< PreviousBYou may want to be professional, elegant, edgy, different, sexy or comfortable. These words will start to form the look that you feel most confident and aligned in. Think about how these words visually look and then it's about creating a wardrobe that reflects how you want to look and feel every day. This will become the foundation of your personal style. efore diving head first into your wardrobe, think about 3-4 adjectives todescribe how you want your style to look. To reduce wardrobe overwhelm, follow this 7- point checklist on each item you own: Does this fit my body shape and/or flatter my best features? Do I have something to wear with this item to make it an outfit? Does this reflect my perceived style and how I want to communicate my style language? Is it damaged or the quality compromised? How do I feel when I wear this item Where will I wear this item? Does the colour enhance my skin tone or age me? Any item that doesn’t flatter or enhance you is taking up valuable space and cluttering up your life.Say goodbye to the items that create feelings of guilt or don’t make you feel good enough.Once these items are removed, you are then left with only the items that will make you feelconfident, happy and fit in with the lifestyle you lead. I guarantee that lurking amongst the overflowing wardrobe, there will be items that you forgotyou owned. You will have found shoes, scarves, accessories and jackets that are still relevantand perfect for the life you are leading. Being able to shop within your own wardrobe isinspiring, sustainable and creates a joy within your wardrobe that you didn’t know waspossible? There will always be items to add to make it a fully functioning wardrobe, but by only havingthe items that work, you can clearly see the gaps and you can confidently purchase without anyguilt. Performing a wardrobe cleanse is equally a physical and emotional exercise. Creating a sense oforder within your wardrobe contributes to inner calm. Having a clear vision of what your styleis will ultimately save you time, money and lead to a more sustainable outlook on life. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. - CLAIRE LUCE BOOTHDECLUTTER YOUR MIND By Sue Lester for lost items, squandering money re-buying things you’ve forgotten you had. The same applies to your cluttered mind. Your conscious mind can be cluttered with expectations, realistic or otherwise - lots of “mustn’t forget”, “should”, “have to”; fragments of unfinished projects through multitasking and shinyobjectitis, story loops reliving angry or upsetting encounters and the dreaded “What ifs”. No wonder you feel frazzled and overwhelmed! n an overly cluttered house you trip over things, sometimes hurting yourself and waste enormous amounts of time and energy lookingITake a large piece of paper, divide it into 2 columns labelled Business/Work and Personal. Dump absolutely everything that comes to mind what you should, must or want to do on it. No matter how trivial, get it out of your head and on to paper. Now go through and Delete, Delegate, Diarise or Defer each item. You’ll have much less to do at the end, and feel more in control without the endless reminders churning in your head. Here are some steps to get you started decluttering your mind, and keeping it that way. The magic is in the maintenance, as always.1Mega To Do list: Stop multitasking. Stay mindful with one task at a time, as much as possible. 2This is admittedly harder with very young children. Reprioritize. It’s more efficient and much less stressful to play with one ball at a time. When finished, you mentally put the ball down, in the past (if finished) or future, and pick up another ball. When thoughts intrude, say “I’ll handle that at X o’clock” not: “I’ll worry about that later.” Diarise it immediately if you think you’ll forget, set your phone alarm if it's time- critical so you can relax and focus on your current task. Or say “That’s in the past now” and mentally flick it behind you. Self-talk is self-programming so be careful how you talk to yourself. Instead of saying “I mustn’t forget XYZ”, use “I must remember to do XYZ in time.” If you tell yourself & others you have a terrible memory and always forget, it will be true. Know that as soon as you ask someone else to remind you to do something, you’ll mentally wipe it off your To Do list, however it may not go on to theirs. Take responsibility for your own reminders, and say “No” more often. 3Mind your language4Time travel for good not evilWhat you think, feel, interpret and act on in the present creates your future. If you imagine a future of failure andrejection, you feel it in your body, and your body naturally wants to flee or fight. It can’t do either because theevent is only in your imagination. It can only freeze, causing anxiety and panic attacks. Some will depressthemselves by reliving an unhappy past and projecting that out into the future. When you catch yourself doing a negative “What if?”, ask yourself “What if it doesn’t happen like that? How willthat feel?” That will bring you back to the present, the only moment that is real, feeling either neutral or positive.Next take action to ensure the negative either can’t happen, or that you are well prepared. Sleep well.5As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness - HENRY DAVID THOREAURANDOM INFORMATIONBy Nerin Chappell A SIMPLE SOLUTION TOThe amount of information we are bombarded with everyday can be completely overwhelming, and still continues to grow. We need a simple way to manage the pieces that we want to save for future reference. Do you have scraps of paper, emails, photos in your phone, information that doesn't quite FIT anywhere? Or maybe you have a project you're working on with all kinds of research, quotes, ideas, photos, websites and articles that you want to organise and be able to search easily? Next >