Write yourself a love letter this Valentine's day

This year, in true Project Love style, we are hijacking Valentine's Day and making it all about self-love. Instead of making this day of love all about romantic love and focusing your attention on others that you love or lust after, we want you to turn all that love right around and in on yourself, starting with the way that you speak to yourself. 

Why? Because learning to speak to yourself like you would your best friend - with love and support - is one of the most powerful things you can do. It is a life changer and key to your happiness and success.

Just imagine what it would be like to spend a day with a voice in your head that was loving and supportive, that was always there for you, that had your back and would remind you that you were loved.

Wouldn’t that feel great?

Imagine all the things you would have the confidence to do. You would make yourself a top priority in life and fill that life with the things that made you happy. You would look after yourself well, follow your dreams and design a life for yourself that you truly loved. A life that would feel as good as it looked.

Now think about the voice that you tend to use on yourself day to day. Often we are our own harshest critics, with a voice in our head that is constantly pointing out what we have done wrong or how we should have done better.

A day of listening to that is exhausting, feels rubbish and has you playing small.

So this Valentine’s Day we are encouraging everyone to turn up the volume on their loving inner voice to hear what it has to say.

How? By writing a letter to you, from your wise older self.

It is a simple exercise that can be surprisingly powerful.

The idea is that you imagine your wise older 80 year old self is sending a message back to the woman you are today. She has the gift of hindsight and knows that everything works out well for you in the end and right now she wants to give you some encouragement, love and support at this point in your life.

You might at first think that you won’t be able to come up with anything, but people are usually surprised at how much this side of them believes in them and loves them.

We invite you to give it a go and share with us how you get on!

Here is what you do:

1. Treat yourself to some special letter writing paper (some lovely sets over at Paperchase)

2. Download 'The Project Love Guide to Writing Yourself a Letter from your Wise, Older Self'

3. Share your favourite line from the letter you wrote to yourself over on Twitter using #selfloveletter and @ProjectLove or why not take a photo of your letter and share it with us on Instagram using #selfloveletter and @loveprojectlove

We will be sharing your love letters during Valentine’s Week <3

Selina & Vicki x

PS for those in London, we will be at Paperchase (Tottenham Court Rd store) on Weds 8th Feb for an evening of self love and letter writing - tickets here - come and write your love letter with us!

Selina's Top 5 Lessons on Designing a Life She Loves

We are getting ready (and getting very excited) to get going on our brand new Design a Life You Love in 2017 course that starts THIS MONDAY, 16th January

>>> This way if you want to join us!

And so Selina - the queen of designing a life you love - jumped in front of the camera today to share her personal top 5 lessons when it comes to creating a life that she loves.

For those of you that don't know about Selina's journey, over the past 10 years she has designed her life to give her the freedom, adventure, love, creativity and fulfillment that she needs to feel happy and alive. 

In 2009 she became her own boss and started doing the work that she loved - coaching and writing. In 2010 she left London and took off on a 6 month adventure, living and working from a camper van named Beryl. In 2011, with her business in a bag, she worked from amazing places all over the world - the beaches of Costa Rica, Buenos Aires, the icy Chilean Fjords, sunny California and the mountains of Canada. In 2012 she went on a journey of self-love and transformed her love life (with the magic and help of Vicki) and since then she has been creating a home and lifestyle that she loves with her new family in London, whilst growing Project Love into a flourishing business with Vicki.

Here are the top 5 lessons she has learnt in all those years of designing a life she loves to live.

* Our new online course is here! *

IT’S HERE! <insert excited noises, hand claps, wooping> 

Design a Life you Love in 2017

Our brand new 4-week online course
that will have you creating a vision and a plan for 2017
to make it your best year yet!

This course has been in the making for a long time and so we are beyond EXCITED to finally share it with you!

Whether you're looking to make a change in your life in 2017, wanting to make a dream or idea happen or if you simply want to make 2017 a year where you make it less about work and more about YOU, then join us!

Over the the 4 weeks, you will:

• Get clear on the key ingredients you need to be happy and fulfilled in life, work and relationships
• Create a vision and a picture of what you want your life to look like in 2017 and beyond
• Design a practical plan that will bring that vision to life
• Learn the best life design tools and techniques that will help you make sure that plan happens
• Clear the blocks that get in the way of you living life the way you really want to
• Get inspired and share your journey with a whole tribe of other life designers making their own dreams and ideas happen

Want in? 

ALL THE JUICY DETAILS ARE HERE

** Sign up THIS week and you’ll receive a BONUS audio visualisation that will get you feeling FULL of love and looking forward to what lies ahead for you in 2017 **

Selina & Vicki x

Our first ever ONLINE Project Love Salon | How to create a life you love in 2017

If I gave you a magic wand and told you you could make anything happen in your life in 2017, what would you wish for?

What aspects of your life would you change? What would you keep the same? Is there any area of your life that you would completely transform?

Pause and think about it for a moment…

Imagine you had swished that wand and were living life exactly the way you want to be.

What would that life look like?

How would it feel?

It’s so important that we each take the time to step back, at least a couple of times a year, to ask ourselves questions like these.

Is this the life I want to be living? Is there anything I wish were different? How do I want to feel? Am I feeling that way? And if this isn’t the life I want to be living and if I’m not feeling the way I want to feel, what can I do to change that?

What can I do?

Because whether you realise it or not, you really do have the power to change any area of your life that isn’t making you happy.

We all have the capacity to change and transform our lives.

THAT is our magic as human beings.

No other animal is able to dream things up that don’t yet exist and then bring those dreams to life.

You created the life you are living today. And you can create the life that you just dreamt up a moment ago.

It’s as if we were all born with magic wands at our fingertips.

And when you start to discover and use that magic, your whole experience of life transforms.

You become the conscious creator at the source of your own life. And that is power.

It is key to creating a life you love.

Because living a life you love doesn’t happen by accident. People who are truly happy and fulfilled in life didn’t just fall into it, they weren’t just lucky. They created that life for themselves.

How?

Well that is what life design is all about and on 12th December (next Monday) we’ll be exploring this topic in full in our first ever ONLINE Project Love Salon: ‘How to Create a Life you love in 2017’

We’ll be looking at how people who have created lives they love have done it. What some of the key changes are that people make in life and how they go about it and we’ll be giving you some top tips on how to create a clear vision for your life and how to bring that vision alive in 2017.

And as a special Xmas treat to you this first ever ONLINE Project Love Salon is free to attend!

All you have to do is grab a FREE ticket over here (and if you happen to not be able to make it on the 12th, then we will send you the recording after the event, but you must sign up here to receive it)

Come and join us and start planning what it is you want to make happen in your life in 2017 and we’ll show you the tools to help you do that.

And we'll also be announcing some exciting news on the night which we can't wait to share with you!

See you there,

X Selina & Vicki

Why we want to get everyone into sister circles in 2017...including you

image by Rebecca Westcott

If there is one thing we would love to see happen in 2017, it would be for all women to get into sister circles.

We mean it. We’ve been enjoying sister circles a lot over the past year and getting our friends involved in them too, even the ones that didn’t think they’d be into something called a ‘sister circle’. And without exception, every woman has found it to be a profound and often life-changing experience.

And before you go thinking that sister circles don’t sound like your kind of thing, think again.

Sister circles are designed to suit ALL kinds of women.

Our own circles have included bankers, creative directors, business women, singers, scientists, film directors, entrepreneurs, doctors...they couldn’t be a more eclectic bunch of women.

And yet they have all had similar experiences in the sister circles: the experience of being heard, being seen, being held by other women in a way that has them connect deeply, not only with one another, but with themselves. That kind of support and nourishment can be truly life changing. And we’re not the only ones that think so...

A recent Harvard study revealed that women with strong female friendships were significantly happier and healthier than those without. A cancer study in 2012 revealed that women with breast cancer that had a strong supportive circle of friends were four times more likely to make a full recovery than those who didn’t. And study after study has found that strong and nourishing friendships reduce our risk of disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol. Our female friendships literally have the power to help us heal.

More than that, they have the power to help us achieve our dreams and remember who we really are.

And that is why we want to get everyone into sister circles.

So we have created the ‘Project Love Guide to Running a Sister Circle’ to make it really easy for you.

>>> Download it here for free

Now all you need to do is invite a few women that you really admire and the guide will do the rest.

Come and let us know how you get on!

x Selina & Vicki

BLOG POST: Who do you bring with you on a date? Yourself or your representative?

Ever wondered why the guys that you like never seem to fancy you BUT the ones that you don’t like, always seem to fancy the pants off you? Well you’re not alone, it’s been coming up quite a lot amongst the women I work with. The conversation goes something like this:

Client - “When I like a guy, they don’t fancy me. And when they like me, I just don’t fancy them”.
Me - “OK, so tell me about the last date that you went on where you didn’t fancy the guy.”
Client - “It was like going out with a friend, I wasn't that bothered about what he thought, I ordered a pint and I was just being myself”
Me - “And what about if you DID fancy him?”
Client - “I would have been more girly with him, I would have ordered wine instead of a pint and I would have sipped it and been more delicate and ladylike. I’m usually a bit of a loudmouth who likes to crack jokes but if I fancied him, I would have reigned that in and been more mysterious”

With the guy she fancied, she felt the need to perform and impress him, as there’s more at stake. This could be the one she could marry one day, so she needed to be on best behaviour, right?

We laughed about the Chris Rock sketch where he talks about dating:

Relationships, easy to get into, hard to maintain. Why are they so hard to maintain? Because it’s hard to keep up the lie! ‘Cause you can’t get nobody being you… When you meet somebody for the first time, you’re not meeting them. You’re meeting their representative.”

So my question to you is..

Who do you bring with you on a date? Yourself? Or your representative?

If you’re like some of my clients then it’s usually the latter. Why? Because it’s scary to reveal your whole self, dating feels like a job interview where you’re being judged on how you look and everything you do or say. Bringing the representative feels like the safer option, the mask to hide behind so if it all goes tits up then you never really lost anything. But when you don’t show up as your whole self, what you sacrifice is human connection and when you have two representatives show up on a date then it kind of makes the whole thing a bit pointless. Here’s what to do about it:

1. Relax your expectations on what the date means - use online dating as a way to meet like-minded people and not a way to find a life partner. If you go into the date with huge expectations, it will put unnecessary pressure on yourself and your date and it will feel like a job interview where you need to perform and impress. Instead, see online dating as a tool to meet people for a coffee and a chat and go from there, taking the pressure off those early interactions.  
2. Adopt an attitude of gratitude - dating can trigger all sorts of fears and insecurities, especially the fear of not being good enough. Instead of focusing on all the things you lack, shift your mindset by focusing on all the things that make you great. Step into the shoes of a loved one and think about all the things they love about you and all the ways they appreciate you and respect you. You could even ask a good friend to tell you! Make a list of all your best attributes and keep reminding yourself of these.
3. Let go of the need to be ‘cool’ - it’s tempting to bring your ‘cool representative’ to a date but honestly, all people ever want from us is to show up as ourselves. Brene Brown says “The need to ‘be cool’ is an emotional straightjacket. It keeps us from moving, growing, stretching and feeling free” and if we’re hiding behind our cool then how can we connect fully with someone? Allow yourself to be un-cool and own it.
4. Use your feelings as your compass - how do you want to feel on the date itself? Playful, inspired, at ease? Then work back from there when you plan the date itself so if it doesn’t go anywhere after the first date, then you’ve still had a great experience, which takes the pressure off your date and will help you to relax and have some fun. You could suggest one of your date ideas the next time someone asks you out. Or why not make the first move?
5. Set out your boundaries - think about how much time and energy you’re willing to commit to dating and set out some boundaries that are suited to your needs. So for one of my clients, she knows that her energy levels are best in the mornings so she’s experimenting with brunch dates. And for another client, her working week is pretty full on and she’s been struggling to fit in evening dates so now she’s limited dating to just one night a week to keep the weekends free for catching up with friends and getting some me-time.
6. See rejection as redirection - each time you get rejected, they are setting you free to find someone who would be right for you, so extend gratitude and see rejection as a weeding-out process to find someone better.

I think it's no coincidence that the guys that my clients don’t like seem to fancy them because when the stakes are lower, they have permission to be themselves. That is all anyone really wants from us. Authenticity is a choice, one that you can make right now. So dare to be you, show up as yourself and give your representative the day off!

Vicki x

If you’ve enjoyed this and feeling like you need some guidance to figure this dating stuff out then come and join us on our Get Ready for Love 30 day course

 

A lesson in goddess archetypes and what they can teach us about ourselves

Ooh we’ve got a great podcast for you this week!

We invited the gorgeous Helen Johnson, founder of Goddess Acumen, to talk to us about the fascinating topic of Goddess Archetypes and what they can teach us about the way we live and love.

Every time I hear Helen talk on this topic I walk away with profound new insights into myself and the world around us. And this podcast was no exception.

We explored how the goddess Aphrodite (goddess of love and sexuality) and goddess Demeter (goddess of motherhood) are in crisis in our society and the HUGE impact that has on us as women and how the Archetypes can be used as a practical tool and guide to help us bring those aspects of ourselves back into full power.

The way Helen illuminates the world we live in through the goddess archetypes is fascinating. I dare you to have a listen and NOT take something valuable for yourself from it!

Have a listen and let us know what you think.

AND if you are in or near London on 21st November then come and join us for our next Project Love Salon with Helen ‘The Goddess Within: how to use goddess archetypes as a practical tool in life and love'.

Grab your early bird tickets here and we’ll see you there!

x Selina and Vicki

Getting ready for marriage: one woman’s approach

As some of you know, I got married last month! It was mind blowing and life changing in ways I could never have imagined or anticipated. A huge celebration of love and friendship that I will treasure forever. But rather than indulge you with all the details of the wedding itself (this isn’t a wedding blog after all), I wanted to share the ways I prepared for it.

The preparation of marriage - emotionally, mentally, spiritually - is often overlooked, with the focus being firmly on ‘the big day’. Like with any big transition in life, fear plays a role and in preparing for the new, we say goodbye to the old.

Here are some of the ways that I consciously navigated the transition.

1. Making time to reflect

This was a great piece of advice from our friend Sam who married us in Spain. Through the process of preparing for our ceremony, I was given homework to start reflecting on the meaning of marriage and our decision to marry each other. I asked myself; what’s my intention for marriage? What makes a good one? What do I want to promise and commit to? How can I stay true to myself and not lose myself in this marriage?

Some pretty meaty questions that couldn’t be answered in one sitting. I got myself a new notebook (any excuse, I am stationary obsessed) and scheduled some dates with myself to start getting clearer on it all.

2. Feeding up on inspiration

To help answer some of my big questions, I read books on love, collected inspiring quotes and poems about marriage, I read blogs, listened to podcasts and drew inspiration from friends’ relationships that I admired. One of the biggest lessons? That marriage is about the union of two souls whilst also being faithful to the voice of your own soul.

This process of gathering inspiration helped me to get clear on what I wanted to commit to. I wrote about being fully present in my marriage, my promise to be Pav’s lifelong dancing partner and to make loving fun. And as well as committing my love to him, I made a commitment to my own self-love, as I know our marriage will flourish if I stay true to my needs and take responsibility for my own happiness.

I was inspired by a blog post by Melody Godfred, the co-founder of the Self Love Pinky Ring, where she talked about how self love saved her marriage. And I discovered a pretty cool ancient symbol of sacred geometry that consists of two circles overlapping in a way that creates a third circle in the middle (known as the Vesica Piscis):

“One plus one equals three. This can only be possible, though, if each remains true to themselves - if they maintain their own boundaries by being honest about the desires and needs that cannot be compromised”

— ‘How to Love Yourself (And Sometimes Other People)’ by Meggan Watterson & Lodro Rinzler

3. Preparing to be vulnerable

The idea of standing up in front of our family and friends, celebrating our love felt super indulgent, even if a wedding gives you full permission to do it. That’s what they want, that’s why they are there! But I was still blocked around this. I went to Jody Shield’s LifeTonic event with a friend and I worked on my resistance to open up, I listened to heart-opening meditations, I meditated with the Headspace app and I prepared to get spiritually naked. I find giving love a whole lot easier than receiving it and actually when I thought about it, the idea of feeling love from all our family and friends all.at.once felt overwhelming. For me, being vulnerable will always feel uncomfortable, I am feeling vulnerable right now as I write to you. I am so used to writing from my comfort zone, speaking as a love coach, but recently (since my hen party) I have started to open up about my personal life in the Project Love space. In feeling the fear and doing it anyway, I normalise that discomfort so it doesn't have so much power over me. Our wedding ceremony felt like one big cuddle and by opening up to receive all the love that was showered on us, I realised just how supported I am in this next chapter of my life.  

4. Journalling one out

Preparing for marriage brought up a whole spectrum of emotions for me, from the incredible sense of joy to the confusion about my new identity as a wife and a woman with a new name. Even trying on my wedding dress for the first time triggered some insecurities, which sounds silly now but felt very real at the time (as someone who lives in jeans and trainers, I just didn’t feel ‘polished’ enough for a gorgeous silk dress. Aren’t beautiful dresses for really girly girls?). I turned to my journal to make sense of my feelings and developed a 3-part process for working through my fears:

• Step 1: Raw and unfiltered mega riff - getting it all down on the page
• Step 2: Asking myself, ‘Ok so what do I want instead?’
• Step 3: Stepping into the shoes of a loved one and writing myself a loving note of kindness and support

When I read back to some of those notes, I recognise the voice of the loved one as the way I talk to clients or how I console a friend. I don’t always speak to myself in that way, often it’s a dance between my inner critic (AKA the Shitty Committee) and my inner cheerleader. In writing my thoughts out like this, I could manage my fears whilst having a huge amount of compassion for myself.

5. Feeling the feelings

In any period of change and expansion, even an immensely positive one like a wedding, it’s normal to feel a sense of loss. In the run up to the wedding, there were moments where I felt down for absolutely no reason. We tend to fuel our emotions with our thinking, so when I was feeling a bit sad, I’d then feel sad about feeling sad. This is rarely the stuff that’s covered in wedding mags or wedding blogs and it’s not really talked about, which brought up some guilt at not feeling ecstatically happy all the time. In honouring where I was at, and ignoring how I ‘should’ be feeling, I was able to just sit with it. Sometimes I would just say to myself ‘It is what it is’ or ‘I surrender’ when the shitty committee was giving me a hard time. It really helped to talk things through with friends and to talk it through with Pav, we had a really honest chat the week before the wedding, about the expectations on us and the worry of disappointing our guests - what if we’d had a really bad nights sleep the night before and we were quite low on energy? Or how about those days when you wake up in a weird mood and you just can’t shake it? Maybe those worries are totally unique to us but it was so great to talk about them. We both agreed that whatever we were feeling was totally normal and to just go with it. And that is exactly what we did, as a team.

There's a piece of advice that was read out by a friend during our wedding ceremony and it's something that I'll be carrying with me in this new chapter:

“People evolve and develop over time
Don’t see this change as scary. It’s beautiful.
Wholeheartedly embrace getting to know
The new you’s every single day.”

Like with any big transition in life, preparing for marriage is a soul journey, full of incredible highs and unexpected twists and turns. We close the door to a part of ourselves that we know so well to open the door to something new. I’m just getting my bearings here but my feeling so far is that it's pretty wonderful. 

V x

Getting the guidance you need from your wise, older self

Three years ago I wrote this letter I'm holding above, to myself.

I imagined it was a letter being written to me from my wise, older self. Over the years I've done this from time to time when I am starting new chapters in my life, when I am at a cross-roads and need some guidance or when I am struggling and need the reassurance that everything will be alright in the end.

And so I image myself many years from now - at peace, full of love and wisdom and with the wonderful benefit of hindsight - and I imagine what guidance and messages of love and support that older, wiser version of me would offer to the person I am today.

A few weeks ago I found this letter that I had written and posted to myself on the 28th October - two days after my birthday - 3 years ago.

I was fully dedicated at that time to learning to love myself and on the path that would later inspire our 'Get Ready for Love' course, but I still had my moments of despair and frustration - after so many years of disappointments and never finding anyone that was right for me, was it ever going to happen?

I needed some wise guidance and reassurance and so I picked up a pen, channeled that wise, older self and let her send me her words of guidance and wisdom.

Reading back on that letter 3 years later, with my partner and little boy lying on the bed next to me, I'm struck at how true those wise words were.

And so here is the letter I wrote to myself. If you are single and wondering why it hasn't happened to you yet, let these words calm and reassure you in the way they once did me…

Dearest Selina,

The moment you realise that your life and your happiness do not depend on finding a partner and having a family, you will be set free.

So that when you do meet a man you'd love to spend the rest of your life with, you won't demand your happiness and blame your sadness and loneliness on the relationship. You won't expect your children to fulfill your life in a way you never could. Instead you will love him, your relationship and your children for who they are. You will allow for them to grow and evolve and change and not fear that in doing so you will be left alone and unhappy.

These years of longing for a partner have been hard, I know. I do understand. You thrive in partnership and to not have it in your life has not been easy, but you will one day be so incredibly thankful that you had the strength to not settle.

So that you could learn lessons that have made you into the person you are. Deep down you chose it, so that you had the space to know yourself first before becoming a partner and creating a family.

But don't fear, it WILL happen and will be richer for the time you spent with yourself being your own partner in life.

Focus on love in abundance in all areas of life and enjoy seeing what grows.

x Selina

At the time this letter gave me such a sense of calm, reminding me that I was in fact exactly where I needed to be. That this was all part of the plan. That this time alone was in fact something I would one day be eternally grateful for.

How wise that older self was. Today I really do look back on that time with deep gratitude, because I see now that it was in those single years that I became the person I am today. In being single for all those years I discovered a strength in me that I didn’t know I had, I got to experience a wonderful freedom that no woman in my family had ever experienced before and my wings got to spread out wide as I flew all over the world. I got to discover the sweetness of solitude and even the transformative power of heartbreak. Each time I thought my heart was breaking, it was in fact a piece of my ego falling away and a piece of my heart being returned to me until finally I stood strong and whole as the queen of my own kingdom.

THAT is what I was doing in the time I was single. And my wiser self knew that, even then.

I appreciated too how she  understood my longing for partnership and love with another and understood that it wasn’t easy to have such a strong longing and not know when or if it would ever happen. Because longing is a hard one. It’s so heavy and can cling to your heart even in the happiest of times.

But do you know what, I believe it is because of all those years of longing that I am so grateful on a daily basis for the relationship I enjoy today.

But what I love most of all about this letter is that it reminds me that when we choose to, we really can tap into a part of ourselves that is connected deeply with life and that always has love, wisdom and guidance to offer. We just have to learn how to make space for her to be heard.

So why not give it a go yourself this week? Imagine a wise, old version of you is reaching back to the person you are today, she looks upon you with so much love and has so much wisdom and guidance to offer you. Let her write a letter to you and just see what she has to say.

X Selina

Is your inner shitty committee getting in the way of you finding love?

This week we've cooked up a podcast dedicated to those of you who are out there dating. Because we LOVE you ladies. We know it isn't always an easy journey (mine certainly wasn't at first!), but what often makes it hard is actually your own Shitty Committee - that internal negative voice that is always quick to criticise you, tell you what you're doing wrong, tell you when you're not good enough and generally fill your head with doubts and fears.

And if that Shitty Committee voice has a strong power over you, then it can cause all sorts of havoc when you're dating.

So what can you do about that negative voice in your head that can cause so much dating discomfort?

Well that is what this podcast is all about. It's a good one. You can download or listen to it over on Soundcloud or iTunes.

And if you’re not already doing our Get Ready for Love course then what are you waiting for? Come and join us today and we’ll really get to work on your Shitty Committee straight away :)

x Selina

PROJECT LOVE SALONS - our new London events - have arrived!

As the summer comes to an end in London, we are getting ready to snuggle in to longer nights and snug sweaters. We love this time of year - a time to slow down, go inwards and feed our soul with inspiration and new learnings to help us grow and flourish in life and love.

We’ve also been listening to our Love Tribe (you guys) and your request for more opportunities to meet face to face with this wonderful community of ladies that want to create relationships and lives they love.

And so we have teamed up with Carousel-London and a team of amazing guest speakers to bring you an Autumn/Winter collection of inspiring, nourishing and transformative monthly events.

Introducing……

The Project Love Salons!

We invite you to join us each month for an evening of inspiration and thought-provoking conversation about love, relationships and living a created life from the heart.

Each month, we'll introduce a juicy topic on love and get the conversation going, with special guests offering their insights and expertise. It will be a place to come together with other like-minded women and explore those topics that simply don't come up in everyday conversation. It is a space to be heard, to connect, to share wisdom and to learn.

And we’d love you to join us!

We’ll be kicking off the series with our very own Salon ‘How to be a Good Lover’ (24th October) and then we’ll hand over to 4 of some of the most inspiring women we know. Honestly - these were the women at the top of our list and they all said yes!

Here is the stellar line-up:

Project Love SALONS - Autumn/Winter Collection

24th October: How to be a Good Lover: The 5 essential elements to enjoying a Happy and Healthy Relationship - with Vicki and Selina from Project Love

21st November: The Goddess Within: How to use Goddess Archetypes as a practical tool in Life and Love - with Goddess expert, Helen Johnson

12th December: Create a life you love in 2017: get ready to make 2017 your best year yet by learning the art of life design - with Project Love's very own life design guru, Selina Barker

** As a special Xmas treat, we’re opening this one up to everyone and taking it online so that you can join us from anywhere in the world! **

23rd January: Love Your Lady Landscape: Trust your Gut, Care for 'down there' + Reclaim your Fierce + Feminine SHE Power. Rarrr - with author of ‘Love Your Lady Landscape’, Lisa Lister

27th February: Fall in Love with Life: Learn how to up your wonder, recharge your creativity and maximise the romance in the everyday - with celebrant and TED speaker, Tiu de Haan

27th March: How to be true to yourself in a modern world: Learn how to use your voice and ask for what you really need - with happiness coach, meditation teacher and inspirational speaker Gail Schock

And at each event the wonderful Paleta Girls will be providing us all with some tasty treats!

How much does it all cost?

EARLY BIRD PRICE: £15 (normal price £20)

BRING-A-FRIEND EARLY BIRD PRICE: £12 each

Now you can of course buy tickets to the individual events, but we’d like to invite you to join us for the full collection of Salons so that come spring time you are FULL of love.

When you sign up to the full course of Project Love Salons, you get them all for just £75 (normal price £100) AND we’ll send you a copy of our all time favourite book: ‘Zen and the Art of Falling in Love’ as a welcome gift from us :)

Are you holding yourself back in life by comparing yourself to others too much?

Last week I got to interview and wax lyrical with the wonderful Lucy Sheridan - the world’s first and only Comparison Coach and co-author of ‘HigerSelfie’  which was published by Hay House (wow) earlier this year.

I loved talking to Lucy - this whole topic of ‘comparison’ that she has focused in on with her coaching is fascinating.

It is a conversation I believe we all need to be having.

And I'll admit, I didn't at first think that. When I first saw that Lucy was a ‘comparison’ coach I thought ‘huh, I guess some people are really hung up on comparing themselves andreally need help with that. NOT me…’

And then what followed was a month of having all the ways I compare myself to others slam right up against me and it triggered one of the biggest spiritual growth spurts I’ve had in a long time.

What I realised was that ‘comparison’ is not a niche issue that just a few people suffer from. It is something we are all at, whether we realise it or not.

And it has a big impact on how we live our lives, how we feel about ourselves and the expectations we put on our relationships.

And now with social media we have even more ways to constantly be measuring ourselves up against one another, fueling the fear that we are ‘not good enough’ and disconnecting ourselves from the love we could be experiencing amongst the people that surround us.

As Lucy said “comparison closes us off” and when you start to dig into how it is at play in your own life, you really start to see how much that is true.

So come and listen in and see how our conversation about 'comparison' opens things up for you too PLUS you'll hear us talk about creating our lives from scratch after hitting rock bottom and how Lucy and Jo landed a book deal with Hay House and wrote Higher Selfie in just 3 months!

So grab a cuppa and join in the conversation over here.

And to find out more about Lucy and the wonderful coaching she offers head over to proofcoaching.com

x Selina

P.S. Vicki is back next week and we will be announcing the launch of our London series of events 'School of Love'! Watch this space :)

How to love & be in a relationship without losing yourself

I'm writing this before I catch an early flight tomorrow to join Vicki and Pav for their huge wedding celebrations in Spain (I'll be documenting things over on instagram).

But before I go I wanted to leave you with a podcast that I've just put up on iTunes that we recorded just before Vicki left. It's all about 'How to love and be in a relationship without losing yourself'. It is a concern that a lot of our clients have been voicing recently, so we decided to dig deep into it and wow, what a fascinating conversation it turned out to be.

Have a listen to it below and let us know what experiences you've had of losing yourself or seeing friends lose themselves in relationships.

Much love,
x Selina

What if you found out that the whole purpose of life was just to ENJOY it?

On Monday we did a talk at the Electric - Soho House - in London all about 'How to stay happy and grounded in a fast-paced life'. It's a HUGE topic that we dedicated a whole podcast to recently - listen to it here.

And ever since we did the talk I've been thinking back to a blog post that I wrote six years ago that served as a powerful wake up call at a time when I was running a million miles an hour, taking on waaaay too much and living off a constantly caffeinated and adrenalised high, while underneath it all I was exhausted and unhappy.

The blog post was my way of grabbing myself by the shoulders, gently shaking me with love and saying 'Why are you doing this to yourself?!'.

Why was I pushing myself so hard? Noone was asking me to do that, so why did I feel that I should? Who was I doing it all for? Was I expecting to get some kind of prize at the end of it all?

Finally as I lay one night collapsed on my sofa, in full blown burn out, I scribbled out this blog post and drew this little postcard.

It marked a turning point for me and I've never forgotten the message I gave myself that day.

So if you have a tendency to push yourself too hard, take on too much, put other people's needs ahead of your own and forget to prioritise the things in life that make you truly happy, then have a read of this.

This message is for you too.

"Imagine if, when you die, it turns out that there IS a heaven and a pair of pearly gates. And when you get there, standing there is god himself looking down at you. You're in the spot light.

You're waiting for the big judgement, the ultimate test, hoping desperately that you did OK, that you did enough, that you were good enough, helped enough people, weren't too selfish, weren't too mean.

You stand there fingers crossed as he flicks through the portfolio of your life and then he smiles and asks calmly,

'So did you enjoy it?'

'Because that's all we wanted. For you to enjoy your time on earth, enjoy the experience of being alive, discover what made you come alive, what made you happy and spend your life doing that...that was what it was all about'.

Imagine that.

Imagine after all that striving and hard work, it turns out that the best thing you could possibly have done for yourself, the people around you and the earth as a whole, was to discover what makes you come alive, follow your heart and spend your time on earth doing that. Imagine that.

I like this game. Try it. Day dream the scene for a moment (no requirement to believe in god for this to work), the moment where you are told that the whole point of this game called life was to create and live a life you love because THAT above all is what the world needs.

What would your reaction be? Play it out.

Here's how my scene pans out.

I'd stand for a moment agog. And then I wouldn't be able to hold back.

"Seriously?! Was that all I had to do?! Why didn't anyone tell me!? Why did I listen to all those people saying that I should be doing this and that?! Why didn't you send some kind of message?!"

I think god would probably look back agog at me.

"What do you mean I didn't tell you?!" I imagine god saying back somewhat indignantly, if gods are allowed to be indignant.

"You had that fridge magnet up for twenty years saying 'don't ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive and then go and do that, because what the world needs is people that have come alive', you built a whole career around that message. So you did know"

If heaven had rocks, I'd be kicking them by now.

"Yeah, but I wasn't sure if that was really allowed - enjoying life so much, having such a good time. Why didn't you just tell everyone it was allowed and that we ALL had a choice and it wasn't just that I was 'lucky' but it was simply that I chose to make it happen. You could have helped me out"

I imagine myself bursting into hot tears of frustration. Thinking back to all those hours, days, years spent doing what I thought I 'should' rather than what made me happy, what made me feel alive. All those years standing in my own way, all that time feeling guilty for having a life I loved, trying to make up for it, apologising for it, feeling guilty for it.

I'd want to go back in time and show myself this scene, send it to myself like a picture on a postcard.

                   (this is the postcard I created after I'd written the blog post)

I'd tell myself to stop feeling guilty about having a life I love, but instead to celebrate it and enjoy it. To get comfortable with it, embrace it, relax into it. That this is allowed. That everyone has the choice to create a life out of the stuff they love and that just because not everyone chooses to do that doesn't mean you have to feel guilty about doing it yourself. Don't create a life you love and then not allow yourself to enjoy it. THAT is bonkers. I'd say do even more of it. Have even more adventures. Dance, laugh, paint, love out loud. And celebrate the whole lot of it. The glorious experience of being alive and being you.

I'd tell myself to join hands with all the others out there creating lives out of the stuff they love and celebrating it. I'd tell myself to full on party with them, keep that party expanding and the door open to anyone that wants to join, but not to worry if people don't choose to. Let them be.

So my question to you today is...what would you do?

What if we were to find out that that IS what we're here to do - to enjoy life, really experience it, follow our hearts, do what makes us come alive? What if you were told that your job on this earth was to make YOU happy, discovering and doing the things you love?

What would you do differently?

Click reply to let me know."

And so, six years later, let's get this conversation going again. Let us know, by leaving a comment below, what you would do differently if your whole purpose on earth was simply to ENJOY yourself and all that life has to offer. And let this be the start, like it was for me six years ago, that you begin to make YOU a top priority in your life.

x Selina

P.S. If you know someone who also has a tendency to put other people's needs before their own and run themselves into the ground with it, then forward this onto them too ;)

PODCAST: Dating is shit... or is it?

In this weeks podcast, I got to interview Gail Schock - happiness coach, meditation teacher and all round wonderful human. Gail had been out of the dating game for 8 years when she decided to do a Tinder experiment with her husband. The whole 'swipe if you like' vibe left her feeling empty and sad, which invited an interesting enquiry - 'was it possible to actually enjoy the dating process if we approached it from a different perspective - one that would give us more freedom and one where we could actually feel good about ourselves in the process?'

We talked dating struggles, relationship fears, speaking our truth, asking for what we need, connecting to our divine feminine and getting into our womb wisdom (oh yes). Plus so much more. This is a bloody juicy podcast and I can't wait for you to listen to it.

Gail also kindly recorded a special meditation just for us, designed to get you feeling in a great headspace around dating - use it before you fire up Tinder or before you leave the house for a date.

Love, Vicki x

PS this is a topic that we're really passionate about, which is why we've dedicated a third of our Get Ready for Love 30 day course to 'Approaching Dating in a Loving Way' - offering exclusive podcasts, videos (inc guided coaching vids), an online dating guide to writing a killer profile and special guest interviews. Approaching dating from this place transforms your whole experience of dating. Find out more here

The real significance of a hen party

In the same month that we celebrated 20 years of girl power from The Spice Girls, I was whisked away on my hen weekend with 13 friends. I'd never really thought about the significance of a hen party before, I guess it felt like a massive celebration with the wonderful women in your life.. (and an excuse to have a party). I was more than up for that when we set off on the party bus from Waterloo, high pitch screaming our way down the M4 with M&S cosmo cans in hand.   

Well, turns out it was that and so much more.

It was everything you’d expect from a hen - we shared embarrassing sex stories, we downed tequila shots, we cackled with laughter, we hugged, we cried, we danced. And yes there were willy straws and blow up men. But what made it different was an additional layer that my hens planned (knowing me so well and knowing how much I love a chat.. I’m often the one at a party having deep and meaningfuls in the loo) - the D&M (deep and meaningful) session. It started as a bit of fun, sitting in a circle wearing catsuits and kaftans, passing a jar of questions around and answering them one by one (holding a dildo, which you could pass on if you didn’t want to answer). We were all giggling at first, some of us feeling a bit awkward with sitting in a circle together. And it was a little scary at first, feeling that exposed and vulnerable, but I can honestly say that it was one of the most powerful and liberating things I have ever done. And I wasn’t the only one that felt that way, it was a rare opportunity to share deeply and really be heard, while being surrounded by a bunch of strong and empowered women who all have your back. Without meaning to, we had turned it into a real sisterhood bonding session, and it turns out that that was exactly what we’d all been craving, we just hadn’t realised it. I discovered things about my friends that I didn’t know before and I felt such a deep connection with them in that moment. It was so inspiring to listen to the other women share their life stories, talk about challenges they’re working through and share their dreams and ambitions in life.

There was a particular question that I was so scared to answer - ‘your life story in 3 minutes’. I have this real fear of being put on the spot so when it happens, my mind tends to go blank like I have no long term memory?!? I know it was the fear that had blocked me but it meant that I couldn't reveal myself in the way that I wanted to. Since then, memories had been popping up from my life, things that I thought were buried away. So last week I had a go at writing my story and it was so cathartic, I wasn't really sure if I wanted to do anything with it but in the spirit of heart opening sharing, I emailed it to the group (cue vulnerability hangover). And yes it was bloody scary putting my story into words but I felt so supported to do it and it has opened something up for me - a part of myself that was in the shadows now has permission to come out into the light. This just wouldn't have happened without that session, and I realised just how much I need a regular space for this in my life . Something really shifted for me and this is just the beginning of more heart opening sharing and a deeper connection with myself. And I know I’m not the only one who’s felt like this. That is the power of sisterhood.

I came home from that weekend feeling an overwhelming sense of love, admiration and gratitude to have such inspiring, strong, empowered women in my life, who inspire me to be the same. I was shown the importance of sisterhood and girl power, the stuff that I learnt from the Spice Girls all those years ago at the age of 11.

And I realised the real significance of a hen party.

It is to show you how supported and loved you are, both as an individual and as a couple, to prepare you for the next chapter in your life. Because having such loving friendships gives you a strong foundation for a happy and healthy relationship and marriage. And it means you don’t depend on the relationship to fulfill all your needs. These friendships make me stronger and elevate me up to be the best I can be.

Now I feel ready to enter that next chapter of my life.

“The people we surround ourselves with either raise or lower our standards. They either help us become the-best-version-of-ourselves or encourage us to become lesser versions of ourselves. We become like our friends. No man becomes great on his own. No woman becomes great on her own. The people around them help to make them great. We all need people in our lives who raise our standards, remind us of our essential purpose, and challenge us to become the-best-version-of-ourselves”

— Matthew Kelly The Rhythm of Life

And of course you don’t need a hen party for some good old sisterhood bonding, grab the women in your life that you love and organise a sisterhood circle <check out Selina’s brilliant post> and love and support each other to grow and live a life you love. In sisterhood we stand.

Vicki x

A very special Real Love Story: with Vicki's fiancee - Mark Pavitt

This weekend was Vicki's hen weekend (check out the glitter and celebrations on instagram @loveprojectlove) and as part of the fun we decided to rustle up a bit of a special surprise for her:

A Real Love Story with none other than the man she is going to marry in a couple of months: Mr Mark Pavitt (here he is with Vicki, the pair of cuties).

It is a gorgeous interview, not only because it is Vicki’s fiancee talking about how they met and what he loves about her and their relationship, but because Mark offers wonderful insights into how baggage from past relationships and attempts to protect ourselves can heavily affect our behaviour in the early days of dating and he gives the most beautiful message to Vicki at the end.

So without further ado...here it is: A Real Love Story with Mr Mark Pavitt (the man Vicki is about to marry!)

You can listen to it over on iTunes or Soundcloud (it will be up on the site on Monday but I needed to hide it from Vicki for now!)

Lots of love,
Selina

An open letter of gratitude to brave women who show up every day

Last week was a big one over at Project Love, as 3 of our coaching clients completed their 3 month ‘Get Ready for Love’ journey and we celebrated 1 year of love stories from our ‘Get Ready for Love’ online course.

We’ve been so moved by some of the stories that we've heard since we started Get Ready for Love and we feel a huge sense of gratitude for the brave women that we have worked with over the years and for the brave women that we haven’t yet worked with.

This week’s post is dedicated to them, and to you, an open letter of gratitude to brave women, showing up every day, even when it's hard.

Thank you for having the strength to rise up through challenges and difficulties in life and committing to what’s important, even when it feels really uncomfortable.

Thank you for your openness and willingness to be intimate with your own deep feelings, to create the space for intimacy with another.

Thank you for holding a space for other women to be brave and share their stories of struggle and transformation.

Thank you for having the courage to walk away from people that aren’t able to commit in the same way that you are, so that you can move on to find someone who can.

Thank you for not giving up and working through your deepest, darkest fears and letting the light in.

Thank you for dropping your expectations of who you think you should be so you can be who you are.

Thank you for respecting your needs and being brave enough to express them and loving and honouring yourself in a way that invites others to do the same.

Thank you for opening up to love, opening your heart and embracing your vulnerability, even when it feels like the scariest thing in the world.

Thank you for feeling everything, even the shit stuff, and even when that voice is saying ‘fuck this.. It’s too hard’.. knowing that feeling is healing.

Thank you for dropping your assumptions as to who you could be attracted to and being open-minded and open-hearted when dating.

Thank you for choosing the path of self love when you’re broken, even when the path of self destruction feels like the safest option.

Thank you for dating yourself, getting to know yourself and treating yourself like a true friend.

Thank you for having patience, taking the time to figure out what you want and the things that inspire you and make your cells dance.

Thank you for your tears, your laughter, your strength, your smile.

Thank you for accepting yourself, as you are, right here and right now.

We're all on this journey together, we’re all going through the same ups and downs and your bravery inspires us and it inspires a whole tribe of other women to keep showing up.

In awe of you,

Vicki and Selina x

P.S. If you’d like to join us and start your own Get Ready for Love journey today then simply head over here and we’ll send you your welcome pack straight away.

Celebrating a year of helping women write their own love stories

Exactly one year ago we launched our online course ‘Get Ready for Love’.

Our aim was to take women on a journey that would transform their love lives, by challenging their beliefs around love and dating and showing them a whole new way of looking at love and how to find it.

We wanted to create an experience that was fun, inspiring and thought-provoking, that would help women to see what was really getting in their way of finding love and help them to shift those barriers once and for all, so that they could let love fully into their lives.

Well, one year later we’ve had over 300 women sign up and do the course and it’s been featured (with full page spreads and great reviews) in Psychologies magazine and Grazia.

But for us, the most rewarding part has been to hear the difference the course really has made to people.

Just days after we launched, a woman wrote to us with this extraordinary story...

 “I have a rather lovely story to share with you. On Thursday last week I signed up for the course - one of the reasons being that I never meet anyone in the real world, or have the courage to chat people up and I hide behind dating apps. Thursday evening I walked into my local pub and spotted a very good looking man at the bar. Signing up to the course gave me the courage to go and chat to him and I offered to buy him a drink. We flirted and spent the evening chatting and getting to know each other and generally having a lovely time. After a few hours of finding out about each other we had a sudden realisation that we did in fact know each other already. We'd been each other’s first boyfriend and girlfriend 25 years ago at school. We haven't seen each for 23 years and we didn't recognise each other in the slightest which was pretty funny as you can imagine. We're both single and seem really attracted to each other and are going on a date tonight. So I guess it just goes to show you never know what's round the corner. I really don't think I'd have gone over to him if I hadn't signed up for the course so thank you :)"

The last time we heard from her they were still going strong.

Since then we have had more wonderful emails like that and invited people to share their stories on our blog.

Shani found that the Get Ready for Love course was a journey that gave her back her power...

"GRFL came to me during a time when I was completely exhausted from being disappointed so many times, but after 30 lessons and the support of the other GRFLers, something magical happened.

I realized I AM THE ONE.

I realized it is in my power to create life full of love. I realized that no one can give me the love I want, because all that love is in me. All of these realizations (and many more), along with turning self-love into a daily practice and a way of life, make me look at myself in the mirror every morning and feel like the most fabulous, powerful, loved and loving woman out there.

And I wish this feeling upon every woman everywhere! ”

Read Shani’s guest blog post 'My Unapologetic Self' over here.

Meanwhile Laina wrote a guest blog post about her GRFL journey and what she learnt along the way, that has been one of our most shared blog posts yet…

 "I had got it into my head that that a relationship would complete me. We’ve all seen the Jerry Maguire film - ‘You complete me. You. Complete. Me’. Well, to the Jerrys out there, Project Love has taught me: You don’t complete me, I complete me.”

Read the whole post here.

Then last week when we sent out an email to invite the Get Ready for Love tribe to celebrate our one year anniversary we got this email from Katherine…

 Unfortunately I can't make it to the picnic on that date ladies which is a shame as I would have loved to have come because Get Ready for Love lead to me meeting the man of my dreams! On day 21 of the course, 4th December 2015, I met Jake, my now boyfriend of 6 months and I can truly say I am the happiest I think I've ever been in my life. I was already in a pretty good place when I started project Love. I had slowly learnt lessons along the way and could feel myself getting closer to having the relationship I wanted, I just wasn't sure how to find the person for me. I was in a positive frame of mind and willing to try anything. The biggest takeaway from Get Ready for Love for me was engaging with the world around me and opening up my mind to meeting someone different. I met Jake at a bar and from the moment I met him it just felt right. He said that the reason he noticed me was because of my big smile. Since that day we have had such a positive dating experience and I think a lot of it has been helped by the lessons learned in your course so thank you! I truly didn't even believe guys like Jake existed!

Keep up all the hard work ladies because I think you are doing a great job and your course really has helped me and I'm sure lots of other women too! I always talk about it with my friends so hopefully some of them will sign up too!

How gorgeous is that?

So next weekend we’ll be gathering with some of the London-based ladies from our Get Ready for Love tribe to celebrate a year of opening up and letting love in. But for now we’d like to thank all of you who have joined us on the Get Ready for Love journey - you have made this a truly wonderful experience for us and we look forward to seeing even more of you joining us as we step into our second year.

With lots and lots and LOTS of love,

 x Selina & Vicki

P.S. If you’d like to join us and start your own Get Ready for Love journey today then simply head over here and we’ll send you your welcome pack straight away.
 

How To Stay Grounded when Living A Fast Paced Life

"I'm ok, I'm just busy" - how many times have you said that this week? If you're like most of us then it's A LOT. It seems that we're living in a constant state of overwhelm and somehow it's become normal, spinning lots of plates in the air, all at the same time.

How do we manage the many deadlines and demands on our time? And how can we stay grounded and balanced living this fast paced life?

This is the hot topic that we explored in our latest podcast, which was inspired by our friends Persia and Joey from Addictive Daughter who have just released their new book 'The Inner Fix: Be Stronger, Happier and Braver'.

Listen in as we share all the things from our 'Inner Fix' toolkit and how we put our happiness and wellbeing as a top priority in life. 

Love, Vicki and Selina x

PS We'd love to hear from you - what do you do to stay grounded and maintain a healthy headspace? Leave us a comment below :)