I have just returned from an incredible trip to Shanghai. It has been nearly 5 years since my last trip and so much has changed. For years, I ran shopping tours to Shanghai. Many people confuse them for a week of blatant consumerism for the spoiled or the wealthy! Wrong. So wrong.

These trips are about people discovering things - often themselves!

I spend the week encouraging people to step into their light, to realise that they are important, valuable and deserve all the joy in the world.

Energy is the essence of our existence. We are all energetic beings, and I think that understanding the dynamics of energy is the key to unlocking our true potential. Our energy is transferable and absorbable. Our thoughts begin it, our emotions amplify it and our actions increase or decrease it.

I think there are four steps to living a life you love:

We need to know what we want.
We need to believe that we can have it
We need to allow ourselves to have our needs met
We need a plan.

Sounds easy right?! If only it was!

I was recently helping a friend who is suffering from anxiety.

Her head is a theme park - it’s filled with adventures and ideas and wonder. The trouble is that her theme park is open 24 hours! It’s an exhausting, messed up, busy place that she wants to escape. She thinks her head is a problem- something that she could ‘get rid of’.

I talked to her about reframing her thinking. About turning the box around and looking at it from another angle. “Sometimes the only thing we can change is our mind.” is a quote from my first book, Look Gorgeous Be Happy. Changing your mind is powerful - but changing your mind about your mind is completely mind-blowing!!!

Thinking has become my favourite pastime! And now like all passionate people with a hobby, I am aghast at why more people are not doing this thinking thing more often. Of the thinking that I have done - my most profound thought is that…

“Our beliefs are the foundation of our lives!”

I believe that the quality of our thoughts determines the quality of our lives. I have spent most of the past 20 years examining, exploring and choosing what I think about everything in my life.

Living an exhausted life is no fun. There is no room for fun and then one day you wake up no longer sure of how fun even works…

We are a nation of exhausted women. So many exhausted, boring and unhappy women. We don’t get enough sleep, don’t eat the right food, have lost the art of being curious, have no time to wonder or wander and are too tired to make an effort, gather some support and change the way we live. And our unhappiness is contagious! We start to affect the people around us - unhappy partners, unhappy children. Our children want us to have lots of energy and have lots of fun. Our partners want us to be happy, sexy and interesting.

How is your parenting experiment going?

In the past 25 years of being a parent, I have finally worked out what parenting actually is - it is an experiment!

Sometimes thoroughly researched, sometimes intuitive, sometimes flying by the seat of my arse, thinking on the spot, kind of experiment!

There are lots of different types of parents running different types of experiments as we speak.

I have been doing a lot of planning lately. Planning is my answer to overwhelm. Every Monday, I have a meeting with myself. You can join me on my podcast - every Monday morning, I have a live meeting with the world juggling all the things that I want to do, have to do and need to do.

I am delighted to be a mature woman!

Don’t get me wrong. There are days when I wish I could pop back into my young body and party all night wearing not much! But mostly, I am very happy with my maturity. There are some amazing benefits to being on the other side of fifty!

Mature women know who they are. They are free from their previous limits of parenting and caring for everyone. They have less oestrogen which literally alters your ability to care! Having been ‘professional carers’, we suddenly wake up and are not bothered anymore! We aren’t interested in all your shit - we just want to get on and do our thing!

I was accused of being pushy this week! Who me??!!

I was pushing someone to be better. Someone who had asked me to work with them. Someone who apparently wanted to be better. But when push came to shove, they dug their heels in. They went into full donkey mode.

I have always thought of my life as a movie.

Different phases, different times, different movies. I find it useful. I believe that I am an actor working through the scenes that I have been given. Often I do not know how the scene will end, I am not the director. I am the actor, whose role is to do the best job I can with the people, the scenes and the costumes that I am given!

As I get older, I’m finding the things that give me pleasure are simpler. I like to watch birds. I watch the quality of light at the start and end of the day. I sing really loudly to a stupid song. Taking the time to do the things that make us glow and feel good inside is not a luxury, it is an essential part of living well.

Every morning my alarm goes. The wonders of my modern iPhone mean that I get to name my alarm. My morning alarm says ‘The world needs you’.

As soon as I see that I am propelled out of bed, it’s the perfect reminder. I think that we are all here for a reason. I believe that the world needs each of us or quite simply we would not be here.

Og Mandino is one of my favourite authors. At the back of his little book “The Greatest Miracle in the World” is the ‘God Memorandum’.

It speaks to me of 10 of my favourite values.

Feeling worthy is a huge human challenge. I have never met anyone who has not been met by ‘a wall of worthlessness’ at some point in their lives.

Some people have a bigger struggle than others. The definition of self-worth is ‘a sense of one’s own value as a human being.’ It has the word ‘self’ in it which means that no one else can fix this for you. Self-worth, self-love, self-esteem are all solo endeavours. It's about building a relationship with yourself and seeing yourself for who you are rather than who you have been told you are.

One of the meanings of the word ‘over’ means being in excess.

I have been ‘in excess’ my whole life!

I am over-responsible, I overeat, overtalk, overspend, overcompensate, overdeliver and overdo most things!

And I refuse to make myself wrong for any of it.

The disease of resentment is alive and well in so many people that I meet. They are resentful that their friends' lives turned out better than theirs, that they aren't as thin or rich or successful as they had planned! Resentment can deplete your emotional energy.

I don’t know about you but I have felt behind all of this year. Like I have been several steps behind where I want to be or what I want to do. So I have a plan!

Let’s cancel March. Let’s catch up!

If we put a line through March then we have four weeks to get ready for April. Take that April fool!!!