February – the month of all things heart shaped! Do you remember when it used to be all about an anonymous card? Valentine’s day seems to have got bigger and more in your face than ever. Now this is fine if you’re loved up and full of optimism, but what if you’re not? What if you’re happy enough but just a bit ‘meh’ about life right now? What if Valentines day is a horrible reminder of what you don’t have in your life? (I once got dumped on Valentines day…I married him in the end but let’s just say that particular piece of terrible timing has NEVER been forgotten!!) What if you’re not feeling good about yourself? How does this one date in the calendar take on such a huge significance?

The internet and magazines are full of ideas of what to do if you’re single on February 14th but I’d like to suggest that you use it (and February) to stop and take stock of how you’re feeling about being you. What do you like about yourself? What are your best qualities? What are you good at? What do you like doing? Is there anything about yourself that’s holding you back? Is there anything that scares you? And are you managing that ok or is it negatively impacting on your life? Is there anything that you would like to change? About yourself or your circumstances? Have you noticed that you’ve changed over the years – do you like that change? Be brave and write all this down – and make sure you do the good bits first!!

Now – take your lists and sort them into ‘Keep’ ‘Stop’ ‘Start’ Identifying what you want to keep doing, what you need to stop and what you’d like to change or start doing differently. Next you need to identify some quick wins and some longer projects and make some plans. For instance, if you know that you are creative, you may want to keep on with whatever your current creative outlet is, but you might also want to try something new. A friend of mine loved to draw as a kid and at the age of 63 signed up to an online painting class during lockdown – he’s now selling paintings! So that was a ’keep’ (creativity) and  ‘start’ (painting). A hypnotherapy client of mine wanted to get control of her blushing as she knew it was stopping her asserting herself. She learned some techniques under hypnosis, we then went on to work on her self esteem and the outcome was the courage to apply for and take on a promotion at work, which meant she could give up her second job and spend more time with her family. So – ‘stop’ (blushing) ‘start’ (assertiveness/self-esteem) ‘keep’ (being good at her main job, and contributing even more to something that she cared deeply about)

Ru Paul of Drag Race fame has many pertinent mantras that are worth adopting. Remember that he works with a community who have long been misunderstood, on the fringes of society and often abused. He urges all of us to love ourselves: ‘If you can’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love anyone else?’  Also ‘we’re all born naked, everything else is drag!’ meaning we can choose the persona that we adopt and that this can change because we’re all more than our name, age, gender or job description.

So how about using this Valentine’s day to assess and renew? You have just the one life so make it the best one that you can manage!