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The hotlist – voted for by the natural and organic beauty industry is a snapshot of the leading personalities driving the newest trends and best products on the natural and organic market.
I’m absolutely thrilled to be part of bringing great natural beauty products into the mainstream.
I love to see natural beauty products being made more available to a wider market and Waitrose, Debenhams, Holland & Barrett, LoveLula, Beauty Kitchen, and Amaranth have all been recognised in the Natural Beauty Retail Awards which highlights the valuable contributions and support of retailers. These Awards celebrate the industry’s dedication and innovations in offering their customers a great retail experience, at the same time as promoting natural and organic beauty for all.
The Natural Beauty Retail Awards 2016 winners are:
Best Supermarket – Waitrose
Best Chain Store – Holland & Barrett
Best Department Store – Debenhams
Best Online Retailer – Lovelula
Best Branded Store – Beauty Kitchen
Best Independent Retailer – Amaranth
Formerly The Natural Beauty Yearbook, Natural Beauty News is the definitive trade publication for the natural and organic beauty industry. It covers the best in seasonal trends whilst also retaining the Yearbook’s most popular elements, such as Retailers Choice and the ‘Who’s Who’ in Natural Beauty.
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If you’ve read any books on personal development you will be very familiar with the concept of assessing your life, checking in with your core values, your goals and intentions, and then checking where you are really at on a day to day basis.
I’m sure you know too about the concept of the wheel of life, if you draw a wheel and divide up the spokes into categories – relationships, work, financial, health, physical activity, family etc. then you can honestly say where you are on that spoke. What usually happens is that we feel we’re doing well in a few areas and not so well in others – hence why our ‘wheel’ – our life, doesn’t always roll along as smoothly as we would like.
It’s a really good indicator to look at the big picture and ask how aligned are you. On my workshops I ask people to really look at and assess their core values, it’s the classic exercise where they start by choosing twenty words from a long list that resonate with them, then they need to narrow down to ten and then five and finally the top three. At first it seems impossible because we want to be everything but eventually it’s possible usually to focus on the three values that feel most intrinsic to who we are. From there, we can clearly see if we are putting our efforts in the right place!
Recently I’ve been reading The Compound Effect, read my blog post HERE. The author Darren Hardy spends a good chunk of the book talking about life assessment, but rather than suggest we mark ourselves between one and ten in each category, i.e. relationships and family, physical, business, financial, spiritual, he goes one step further and suggests we have subsections for each category. So for example, under the heading Spiritual, you rate between one and five on a series of ‘sub- questions’ such as:
‘I consider myself a spiritual person’
‘I take at least twenty minutes a day to meditate and reflect on my life’
‘I study my spiritual beliefs daily’…and several more
Rating these questions brought on one of those light bulbs for me because I am so often caught up in business and minutia, I don’t think I’d been honest with myself until I’d looked at it and saw just how many things that I say are hugely important to me, are going by the wayside in the name of being too busy.
If I merely had to rate the ‘spirituality’ corner of my wheel I would have rated it about an eight, yet when I really answered those very pertinent questions, I came down to a measly four.
As I went through each of the questions in the categories I had to be really honest with myself, I DO consider myself ‘spiritual’ but recently I have barely had time to go to the loo let alone carve out regular meditation time, and when I scored so low it was a bit of a wake-up call, as it’s high on my priorities.
In the ‘physical’ section of the wheel it was even more of a revelation, as someone who walks a lot, does regular yoga, Pilates, a fit-steps dance class (if you haven’t tried it DO!!), Nia dance whenever I can and the odd workout with weights when I remember, I usually score myself fairly high but in his life assessment breakdown questions, Darren throws in some curveballs…
Score yourself between one and five…
I do strength training at least 3x a week…(oops)
I do cardiovascular training at least 3x a week (nope)
I do stretching and yoga type exercises at least 3x a week (almost…)
And there was more…now of course all of his suggestions aren’t appropriate for everyone, but it is interesting how when you get down to the detail maybe there’s room for improvement, not in order to meet anyone else’s standards, only your own.
I’m not saying any of this to further beat myself up for what I’m not achieving – I’m self-made ‘imperfectly natural’ – remember – but it did make me question how I spend my time and focus.
There’s no doubt that books are awesome value, people (just like you) who have put potentially thousands of hours into honing their ideas and their craft to present it to you for a mere ten or so quid.
As a writer of motivational stuff, a Hay House author, and someone who runs workshops encouraging people to write their book, take the first steps…et al, you’d think I might have reached a point where I felt I didn’t need the ‘classic’ books around success and wellbeing. I’m well versed in the classics from Napoleon Hill through Scott Peck, to Hay House hero’s Dr David Hamilton, Pam Griers, Cheryl Richardson et al, not to mention Wayne Dyer. However, I came across an unassuming paperback at an event recently and something about it resonated. ‘The Compound Effect, Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success’ is by Darren Hardy, the publisher of Success Magazine, it’s been a New York Times best seller and the foreword is written by none other than Anthony Robbins, a must for the library of course, but something about this book actually made me want to read it, properly. Despite the author being American (and I doff my cap here to my US counterparts across the pond) there was none of the pious ‘get rich quick’ strive for success at all costs’ kind of dialogue, this is one of the most realistic down to earth books about success I have ever read.
The basic premise is that it’s not the ‘life changing’ massive 360 degree changes that sometimes come along to rock our world that shape most of us (though of course that might be the case) – rather it’s the little things we do (or don’t do) every single day, the small changes that when ‘compounded’ over time make a massive difference. Darren blows away the theory that only ‘lucky people’ are successful, that you have to be ‘naturally’ talented to succeed, instead he drills in the old fashioned traits of hard work, resilience, practice, yes he even goes as far as to say the path to becoming successful can be downright boring, lonely and unsexy. In our quick fix society we aren’t often used to hearing that and I found it hugely refreshing to read a multi billionaire tell me there is no quick fix. You, like me, may be exhausted by the stream of emails you get from ‘million dollar marketers’ promising you instant success overnight if you just pay them that six figure sum.
Darren says there is a formula for getting lucky:
Preparation (personal growth) +
Attitude (belief / mindset) +
Opportunity (a good thing comes your way) +
Action (doing something about it) =
Luck
The book is full of his own tales of growing up with a sergeant major style father who cut him no slack but made him the disciplined man he is today, he reminds us of the importance of tracking how we spend our time, analysing our thoughts, practising gratitude (a big one) being aware of our own habits and who is controlling who. I love his suggestion of taking each of your ‘vices’ – be it wine, coffee, chocolate and stopping that habit for 21 days to check that it isn’t controlling you. He suggests taking a long hard look at your habits, whether that be eating too much, procrastinating over a project you know you need to get started (how many of my clients tell me they know they MUST write their book…, avoiding conflict even though you know you need to ditch toxic relationships in your life and allowing fear to take hold (so that you hold back rather than taking the first steps to starting your business or fulfilling your dreams). We all think we need huge amounts of ‘willpower’ to change our habits, but as anyone who has ever tried to lose a considerable amount of weight just by giving up the extra calories will know, willpower doesn’t work, what we need is ‘why-power’ – if you want to make significant improvements in your life you have to have a ‘why’.
When I work with heart centred businesses this is usually the core of the problem, many of the people I work with are therapists or practitioners, and they are doing the work they are doing because they want to make a difference, they want to bring light, healing transformation, whatever it might be, but they are not always quite ready to stand in the spotlight and claim their own ‘USP’ their YOU-nique brilliance. ‘Don’t look at me…look at EFT…or aromatherapy…they say, but we have to see you, and you have to be willing to stand up and be counted. Be visible. A great number of people are nervous of speaking in public, having their photograph at the top of their website, doing a live stream on Facebook, but it’s true that people do business with those they like know and trust, so in order to sense if they can like you they need to see you!
The key is to be aware of what you want, what’s currently holding you back and know you can change. Pay attention to it every day and the ‘compound effect’ means that over time…the little actions add up and you will be on course to achieve your success – no gimmicks, no spin, no quick fix. Old fashioned hard work, knowing what you want and going for it, bit by bit…and then some.
The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy – Da Capo Press
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