A note on not giving up, Part Two

Posted in Positive Thinking by ameliaflorencesimmons

Things started to look up in January. I can recall having just one moment where I experienced the highly unoriginal sentiment ‘life’s too short’, for the first time. I’d trekked into work, suffered a 40 minute bus journey where I’d stood up all the way, surrounded by screaming children, terrifying looking chavs, and people who looked like they’d given up on life. I then jumped on a train for the remainder of my journey, which was delayed Every. Single. Day. I got into work, late, for a day of being screamed at over the phone by people I’d never met. And then I realised. Life’s too short to make a daily three hour round trip to a job in a call centre that made me miserable. Life is TOO SHORT to not be doing what I want, and to not even try.

And from then on, it just sort of clicked in. I began to engage more with life. I moved on from the call centre, heard back from the job I wanted in advertising, and I began to blog more. I started setting myself blogging challenges, focussed around doing things for other people, or trying something new. I enrolled in Race for Life and started running. I started organising events and trying to see a lot more of my friends. Slowly but surely, things started to change.

The main difference was actually something incredibly easy to do. I mentioned it in my post on New Year’s Resolutions: just say yes. I began to say yes to things, to different opportunities, to invitations, and suddenly my world opened up. Instead of just planning things and never doing them, I made it my mission to just get up and do it. My friend India and I talked about going to Latitude festival. In previous years, I’d only have talked about it, ultimately being put off by the idea of not having a bath for four days, and I’d never have gone. Instead, we saved up, booked tickets, and it was one of the best things I did all year.

I made it a policy to try new things. I’d never run to fundraise before, and entering Race for Life was a fantastic experience. In previous years, it’d always been that thing that I ‘really ought to do’. It was always on my To Do list. I would say things like ‘yes, I really wanted to enter Race for Life this year, but I just didn’t get round to it’. In 2011, I got round to things. I sat down, enrolled myself (it took less than fifteen minutes), and set up a fundraising page. I found that the more I ‘just did’, the more things I wanted to do. I’d set up a precedent now, and I wasn’t going to let myself down.

The other wonderful thing I found was that one thing inevitably lead to another. Through Twitter, I found out about a fashion festival happening on the Pantiles. The woman organising it runs her own online fashion magazine, www.LadyMPresents.co.uk, and I volunteered myself to be in it. Not only did I have the insanely fun experience of walking in the fashion show, but because Lady M herself liked my (somewhat bizarre) outfits, she wanted to write a feature on me. Fast forward a month, and instead of writing a feature, she wanted me to write my own column. Then suddenly, I was going to London Fashion Week to cover some of the shows. I’m now a regular contributor, and it’s one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done. I’d always dreamt of going to London Fashion Week, but never thought I’d get the chance. While I’m on the subject, I must thank Lady M for her unbelievable support – she’s a dream editor, and she’s made this past year so special.

I also started paying attention to my strengths and weaknesses, and applied my ‘life’s too short’ philosophy countless other times. The job I thought I’d wanted turned out to be incredibly wrong for me. I left with the goal of pursuing more creative pastimes, and so it was that a few months on, I began to design and make my own jewellery. Thanks to the support of friends and the extremely helpful videos you can find on YouTube, I’ve managed to design and build my own website (also thanks to Mikey for getting me out of a sticky spot), and I’ve never been happier.

Things have continued to happen – I became an ambassador for the Teenage Cancer Trust, which you’ll be hearing a lot more about in the New Year, and I’ve just got another ‘post’ doing PR, communications and general Girl Friday-ing for a fantastic local artist. A year which started with me working in a call centre is ending a million miles away. I’m excited about life again, I’m enjoying myself, and I’ve never worked so hard in my life.

But, look. This blog isn’t about showing off about my endeavours (well, not completely, anyway.) I wanted to use my own example as a tool, to show you that you shouldn’t give up. I know I wasn’t exactly in the gutter before, but I had no idea what I wanted from life. I was just coasting by, not really engaging with anything, feeling miserable. If you saw yourself in this blog, then don’t worry. Things can and will change. Just remember the following:

Don’t ignore opportunities – you never know what they could lead to.
Say yes to everything
…Within reason – don’t be a doormat…
Be an interesting person – cultivate your own interests. The arts, sports, books. Whatever it is, tap into your interest and find a way to pursue it. In many cases, you can do that for free.
Use social media – Twitter and blogging, you never know what you’ll come across.
Just get out – what good is sitting along in your room? Simply getting out and doing something can work wonders.
Don’t give up – if you don’t feel things are going right for you at the moment, keep going. If you have the right attitude, you can make things happen.

Thanks for reading, chaps. It’s been a pretty self-involved post, and I apologise for that. But if you get your own blog, you too can be marvellously self-obsessed.

Lots of love and a Happy New Year,

Amelia xx

26Dec2011

Resolutions

Posted in Positive Thinking by ameliaflorencesimmons

I’ll start with a confession. I love New Year’s Resolutions. I start thinking about them back in November, and by the time this post-Christmas week rolls around, I’m absolutely dying for the New Year to start. Perhaps it’s also because my birthday is quite early in the year, in January, so it feels like a really fresh start.

In 2010, I couldn’t wait to shake off the old year, and it wasn’t just me. I remember sitting around with friends, and discussing how and why 2010 had been such a thoroughly appalling year all round. We deigned that 2011 was going to be ‘the year of getting what you deserve’ (for better or worse, I suppose!) Anywho, it really did work out that way. I finally got moving career wise, but more than anything, I actually managed to keep some semblance of my New Year’s Resolutions.

Despite my aforementioned lusting about them, I have frequently started out the year hepped up on lists and promises, running full force at a variety of ridiculous new hobbies, and burning myself out by March. Come March, my beautifully written, hopeful lists have crumbled to dust, my workout gear is rapidly getting eaten up by moths, and I’m teetering on bankruptcy due to all the ludicrous implements I’ve had to invest in for my new hobbies.

Back to the point. Last year was actually infinitely better, for just one good reason. I didn’t set myself ‘negative resolutions’. What I mean by that is, I didn’t have a single resolution that went along the lines of ‘Never, and I mean NEVER, eat biscuits’. They were all positive things, like ‘go to a music festival’. At the end of 2011, I found that I’d managed to keep a regular blog, throw a Royal Wedding party, go to my first concert (lame, but I’d always thought I’d rather just buy the CD and spend money on a proper night out…), go to my first festival (ALRIGHT, so I’m pathetic!), get my first ‘grown-up’ job, walk in a catwalk show, go to London Fashion Week, run Race For Life, become a regular contributor to an online fashion magazine, start my own business and become an ambassador for an amazing charity, amongst other things.

It worked because I started looking outwards. I also set myself goals about trying to think more about other people. One of the first challenges I set myself was making a copy of a jacket I owned that my little second cousin had taken a shine too, and that was probably one of my favourite things of the last year. I made it back in January, but she still wears it now! Too often, our Resolutions are all selfish, and often unreasonable: get thinner, get whiter teeth, go for a five hour run every morning, go from being single to married in twelve months, buy an amazing car, etc. I didn’t do any of those last year, I just set myself challenges, the most important of which was the following: to take every opportunity I could see.

If you keep your eyes open, you can change your life without even putting in a huge amount of effort. I’m a huge advocate of Twitter, and many of the positive things that have happened in the past year have been because I spotted an opportunity on Twitter, and took it. I even found my most recent job through The Mighty Twit. Do you know what? Life is just too short to keep holding yourself back. It’s a cliché, it’s all a cliché, but thinking like this worked for me. If you are holding yourself back, why? What are you scared of? Have no regrets, take every chance, just GO FOR IT.

I know it’s all sounding terribly naff and self-helpy. But 2011 has been a completely fantastic, different year for me than 2010, and so much of that has been due to my more positive state of mind. The world is absolutely full of possibilities, and you owe it to yourself to at least try. Whatever it is that’s holding you back, be it the fact that you only eat Super Noodles, or that you hate public transport, or that you’re in a rubbish relationship, just fix it and move on. Once you’re cleared the clutter from your life, you can focus on starting to achieve whatever it is you’ve always wanted.

Here are my suggestions for when you’re drawing up your Resolutions:

Make it achievable – you’ve got to walk the line between aspiration and practicality. Keep it something that’s in your capabilities, for now. Remember, there’s always next year!
Keep it positive – as I said, stick to challenges as opposed to huge lifestyle changes that you’ll never maintain.
The more you try, the more good will come your way – things tend to feed into each other. You might be surprised as to what happens when you start making small changes.
Put it on paper – if you’re writing a list, make it attractive, and put it on your wall, not just languishing in some mouldy old notebook.
Don’t keep looking inwards – by all means, if you want to lose weight, go for it. But make sure you keep things balanced.
Just say yes – the easiest way to make a change is to just start saying yes. Whether it’s event invitations, or giving someone a helping hand, just saying yes puts you on a good path. Keep it within reason though, don’t be the person who can’t ever say ‘no’…
Pace yourself – trying to tick off everything on your list by the end of January is insanity. Try setting a new challenge at the beginning of each month, and you’ll keep your year interesting.
Don’t join the gym…yet – ah, the classic resolution. Seriously, don’t kick off your year by outlaying huge amounts to the local fitness emporium. If you really are looking to shape up, start out by getting free workouts from YouTube. If, two months down the line, you want more, THEN join the gym.
Small changes can be the most effective – if you don’t fancy a huge overhaul, keep it small. I’m taking this tip from one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever known: every time we’d go out to eat, he’d always have something different to eat. In fact, he would generally always try something new. Stop sticking to what you know. Adrian, I’m sending you a link to this post, because I want you to know I still remember your unique approach to life!
Keep a blog – and finally, write it down. A blog is the perfect way to keep a record of what you’re up to. When you’re flagging, you can look back over the year and see all the different things you’ve done. I can’t recommend it enough.

So there we are, ladles and jellyspoons. I hope I’ve given you a bit of food for thought. Don’t be daunted by the new year, and don’t make the same mistakes you did last time. Be excited by life, be inspired, and be positive. You won’t have any regrets, I promise.

Whether you make the biggest change of your life in 2012, or you keep it small, good luck. You can do it!

Lots of love,

Amelia xx

29Nov2011

If you read one thing on my blog, read this

Posted in Charity, Positive Thinking by ameliaflorencesimmons

As you sit down and read this post, I want you to pretend to be Doctor Who and transport yourself back to your own teenage years. Strip away any thought of children, marriage, university, your first job, everything you know now…feel those years falling away. Can you remember how it felt to be 16? To be 15, 14? How did it feel? Those awkward, self-conscious, hilarious, embarrassing, exhilarating years. Remember how you felt in your own skin. Did you go through an ‘ugly duckling’ stage? Did you wear braces, glasses, carry a bit of extra weight? Did you stay up all night talking to your friends? Did you discover eveything new? Drinking, smoking, having sex, relationships, a social life…

Even if you look back and still want to dig yourself a hole for those moments when you felt unbelievably uncomfortable, you probably still think it was an amazing time. Even if you scraped through your GCSEs, experienced your first painful breakup and your first breakouts, you might still look back and smile. For me, my teenage years were entirely self-absorbed. My worries seemed huge. WHY had I left my homework until the last minute, again? Would I be carded if we went to a proper club? Why couldn’t I afford the shoes I wanted? Oh, the delicious vacuity. I look back now and think about how I felt. I thought I knew everything. Some days, I thought I could take on the world. Others, I didn’t think I could get out of bed. I was a raging mess of hormones, laughter and precociousness. Perhaps you were similar.

Are you there? Are you back there, wandering school corridors, frequenting coffee shops, huddling in the only bar known to serve the underage? Ok, good. Now I’d like you to imagine that, in the midst of all of that wonderful turmoil, the most unthinkable thing happens. Perhaps you just have flu that you can’t seem to shake off. Maybe you find something a bit lumpy – but that’s nothing new, because your body seems to change everyday. Possibly that little mark near your elbow seems to have changed a bit. You worry, because you’re a teenager and everything seems like the end of the world. Maybe you tell a parent. They might seem concerned, or maybe they just tell you it’s probably perfectly normal, and not to worry about it. You might go and see your GP. They too might tell you not to worry – after all, they probably have hundreds of teenagers in every week, worrying themselves stupid.

Maybe you lose or gain weight. You just don’t feel quite right. You go back to your GP. They might take a look and refer you onwards. You’re more than worried by now. You get your referral, and you’re thoroughly checked out. And some time on, you get a phone call that you never, ever thought you’d get. You’ve just been diagnosed with cancer. Cancer, that huge, ugly word that automatically inspires fear in all of us. It’s a word that shouldn’t really penetrate the world of a teenager, and yet it is, for six young people every day in the UK. Your world feels like it’s closing in, and your identity is thrown into question – the identity you’ve been striving to understand anyway. And bit by bit, the things that make up who you are slowly get taken away. The more it progresses, the less control you have over your own life. Everything, from the time you get up to the time you go to bed begins to be taken away from you. What you eat, what you drink….maybe even your hair. At a time when a spot on your nose can seem utterly catastrophic, imagine how it would feel to lose your hair. You can imagine the rest.

You might be wondering where I’m going with this. You might well have stopped reading, because it’s just a bit too uncomfortable to read, and you want to look away and not think about it. Well, I just wanted you to think about some of the issues a teenage cancer patient has to go through. Why? Because I want to talk to you about a charity that I am currently working as an ambassador for: the Teenage Cancer Trust. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. I want to explain a little bit about what they do, and why they’re very worthy of your support.

The Teenage Cancer Trust was founded just over 20 years ago by a group of people who found out what a hard battle teenagers with cancer faced. Teenagers used to be either treated with young children or old people, so were effectively alienated from the people on their ward. Anyone who has been in a hospital knows that for the most part, it’s not a good place for a young person to be. When you’re young, your bedroom is your sanctuary. To be taken away from that and plonked on a ward with people more than four times your age is not conducive to recovery. Teenagers tend to need to visit hospital a lot as they can get some of the rarest and most aggressive forms of cancer, due to their developing bodies. The original group raised the money to build the first Teenage Cancer Trust unit at Middlesex Hospital in 1990.

So you see, TCT need to raise funds not just for supporting teenagers and their families, and educating young people on recognising cancer (all things that they do exceptionally well), but they need money to build units for young people. They’re currently finishing work on a ward at the Royal Marsden in Surrey, which has cost £3 million. TCT wards are beautiful and unique, and designed to create a comfortable and enjoyable environment for the young people, which in turn leads to them having more strength to fight back. TCT aim to give teenagers back some of the control they lose in their lives, by making them completely in control of their surroundings. They can control lighting and sounds, have individual computers with constant internet access, TV screens, and ‘common rooms’ that look more like university halls than a hospital.

Everything is designed to make a teenager still feel like they are first and foremost a teenager, and that the cancer is secondary. Games tournaments are held on the Wiis or Playstations fitted on the ward. A special sound proof room is provided, where the young people can plug their iPods in on the outside, and listen to music at top volume without disturbing anyone. This can be cathartic if someone has received some bad news, or just needs some alone time – they can even go there at 3am in the morning if they need to. All staff are specially trained to deal with teenagers, and it shows in the way they interact with the young people. TCT are providing an unbelievable service that is so, so essential to these young people, and can help give them back their quality of life.

TCT units provide a positive and stable environment for teenagers to go to. Units feature ‘schoolrooms’ where teenagers can study, read, and even take their exams if they want. Many former TCT unit patients go on to good jobs, to sixth form college, or to university, and this is in no small part due to the encouragement and positivity that TCT provides. It’s so important for a teenager to feel like a teenager, and this is exactly what the Teenage Cancer Trust give them. In fact, I’m going to stop talking and let the teenagers tell you exactly what they think themselves:

I hope you’ve felt inspired by this blog. There’s so much more I could tell you about this amazing charity, and all the services they provide, but I’ll wait, because I’m already at well over 1200 words.

We’re currently setting up a fundraising outpost in Tunbridge Wells. Although the Royal Marsden is in Surrey, it’s our closest unit. We need people with ideas, with passion, with empathy…and you can give as little or as much time as you’d like. I’ll keep posting about TCT, but please comment on here or find me on twitter @ameliafsimmons for more details. We want to raise as much as we can. TCT is a very small charity who receive no government funding, so fundraising is incredibly important. I’ll keep you posted on upcoming events and ways you can get involved with this truly inspirational charity. Meanwhile, check out http://www.teenagecancertrust.org and ‘Like’ their Facebook page.

Thank you so much for reading.

Amelia x

21Nov2011

Winter

Posted in Fashion, Positive Thinking by ameliaflorencesimmons

Prepare yourself for an extremely lazy post. Essentially, I’ve been too busy writing things for other people to write anything for myself, so what you have here is a collection of pretty pictures (all courtesy of the outrageously sexy Google images) that make me think of the festive time of year. Just giving my poor old tired brain a rest…

24Sep2011

Then you’re going to be a star…

Posted in Body image, Health & Beauty, Positive Thinking by ameliaflorencesimmons

I just finished watching ‘Cherry’s Body Dilemmas’ on BBC3. Now, let me just explain myself. This is not at all the kind of thing I usually watch, and I wish I could claim that I found it revelatory, or that it was a cut above the rest of a slew of similar shows, or even that the people interviewed were uniquely charming. It was none of these things. Cherry Healey seems like a very sweet person with a totally darling little girl, but that doesn’t change the fact that this show gave me nothing new whatsoever. What’s that? Girls in their twenties with body issues? Someone who is ok with being ‘fat’? How strange – one girl wants a bigger bottom, not a smaller one. And a nudist! Goodness me, just mull over these different points of view! My mind has well and truly been expanded.

There was something that was different, though, which really had little to do with the actual content of the show, but more to do with my reaction to it. At some point during the last couple of years, without actually registering it at all, I’ve become really happy with my body. What?! How did that happen? It strikes me as funny that something so huge and all-encompassing has just changed for the better, and I’ve not even noticed. It’s especially bizarre when I think about all the hours spent agonising over my looks as I grew up, and even moments of claiming I ‘hated’ my body.

In the show, Cherry trawled through her old diaries, shocked at how many pages displayed scrawled longings for a thinner body. I know even without looking at mine that they contain some similar pages, particularly at a few choice periods of my life. I’m fairly sure there might even be lists somewhere, of everything that I felt was wrong with myself, or things that I wanted to change. I remember going on crazy diets, not eating for days, then falling off the wagon spectacularly. School, my lovely Private all girls school haven, was obviously an interesting place for this kind of malarkey. I distinctly remember an ‘anorexia watch’ at lunchtimes that made sure we were eating enough.

I remember one awful Summer, long ago, where I suddenly became horribly self-aware. Even in the most blazing of hot days, I kept myself swathed in a long, thick coat, because I was simply too self-conscious to go without. I weighed myself obsessively, I noted down everything I ate, I cried and cried to myself and imagined how perfect everything would be if I just lost all that terrible weight. I can’t ever have been more than 9 stone, if even that, but I felt huge. Even at uni, during stressful periods the eating was always the first to go. Break-ups, exam stress, anxiety, and suddenly I’d be eating less and less. But so what? Ask a certain type of girl, and they’ll all cite exactly the same experiences.

My worst habit is getting too into things. So I’d start with ‘healthy eating’, which was just trying to be a bit more careful, you know, not a diet or anything, obviously, but just eating a bit more fruit and veg. Two weeks later and all bad foods would have vanished. Another fortnight after that and I’d be eating a bit of vegetarian sushi from M&S and obsessing over calorie free drinks. Another two weeks and I’d be falling into a pile of cake.

What changed, then? It must be a number of things, looking back. I haven’t weighed myself in years, for a start. Last time I did I think I was around 8 stone, but that doesn’t really mean anything to me in the real world. Clothes sizes are untrustworthy, so I make a point not to care too much about those. I got into exercising, but not obsessively. I ran to raise money for Cancer Research, and I loved doing that. I started listening to compliments from girls and boys, instead of shrugging them off. I learnt to dress for myself. I am now extraordinarily confident about my body, in a way I never even dreamed would be possible.

I only measure myself against myself these days, if that makes sense. Years ago I used to constantly look at other girls and think ‘are my thighs bigger or smaller than hers?’ It was ongoing, and thoroughly miserable. Now I just focus on me, because really, what’s the point? It’s not like you’re going to be able to swap thighs with that girl, so why agonise over it? Exercising has helped hugely, because you start thinking about what your body can achieve, instead of what it can’t. I eat what I want, at regular intervals, and I never look at calorie counts, because that’s a downhill slope for me. I avoid anything ‘low fat’ or ‘sugar free’, because it’s rammed full of nasties. I enjoy food, and I enjoy cooking. I started looking outside of myself. I met people who’d suffered life-threatening illnesses and were glad just to be alive. I’m now an ambassador for the Teenage Cancer Trust, and I’ve learnt so much about being grateful for what I have.

But back to the confronting the day to day issues. Experimenting with my clothes has really been a huge saving grace. I have a very small waist that I used to hate, as I thought it made my hips and shoulders look bigger. Now, I’m grateful. There’s a classic Edith Piaf quote that says ‘use your faults, use your defects, then you’re going to be a star’. Now, I don’t like to think of my body as defective in any way, but I catch her drift. Sometimes it’s the things that you hate about yourself that you learn to love the most. I used to always long for blue eyes growing up, going so far as to look into coloured contacts (the ultimate in vanity, as far as I’m concerned) until I realised that my dark green eyes are one of my best features. Likewise, I am now almost inordinately happy and proud of my bottom, after years of –ahem- eyeing up Kate Moss’s boyish posterior.

I’m afraid I’m going to bring this back to a bad note, though. Being confident about your body is not necessarily the difficult part – it’s how that confidence is received the people around you. After all, it’s not how we, as women in 2011, are expected to feel. How many times have you bonded with friends by saying ‘I wish I had her legs’, or ‘you’re so lucky to be so thin, if only I was like that’. Putting yourself down is part of the female experience. I can’t imagine myself sitting in a group and going ‘god, I’m sooo lucky to have the body I’ve got. I look great. Right guys? Right?’ It’s just totally anti-instinctive. I’m not sure it’d be a good thing to happen either, actually.

So what do we do, then? I truly believe chucking away the scales and stopping the ghastly diet is a good step. Compliment your friends. I know so many beautiful girls, and I must make sure to tell them more often. In turn, listen when you are complimented. And if you’re feeling positive about a part of your body, be proud of that! There’s no reward in putting yourself down. We are told, as women, (and very probably men are too), that it’s ok to feel insecure. This is damaging! Why should we? Why are we now expected to be so unhappy with ourselves? This is my primary issue with Cherry’s program. It was all about her insecurities, and coming to a vague happiness with herself (which I’m not sure she did.) What about actually encouraging us to be happy with ourselves?

Sorry for the long post. This is something I clearly feel strongly about. We all have the right to feel beautiful.