A month from now, it'll be 16 years since my mum died. 16 whole years of her not being around. I can't even remember what it was like to have a mum. She was in my life for nearly the same time as she hasn't been. I had to figure a lot of stuff out on my own after she'd died. You know, this doing life stuff. She wasn't there to ask. I get lost in ideas and thoughts about what it would be like to still have a mum. I can be doing something as simple as crossing the street or sitting in [...]

I was recently emailing back and forth with my friend, Josie. Amongst lots of other wonderful things about Josie, she is an actress. I don't know much about the acting world, but I do know that it's competitive and hard-going, and that it involves lots of auditions and not getting them. I can't imagine how frustrating and deflating it can be, to get the "Sorry, it's a no" call, when you've put everything you've got—heart and soul and talent and LOVE—into it. Josie talked about this in our back and forth emails, "I'm trying to keep to my rule of 5 emails [...]

For most of you, you probably woke up this morning and soon after, brushed your teeth. And this evening, before you go to bed, you'll brush your teeth again. I bet you didn't even think about brushing your teeth, did you? You just did it. On autopilot.  Brushing your teeth is so easy, you could do it standing on your head (although not recommended). Why is it then, that something as boring as brushing your teeth twice a day is totally possible for you, and yet when it comes down to, say—eating vegetables twice a day—it feels totally impossible? It might be that you keep trying to eat [...]

A popular snippet of advice out there in the self-help world is to think positive thoughts. Which I think is a load of old bollocks. Now, I am all FOR getting curious about your thoughts and what you say to yourself all day long - did you know we have over 60,000 thoughts a day? Because, really, if you're a negative ninny-type, this means that ultimately you're inflicting yourself with 60,000 pretty shitty thoughts. Which is far from good. Thinking positive thoughts is the obvious antidote to this, right? To think 60,000 lovely thoughts instead. Makes sense. But in reality, [...]

A few weeks ago, for some reason I still cannot fathom, I got the urge to 'do up' an old 1950's kitchen cupboard that belonged to Kristin's Oma. It's been sitting in the barn for years gathering dust. At first, I considered asking a local carpenter to sand and paint it, but then I figured I could probably do it myself. And so, for the last 10 days, I've been holed up in the barn in our garden - in between looking after our kiddo and coaching clients and writing and swimming - sanding and sanding and sanding and painting and painting. I learned [...]

  "Don't think about it. Just jump!" My fourteen year old niece is standing on the edge of the top diving board. I don't know much about diving boards, but I know it's high. She peers over the edge of the board, one hand grips the metal safety bar to the side of her, the other rests on her stomach. She looks over to me and my sister, treading water in the pool below. "I can't do it!" She shouts, "I'm scared." "Just jump, come on! You can do this!" She shakes her head and steps back, hands grappling the [...]

I've been giving this a lot of thought recently. I'm noticing more and more just where I'm spending my time. I sit a lot in front of my laptop, Skyping with my brilliant coaching clients and writing, writing, writing. Sitting in front of my laptop, however, also means getting lost in YouTube wormholes and Facebook and oh man, if I'm not on my laptop, my phone is in my hand and I'm scrolling through Instagram like a wild woman. And so, with this increasing awareness, I deleted Instagram last week, and I now make a real effort to limit my time [...]

"Do you want me to go and buy him some chocolate, love?" I'm hunched over my 7-month old son, my hands holding his, trying to steady him as he has an all-out tantrum. We're waiting in a ferry terminal, looking out over the giant boat that we'll board for the next 12 hours, taking us from the ferry port in the UK back home to Germany, via Holland. He's wailing and throwing himself to the ground, and honestly? I've had enough. Kristin, my partner has also had enough. We're tired, having spent two weeks on the road, staying in different [...]

I took this photo earlier, during lunch, when I got up from my desk and wandered outside, through the garden and onto the yard. And woah! The leaves and the Autumnal colours and the way the logs are all stacked against the wall caught my breath. My first thought was how grateful I am to live where I live. To have chosen to be here, despite all the fears and doubts and uncertainty about selling up and not staying on the London property ladder. My second thought was, "I'll take a photo of this and put it on Facebook". Why? Because [...]

The 50 metre outdoor swimming pool in our village, the one I've been swimming in all summer, closed a few weeks ago. There's an indoor swimming pool in the same village that's just opened, but hmmmm, it's very small and, well, there seems to be a cultural difference between UK and German swimming etiquette. (GERMAN PEOPLE, WHY CAN'T YOU JUST SWIM IN A STRAIGHT LINE, HUH?. UP AND DOWN. IT'S EASY!) After some serious Googling, I've found another pool a few towns away and on certain days, they have sessions allocated for swimmers who are training. I really want to [...]