Gosh, time flies through a year doesn’t it? Feels like I’m approaching half-way, with way more than half the things to do on the challenge!
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This week feels a bit quieter than previous weeks. On Saturday, I took an opportunity that presented itself, and at the grand age of 30, found myself babysitting – something I hadn’t done since I was about 16. A lady on a Facebook group I’m part of commented that her babysitter had cancelled and could the group recommend anyone – and I found myself thinking that I had a free evening, some work to do, and a few extra pounds could come in handy, so I offered to step in. So off I went, to babysit for 5 young boys (it sounded daunting, but they were all in bed when I arrived, reading books, and were the politest, most-well-behaved kids I’ve seen in a long time.) I then got nearly 3 hours of work done, a free piece of cake and £30. Not a bad for an evening’s work.

In the hair stakes, I found myself determined this week to master the French plait – it has long evaded me, and even evaded my mum, who used to get mummy friends round to teach her how to do it and who all commented that my hair was really difficult to separate when trying to deftly scoop extra strands up with one’s little fingers. After some determined practice, I ended up with a fairly messy pair of French plaits, and despite several attempts since this photo, I’ve not got any better. I have therefore stuck to traditional pigtail plaits this week. I also tried a ponytail with the band wrapped in hair too. Results below. (If anyone dares agree with Matt that I look a little bit ginger in some of these photos.....there'll be trouble....)

On Wednesday, I had a networking meeting with Bonnie Clark, a fellow NLP student and director at a recruitment agency. I asked her for help on getting my retreat business into the corporate market, and she gave me lots of good advice how I can progress it.
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Friday night saw a flurry of challenge items met all in one evening. I met up with an old university friend, Phil Whitby (also known in the olden days as the Whitby Monster) who was visiting Edinburgh with his girlfriend, Beth. Phil hasn’t really changed at all, and we had some interesting conversations catching up on news from those we used to know in the mountaineering club at uni. He also bought me a fab gift – a small colouring book, meaning it’ll be much easier to get pictures completed as they are A5 instead of A4 sized. Thanks Phil! Beth counts as a ‘new interesting person met’ – Beth sounds entirely Irish, but grew up in Scotland, and now lives in Ireland and is training to become a personal trainer. The most interesting thing about her is that she puts up with Phil! We went out for a meal at a new restaurant, Tutto Matto, where I had a Moroccan pizza (tomato sauce with cumin and cinnamon added, Moroccan sausage and goat’s cheese.) I also accompanied this with a Frozen Strawberry Margarita, which was a delicious new alcoholic drink for my challenge. 

Despite the pizza, a week of ‘being good’ after my retreat last week has seen me knock another pound of my weight loss. Its very slow, and not very steady, but is at least going in a downward direction!

This week, I have actually played my piano for 30 minutes as well, one of my most neglected challenge items. I am trying to re-learn Fields of Gold to sing at my mum’s wedding in April.
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My learnings for this week:

1. Babysitting is a great job. You get paid to watch someone else’s TV, eat someone else’s food and do work without any distractions. I guess it may have been somewhat different if you didn’t have such well-behaved kids to look after.
2. I notice when I’m meeting people for networking that I often want them to hand me the solution on a plate and give me some work there and then. I was reminded this week of how it takes between 7-15 touch points for someone to be likely to buy from you, and that it’s a longer term game. Hopefully, some of the seeds are being sown now that will grow and be fruitful in the future……..patience is needed (and persistence.)
3. I may be destined never to master the French Plait.

So, the gaps between me writing blogs are getting longer! 3 weeks in one this time, after a few very hectic weeks. Last week, I was away running my first Wellbeing Retreat, a mix of yoga, walking and coaching up in Kinloch Rannoch, where I was completely ‘off grid.’ The week before that was busy preparing, shopping, cooking etc.

So, what have I been up to in terms of the challenge? Probably best to start with the cooking based ones, as they took up much of my time. For the retreat, I cooked a veggie stew, of lentil and butternut squash. I also made a beef stew, but didn’t use a recipe for that, as I take a ‘bung everything in’ approach. I also made 3 soups for the retreat, a butternut squash soup, and old favourite of tomato and ginger, and a new soup for me, broccoli and stilton (which was pretty delicious!) Finally, the retreat meant home-baking, and I made 2 lots of flapjack, a vanilla cheesecake and an apply crumble, counting towards my 30 cakes/desserts. My Gran had also made a lemon cake and a Dundee cake, and the owner of the venue made cupcakes as well. We were very well-fed on the retreat, meaning that my weight loss count has gone a little bit (ok, a lot) backwards!

The retreat also brought opportunities for a random act of kindness. I offered my aunty Jilly a place on the retreat, as she’s been having a tough time of things lately. She really enjoyed the retreat and got a lot out of it. I also got to catch up with an old friend, Linda Cairns, who came along to the retreat, to support me on my first retreat of this type, and also because she thought it sounded like exactly what she needed! I first met Linda when I lived in London and went on a coaching walk with our mutual friend Sarah Maliphant. After moving to Scotland, Linda contacted me out of the blue saying she always saw me up to interesting things on facebook, she was coming to Edinburgh, would I be interested in having dinner? We did, and got on really well, and have stayed in touch since.
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The retreat also offered the opportunity to meet some ‘interesting people’ – I met Carolyn, who works with my co-host Lindsey for CVS, a volunteering organisation. Carolyn was a complete force of nature and a very inspiring young woman to get to know. I also met Marie, who joined us for the Monday-Thursday part of the week. Marie used to be a neuroscientist and was a fellow keen walker and traveller, so we had some interesting chat about our various adventures. 

Before the retreat, I got really organised and sent two cards, both for mother’s day. One was to my actual Mum, and one was to my NLP Mum. Madeleine, who taught my NLP Practitioner course, and runs regular NLP Grapevines, does not have any children of her own, but has built this community of people connected by NLP. She supports each and every one of them in following their dreams, often discovered through her NLP courses, so I got together with some other NLP students and made a card with a personal message from each of them. She put on facebook that she was completely overwhelmed to receive it and really appreciated it.
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I also took an opportunity offered to me, to run a personal development session for the Edinburgh Businesswomen’s Club. I did this session on an NLP process called the neurological levels of change, by Robert Dilts. The session went well and I’m also counting it as a networking opportunity, as I reconnected with several people I’d met at previous networking events. 

I attended 2 Cambridge Weight Plan events, one a Medical Training course, and one a conference, again a great opportunity to network with people who do the same as I do (I run a Cambridge Weight Plan business on the side of Reach the Peak.)

I also went to London for the day, to attend the Coachmatch conference. The conference was a really good opportunity to meet fellow coaches, working all across the UK and abroad. Being in London was a bit of a shock to the system, as its been a while since I went down there and had forgotten how busy, noisy and stressed it is. This was made significantly better by catching up with another old friend, Kirstina Divall. I met Kristina on my very first day at Lloyds Banking Group in 2009 and we’ve stayed friends ever since, seeing each other about once a year. She came to stay in November, but for some reason, I didn’t count her in my challenge as an old friend, so I’m claiming her now.

​While in London, I travelled to Kent to go to Matt’s brother’s wedding. This was a really lovely day, I was made to very welcome as part of the family for the day, and also got to eat in a new restaurant, with the wedding meal at Winter’s Barn. It was the best wedding food I’ve ever had. The night before the wedding, we also went to Zizzi’s and although it was at a different end of the country, I couldn’t quite bring myself to count it as a different restaurant.
The wedding was a good opportunity for a new hairdo, so I had it in a half-up pony tail, curled with pearl heart shaped clips. Also on the hair front, I attempted a bun wrapped in plaits…..it was fiddly and a bit messy. 

Finally, I joined a gym and undertook a mission to start trying out different machines. I did a session on the crosstrainer, some time of the steps machine, and some time on the weight resistance machines (which I’m counting as one type of exercise.) I also tried some exercise classes: BodyBalance -  a mix of yoga, pilates, tai chai – quite enjoyable; Spin – evilly horrible, especially at 7am in the morning; BodyCombat – an non-contact aerobics class based on punching and kicking; and PiYo, a dynamic, fast mic of yoga and pilates to music, which I didn’t get on with at all.
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Lastly, we went to see 2 new films, Deadpool and Dad’s Army. I enjoyed the rather cheesy Deadpool, despite not being particularly into superhero films. I was a bit disappointed with Dad’s Army – despite an all-star cast, I didn’t find it very funny compared to the old series.
So, that a rather quick summary of everything I’ve done in the last 3 weeks.
My learnings are:

1. Sometimes, the best, most supportive and longest lasting friendships start in the most random of places and can’t be predicted. Who’d have thought I’d still be in touch with the random person I sat next to on induction day, or a random person I happened to chat to on a Sunday walk in Guildford when I didn’t know anyone. Never miss an opportunity to make a new friend, you never know where it’ll lead!
2. Pride comes before a fall……after a week of twice-daily yoga on retreat, I was extremely proud to be able to get into my first shoulder stand, feeling very proud as it felt a little advanced for this early in my yoga journey. My core muscles evidently agreed, as I had a little spasm in my back muscles on the return to flat-backed and have been a little sore ever since.
3. I love my job. I knew that already, but I really really enjoyed running a retreat this week. They say that if you do a job you love, you’ll never work another day in your life, and this certainly felt true, sitting around a log fire chatting to some truly special people this week.