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Hello and welcome to another Thoughtful Thursday :)

A couple of months ago, when things were changing rather quickly, we decided to tweak our weekly emails by changing Monday Motivation to Mindful Monday and adding (this) Thoughtful Thursday email. While we've attempted to not only provide useful, positive, health-related stuff, they've sometimes morphed into our own thoughts and reflection as we too have experienced our own version of this new reality.

We were assuming the majority of people were going to have some combination of more time, different commitments, a change in pace of life, or be alone more. While all our experiences over the past months have been uniquely "ours", we have shared a common causation. I hope you've enjoyed these extra little emails and found something useful you can try, apply and maybe even hold onto.

I also hope, at some point, you've been able to carve out some time for yourself to reflect on your world, your life, what you've missed, what you haven't, and what you'd like to bring with you into your future from this (hopefully) once-in-a-lifetime episode.

(Thank you to all those who have reached out, commented on, and shared their own thoughts and experiences with us – please keep them coming. Simply hit reply to this email to let us know what you think.)

And on that note, I present to you some of my favourite things, thoughts and musings I've recently enjoyed….

“Everyone's busy being somebody.”

- Ram Dass

Yeah… guilty.

Helping

There have been lots of brilliant local community endeavours to support local businesses that have been hardest hit by the C word (you can find some of our favourites here). However, as we gingerly start to move out of this, and our economies start to build again, perhaps we can extend some further generosity to other countries and workers in need. Lost stock is a great little set up that is helping the unpaid and out-of-work textile industry workers in Bangladesh. £35 gets you a box of clothing from well-known British high street retailers and supports a worker and their family for a week. Sounds like a win/win!

Exercise

Just because the world went into lockdown, doesn't mean our body's physiology took a break. Almost a shame in a way… So, you still need to do some exercise (sorry).

Lots of us have found our grove with Zoom classes of some description, while others have found the joys of running and other outside endeavours. Some, however, might be finding it difficult to eke out a specific or consistent time to exercise. To those people I recommend short bursts of activity throughout the day. Perhaps something like this:

10 lying on the floor on your back and standing up

10 sit ups

10 push-ups (either toes on floor or knees on floor)

10 air squats

10 lunges

Doing seemingly random sets of these types of movements throughout the day add up over time, without specifically "exercising" for an hour or 30 mins or whatever every day.

68 bits of unsolicited advice

I found this article on Keven Kelly's blog and immediately fell in love with it. He offers, as the tittle suggests, 68 bits of advice for life. Some are obviously, some super clever and some are very funny.

My favourites include:

• Don’t trust all-purpose glue.

• Promptness is a sign of respect.

• If you are looking for something in your house, and you finally find it, when you’re done with it, don’t put it back where you found it. Put it back where you first looked for it.

• How to apologise: quickly, specifically, sincerely.

I could go on…

And finally… 

Black holes. Hmmm… this is just cool. An astronomer explains black holes in 5 levels of difficulty, starting with a child, right up to an expert in astrophysics.

Love you guys. Stay special,

Luke x