When you lose your Sparkle for some reason, and we all will experience that now and again in our lives, the first steps to coping with it is to, breathe consciously a few times a day to just be with the situation, and to be honest about how you feel and experience the situation, and to start to get familiar with the idea of acceptance.
Just to be with what's what

Then comes the next step "to see it as it is", or to accept what's going on, by imagining stripping away your emotions to see the situation exactly as it is and to notice where in your body you feel your upset.
Starting to accepting the situation

Then – when you feel ready, the next step is to set a small goal. It's important you see is as taking a tiny little step, if you set it too big you might feel even more upset or that there is no point.
The first tiny step towards what's next

The goal could be something like, within a month I'll go out for dinner with a couple of my friends. Call them to arrange this. Or it could be like what I did. I decided to participate in the next year's dance show. I was really upset when I broke my foot and that I couldn't participate in the dance show this year. It felt like it would take months and moths for me to be able to dance again.

The truth is it might take that long, but I'm more ok with that now. I had a talk with my dance teacher, she suggested that I could set a goal that would inspire me during the healing process, and we came up with the goal of me participating in next year’s dance show. I felt sooo much better after that phone call. I feel that the goal is achievable, and it is something that I really want to do.

And it really put me at ease with my impatience that I often have in my life, especially when something like breaking my foot happens. Initially I couldn't stand the thought of it taking months and months before I could dance and work again.

When something happens to you that you don't want, like breaking your foot, as I wrote about in my last blog, I mentioned that acceptance is important to claiming your sparkle back again. What does acceptance really mean?

We all go thorough tough times in our lives sometimes, it doesn't really matter what level of hardship we are going through, it's about how we feel about the situation that matters, when life changes because of an accident like breaking bones in your foot.
When we are in a situation that we don't want we feel frustrated, upset, sad and angry, and we don’t' want to feel what we feel. If we can get to acceptance of the situation, it is a good start to feeling better again.

See things as they are

Acceptance to me also means to "see things as they are". Just play around with this for a while, don't take it too seriously. To "see things as they are" imagine stripping away all the emotions, interpretations and dramas around the event, what was is that actually happened? I know it can be difficult, but just have a go. When you see it as it is, what does the situation really look like? What do you see or feel?

It's completely human to have feelings, but often we get caught up in our feelings and it can be difficult to cope with situations and events that you don't want. Our lives are often run by how we feel, and sometimes, that we shouldn't feel the way we feel. What I believe is important is to really accept that all feelings are OK to have, and when you accept them as they are you will find it easier to “cope”, your sparkle will come back again.

It's important to see a situation as it is and allow your feelings to be what they are. It's not good for your health and well-being to suppress what you feel or to try to avoid your feelings, it will keep you away from the true you, who you really are and living your life to the full.

“Hurray” for your feelings, it's lovely to feel alive.

The first step to accept things:

What you need to do is to “walk through” what has happened, rather than trying to escape from it Typical ways of escaping are: using positive thinking (which can work, but just in the short term), burying yourself with work, or something else that will keep you busy.

Or, as for me, I got really upset, lots of sadness and anger that this happened to me, and I wanted an answer to why it happened. So, I was working on figuring this out by using my mind to get a reason to why it happened.

When I really looked into it, “walked through” it, I started to see that I would never get an answer, but more importantly, there was no point going there, it wouldn’t make a difference. And having done that, I suddenly started to be OK with the fact that I had broken my foot.

This is how you do it:

Breathe – take a deep breath in and then out.

Strip – imagine stripping away your emotions.

Notice – just notice where in your body you feel your upset (frustration, anger, sadness etc), don't try to feel anything different just notice it and stay with that.

Is that it? You might wonder. Yes – this is the very first step to accepting your situation, or as it were, accepting your feelings at the moment. What happens is that it changes from "This shouldn't be" to "OK where do we go from here?"

You might have to do this more that once, perhaps a couple of times a day for a period of time. I'll let you know what the next step is next week.

What will you do when you have re-discovered your sparkle and suddenly something happens in your life and the sparkle goes, you have just got that glow going and then it's like something or someone put some water on the perfect glow and you hear the sound of psshhhhh and the sparkle is out.

I'm the one who works with women to help them to re-discover their sparkle, from my life experience of having a kidney transplant and having found a way to show women how to find that sparkle again.

And a couple of weeks ago – I was doing my contemporary dancing class and my foot got stuck on a big piece of tape on the floor and you could hear the sound of twigs breaking...I broke two bones in my foot and in that split second my life changed physically and practically and emotionally.

In the morning of that day it happened, I took my husband to the airport going to Sweden to work for 10 days, and I broke my foot in the evening. I came back from A & E at 3 o clock in the morning and it was just me, my broken foot in plaster and two crutches, and I could only use one leg. I had to re-think everything I needed to do practically.  For days I was sad, angry, generally upset and my sparkle went.

I knew before this happened, but more on an intellectual level, that part of life is the negative or “bad” stuff as well. Now I'm experiencing it first hand, and it wasn't easy at first but I'm doing much better now.

Here's what I did and am still doing to cope with this situation that I don't' want to be in:

Breathe: Take deep slow breaths, any time when you can remember, take a couple of deep breaths, I keep talking about this, but breathing properly will really help you physically and emotionally. Just following these instructions:

• Take a slow deep breath in
• Slowly breathe out
• Repeat 3 times

Be honest: Say what is the truth. For example, when people called me to ask how I was and how I'm getting on, I said exactly how it was and how I felt, normally I would have put on my nice voice   with a slightly higher pitch saying, "I'm fine, I'm getting there, it's not too bad..." I have learned that you should focus on the positive stuff rather than the negative and it will easier move you forward. But my experience is that nothing is as healthy and inspiring as speaking the truth. Why is this good? Because it leads to the next point...

Acceptance: I noticed that after expressing how it was for me, I felt relieved and I could accept the situation better. How do you accept it? First, you see it as it is. What I mean is, see as it is, without adding or deleting anything. There is no point pushing it, just continue to practise seeing it as it is. Eventually you will most likely come to a space of feeling more at ease with the situation.

It's early days yet, I'll let you know how I'm getting on efter the weekend.

Do we as humans have to go though a life-threatening condition to change our life to the better, to start to live the life that we really want? Do you have to wait to be hit by a bus in order to do something about the way you live your life? The bus that 'hit' me was metaphorical, (needing a kidney transplant), but to rediscover your sparkle you don't have to go through what I did.

I have been looking into this for some years now. It can certainly help to be "hit by a bus", but I believe that no, you don't have to be faced with death or destruction to change your life. Also, just because you have gone through a difficult time and came out ok, doesn't automatically mean that you will live your life differently.

I think the reason that we want to change something in our lives, or even change our life, is that we want to change the way we feel. We might want to feel happier, healthier, more energised, have more love and passion, the list can go on and on. Here's what you can do – no buses involved!

Sorting out your relationships without actually doing it

One of the struggles that we have as humans is that we have unresolved underlying issues with people, especially with loved ones. What will help you to move on, to feel better, to live the life that you want and to feel healthy, is to sort these relationships out. I'm not saying it's going to be easy, and I'm not saying that because you working on sorting them out everything is going to be hunky dory with these people for the rest of your life. They might not even be ready to do this yet.

I'm sure that you have heard this question before, if you have, here we go again. If you knew that you had one day left to live on this planet, and if you wanted to leave this earth feeling complete with all your relationships, said everything that you want to say to people:

• What would you say?
• How would it make you feel?

Do this as an inventory - as a clean-up check list, or even a de-clutter list of your unfinished businesses with people. Write it down on paper, or record it or do something that suits you. If you feel it's too much for you to do on an emotional level, remember that you don’t have to do anything about it, it's just your opportunity to think through, making an inventory of your "stuff" that is holding your back in life especially holding back who you truly are, the true you.

What's next?

Now – here is the thing, you might think "ok – what do I have to do now"? Of course you could start to contact the people that you have on your list and say what it is that you really want to say to them, it's a really powerful way to get closer to the true you. But I know from my own experience that it might be very difficult to do, you might not feel that you can do it…yet…

Here is what to do. You start to work on the step before "this might be your last day on this planet action".

Decide what is the one thing that you can do for you that will bring you closer to yourself. It could be something like, "Every morning I'll do a 3-breath exercise to be in stillness", or something else that you feel will make you feel better about yourself, and frankly your life.

Be careful here, not to promise yourself something that is too big for you to do at the moment, like I'm going to go to the Gym 3 times a week from now on.

This action to decide what is the one thing that you can do for you, will really help you to get closer to the true you, and when you are ready, you will speak to the people that you know that you have some unresolved businesses with.