In exactly the same way as we might bake a cake, because we all deserve treats, you can make your own opportunities.

Very often, we only need to make little tweaks in our mind set, to help shift away feelings of complacency; or to assist in heaving us out of long spells of unhelpful procrastination, or the hefty toll of over-thinking.

But, because these emotions can be all-consuming, they clutter up our heads and to such an extent, that they block our sensibility, and we forget that we can harness our wayward emotions: favouring our intellect instead.

If we’ve never baked a cake before, then trying to copy a professional chef’s bouncy sponge, or recreate their awesome sugar art, will only make us feel disappointed with ourselves – if ours doesn’t turn out the same. Yet since the desire is to make a sweet treat, we could achieve the same yumminess, if instead we take the opportunity to bake, far simpler- to- make: chocolate chip cookies.

This is how we can think when we’re making opportunities. It is about achieving and collecting small wins, that just like pennies: add up to a higher value…

“I can’t bake for toffee” – now shifts to “Wow I’ve just baked a tray of home-made cookies”.

And hey presto, some of the poor-thinking debris melts away in your head. The rubbish that likely was not of your making anyway: poor self-narrative or learned behavior. Within this is an opportunity for you to feel accomplished with yourself for making a drop of tasty self-care for number one. It’s nice to reward ourselves, and if you’ve not been in the kitchen recently, then another opportunity presents itself for you to start enjoying more cookery: an opportunity to save money, and another for far nourishing home-cooked food.

These kind of: lily-pad wins are part of your life-journey; I’m sure many of you endure challenges and worries. Few of us have chocolate-box lives. But we all deserve to be the best versions of ourselves, because within this is the opportunity to feel content and peaceful.

Instead of being mean to yourselves, and especially for those of you: who’ve not had maternal guidance: can benefit from recalling, that you’ve not experienced the doting caress.   You will be hard on yourselves. You likely do have holes in your self-esteem or worth.

Yet, within this fact, you are a survivor, and you’re innately strong, because you had to be. All that happens sometimes, is like everyone, you will have time thinking this way. But next time you do firstly remember that every human emotion is normal and valid. Picture your almighty younger resilient- self. Or a time when perhaps a kind shop-keeper gave you a supportive smile.

Those little strands of happy childhood memories are powerful: they kept you going, and still do, they have been preserved in your memory: the sweet jam in a cake. You’ve just got to remember to hoke them out of your head cupboard.

They can be remembered and revived: a glorious opportunity to siphon-off old energy.

Don’t focus on the bad bits: cut them away as you would on an apple, when baking a pie: just use the nutritious fruit.

In the same way as learning to bake, we can apply this to the way we think about opportunities. Start with the small ones: cooking / getting outside (which once it becomes habitual, you have the opportunity to make walking a regular enjoyment) clearing away old clutter / making some cash on the way etc.

And this all starts when you recall that you have the opportunity to pilot your own magnificent human brain: be the teacher of the hindering emotions… and who knows perhaps while you’re strolling down newly -discovered lanes. Or, allowing the sea breeze to re-charge your atoms: perhaps your tough childhood could reward you with the opportunity to be a counsellor, or a teacher?

I hope this is helpful.

SUNNY wishes, Emma x