Hello awesome human! I cannot believe we’ve come to the end of 2014, seriously this year has flown by! I hope this mega list of awesome links will keep you occupied if you have some down time these holidays. Enjoy.


You may have heard on the grapevine that I am currently in the midst of creating a free eBook for my newsletter subscribers. The ebook is going to be super inspirational and contain some stories from my own life, as well as some actionable tips. Last week I shared a snippet with my newsletter subscribers about how to overcome fear. It got such a great response I decided to share a little sneak peek here on the blog as well. Enjoy!
I’m sitting in the meditation hall. The silence is deafening. I can hear my own heart beating. My back is aching. Tears are streaming down my face. Every single part of me wants to get up and run far away from this place and never come back. I find myself wondering what I’m doing here and my mind wanders to the events that led me here…
It all began a few months before, when I started reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle – a total life-changing read.
The idea of presence and mindfulness was revolutionary for me, but I was having difficulty bringing more presence into my daily life.
Then I read Tara’s incredible post about her Vipassana experience.
Honestly I was bedazzled that anyone would willingly subject themselves to 100 hours of meditation in 10 days.
However, contradictorily every atom in my body told me that I was going to go to a Vipassana meditation retreat.
So this time last year I found myself at a retreat, sitting in the meditation hall wondering how I got there.
Those 10 days were the most challenging and intense of my life, but they were also very rewarding and transformative.
I went to the retreat hoping that by immersing myself in 10 days of silence and stillness would help me bring more presence and mindfulness into my every day life, but honestly I left learning so much more, that still influences me in my life today.

I absolutely love reading — and I always have. There have been so many books that have changed my life. There have been books that have changed the way I see the world, ones that have opened up my eyes to new perspectives, and ones that have left a lasting impression long after I’ve finished turning the pages.
Here are 5 books that have genuinely changed my life in someway and that I highly recommend.
I hope you enjoy them as much as I have! 🙂

One of my favourite things to do is make a pot of herbal tea and read link round-up posts, so it was only time before I start putting my own together.
This link fest contains some of my favourite articles I read in November, plus some things I’ve been loving this month too.
Good morning you incredible human!
It’s time for another serve of The Gratitude Diaries – a segment where I share what I am grateful for, the things I’m loving and just stuff that is just rocking my world.
Let’s do this!

One of my all time favourite blogs belongs to Tara Bliss. So needless to say, when she released her book High: A Party Girl’s Guide to Peace I was beyond excited.

Anxiety is something I have experienced on and off for as long as I can remember. Trying to find what helps me keep anxiety at bay has taken patience, persistence, an open mind and a willingness to try many different things. Today I am going to share with you 8 ways to reduce anxiety that I personally use in my own life. Keep in mind that everyone experiences anxiety differently and what will help to reduce it will also be different for each individual.

Being grateful is one of the (many) important practices that helps me to live my best life. Last week I shared my tips to create a powerful Gratitude practice, and one of them was to publicly declare your Gratitudes. So today I’m walking my talk and starting what I hope to be regular feature on my blog: The Gratitude Diaries. It will be a space where I can share the things that I am appreciative of and things I am loving.
You know that amazing feeling you get when you discover something new that you absolutely love? And you have an uncontrollable desire to share them with pretty much every single human you know? That’s precisely what has led me here today. There have been a few things that have come into my world recently that I have been loving and I am so excited to share them with you.
So without further ado, here are 3 things that I am currently digging:
image via Danielle Laporte