series here at thewellbeingblogger.com called “Questions to Fall in Love”. This series was inspired on Stephan’s blog Stories of a Colorful Life and on an experimental Psychology study in which strangers were asked to answer a set of 36 questions. You can know more about this study and its goal here.
And this particular post is based on a question that I often ask my clients:
What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?
The perfect day for me starts with NO alarm. I like to wake up naturally, and whenever the body feels like it is ready. Then I would have a delicious breakfast, preferably outdoors. My perfect breakfast is either an avocado toast with scrambled eggs and pepper OR a nice bowl of oats sprinkled with cinnamon, honey, and banana. Ah, and a nice cup of black coffee with no sugar, because life only starts after coffee! 😋
If I’m by myself, which happens quite a lot, I like to use my laptop and check what’s new on WordPress while I savour my delicious toast. As soon as I finish breakfast, I like to spend some time writing and finish my coffee. Next, weather permitting, I like to go for a long walk until lunch time – ideally next to the seashore or in a beautiful green space.
I love preparing my meals and that’s one of my favourite ways to practise mindfulness. I opt for doing healthy, nutritious and easy meals – food bowls are my favourites. Next I usually have another coffee and I start working on projects, answering e-mails, or anything else work-related like calling my coaching clients or preparing teaching materials. I often do creative activities in between, but everything depends on my workload and tasks.
At the end of the day, I like to have a small yoga session at home and then prepare dinner and do some grocery shopping in case something is missing. Since it’s a perfect day, I watch the sunset from my balcony (thinking about the house I used to live in Whitstable, UK) and I have a glass of Porto Wine while I feel the nightfall on me.
Afterwards I would then spend some time reading and connecting with other bloggers. Next I would either catch-up with my favourite series or watch a talk / documentary, until I fall asleep. 😴
What about you? What does your perfect day look like?
If you enjoyed reading this post, you may also like to read the previous posts of this series:
You may also enjoy reading these ones:
Sunday’s Chat & Cuppa: My First Week Back in Lisbon
It’s a blessing that I have this moment of silence and quietness to write a few words of reflection upon my first week back in Lisbon.
I’m sitting at my parents’ kitchen table with an espresso cup at my left and an albino naughty cat at my right. The cat is a ‘she’ – and she likes to tap my hands while I type. The only time she let me cuddle her so far was yesterday, and only because I was holding her food. Other than that, she’s mean and always ready to attack. Being a dog person, I can tell you… I’m satisfied with how far our friendship has come. In fact, she became the editor of thewellbeingblogger.com in less than a week. What can I say, she’s clearly an alpha female while I’m a sigma, so she gets to be the boss much quicker than me.
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Your Heart Knows Who You Are Looking For
I was almost coughing my lungs out when he said he loved me, right in the middle of his kitchen, a few days before my flight. That’s something that probably doesn’t happen often after a certain age, I would say, but it was something I knew he would end up doing.
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Would You Like To Be Famous? | Questions to Fall in Love | Q2
I recently started a new series at The Wellbeing Blogger, in which I will answer and reflect upon 36 different questions. These questions were used in a Psychology study to promote closeness between strangers and, since I’m often a stranger to myself, I decided it would be a good idea to follow Stephan’s steps and surprise myself with what comes out of my fingertips.
The second question on the set to fall in love is the following:
Would You Like To Be Famous? In What Way?
Continue reading “Would You Like To Be Famous? | Questions to Fall in Love | Q2”
I Can Breathe Again, Away From The Queen’s Land
I only noticed how poorly I was breathing until I landed yesterday night in Lisbon. How did things become so heavy? At what point did I stop being positive and turned into a grumpy, annoying, all-the-time stressed, little gnome? When, exactly, did I stop being ‘me’ to become a human black hole?
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Book Giveaway + 400 Readers
Hey beautiful people,
My blog just hit the 400 followers mark on WordPress! I’m very happy to have achieved this mile before going back home and I want to celebrate it with you here, so… I’m hosting a book giveaway!
Now, before I go into the book giveaway, I would like to thank you all for your support and time. I started blogging when I was 12, but this blog is the first one to last so many days and months: it will be 2 years old in early 2019!
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Expat Life: The Return To Lisbon
I guess I haven’t shared much about my life as an expat in the UK. Well, some ugly details have certainly slipped away, but I know I haven’t dug too deep on that. There is a whole interesting cycle that I’m sure someday I will be delighted to describe here. For now, I just want to share how excited I am about my return to Lisbon.
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10-Day Wellbeing Challenge
We all know what to do in order to live the best version of our life. The problem is that we are human beings and sometimes we get lost due to the overwhelming load of information that surrounds us.
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10 Ways to Boost Your Wellbeing
Hello beautiful people,
This is a short post just to let you know that I created a workbook to help me manage my own wellbeing habits – and I now share it with you for free, hoping it will help you too!
The workbook explores 10 ways we can boost our wellbeing. Each section has a practical exercise, because talking and processing information in our heads is not enough to produce REAL change in our lives.
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FREE Online Class: Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation
In this online class you will receive a brief introduction to Mindfulness Meditation.
Learning goals:
- understand what mindfulness meditation is
- know the 3 components of mindful awareness
- get acquainted with the practise of mindfulness meditation
How To Effectively Manage Your Pre-Workout Meals
I have never waited this eagerly for my salary to get credited. That is because just like my luck, all the money is spent in buying the expensive pre-workouts, with the hope to get bigger and more vitalized. It was good but then pondered if it was that necessary to spend so much on the expensive pre-workouts. On one hand talking about “Gareebi mai gym” and on the other hand buying expensive stuff. There’s a saying that, “Necessity is the mother of inventions” and who other than us can think of easy jugaads to fix things up. By “us” I refer to my fellow Indians.
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The 3 Biggest Bullshits of Mainstream Spirituality
In this blog post I will share with you the 3 biggest bullshits I have found throughout my spiritual journey.
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3 Important Steps When Meditating at Home
In this blog post you will learn about three important steps to make your meditation at home work for you.
Meditation can help us embrace our worries, our fear, our anger; and that is very healing. We let our own natural capacity of healing do the work.
Thich Nhat Hanh
From time to time I get some messages in my inbox about practising meditation and the first steps to integrate meditation as a daily habit. Most of the messages I get are from people who are not sure about whether they are doing the “right” or “wrong” thing so, with that in mind, I recently recorded two Youtube videos in order to provide (hopefully) some answers:
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How To Create A Morning Routine That Works For You
In this blog post I will share with you the most important ingredients to create a morning routine that works best for you. If you prefer, you can now also have access to this blog post in a Podcast format:
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