The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 3,800 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 3 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Written for International Women’s Day – 8 March 2014

By Sandra Peachey

What is woman..?  She is such as this:

• Awesome, angelic and animated, at least…
• Beautiful, bountiful and beau-dacious! We have and give so much.
• Colourful, connecting, and yes, so creative…
• A Dreamer, do-er and a Diva!  And a drama queen? – well, may be never!
• Engaging, enlightening and oh so enigmatic…
• Feminine, fascinating and completely fabulous – each and every one of her.
• Giver, gifter and Goddess – so let’s worship her.
• That certain mix of hedonistic, helpful and HER.  Hurrah!!!
• And impossible, incredible, innovator – we ALL know her…
• A juicy, joyous, jay walker.  Jealously guarding her friends, her feelings and her dreams.
• A kitten at times, kind of Kitsch when she wants to be, kitted out for life – for a day out, for shopping, for tears, for laughter and …
• A lady, yet lovable, and loopy – she’s allowed to be.
• Meaningful and magnificent – more, more, more!
• Natty, naughty and certainly nice.  Would you want her any other way?
• Old in a never aging sort of a way? Oh yes!!!
• Perfectly imperfect, peachy and present.  She is gorgeous and she is with you.
• A queen, still she can be quick silver, and definitely quite something.
• She can be radical, and yet radiant, whilst still being ‘real’…
• Sometimes soft and sympathetic, the world’s sister – super-charged, simply special and so much more.
• Tender, tenacious, and talkative too.  She’s all that…
• Undiscovered and unrealised, she is still so deep, there’s so much more…
• Sometime vixen, quite a vanguard, yet variable – a veritable mixture that defies boredom.
• A wonder, oh so wonderful, a complete wow! She has the works!
• She has X-Ray vision.  Stop!
• Youth in age – you are her and she is you.
• She just has the Zebra like surety of step, with such grace and free boundlessness, that she is every where – when wanted, when needed, when called.

A woman is… just that, never that and all that…

~ Happy International Women’s Day! ~

To celebrate this auspicious day, Damsels in Success is holding free events for heart centred women, who want to get their message – products and services out into the big wide world, all through out the month of March.

You are cordially invited to join Damsels in Success – Burton on 19 March.  Let’s get visible – together!  Click here to find out more and reserve your place…

Dear Visibility

I am an author, coach and blogger, to name but few of my life labels.  I have recently been shortlisted for a coaching award; and a year ago I published my first book Peachey Letters – Love Letters to Life, which has been defining, amazing and absolutely life changing…

A year on and I’m pondering about being ‘out there’… There was a time, when I lived in a structured world of work, rest and play.  I was defined by my routine, by doing my work – getting a sense of significance from it, sometimes satisfied by it, sometimes stressed.  And after work I would fill my time and my head with friends and social situations and other distracting stuff.

And now here I am… Strange times… Strange times..?  Strange times!!! 

I work, still, in the corporate world from time to time, I coach my own clients to achieve their dreams and goals, I run my own women’s group, as part of the sisterhood of Damsels in Success.  And more than that, my first book is all about my inner and outer life, my own iselfish sharing stories of my journey from day, to thought, to year, to who knows where.

My book started as a blog and in it I analyse, I love, I let go and coach myself through the ups and downs, ins and outs, ebbs and flows of my life.  The first time I published the first post online I really had second thoughts.  Surely if I pressed the button and put it out there, I’d be judged, laughed at and possibly worse.  Cringe time…

Knowing me as I do, I know these thoughts, these patterns, these cyclical chidings that circle in my head.  So I published any way… The lid was off the box, the cat out of the bag and my stuff was well and truly out there…  Peachey Letters was, is and will be…

It still feels vulnerable to share my stories sometimes and at other times I forget that people know so much about me, and pass by in the world in forgotten innocence that I dared to share… But can I tell you too, from so much fabulous feedback, from so many, that this sharing has touched people, has healed, has changed, has entertained and has turned things around.  So peeling off the plaster of vulnerability is not something I am ever going to regret in this lifetime…

I am passionate about giving support, of giving my gifts to the world and so too I ask for recompense in return, as a fair exchange of energy, yet still, I can feel uncomfortable, pushy and ugly and so I have had to learn to put myself out there, to dare to show up and shine, no matter what.  To seek attention, to say ‘here is me, here is what I do, it is unique, it is gorgeous and it makes a difference…’

And one thing I have learned about life, is that I have to learn my lessons again and maybe again.  So, right now I have been shortlisted for a Coaching Award, as Women’s Coach with the Association of Professional Coaches, Trainers and Consultants (APCTC).  I have already been nominated a times in the past few years for these awards, so really was gratified, but not attached when I received my 3rd nomination this year.  Then, to my surprise – nomination changed to shortlist and shortlist is decided by a public (online) vote. 

So I am out there again – asking, sharing, daring to say this is who I am – please recognise and support me.  It has frequently been uncomfortable, getting out of my comfort zone – waving and pointing and requesting.  Then again discomfort is more than recompensed by the good wishes, and happy acquiescence.  I have had so so much to be thankful for, to so many people.

And I have gorgeous coaching clients, in all the spheres I work in, who know they have so much to give, have a craving to share and yet, something holds them back.

Actually for something, read many things.  There can be our cultural expectations of not publically praising yourself; of wondering if you are nothing special; of thinking that lots of people are already doing what you want to do.  And how about that dark, dangerous voice in your head – ‘who DO you think you are?’

So we have to learn to shine our light out into the world.  If we don’t shine, who will see, who will know, who will be touched or changed and who will stay in the darkness???

Let’s take this a step further – where is your sense of significance? Is it in waiting for someone else to say, ‘yes you can?’ or is it time to listen instead to a deeper calling to make a difference?  Really – only YOU know the answer to this, but to know, you have to go out there, to do, to speak, to act – to trade your gifts with the world.

The voting for the award ends on Friday 28 February 2014. If you haven’t voted yet, I would really appreciate you taking the short time to cast your vote, here online…

So here is the thing – if I win, that will be truly amazing.  If not, then I won’t be crushed.  I put myself out there, I pushed through the discomfort, I asked and I have been rewarded over and over in positive responses.  I have learnt and I have grown and I have shown the way to any one else who wants to see the possibilities. 

Hey, it’s a cliché, but that already makes me a winner… And THAT thought is delicious and I am so enjoying the experience, what ever the outcome…

Here I am world!

Here’s to shining and sparkling then…

  Sandie xxx

MWAH!

Have you had a productive and juicy January?  I can’t believe that February is here already, can you?  I definitely getting into the swing of 2014 and am having a good old clear out and sort out!  As well as the usual life laundry of sorting and chucking, I’m also getting more organised with my finances, my office and my email Inbox.  I’m really busy with my corporate clients and Damsels in Success business at the moment, and whilst I love that, with 2 new books in the pipeline, I’m itching to do more writing too…
 
So it is an absolute necessity for me to get supported and organised.  Rather than get overwhelmed, I am focussed on asking for support and delegating where ever I can. And when it comes to being more organised, at times like these, dealing with emails can either feel like they are eating into my precious time, or being guiltily forgotten whilst they continue to breed, mushroom like, in the darkness of my ignored Inbox!
 
I am delighted to announce therefore that the guest speaker at my February Damsels in Success event, is email expert and overwhelm banisher – Kate Gerry of http://www.kategerry.com.  
 
So I wonder, does any of this sound familiar to you:

• Opening your Inbox makes every day feel like a to do list that you didn’t get round to yesterday?
• Your workflow keeps on being interrupted throughout the day by a constant barrage of emails?
• You are constantly worried about missing (or even worse, losing) important emails coming in?
• You have EVER spent a Sunday trying to catch up ready for Monday morning..?

If you would like to get cleverer with emails, then join us for our next meeting, where Kate will show you her strategic steps to keeping your Inbox clear for good – in less than 30 minutes a day! 
 
At our live training event, Kate will also reveal:

• The top 3 reasons most business owners don’t keep their Inbox clear and what to do so you never get caught out again! 
• The Number 1 secret that will give you more time with your family and your weekends back instantly! 
• How she helped her accountant to save over 7.5 hours a week, just by being more efficient with her email inbox! (How many hours do you waste on YOUR Inbox?)
• How to use your Smartphone to stay organised – instead of ruining your day when you get bombarded with a whole heap of emails hitting your Inbox!  

So… to discover a fun, easy way to cut through your email overwhelm, spend less time in your Inbox and more time focused on the things you love, simply book yourself onto our guest list here to join us for our February meeting, on Wednesday 19 February, in Ashby de la Zouch, at 6.30 pm.
 
Well, February IS the Valentine month, so let’s spend it doing more of what we love!
 
I look forward to seeing you on the 19th 🙂
 
With love and laughter
    Sandie
Sandra Peachey
Coach, Author and Director at Damsels in Success
* Author of Peachey Letters – Love Letters to Life as featured in local press, Psychologies, The Lady & The BBC!
* Co-author of ‘The F-Factor’ – the blueprint for entrepreneurial women to have Success without the Stress
* Winner at the 2013 ‘Women Inspiring Women’ Awards
* Nominee in two categories in the ‘Association of Professional Coaches, Trainers & Consultants’ Awards, 2012 & 2013
Tel. 07921 494363
www.peacheydays.co.uk
www.peacheyletters.co.uk

Tel. 07921 494363
www.peacheydays.co.uk
www.peacheyletters.co.uk

Oh Heck – Not ANOTHER New Year / New You Posting – Pleeeeese!

“The merry year is born, like the bright berry from the naked thorn.
~ Hartley Coleridge.”

How was your Christmas?? Well the ‘Twelve Days’ aren’t even over yet and my tree and decorations are still up… but now it feels like it is time to look forward…   And the New Year is nearly here…  So – will it be back to reality and to the same old same old in 2014?
 
Now I don’t know about you – but I have already seen so many of those emails and postings about a New year / a New you, and what a good time it is to start diets, launch a business, buy this perfect product and so on and so on…  and blah blah blah… And yes – I could even be guilty of having written a few of those myself…
 
So here are a few of my own observations on the New Year subject… I know that for me – there is a very definite ‘New Year, New Start’ energy… Maybe it’s because I’ve had a rest and taken a break from ‘the norm’, but I am genuinely raring to go and have already got round to loads of niggling little jobs that I have been meaning to get around to for months.  I’ve been cleaning and sorting and arranging and planning and getting ready to face the New!
 
I’ve decided to deliberately embrace the New Year flow and go where the energy takes me and to capitalise on it – even taking a little longer to ‘get back to the day job’ so I can enjoy myself and feel great about what I am acheiving effortlessly, in the meantime.

I have had just the most amazing 12 months, publishing 2 books, speaking to capacity crowds and fulfilling my ambitions to appear in Psychologies Magazine and on the BBC!   And there are more plans afoot for the coming year, where I will be supporting more people in writing and publishing THEIR books too…   So it is most definitely time to be asking myself some big questions for the year ahead, and putting wings to my prayers – taking the action that will turn them from plans to reality.
 
Yet I am just as guilty as anyone of not keeping New Years Resolutions, as the pages on the calendar turn and life carries us along.   So how DO we make our new year good plans and intentions actually stick???  
 
Well, that is where my next Damsels in Success event comes in, because to make this planning malarkey a completely ‘success with ease’ process – Burton members and guests will be ‘Goal Setting for Goddesses’ together, so that we will all create our own 2014 the way we want it… And the reason this whole process will be easier is that it has been designed for women, by women; we will walk through it together; then really commit to it and together hold each other to support and to account – giving our goals real wings and the genuine chance to make a difference to our lives.

It all happens on 15 January in Leicestershire, just sign up online for your fab free place, here…
 
And here are more ways I can support you and your Goddess Goals too…

Firstly my complimentary gift to you, is my Peachey Process to help you set gentle goals that will actually ‘stick’, in the form of my Peachey Letter to New Years Eve, for you to read, reflect and take action on…

Secondly, the next level of support I can offer you, is individual.  I get incredible results Coaching and Mentoring my cherished clients on a one to one basis, and if you are ready to take things to the next level, in life and business too, I have a special offer on a Fast Track Coaching session – find out more here…

If you have any comments or questions on this months newsletter, let me know….   And that, was all the latest Peachey News, Views, Offerings and Opinions for now…
 
Here’s to a delightful and delicious January, and an amazing 2014, for all of us.

With love and laughter…
    Sandie
Sandra Peachey
Coach, Author and Director at Damsels in Success
* Author of Peachey Letters – Love Letters to Life as featured in local press, Psychologies, The Lady & The BBC!
* Co-author of ‘The F-Factor’ – the blueprint for entrepreneurial women to have Success without the Stress
* Winner at the 2013 ‘Women Inspiring Women’ Awards
* Nominee in two categories in the ‘Association of Professional Coaches, Trainers & Consultants’ Awards, 2012 & 2013

Tel. 07921 494363
www.peacheydays.co.uk
www.peacheyletters.co.uk

How is this December day finding you?  And do you love this time of year or dread it?  I ask because I’m completely in to the whole 12th month vibe, with its’ coldly crisp sunny days and the countdown to Christmas; yet I know too it can be stressful for so many women, with a 1001 tasks to complete, people to please and the ‘day job’ to fit in around it all too!

As part of MY own Christmas preparations, you may know that I have a habit of writing ‘Love Letters to Life’ – the first collection of which came out as a book this year.  As an early Christmas gift to you, here is my ‘Letter to December’…  sent with warm festive wishes…  Click here for the letter…

So that is one view of December and recently a friend was sharing with me how much she dreads this time of year, as some sad things happened to her in the past, and so the advent of Advent brings it all back.   I wonder then if Christmas is a choice?  Has Christmas just ‘happened’ to that lady that dreads it and need these feelings continue for her and for us all?

I know I often unconsciously look for things to throw onto the bonfire of worry and stress – in fact last year I had been quietly fretting about having my first ever Christmas without my mum (who passed away in the summer of 2012), but then, instead, I got to spend my first Christmas day ever with young children; and you know what – I saw it through their eyes, got up with them at the crack of dawn (when all the other adults were still snoozing) and just loved the whole experience; so the Universe more than compensated me for what I thought was going to be huge hole…

There seems to be a certain irony that though Christmas is about celebration and enjoyment, even the quietest ones seem to come with all the stresses of pleasing family and friends, as well as all the shopping, cooking, eating, socialising, writing, wrapping, and rushing around that it can so easily entail.

So how about we consider that our Christmas IS a choice and we can choose a ‘Christmas with Ease’?  A Christmas created by us, ditching guilt or necessity, an experience that serves us and nurtures us, so that when we are ‘filled up’ we can do the same for those around us with love and vibrant energy?  Each of our Christmases is OUR Christmas after all, isn’t it?

As well as Christmas on the horizon, Damsels in Success has been keeping me gloriously occupied, with live events for my beautiful Burton group and new local members joining, as well as our conference – IGNITE! 2013 held last month.  As a result of IGNITE! our fabulous personal development community gained new members across the UK – as we gave great value with amazing speakers, saw many light bulb moments for our delegates, and received fabulous feedback for a life changing and inspiring 2 days.  Below is just one of the many pictures I have to prove it (for more pics, check out all the photos on Facebook, here)!

Now Christmas is nearly here, I’m extending a warm invitation to you to come along to my next Damsels in Success event, being held in Ashby de la Zouch (Leicestershire) on the evening of Wednesday 18th December.  Our theme this month, you won’t be surprised to learn, is ‘Christmas with Ease’.

So… do you do Christmas with stress, excess or smooth success? At Damsels in Success we definitely believe in having a Christmas with Ease, so together let’s celebrate, organise, enjoy… and along the way – give something back – to our world and to the world at large…

Infused with fun, laughter and learning this will be a fabulous way to get set for Christmas – which is why we are deliberately holding it the week before, when ironically we could be tempted into doing other Christmassy things…  It is free for all first timers and all we ask is that you register your place on-line here to secure your place… 

And to make your Christmas even MORE easy, I have a special offer for you – to buy my book – Peachey Letters in a bundle with the Damsels in Success Book The F-Factor.  Together the normal combined retail price is £21.99, but MY book bundle is just £14.00 (inc postage, in the UK).  Check out all the details here and buy bundles of beautiful books for you AND for loved ones…

It’s time to wind down now – I’m allowing myself space to slow down before Christmas and give myself time to smell the poinsettias…  So what ever YOUR December dreams are, here’s to them coming deliciously true…

With warm Yuletide wishes
   Sandie x
Sandra Peachey – Coach, Author and Director at Damsels in Success
Author of Peachey Letters – Love Letters to Life as featured in local press, Psychologies, The Lady & The BBC!
Winner at the 2013 ‘Women Inspiring Women’ Awards
Nominee in two categories in the ‘Association of Professional Coaches, Trainers & Consultants’ Awards, 2012 & 2013

Tel. 07921 494363
www.peacheydays.co.uk
www.peacheyletters.co.uk

Dear December

Here you are… the clock and the calendar have ticked and clicked around to you yet again…

My December is the feeling of Christmas coming – a slow and relentlessly gorgeous anticipation of celebration, of receiving and of feasting.  Then there is the savoured future joy of family and friends coming together; of anticipated gifting and unwelcomed bloating.

That is December in my head and heart; and then there is the external twelfth month landscape too.  Sunlight and chill combine to crisp refreshment of the senses – the cold stinging us into action, so we must dance and cush through our outdoor chores to return as quickly as we can to the internal warmth and comfort of anti-cold, back to our own warm and cosy indoor comforts.

December’s outdoor world is alternatively gloomy and sunny.  I dive into the lush, sunny, crisply cold days. These days are meant for walking, and I devour them with all my senses – frost under foot, slickly wet autumnal leaves carpeting the ground, a lack of smell sense, bare and beautiful trees; ice skimming and then thickening the surfaces of puddles and ponds, widening as the thermometer dips…

These are my December days and as we troll down to the end of the year, the dark nights deepen and thicken and deprive us of daylight.  On past winter days I have risen in the dark, worked in caves of chores and returned back to my lair, hidden in the same darkness – a kind of celestial vampire, never seeing, and so starved of the sun.

Then somehow we contrive to bring the outside be-wintered December into our interiors.  Chopping down and dragging in fir trees or counterfeiting them with tinsel or plastic representations of their tree selves.  Then we spray and scatter pretended snow and bring in boughs of holly and mistletoe – the forgotten ghosts of our pagan past.

So my indoor world transforms to Christmas land with decorations collected over decades and added into every single year.  Boxes brought down from the dark attic, waiting their turn, and when opened, bringing with them joyous shocks of remembrance – a year of Christmas stored in the glistening darkness, germinated and then liberated to live in the Christmas light for a few shiny, glamorous weeks.  Then the cards trickle in and are displayed – from colleagues, cohorts and friends; from long lost cousins and nearly long lost friends of decades gone.

I love the preparations… I take and make them languorously and slowly, relishing the joy of Christmas transformation, dining and dancing, of presents wrapped to be deliciously unwrapped.  To choose the present that will delight the gifted one, that will make them pause and smile.  There are Christmas decisions to be made – whether to take the time trodden path of tradition or to spice it up with modernity; then again to take and shake all the elements together to make it MY chosen Christmas, a blend of me and of history?

My December is flavoured with gluttony and gastronomy.  Spices tingle and warm through mulled wine, mince pies and other wintery delicacies.  Chocolates rustle, jostle and abound.  Spirits chink in glasses and some seem reserved solely for Chringle tide – port and advocaat stay firmly at the back of my drunken cupboard for 11 months of the year, and then in December are opened, poured and appreciated in their own spiritual season.

December is winter through and through.  The distinct and distant possibility of snow can transform our outdoor world and seize up the systems of transport and safety – slipping us up, or blanketing our dull world with white ethereal beauty.

December is light and shade.  A tingled anticipation or a mangled realisation of misplaced expectation.  Expectation or negative association can be heavy and brutal, so consciously choose delicious anticipation and feel and fly through your own December.

So December is a choice, a feeling, a flux of emotions.  Choose wisely and craft your Christmas to you.  For all that your December is, I wish you joy of it, to love and revel in the now of it.

So dream your December, deem your December; live it and love it.

And so Dear December, another end here begins…

Yours, again and again.

  Sandra x

PS: As Christmas comes round and you are thinking of a gorgeous gift, a collection of my ‘Peachey Letters’ have been gathered together in book form.  It makes the perfect present, for you, family and friends… You can buy it on my website here or from Amazon (in Paperback and Kindle)…

Taken by me, on a wonderful winter walk by the River Avon…