relationships

Friends: 3 characteristics of a good friend

A friendship can strike up quickly between you and another person or it may grow over time.  Both are valid approaches to establishing a friendship.  At some point you will realise they are important to you.  Your relationship may display many of these characteristics;

  • challenge you making the relationship exciting and fun.
  • stay with you through the good times and the sad times.
  • supportive of each other – your hopes, desires and fears.

Often conversation bounces backwards and forwards between you with each of you listening and giving a considered reply.  Good friends love you and can feel as comfortable as an old pair of slippers!

You feel able to ask them for their help and they are there for you if your world comes tumbling down. read more

By Alison Wem, ago

Families: how to make them stronger so they stay together?

In the UK and I suspect many other countries too, the school half term is now over.

How did the holiday break go with you and your family?

This includes grandparents and anyone else who may have been involved with providing child care for younger children or ‘entertainment’ for older ones in half term week.

Hopefully you all had a wonderful time. But if my memory of being a working mum serves me right, this was not always the case. There is often so much expectation of the fun of being together, but without the ground work already in place, anticipation can turn to disappointment, frustration and fatigue. read more

By Alison Wem, ago

Are friends as important as family?

Family are given to you but friends you get the opportunity to choose.

Family often love you unconditionally and stay with you throughout your life.

Friends often stay for a period in your life and then drift away. However I have noticed really close friends stay for the duration.

Some friendships are as close and as strong as a blood tie. They can be based on a common interest or less obvious things like the same sense of humour, life values or the joy of giving and receiving.

The picture of the three flowers represent me and my two closet friends. read more

By Alison Wem, ago

Send love to someone you cannot meet

I am learning from giving virtual reiki sessions over WhatsApp in lockdown London, that distance is absolutely no problem for energy. My friends and customers are amazed that it feels the same as when I am in the same room as them.

Love is intelligent energy and has no bounds.

So with this post of the Kyoto Garden in Holland Park, London I am sending my love to my friend Hitomi in Tokyo. Normally she visits us every other year but she has not been able to come due to the virus. Hitomi, we are missing you and hope we can meet again sometime soon. read more

By Alison Wem, ago

How to Handle a Toxic Manager

Toxic managers can be challenging and also detrimental to your calmness and well-being. I know this from first hand experience. I was a senior executive successfully delivering a business change programme but I had the meanest manager I had ever experienced. He was a short New Yorker who loved to shout and belittle people. He did not respect that I lived in a different time zone from him and would call me late into my evening. Normally a confident person, my self-esteem and confidence hit rock bottom. It was a very unhappy period in my life. read more

By Alison Wem, ago

Families who eat together stay together

Its is Spring Bank Holiday in the UK so it seemed right to talk about families and how we can improve the time we spend together. My observation is there are many benefits from families who eat together.

In our busy 21st century lives, there is a trend towards families eating their meals from trays watching TV rather than sitting to a table and facing each other.  Likewise teenagers, if allowed, will take their food and eat in their bedrooms.

Eating a meal at a table together as a family strengthens the family bond.  Over the meal conversation will flow backwards and forwards between parents, between parents and children.  By sharing their day’s news, family members are more involved with each others lives.  This gives opportunities to support one another and for parents to guide a child. read more

By Alison Wem, ago

Bloggers: can your posts be written by a robot?

Hello fellow bloggers,

I came across this article, Artifical Intelligence Can Now Write Amazing Content – What does it Mean For Humans? by Bernard Marr who is a Big Data and AI guru. It is a well written article. Have a read and see what you think.

As an independent blogger, I feel it gives me the opportunity to share my thoughts and approach to life in the hope it will make other people’s life easier. I am sure you may be the same or looking to entertain and make life more fun.

Have a read of this article and let me know if you think a robot can replace the human emotions we experience which often inspires an author’s writing. Can they learn to demonstrate empathy? They seem to be learning to mimic many human behaviours. read more

By Alison Wem, ago