6 Ways to reconnecting with your self

Any person who is in touch with their sensuality is empowered. Many women, in particular, feel that this is a part of their lives that is missing. Those who work in traditionally male environments often don’t feel connected to that feminine part of themselves. Podcast fave Tonya Leigh suggested that part of us living our best life would be getting back in touch with that side of ourselves. She offers some tips to consider getting back in touch with your feminine side:

Learn to manage your mind – the three dominant emotions that keeps us from that feminine part of ourselves are guilt, shame and overwhelm. When our own thoughts create negative feelings, we often deny ourselves those things that will make us better wives, mothers, daughters, community members and businesswomen, those things that will heal us. These are feelings that we can control.
Manage your schedule – everything we put on our schedule is our choice. We need to put ourselves on our schedule. That may mean turning things down, saying no to people, give up obligations, others may be disappointed. But when we learn to manage our minds, we can deal with all that drama. If we are not on our own schedule how do we expect to create time for pleasures, time alone, creating fun, try new things, being playful and creating space for connection with ourselves and those we love. Make connecting a priority.
Practice where to connect with your body – through dance, yoga, walking, whatever. When we’re disconnected from our bodies, we can’t tell how we feel, when we’re full, what sensations we’re experiencing. Learn to be kind to our bodies, practice reconnecting with our bodies and play around with what those practices could be.
Create sensual style – do your clothes and accessories spark that feminine side of you? Get properly fitted underwear. Find a perfume, or lipstick, or have beautiful loungewear. What matters is how we feel in it. Are we being intentional with our style? It helps us create emotion. Look at what we’re wearing and how can we spice it up a bit to help us spark that femininity again.
Create a sensual environment – have fresh flowers around the home, music playing in the background, candles, scents. It’s these little details that we use and create that remind us how important they are and what they say about us.
Experience life through our senses – we often fail to smell the delicious aromas, or hear the wind, or notice what is going on through our senses. Take time to taste food (it can help you lose weight too). Look around and notice what we hear, smell, feel, taste.

I am getting better at controlling my mind around negative thoughts. Whilst I’m more careful about what I say and do around others, I understand that I am not responsible for their responses. I will do my best not to upset people, and its certainly not something I do deliberately, but how they respond to it is their business.

Sometimes, I feel overwhelmed with the number of things I have on my to do list. A lot of what C and I do revolves around #bellringing but that’s not spending quality time together. We have a number of vouchers for experience days that we often struggle to get organised enough to book. Obviously during the last couple of years booking things has been difficult anyway. This year we celebrate our 25^th wedding anniversary and promised ourselves that we’d go away for a couple of weeks. When we first started talking about it we were looking to go abroad but have down played that now to staying in the UK. We’re just really bad at planning “down time” together.

I know I have to make myself move more. I can be sat at my desk all day and if I’m not careful, find that I have hardly moved at all. My working days are nine and a half hours long, so to be sat in an office chair that long does nothing for my posture or making me feel any better. Whenever I can I almost schedule time to go for a walk at lunchtime. I’ll look at the meetings I have and see the best time I can slot it in.

I am working on my style. I used to live in #bellringing polo shirts and jumpers all the time. I’ve ditched most of them and only bring them out for #bellringing events. I’ve gathered more colour and moving away from monochrome all the time. I’m trying different fabrics, styles and combinations.

I buy fresh flowers every couple of weeks from the market stall in the high street. They usually last that long. It has added an element of calm and relaxation to the room. I only have them in the lounge, we don’t have either the space anywhere else, or the inclination to spend that amount of money on them. I do enjoy watching the buds open up and show the full beauty of the petals though. I’ve hand candles for years. I have two particular sorts that I use regularly, but people often gift them to me. Then of course the other major scent in our house is of baking, whether its cake or bread.

I am a bit of a fast eater and often have to remind myself to slow down and taste what I’m eating. But I am better at looking around and noticing things when we’re out on a walk. C often looks at the floor or only straight ahead whereas I’ll look around and up, close up and far away.

So, I’m getting there I think. How about you?

What no bells?

Although there has been no group #bellringing for such a long time now C and I have been going to the Cathedral and ringing two bells just to keep things going.

This week however we are away visiting E&M so not able to go to ring. In ordinary times we would go with E&M to their tower to ring on Sunday bit as they’re not back ringing yet either, we had the morning off.

An odd feeling to not go ringing but after yesterday’s marathon walk around Hardwick Hall we were all exhausted and enjoyed a couple of extra hours sleep.

I am looking forward to returning to the Cathedral next weekend when we will have a couple of extra of ringers for the first time in many, many months. The rules still only allow six people with social distancing, masks and good ventilation but it will be fantastic to hear more than ding and dong and try real ringing methods.

As we head into June and the possibility of no restrictions after the 21st (fingers tightly crossed) we may also be able to start practices again. I know many towers already have but because we are very reliant on people from other towers supporting our practice we’ve decided to hold off for a while.

It will be interesting to see and hear how we get on when trying to raise and ring the heavy bells for the first time in 16 months. Managing people’s expectations of what they could and should ring might be a challenge.

From what I’ve read on social media from other towers it seems that there has been a positive community reaction to bells being rung again but then I upoose no one is going to share any negative responses they’ve had.

I always share details of what ringing we are planning and what we’ve done on our Twitter account and tag local radio, the diocrsan office, the cathedral, local city sites as well. Some are really positive and like and share our posts which is lovely.

I want to build a closer relationship with the cathedral and diocesan offices and local community sites so that they start to fully consider the advantages that bellringers bring to church and community.

I’ve already had conversations with the cathedral office about a diocesan wide ring to mark the enthronement of our new Diocesan Bishop later on in the year and look forward to some closer links.

Connections and reconnections

Reconnected with a former work colleague yesterday. Haven’t spoken with them in years. Paths went different directions and they are now self-employed and seemingly doing very well in a field that they are absolutely suited to.

I was feeling a bit meh about something said recently and spent a bit of time trying to research about not dwelling on things that I have no control over. My former colleague has moved into the positive psychology sphere and that’s what their business revolves around. I decided to reconnect with them on LinkedIn and see if they had any advice.

I find it really hard to connect with people generally. I have a lot of acquaintances via #bellrining and work, but no one that I would say was a “close friend”. In the past, I have rushed to help people at all times of day and night, who I thought were friends, to help them through marriage break ups and bouts of illness and depression, but no one has ever returned that favour. Maybe they don’t see that I need any help, or think that I’m a strong enough person that doesn’t really need it, or they’re so wrapped up in their own issues they can’t see someone else’s. Seemed to have been all take, so frankly, I let them go. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a needy person, but every now and then I need reassurance just like anyone else.

This is why I hate those circulars that do the rounds every now and then on social media about “call me if you need me, I’ll always be there for you” a) I shouldn’t need to call you, if you were really my friend and knew me well enough, you’d know when I needed help or support and b) no you won’t, even if I did call you’d make some excuse for not coming to see me or calling me or reaching out in some way.

I hate the way that I’m supposed to be mindfully of everyone else’s feelings but no one needs to be mindful of mine. How am I supposed to be honest, open and authentic when I have to hold back so much of what I really want to say?

I looked into advice on how to connect with people and it suggests:

Smile – genuinely and warmly. That’s a difficult one to start with. I hate my smile. We even have a joke in the family about if I smiled no one would recognise me. It’s not because I don’t want to or can’t but that it feels false, even when I don’t mean it to be.
Invite conversation – showing you are interested in other people by giving a little of yourself then asking about them e.g. “I enjoy reading historical fiction. What sort of books do you enjoy?” Obviously tailor it to the situation, but you get the idea. Trouble is, I don’t like what most people like. I don’t like sport of any kind and am actively turned off when someone starts talking about it. I don’t watch what everyone else seems to be watching on tv. There seems to be very little room for finding a common interest in most situations.
Offering compliments – might be something someone has done, or what they’re wearing. I do do this, sparingly, otherwise it just gets a bit weird.
Putting yourself out there – push yourself to be sociable. There are times when I’ve go to a works or #bellringing do because I’ve felt that I’ve had to be seen to be there when really I’d rather be at home with my own company. I have offered invitations to coffee etc and sometimes they are taken up, but then it always ends up being me that organises it. Sometimes it would be nice if the invitation was reciprocated.
Be yourself – this seems totally contradictory. Myself would be at home, in my own company, minding my own business. Yet the advice has just told me to go out there. There are times when I feel a little bit more at ease with others, but that’s usually because it’s a meeting with a purpose, rather than just a social event.

Hit me with your favourite positivity sites and top tips for connecting with people.