Do you love to try new things, and want to feel joy and happiness every day of the week? If you do, you’ll just love my ‘Joy Seeker 1 Week Challenge’. 

The Joy Seeker Challenge is a follow-up from my previous blog ‘Joy is yours for the taking everyday!’, where I explain a little about joy, what it feels like to experience it, and how you can feel it every day of your life. I thought now might be a good opportunity to transition from reading about it to you actually experiencing it for yourself every day, for just one week. 
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In preparation for this challenge I will highlight joy seekers characteristics, give you the low-down on the benefits to you becoming a joy seeker, and expand upon ways to experience and cultivate joy. Then you’ll be fully equipped with all the tools and knowledge you need to actively participate in my one week joy seeker challenge. 

Joy seeker characteristics
Joy seekers often go about their daily business, happily mingling throughout their communities, wafting happiness, optimism and generosity of spirit over you as they pass by. They exude positive energy. Joy seekers come in all shapes and sizes. They can have a calm, quiet, discerning manner about them, or they may be gregarious and enthusiastic. They are very likely to be dependable, determined, purposeful, spiritual and charitable. They are proactive in seeking out joy for themselves. Joy seekers live mindfully, are resilient and accepting of themselves. They prefer to spend more time concentrating on the present, rather than living regretfully in the past or anticipating what the future may or may not bring.
They have an abundance of self-awareness. They’re usually observant, and are not afraid to explore new experiences for themselves. They love to share their joy with others wherever and whenever they can. They prefer to bring sunshine into people’s lives, rather than dowsing you with rain. They find lessons to be learnt and opportunities to be gained from unfortunate situations, rather than dwelling despairingly on their misfortune. You may well be one of these people yourself or may certainly be aware of people like this in your own life, as their presence is often highly visible.

Why become a joy seeker?
When you are open to receiving and sharing joy there are a significant number of benefits to you and your personal health and well-being, not to mention your productivity. 

1. One of the most significant factors is that joy can create a more positive outlook. A positive attitude often reduces that nagging, negative self-talk, that works hard to sabotage your joys, ideas, dreams and aspirations. 
2. A positive attitude helps us to manage stress and deal with those day-to-day small crises more effectively.
3. Joy has the power to revitalise and invigorate you, restoring your energy levels, and in turn creating greater clarity and fresh perspectives, helping you to be more creative.
4. New evidence in neuroscience is discovering that savouring positive emotions is actually a key component to psychological well-being.
5. It is well documented in science journals that positive emotions increases our physical health and well-being.
6. Scientific research indicates that sharing our positive experiences with a supportive listener, enhances our satisfaction with life, creates more optimism, and decreases negative attitudes such as anger, envy and materialism. 

Exercise your five senses

As you’re probably aware we have five different senses to perceive the world around us. These are; vision, smell, taste, sound and touch. In order to make the most of your joyful challenge week experiences, you will need to utilize all these senses. The most effective way of doing this is to be in a mindful, calm and present state. You can find lots of information online but these are the main attributes to a mindfulness life, which is a life full of joy.
o Take time and pay close attention to the environment around you
o Look for the little things, the everyday things, the ordinary moments in our lives
o Avoid focusing on anything negative (for this challenge)
o Acknowledge your appreciation for the moment 
o Be mindful of the senses that bring the joyful moment about
o Explore your emotion in detail – what emotions are you feeling – where do you feel it?
o Be non-judgemental about what emotions you are feeling, just acknowledge they are there
o Give the feelings a colour that will help intensify those joyous feelings and emotions 

The Joy Seeker 1 Week Challenge
To take part in the ‘Joy Seeker 1 Week Challenge’, email me at info@asterialifecoaching.co.uk requesting the free one week challenge template. Then complete the challenge sheet fully as you go through the week, and take photos, as this really does help to reflect on your joyful experiences, allowing you to relive it time and time again, whenever you desire.  Record at least one joy you’ve felt each day. You may experience more than one joy throughout your day. If you do that’s great!  You’ll probably find the more open you are to experiencing joy, the more self-aware you become, and the more opportunities arrive each day for experiencing joy. Alternatively, if you would prefer to add it to your daily journal entries, that’s fine too, but either way it would be great if you could email me at the above address, to let me know how you did or are doing with the challenge. I really would love to know what joys you experienced during the week. Remember to be as detailed as you can, as this brings colour and helps create a stronger memory of your joys, which in turn helps you to recall more easily that joyful feeling whenever you need a little lift in your day.

​Enjoy this joyful challenge.

I look forward to hearing back from you soon.
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Julia

I would love to hear your feedback on this blog. If you’re not taking part in the 1 week challenge, perhaps you have a moment of pure joy you'd like to share?​

Every year for as long as I can remember, I’ve watched the London Marathon with the deepest of admiration for all those people running 26.2 miles (40K) for their personal charities, and thinking what a worthwhile goal to achieve. I make no apologies for admitting that running is not my thing. However, I love walking and really wanted a new personal challenge to take on. 

Whilst browsing the various challenges online I noticed Discover Adventure London Marathon Walk 2017. Perfect! So back in February I booked myself up for my first ever London Marathon Walk, which ran on Saturday 23rd September. 

As this was my first Marathon I didn’t really know what to expect. I’d never really tested my fitness nor my trainers to this level before. I wasn’t with a group, I was striking out on my own, I wasn’t sure what the weather would throw at me or how much sponsorship I would get. The fact is I could have worried about so many things and talked myself out of it a million times over. This really isn’t my style though.  I’m a great believer in ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’ which enables me to turn my fears into my personal achievements and more often than not greatest successes.

Remaining positive gave me the opportunity stay fit and active, raise awareness and vital funds for my charity, as well as achieving a lifetime goal, with the prospect of making some new positive like-minded friends along the way. It's all to do with your perspective. The fear of the unknown was always going to lose badly when so much can be gained with an optimistic outlook.

On the day the weather was perfect for walking. I met up with two other amazing ladies (Susan and Sheila) before we started out, each of which were solo walkers and first-timers to the London Marathon. Susan navigated the course, Sheila was our official photographer and I was the pace setter. We completed the London Marathon in just over 9 hours. We were a great team on the day, dubbing ourselves ‘The Marathon Queens’. We raised around £3,500 for our personal charities between us, as well as becoming firm friends.  Yes we all had our own aches and pains to deal with from the day, which are temporary, but in a weird way the discomfort enables you to understand just a little of what our charities receivers go through every day of their lives. 
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I would like to extend a huge thank you to Discover Adventure for making the day so much fun, setting up such an interesting course and making sure we had plenty of water and snacks to keep our energy levels maintained.

Words of wisdom;
‘Erase your fears and your world becomes a limitless adventure’.

Here are some photos from the day, courtesy of Sheila.
Enjoy life!
Julia – Asteria Life Coaching

I would love to hear your feedback on this blog. Perhaps you have some experience yourself of running or walking a Marathon or tips that you’d like to share with me. Please like and retweet this article on Twitter @AsterlifeC

If you want to discover your star potential, meet your lifetime goals and think I may be able to help you, then please call me on 07752565740

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Hi there,
In this blog I thought I’d tell you about one of my great pastimes, the allotment, and how it came to be.

For about 15 years now I’ve been working on a couple of allotment plots with my neighbour. I got into the allotment world by complete accident. Literally!

I’d been skiing in Morzine, in the French Alps, when a freak accident had me air-lifted to hospital. Very embarrassing. I was diagnosed with torn ligaments on my right knee. Ouch!! It still makes me shudder today.

When I returned home I had to take three months off work, under strict orders from my GP. As you can imagine, time laid very heavy on my hands, and I was getting very down.  So my friend and neighbour invited me onto her allotment. She said it would be good for me to get out in the open air and do something constructive. I’m glad to say from that point on, I never looked back. I was hooked!

It just goes to show you that sometimes good things can end painfully, so that better things can come together.

Anyway, I thought you’d like to see a little gallery of our allotment. I’ll blog about this from time to time, so that you can see what I’m up to on it. I hope you enjoy my little gallery of flora and fauna of our allotment, which my neighbour and I lovingly care for.

I would love to hear your comments, and please share with me your photos of your allotment or garden.
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Discover your star potential.
Happy June!
Julia