Reflections: a book for all those seeking peace in a frantic world
“Reflections is not like any other colouring book. Besides engaging focus in beautiful, well detailed illustrations, it helps us to reflect on how daily stress can be harmful to our mental and physical health. I think that one of the most valuable messages it gives is that, through the exercises and colouring, we can learn techniques to help us alleviate the negative thinking and stress in our lives. An amazing, soul-touching book which I recommend for anyone to use and enjoy!” – Daniella Liberato
The reason that I put this book together was to give people some of the tools and techniques that I’ve learnt on my own journey and now use to disconnect from negative thinking, beliefs and anxieties that used to run my life, in the hope that these tools may help other people to do the same.
I think it’s incredibly hard to remain balanced in today’s world, with the pressures we face on a daily basis. So having tools and techniques that we can call upon to use when life is challenging us, helps to get us back into centre before we drop into negative thinking and spiral downwards.
It was 14 years ago that I left the UK to head off travelling for what I thought would be for a year. Little did I know that I was in fact embarking on what would become a journey of self-discovery and wouldn’t see me settling back in the UK for 12 years.
I realise looking back now that when I set off on my travels I was searching for something more, something that would take away the underlying feeling of anxiety and sensitivity to life that I was carrying with me like baggage. I was searching for happiness and peace and at the time thought that it was outside of me, in another country, another relationship or another job.
I wasn’t happy and was reacting to the world, in victim mode, and was a bit lost. I felt like sometimes I was just existing through life and often each moment was just a means to an end in the hope that something in the future would come along and give me the happiness and peace I was desperately searching for – I was living in my head in my thoughts a lot rather than experiencing each moment in the present for what it was and that was a really painful, anxious and stressful place to be.
I was drawn to a lot of different teachers and practices who all teach different techniques in their own way, but I realised that they are all pointing in the same direction, that change comes from within. I recognised then that the happiness and peace I was seeking was already in me and I just had strip away the layers of negative thinking and beliefs that I’d accumulated over the years to re-connect with me.
What I wanted to do is to create a workbook that people can use however they are drawn to using it. I’ve alternated colouring illustrations with mindfulness techniques, visualisations, negative belief changes, empowering belief integrations, finding your inner strengths exercise, looking at a challenge from different perspectives etc. I’ve also incorporated some thought-proving quotes throughout the book that have been a source of inspiration to me.
By integrating the self-help exercises with colouring illustrations, I wanted to create a book that would appeal to a wider audience, an audience who might not necessarily reach for a self-help book even when life is challenging them which in today’s world it often does and with this in mind I have kept all the exercises simple, light and easy to follow.
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