Breaking the mould

Many years ago I spent some time working in a steel works as a metallurgist. A steel works can be a fascinating and quite frightening place to be and, alongside the powerful images of huge furnaces and rolling mills, one of the more beautiful visions that I remember is that of the sand casting process. [...]

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Fun and frivolity

“What do you do that’s frivolous?” This was a question posed of me at a pre-Christmas party and caught me completely unprepared. In that moment, despite being ever so slightly under the influence of a rather delicious glass of mulled wine, I couldn’t think of a single thing! Well, how boring does that make me?! [...]

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Finding Peace in a Simpler Life

Since starting my downshifting journey to a more sustainable existence, I have become acutely aware of just how frequently other people voice their exasperation at “having to lead a seemingly pointless and unhappy existence.” I was one of those people a mere 10 years ago. So much has changed in that short space of time. [...]

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Back to School – or Not?

From my experiences of helping to run a local home educators’ support group, I know that the school summer holidays can be a decision time for those families who are facing problems with their children’s education. Sometimes it is the act of going away together that gives parents and children the opportunity to talk about [...]

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Intuition and sustainablilty

1. What is intuition? Many of us can cite examples of times when we have used our intuition or perhaps been aware of it and yet ignored it; for example picking a time to have a difficult conversation with a friend or knowing which turning to take at an unfamiliar and poorly signed road junction. [...]

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Job Juggling and the Home Educating Family

As lifestyle challenges go, combining earning a living whilst at the same time home educating your children, has to be one of the toughest. I’m assuming, for the purposes of this article, that you’re not one of the few home educating families where the parents can afford to go out to work and employ someone [...]

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Time management for downshifters

Have you downshifted and yet still spend your days racing against the clock? One of the bug bears of many of my clients is this: they manage to leave the rat race, to reduce their working hours, to balance their working lives with their personal lives, to find work doing something they truly love BUT [...]

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De-stress Your Thinking – Part Two.

In part one of this article, we considered the symptoms of stressful thinking and how that affects us. Using two examples of stressful thinking – “I don’t have enough time” and “I’m not motivated,” I introduced you to a simple strategy for de-stressing such limiting thoughts. In part two, we’ll look at two more examples [...]

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