Tag: non-visible disability

How To Create A Home Environment That Inspires Your Life

Do you ever wish that your home space, your living space could enhance your life more? Could match your values and just be a wonderful sanctuary for you? Well if you do this is for you my friend!

Now, your living space where you cook, sleep, have downtime, and where you share time with your friends – it would be nice to have a nurturing home environment wouldn’t it? A sanctuary where you can feel safe. Feel peaceful. Feel calm. Where you can feel invigorated. Feel peaceful. And sometimes, the importance of the living space can be overlooked. So I’d love for us to shine a light on that here.

If you’re living with a hidden disability like me, your lived experience can be impacted so strongly be the spaces that you inhabit and how you feel in them. So yes, another level of importance here.

I’ve got 4 areas that you can start with so that you feel like you have some sort of a plan with which to move forward.

Let’s dive in!

1. Declutter and Simplify

Love love love this topic! There are so many benefits to your health, your mental health, your emotional health, to your PEACE, from having an organised space. The stuff of our lives can accumulate without us realising it. Piling up on surfaces and multiplying and taking over. Be it your clothes in your wardrobe, the cupboards in your kitchen, the areas where you watch television or read, all this stuff everywhere…! It’s the first thing that can get in the way of you fully enjoying and breathing into your space. I encourage you to tackle the area that is bothering you the most. It might be one particular room, or part of a room – start with that. Think of letting go of the stuff you don’t need, or the stuff that no longer gives you value or those things that you haven’t used in a long time.

2. Optimise your Comfort and Accessibility

You want to customise your spaces for living to suit you and to suit your needs. Even more so if you’re living with a hidden disability. Give yourself permission to feel bold enough to customise space for your own comfort. You don’t have to stick with convention to have a big large double bed for instance, when you would secretly like to make better use of your sleeping space to be flexible to do other things like roll out your yoga mat of unfold your lounger to sit right in the middle of the room to enjoy the beautiful sunlight captured in that nook between 8 am and 1pm. What do you need? How do you want things laid out? Don’t feel you have to stick with a space just because ‘it came like that’.

3. Incorporate Nature/Natural Elements

How might you be able to bring in some touches of nature or natural elements into your living space? What elements might make you feel more grounded? It could be in terms of plants. Or things that you like to touch like stones or pebbles. Perhaps like me you like landscapes – and the right painting with the right colours that you connect with could help you breathe more deeply and really exhale. Some people with a garden like to have a water fountain, or flowing water because they love how the sound of water makes them feel. Maybe you don’t have a garden and you live in a flat or apartment, but you could incorporate listening to the sounds of nature into your living space.

Something from the outside, something from nature. Have a think about it, but it can be really rejuvenating to have these elements in your space. Also natural light! Having more natural light. How can you bring more light into your living space? What can you take away that might be blocking the stream of natural light? Perhaps the colour of the paint on your walls is a little dark and changing it to a lighter colour or white could make your living spaces so much brighter. Or a strategically placed mirror at a right angle to your window, to pivot more natural light into a tucked away corner of the room? You want to be able to enjoy that serene feeling, but also an invigorating feeling from your space.

4. Create Zones For Different Activities

I like this one. It really can invigorate and helps you move through a great flow of your day. Having designated areas for all of your activities. A place where you sleep. A place where you can work or have your creativity time. A designated area maybe for reading. An area for meditation? You don’t necessarily need lots and lots of space. Just think about what is important to you and give space for that activity. So for me, I like meditation. So I would roll out my yoga mat and sit on a yoga block. Or sit on the tatami mat. Or if it is a day when I’m less agile, I have a dedicated chair, a comfortable gravity ‘lounger’ type chair, that I can fold away when I’m done. That also doubles up as my reading chair. I love that chair! So just little things like that.

Have a think about it. Maybe you might want to journal about it. Put your personal mark on your living space to make you feel lighter, make you smile, and lift you.

I hope that some of this resonates with you and helps you curate a living space that makes you feel uplifted and happy.

If you liked this then hit the ‘FOLLOW’ button, COMMENT letting me know what was your biggest takeaway, and tell a friend!

If you’d like to watch more videos then hit the ‘SUBSCRIBE’ button on my YouTube channel so we can journey together. I’d love to hear from you.

Many people ask me to share what health, wellness and beauty products I use. Instead of listing out each item individually here on the blog, I made a list of my Top 20 favourites, the ones I personally love and use here linktr.ee/tessafyffe

How To Foster A Lifelong Love For Learning

Have you ever wished that you could be that type of person who seems to get a buzz from learning something new? Well this blog is for you my friend!

You’re not alone. There is something wonderful about that buzz and energy and uplifting feeling of the excitement of learning and the newness that often comes with it.

Becoming a lifelong learner can be transformative. Especially for your lived experience with your hidden disability. Learning can open up all the doors and windows of your mind. Learning can take off the roof of your mind and let in the blustering fresh air of infinite possibility into your mind, your heart, into your life.

Lifelong learning enables you to break out of that ceiling that the world can often impose upon us, and we forget that we actually control that ceiling…….in fact there IS no ceiling!

It is so important for your personal growth so you can be more, do more, help more, receive more and contribute more. After all, isn’t this why we’re all here?

Okay let’s dive in.

1. Embrace Curiosity

I’d like to encourage you to have a mindset of curiosity and openness to new experiences. Sometimes all we need is a little tweak in perspective as to the way we choose to view life. Sometimes you can get a bit closed off or consumed by all the stuff around your hidden disability and if feels like you have no headspace for anything else.

Let alone anything new. Give yourself permission to get curious again. Curious enough to ask questions, to want to understand things that you currently don’t. Having a desire to be open to adventure.

Lifelong learning has a fun element of ‘play’ about it and can be really exciting. You wouldn’t think twice about encouraging a child to have ‘play’ time would you? It is important to their development in so many ways. Why not you as an adult? Are you not allowed to have fun learning and developing yourself? Must life always be so serious – carrying what can often feel like the weight of your hidden disability.

You may wish to explore new interests and discover new passions through books, online courses, or events in your local community. I’m a big fan of online courses! I have found it to be a great way to learn new things, new skills, a new awareness about a topic. What might you like to try?

2. Set Your Personal Learning Plan

This is so much fun. We’re not necessarily talking about your career learning or the course modules you need to complete as a condition of your ongoing employment. I’m talking about a personal learning plan uniquely curated for YOU.

Your individual interests. Your abilities. This is so exciting as you put yourself at the centre of this plan, having full control over what and how and when and WHY you’d like to learn this new thing. Experiment with this new adventure.

Perhaps you have no idea where to start but just know that you want to do SOMETHING to shake things up and reawaken your heart and soul which feels like its been in a coma for years. Well, I remember when I felt that way, and someone introduced me to a 4 day event called ‘Unleash The Power Within’.

Wow, that completely blew the roof off for me. I was immersed into this 4 day melting post of personal development and OH MY GOODNESS, I’ve never been the same since.

It was fantastic. So much so, I’ve been on it 4 times so far, and I’ll probably go again. Because it changes you, and every time, you get something different – a new insight, new invigoration, new friends, new levels, new depths, a new and improved version of you! I would not hesitate to recommend it to you my friend.

It may be that you’d like to look at your plan for the next 12 months. What would you like to learn? How often? Could you learn something new every 4 months? Perhaps an immersion experience of 2-4 days? What about an online course that may last for 6 months, requiring some input from you every 2 weeks? This is your personal learning plan. Make it for you.

3. Create Your Supportive Learning Environment

This can really encourage learning and growth. Not everyone is gonna get it. This new learning thing you’re doing. This new learning quest – it may make other people feel uncomfortable. For a whole host of reasons too long to go into here. The point is, it’s okay. They may be your nearest and dearest. But that doesn’t mean they are your ‘people’ when it comes to your choice to become a lifelong learner.

It may be that you’ll feel better building your own small network of like-minded people just like you. Or perhaps you’ll be open to joining an online community to enjoy shared learning experiences.

I enjoy learning alone. It fits in nicely with the default introvert within me. But it can be a lot of fun learning with other people who get excited about learning and developing in the way that I do.

That’s why I joined a Mastermind community where I found my ‘people’. It’s electric! Especially when you come across people who are on your journey, but are perhaps a few years ahead of you – there is so much to learn and you can see what is possible.

Equally, it is lovely when you are approached by someone on a similar journey to you, but perhaps they are a few years behind you, and you can relate to where they are, and you can offer them tips, guidance and help. A hand to pull them up along the way.

Well I hope that this gives you some food for thought and I encourage you to embrace a love of lifelong learning. There are so many rich benefits in store for you.

Comment down below and let me know your number 1 takeaway.

Share with a friend who may enjoy or benefit from reading this.

I look forward to hearing how you get on.

If you liked this then hit the ‘FOLLOW’ button, COMMENT letting me know what was your biggest takeaway, and tell a friend!

If you’d like to watch more videos then hit the ‘SUBSCRIBE’ button on my YouTube channel so we can journey together. I’d love to hear from you.

Many people ask me to share what health, wellness and beauty products I use. Instead of listing out each item individually here on the blog, I made a list of my Top 20 favourites, the ones I personally love and use here linktr.ee/tessafyffe