Costa Women Blogs

An urge is a desire to do or not do something. It appears in our body as feeling. We have genuine bodily urges to sleep, eat, drink water, move, procreate and go to the ladies! We also have urges to do or not do something that feel genuine but are not. Urges are driven by our thoughts, beliefs and habits for example: checking our phone when we just checked it two minutes ago, to eat or drink or do something we promised ourselves we wouldn’t.   Resisting and reacting to an urge    Whether our urges are genuine or not, we are mostly taught two options. Resist them or react to them.  Resisting an urge is often known as ‘white knuckling it’. Hanging on, gritting our teeth and using all our determination to not do the thing that the urge is telling us to do. The opposite is reacting to the urge, giving in, letting ‘it’ get the better of us and doing what we had promised we wouldn’t do and then feeling bad afterwards and making it worse by beating ourselves up. Hands up all those who have done that. Chocolate, wine, online shopping? I have! There is another way There is another way with our urges. An urge is just feeling in our body driven by a thought in our brain. The more we repeat the thought, the more we train our brains and the more the urge will appear. We know this with these ‘wine’ habits of ours. Or whatever your habits are …. Insert appropriately! For example, thoughts such as the ones below: I have had a tough week I deserve it. It’s the weekend, I can relax and …. Everyone else is doing it…. there’s a pandemic on! I’ll start again on Monday. I’ve got no willpower… Just one …. can’t hurt and it makes me feel good. When we keep repeating patterns of thought we are carving deep neural pathways in our brain. Our thoughts become ingrained and when the external cue is triggered, the urge appears, again and again. The good news is, we can change, if we really want to. Choosing to observe an urge instead This a very powerful premise. We can choose our thoughts, and we can choose to observe our urges. But we need to learn to do this. Often, we feel that our urge to do or not do something controls us. It’s like sleepwalking. We hear people say, ‘suddenly I found myself in front of the fridge’, or ‘opening a bottle’, or ‘handing over my credit card’.  6 steps to breaking an urge When we choose to observe our urges instead of reacting or resisting, we can let the feeling go through our body and pass through. We can literally let it ‘wash over us’.  An urge, a feeling, is a vibration of energy that may need to be observed many times over and over until the link in the chain of events from circumstance to action is lessened or broken. If you are trying to break from an urge that is not serving you then try this: Reflect when the urge to do or not do something usually appears. After a tough day? When difficult emotions surface? At a set time of the day? Notice what the urge to do ‘the thing’ feels like. Do you feel disconnected? Do you lose time? Do you move quickly? Can you name the feeling in your body? It’s ok if you react to it at first and go ahead and do the thing, but progress is knowing that there was an urge and how it felt. Take note of any patterns. For example, ‘it’s nearly 6pm, this is when I normally feel the urge to ….’. At this point you can also choose to use distraction as a supporting tool. If 6pm or whatever is a trigger to do a thing, change your routine around that time. The urge may still come but you have already taken yourself out of the usual circumstance and you are already lessening the pattern.  Plan for the next time. Be ready and plan to ‘sit with it’. This means sitting, breathing, really focusing on your breathing and waiting for the urge to pass through your body. The urge is a feeling, an emotion and we know that emotions pass with time. Helpful self- talk and phrases such as ‘ah this is what the urge to do….… feels like’. ‘here it is, right on cue’. Practice, practice, practice. Words don’t teach, only experience teaches. Knowing this is intellectually good, but until we practice in real time for ourselves, we won’t know what it feels like. When we have practised thoughts into unhelpful urges then we need to find thoughts that support our desire to change. Helpful thoughts such as: ‘It’s possible for me to change or stop or do less of or more of … something, leaves the door open to change. Finding your own sentences like ‘it’s possible for me to allow this urge to pass without reacting’ are so kind and gentle to ourselves. Using words like this in the midst of an urge are known as ‘pattern interrupters. They literally change your brain and in turn change your feelings and the action that you take or don’t take. Learning to get back in control when urges are having a little bit too much impact in our lives build self-awareness, trust and integrity with ourselves. This builds our personal power and confidence. Isn’t that a good thing? If you have an urge that you are reacting to, a little too often and would like to stop, do get in touch. I help people get clear on their goals, find the empowerment they need to achieve what they want, their way. Dale Potts Business and Career Coach connectedcoach.org  

Do you feel you work too much and don´t have enough time for you or your family? Traditionally January has been the month where we start afresh.  It´s a clean slate, a new page in our journal.  Perhaps we take time to weigh up, compare and evaluate what worked the previous year and what didn´t.  We use January to balance the books from the previous year and to put our lives back on an even keel – to retain some equilibrium and steadiness to prepare us for the year ahead.  But what has it meant for you?  Did you put any of our tips into practice?  It´s not too late.    We have even more expert advice available for you, and after all – life shouldn´t just be in balance in January.  We hope you will gain something from this information to help you set new habits and create your life in balance going forward. Work from home – or live at work? Maya Middlemiss, freelance journalist, and author has some positive suggestions as to how to change our “home-office” mindset into a positive one. The explosion in remote working is one positive and continuing legacy of the global health crisis. It has opened more opportunities than ever before for people to live wherever they choose, doing location-independent work in a field they are passionate about. However, many people have struggled to integrate a workplace into a home that was never designed or chosen for this purpose.  This has also been impacted by the erosion of vital boundaries between life and work, especially where space is at a premium. If you are not fortunate enough to have a dedicated office room with a door to close at the end of the day, here are some tips to help stop work and life blending into one huge amorphous mess: Plan your day, to get clear on your priorities and most important tasks, while allowing time for reactive work, and having a cut off time in mind to work towards. Ritualise the start of the day, in a way that is meaningful for you. Rather than checking work email in bed just because you can, create a routine that moves you from personal to working mindset.  This can help you impose a boundary, where none physically exists!  Consider exercise, meditation, journaling, coffee, or whatever combination helps you shift into the right gear. Just prior to “switching off”, be sure to list any uncompleted tasks and carry them over into tomorrow’s plan, so they don’t buzz around in your subconscious. Then log out of your work tools. If you are sharing space, symbolic boundaries might help – like a paper room divider. While it does nothing for the noise of someone else’s meeting or classroom session, it can help you focus mentally on your own work. It also hides your work area from view in the evenings.  It can also help hide any domestic chaos from your Zoom background. Identify and ask for the help you need, whether that’s a call with your manager about your stress levels and how they can better support you, or a supportive chat in the Healthy Happy Homeworking community Overcommunicate, to pre-empt micromanagement and surveillance. Lots of managers are as insecure and unfamiliar with this set-up as anyone else.  A tendency to demand endless reporting and supervision might be as much about their need for reassurance as your likelihood to slack off. Achieving balance when you work from home can be challenging, but ultimately, it can also be incredibly liberating.  It’s well worth taking active steps to instill the right boundaries, manage yourself, and manage-up as well if you have to. Once you truly uncouple work from a place you go, to be a thing you do, you’ll have the world at your feet… And hopefully, we will all soon be free to explore that world a bit more freely. Maya Middlemiss is a freelance journalist and author from London settled in Valencia, Spain. She is the author of the Healthy Happy Homeworking book series, with book 1 ‘Out Of The Office’ available now, and the new book on boundaries, “Finding Your Edge” publishing shortly. Join the mailing list for pre-order advice and pricing. Continuing with our theme on “Balance”, Leigh Matthews, Australian Psychologist and Founder of Therapy in Barcelona talks about how at times, we all struggle to seek balance. Selflessness has been glorified as a goal for the “good” woman, while balance, and the assertiveness, self-care, and boundaries that support balance, have been relegated to the realm of the “bad” woman/mother/wife. Balance has nothing to do with being good or bad, and everything to do with thriving, and empowering our children, partners, siblings, colleagues, and friends to thrive too. Stress is the result of imbalance. Stress occurs when the demands on you outweigh your coping resources. Finding balance means reducing the demands on you, or increasing coping skills, or both. What balance means and looks like is unique to you. When you have it, you will be thriving in multiple areas of your life, feel calmer, sleep better, be less easily upset by trivial things, and more enthused by your daily tasks. Balance is dynamic. There is no state of perfection or endpoint. Balance requires frequent reflections, and adjustments in priorities as the demands on you shift or as your self-care shifts. If you lose balance, you can get it back. If you obtain balance, you can lose your balance. It’s like riding a bike, you respond to changes in the environment or your wellbeing to keep balance. Self-compassion is essential on this journey because you will lose balance….and then obtain it again. In seeking balance it can help to shift from the question “what should I do?” to “who am I?” Who are you? What do you need and want? What are your values and priorities? The answers are the compass that will guide you in the boundaries you set and the choices you make to be able to function well. If you value family time, then you will need to set boundaries around work if it is devouring family life. If you value longevity and physical health, then fatigue, or illness signal a need to shift priorities to enhance self-care. If you are miserable and pursuing zero joyful activities, then you need to find some joy in your hobbies. In seeking balance it can help to shift from the thought “This is selfish” to “This is helping me show up as my best for others.” Balance is work and requires toppling mental barriers to obtaining and maintaining it. Beliefs like “I’ll upset others if I ask for what I need or want” prevent you from taking time or delegating to rectify the imbalance. Knowing your needs and personal bill of rights helps you to stay convinced of your right to do what needs to be done to maintain balance. “I have the right to say no!” “I have the right to change my mind.”  Did you realise, that just three words can help you in your quest for balance: “delegate, automate and eliminate.” Communicate assertively to delegate tasks at work and home. Balance means making conscious choices, taking responsibility, and granting responsibility to others. Delegate. Use technology to automate, schedule online shopping or social media posts. Use your email’s vacation responder to alert people to your need for time to respond. Eliminate tasks and sometimes even people that are unnecessary or make you stressed.  Care for yourself. Create your environment. Connect with your community. Ritualise your day – yoga in the morning, a walk after lunch, a non-negotiable lunchtime, news once a day for 30 minutes, an end and start time to the working day that you stick to, dedicated time for the family to eat and play together. Tend to your physical space. Lavish yourself with the nourishing, luxurious, “good” things you put aside for “special” days. Today is a special day. Now, we have an opportunity to get back to basics. Without travel plans, extracurricular activities, and social demands, we have an opportunity to reflect on our priorities, to better support our juggling act when the fullness of life returns.  Balance is a skill that requires practice and allows us to live a full expression of ourselves. The gifts of balance include self-respect, improved health, the capacity to be the best version of yourself, and, in turn a better mother, friend, colleague, boss, sibling, or partner.  By Leigh Matthews, Australian Psychologist and Founder of Therapy in Barcelona, an international team of therapists working online and in office with adults, couples, children, adolescents, and families. Follow Therapy in Psychologist and Founder of Therapy in Barcelona on Instagram @therapyinbcn or join their Therapist Led Peer Support Group on Facebook Do you feel you have that work-life balance in better proportion since working from home, or has any balance gone? We hope that some of these tips and insights will help you regain your balance. Please feel free to comment on your work-life balance and how things have changed.

  I wake up in the mornings and remember how grateful IAM for everything in my life, for the breath I breathe, the warmth and joy I feel flowing through my Body Consciousness, and the great company and home I share with my husband Tom. IAM Grateful for the singing birds, creepy crawlers and giant plants blowing gently in the breeze and for our sunshine days and opportunity to sit peacefully on our balcony, overlooking our beautiful garden.   Occasionally here in our magical paradise at home, we feel the storms, the rain, fierce wind and coldness, the sadness, confusion and anger as mass consciousness feels the pain and suffering of our yesterdays, affecting us all. Affecting our natural balance for a while, and then we are grateful and embrace it all. Grateful for the compassion, the nourishment and the cleansing it brings about for everyone and allows Humanity to move closer to experiencing the grand dream.   This is truly a great time to exist and be part of Humanity’s Evolution of Consciousness! Being part of a most natural transformation. Feeling how the rays of light pour down and naturally change the Human energy dynamics, allowing for the integration and embodiment of the Divine… for the ones who choose to experience Heaven on Earth.     Many of you know how my passion and mission these last 20 years has been holding the vision, for all Humanity to choose to embody and live their truth as a Celebration right here on the Earth plane, and sharing, through my writing and painting my own experience and journey awakening and embodying my Divine truth.   I inspire others to love themselves most deeply, to feel and observe the truth of their own power and magnificence within, quite simply by relaxing with their conscious breath. Embracing the darkness and the light, creating harmony within and making it possible for their desired new reality of unity and harmony to come into their Environment.   I feel blessed to continue to observe as more and more hearts awaken to their own truth and being living examples of DivineHuman Master’s and Creator’s, who we all truly are… causing ripples of change to spread throughout all of Humanity!       You can know, everything you are seeing playing out throughout the world is because of YOU! Because YOU dared dream of living your truth in harmony with others… of experiencing true and pure love, joy and peace right here!   You can know, everything not aligned with love, is no longer supported by the Earth and Cosmos and is crumbling before your very eyes. Everything in the entire world; the governments and the systems built on greed, domination and manipulation by a few, is falling apart and collapsing.   I know you sense; within the confusion and chaos on the outside, yourself living in the last days, weeks, months of darkness. A time for everyone with eyes to see, the ones who want nothing more than to keep Humanity enslaved in duality and limitation and are playing out their last card to bring us down on our knees. To fulfil their long term agenda to smother consciousness and control Humanity once and for evermore.     This year of 2021 is the year of the great divide; love against evil and the final showdown that will determine the continuance of Humanity’s natural evolution of Consciousness or not. It is a time for you to choose for yourself and stay safely in the eye of the storm, not choosing either side out there, only for yourself and the embodiment of Divine love and new experience of unity.   The curtain continues to fall and disclosure takes place ever so slowly… in order for more people to wake up, to follow their common sense and discover the truth of the bigger picture, being played out under our noses since the beginning of time!   When one chooses to embody love, we feel the joy within and the beauty around us. We know true freedom and the experience of NewEarth. We know in each moment which step to make next and get through this time in all ease and grace. We celebrate life no matter what, holding the vision and observe this great shift and transformation of Consciousness taking place.     Yes it’s tough, and it will remain this way for a while… until more of us stand up and say no more! No more enslavement! Choosing to love and trust yourself and play out your natural state of being Sovereign, free and powerful in your own right.   Nothing can hurt you out there if you stand in your light! Your Divine love conquers all and will bring you into a beautiful new experience of living your grand dream of unity consciousness here on the Earth plane.   It is time for the many to turn within and guide yourself through this time in all ease and grace… oh quite naturally!   ©Barbara Franken… Creative Visionary & Master CreatorInspiring New Energy Consciousness & Multi-Dimensional Living         A True Magical Children’s Story about Love and Life, available as an ebook for €4.19 More inform & link to purchase here.     A paperback and eBook is available from all Major online stores… Amazon and Apple.  I share my own magical journey, exploring Who I AM with the help of nine Elemental Beings and expand from a world of fear, struggle and limitation into a New Energy Consciousness of love, grace and freedom. It is in this loving space that I discover my Divine and ALL LOVING self and allow myself to integrate together as one Body Consciousness… a DivineHumanBeing… and Magnificent Master Creator who expresses and creates heart and soul passion on the physical plane and beyond..    Join my MasterCreator Class and emerge yourself in the celebration of life through dance, song, art, relaxed inner journeys and beyond everything known… preparing yourself for your NEW role on New Earth.   There is no time like the present moment to Sign Up and give YOURSELF this magnificent gift… More Info: MasterCreator Class     All the money raised from my books and classes go to my non-profit association The Magnificent Consciousness that holds free local Creative Art projects in Benalmadena, Spain.    

Now that the decorations are packed away and Christmas is truly done with, we at Age in Spain are looking forward to the challenges of 2021.   We started 2020 with a new project in partnership with the UK Government, to help vulnerable UK nationals living in Spain to secure their residency rights under the UK/EU Withdrawal Agreement. Our national Residency Helpline and outreach services have already directly helped more than a thousand people with information and one to one support. A small staff team and thirty volunteers provide the service and our caseload of people who face multiple barriers due to issues such as capacity, health, income, language or access to the internet, continues to grow.    For many UK citizens in Spain, the issue of residency still has not gone away. Many people began the process of becoming resident but are still waiting to conclude the process while others, not least because of the covid19-related delays, were unable to get appointments to even begin the process. The clear message from both the Spanish and UK Governments is that those who were legally living in Spain (ie they met the requirements to apply for residency and can demonstrate this with appropriate documentation) by 31 December 2020 can still apply for residency under the protection of the Withdrawal Agreement. However, we know that people’s “on-the-ground” experiences can vary widely and Age in Spain is still here to support people who need extra help with the residency process.    We are funded by the United Kingdom Nationals Support Fund to provide free support in the following regions: Catalonia, the Basque Country, Aragon, Navarra, La Rioja, Cantabria, Asturias, Galicia and the Balearic and Canary Islands.   People can contact the residency helpline on. +34 932 209 741 or email residency@ageinspain.org    Please do spread the word that we are still here to help.   Casework   Our casework service continues to help those who face losing independence and we expect to see increases in referrals during 2021. We have developed new caseworker training and support systems to ensure that, despite continuing Covid 19 restrictions, we can continue to make assessments and coordinate care packages with other welfare organisations to provide the vital support to stop vulnerable people slipping completely through the net.     Friendline – our new telephone friendship service   As important as residency and welfare issues are to many, we are equally keen that Age in Spain continues to serve all English-speaking older people in Spain, whatever their nationality. In that context we are delighted to tell you about Friendline – our new telephone friendship service that we launched just before Christmas.   Friendship is one of the best ways to help people stay healthy and happy but sadly as we get older we often lose or lose touch with people and making new friends often gets harder. Of course, this is even more true as we live through the Covid19 pandemic.   Friendline connects people who would like a regular weekly call with trained volunteers who have similar interests. There is no threshold of “need” to become a Friendline member. If someone is over 60 and an English speaker then they qualify. One way to think of Friendline is as vaccination against loneliness and isolation – it helps prevent the negative impact.   Find out more about Friendline at www.ageinspain.org/friendline and help us reach more people. Here is a very brief video about Friendline that we have used to promote the service on social media:       Finally, I would like to invite you to let us know about your work and to hear about potential opportunities to collaborate and make us all more effective in reaching and serving our communities. We certainly have exciting plans that we will share with you as the year goes on.   Helen Weir, Director

Nearly 3 years ago when we moved to southern Spain I would walk past a converted train ticket station in La Cala Del Moral, along the paseo maritímo, where they held monthly art exhibitions and think to myself – wouldn’t it be wonderful to have an exhibition there?? I’m excited to say this month, until February the 26th my work is being exhibited and although there are restrictions which right now are preventing dear friends in Spain and the UK from coming to see the work, I’m delighted to have a beautiful place to display my art work to the locals here. This has been an especially significant achievement for me as I have found transitioning from my home and daughters in the UK very challenging. My first year in Spain was painful as I was filled with grief for what I had left behind, and all my experience as a coach/mentor and self-development teacher could not pull me out of my sadness. I relied heavily on my faith and trusted in the belief that ’this too shall pass’. Time is a wonderful healer and moving forward meant taking action… learning some Spanish every day so that I could communicate and make jokes with the locals as well as transforming our apartment with colourful art work to make it feel more like home. I also continued to coach and mentor which gave me a wonderful sense of achievement as I helped people change their lives and achieve their goals. However, the most significant goal I achieved for myself was the constant turning up and working on my paintings. My husband Pablo is a guitar maker and teaches guitar making courses in his workshop in La Cala and I am fortunate to be able to share that space with him. I visualised myself showing my work in the local gallery and applied in October, not expecting for anything to happen for a year!! And it’s happened!! I hope you enjoy the virtual YouTube video which gives you a little tour round the exhibition, and I really hope that restrictions will allow more people to come during this month. Please let me know which of the paintings you liked best…     I love hearing which of my images touch people and why. Blessings, Dovi

Studies prove that writing down specific goals will help some people achieve significantly more in their lives than people who never set goals in the first place.   And if you’ve been following my posts over the past month, you know there’s another important step: taking action.   One trick I’ve learned from human-potential experts Dr. Dave Braun and Dr. Troy Amdahl – authors of Oola: Find Balance in an Unbalanced World – that makes taking action a whole lot easier is something they call “reverse-engineering your goal.”   It’s simply determining the exact actions you need to take that will create the income, build the network, lose the weight, or otherwise achieve the daily “wins” you need to meet your goal.     Reverse-engineering is time-efficient, purposeful, and effective. It is almost like building Lego – one piece at a time but you always have the big picture in mind.   How about YOUR goals? Whatever major breakthrough would change your life for the better, I’d be pleased to work with you to do the math, create a plan and take action every day to make that reality happen. Whether it’s financial sanity, a more fulfilling career, overcoming a major challenge, or something else, helping people find balance and create their dream lifestyle is what I do.   In fact, I’ve teamed up with Dr. Dave and Dr. Troy to deliver a coaching program that will help you achieve your own OolaLife – happy, balanced, and growing.   Message me and we can jump on a free discovery call about it.   It only takes 10 weeks to make massive progress.