More… Thoughts & Feelings

My mentor suggested a Blog… So, here it is friends!

One theme for each month of 2025 starting… NOW!

Welcome to the inner workings of my mind…

(Looking only, no touching please… hahahaha)

April - HABITS

March - SAFETY

February - LOVE  

Habits.

I have this beautiful mentor and friend, Anna. A woman I’ve spoken of many times of in my book, Thinking & Feeling, OUT LOUD.

But I refer to Anna, as Queen Anna, because she is the absolute Queen of Self Love and her program Self-Love School was ONE of the KEY elements I did in my journal and journey of healing. It was a guide for me to learn to love myself unconditionally.  To follow SLS this is the link to the socials: https://www.instagram.com/selflove_school/

More about this woman who is mentor and friend to me. She does NOT consider herself an influencer, just a creator of community. And it’s a phenomenal community to be a part of. It’s a privilege!

But how she shows up on her social media is both parts Inspirational & Motivational.

Almost daily, there are some key messages:

1. It’s her reminder to get up and Move “Like You Love Yourself”

(normally while she is on the way to doing just that herself & also the place her own self-love journey began)

Now, she’s an athlete! Right along with her own athletic brand - TAW Collective

Follow here: https://www.instagram.com/taw_collective/

2. It’s a beautiful day to have a beautiful day

(In my head, U2 plays the song “Beautiful Day” with the line of “it’s a beautiful day, don’t let it get away)

I then immediately think, Fuck Yes, it is and I dance around to that song for a hot minute.

3. Day by day, Habit by Habit.

She speaks of these things like I mentioned daily. DAILY!! (if on socials)

Being part of the self-love community and other techinques she taught us, like My Compelling Life Vision Statement and My “Like I Love Myself” daily affirmations became second nature to me. That’s why I still write to get it out, to share what I know works for me, to encourage and support any person ready to do any level of learning and healing in their lives. Also, why I currently sit here writing this as a Self-Published Author. I spoke it into existance. I work at all of my habits, day by beautiful day.

You can buy my book here: https://www.authortanyalnewton.com.au/buy_your_copy

But then after reading through James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits I wanted to talk about habits further.

Also you can subscribe to his newletter weekly here: https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1

When I started this year, I was still on the high from launching my book, sinking into the Celebration of this achievement as it took the time it took, but all through 2024 I knew it would be the reality of the book, holding it for the first time. Selling copies and creating the marketing around this. But then came the enevitable question we probably all tend to ask after something like that… What’s Next? And while my word for 2025 is Amplification, so my next plan for a podcast made sense, it’s since taken a backseat. And something else I planned for the end of 2025 came racing up to the forefront of my mind. Dropping in one night while dead asleep. Wake up, grab your phone…. Flow chart incoming…. Magically!!

With this then My Compelling Life Vision Statement needed the upgrade. I continue to read My Like I  Love Myself affirmations. I sank deeper into creating more and more habits and the things that had slipped, needed to  slide back into my day. I developed what I call now, My Non-Negotiable Mornings.

It’s me. For me.

The only person I disappoint if I don’t do this is myself. I don’t do it for any other reason than how I want my day to FEEL from this practice.

After hearing the pearls of wisdom from James Clear in Atomic Habits, I began to habit stack this morning for myself. Mine. My way to start my day.

Here’s some of the things in my Non-Negotiable Morning:

Wake up full of Gratitude - Speak it OUT LOUD

Make my bed

Feed my cat - Shady - Or risk losing a limb - He’s a big, always hungry cat.

Hit my rowing machine. This is an area I’ll expand on soon.

(& I’m so grateful I brought it to my new apartment. Didn’t think I’d have the room but beautifully I do.)

Make coffee - One for home, one for work.

Eat my banana with my vitamins.

Read My Compelling Life Vision Statement & Like I Love Myself Affirmations

Drink coffee & sometimes journal with it or sit in meditation.

Get ready with a shower for my day. Moisturise if I remember - this one is recent addition.

Head to work.

Remember to take my phone. Another I’ll reference soon.

Rowing started for me a few months ago again. Less than 2 minutes. And some of you may even be thinking, “What’s even the point of that?” Am I right? But I had started before this even with just 10 stride on my rowing machine. Even easier! Why? I’m getting there I promise. But what felt good was getting the technique and doing something for movement daily. Then week by week I increased it by 10 more and more and so on. I got up to about the 100 mark and then all the other life stuff came up, I missed a few days here and there and then I slippped out of it completely. So, started this time at 50 strides this year. Again week on week, adding in 10 more, technique over speed and moving again to feel good for me. That simple.

When I heard James Clear indicate in Atomic habits the story of one person who came to him overweight and he told him to listen and trust what he instructed. “Go sign up at the gym.” “Okay, done.” “Week one, I want you to get up, get dressed and go to the gym for 2 minutes.” This man somewhat confused trust James. “Okay, sure.” Next week he instructed, “Get up, get dressed and go to the gym for 5 minutes.” Right with somewhat hesitation, thinking to himself, I need to surely do more than 5 minutes at the gym, but I trust James. “Yep, sure thing.” I think maybe it was by week 3 or 4 the guy tells James, “I know you said, Get up, get dressed, go to the gym again this week for 10 minutes, but I stayed for 30 minutes. I don’t know if I’m doing this wrong, but figured, I’m here anyway. I want to stay and work out for a while.” James, totally impressed by this. “The habit isn’t the time you spend in the gym.”

“The HABIT is getting up, getting dressed, going to the gym. You now identify as a person who goes to the gym.”

Mind blown when I realised I just had done this exact thing without hearing it this book until now! And for me, at 10 minutes of rowing now, I’m really proud of myself. Also, living My Move Like I Love Myself goal from ease to discomfort, back to ease, back to discomfort. Living from My Compelling Life Vision Statement, that I move like a woman who loves herself daily.  

I mentioned my phone earlier, and the interesting thing I discovered here. I noticed the mornings I left my phone on charge, until I left the house, these are the mornings I realised I’d hacked it. The time to do the whole list was free, not using it to check social media, scroll and waste my morning. Turn off the alarm was the ONLY time I’d touched it. Complete HACK.

Let’s talk more things Habits in April!

Follow my socials for more details…

Safety.

After talking all things LOVE in February, I thought and felt long and hard into how we get Love to show up in our life. How we attract the energy of love. With our thoughts, feelings, actions and words.

I personally don’t think it comes without the one KEY element.

And I believe that element is SAFETY.

It’s one of our basic needs for survival. The desire to feel safe and experience safety within ourselves and also those in our world. Relationships, intimate and friendship alike, with our family, children, parents and siblings, even to co-works or strangers. In whatever environment we are in. Within our own Mental, Physical and Emotional states. Especially in the relationship we have with ourselves.

I re-read my own story on SAFE, in my book, Thinking & Feeling, OUT LOUD - A Journal of Healing

(To buy your copy: www.authortanyalnewton.com.au/buy_your_copy)

My memory refresh brought me back how safety became the basis of healing. Safe to do the things I was doing to heal. Safe to have the new experiences I was having.  Safe in the situations I was inviting into my life.

I learnt how to create the mode in my own nervous system that didn’t go into FIGHT, FLIGHT or FREEZE. It was no longer LIVE or DIE. I was going to be okay and survive. Not only that, but thrive on the learning of how I CREATE from this place.

I created it for ME. Maybe for the FIRST time in my life. It wasn’t something that I had experienced before.

I ran a story, previously that I was NEVER safe. Probably created from childhood wounds of growing up in a house of what would now be described as “severe domestic violence”, not the term I knew then, my dad being a “bad drunk”. Until I tore my life apart to do this work, I was under an illusion it had affected my life and relationships to the severity it did. I began Therapy, Breathwork, Reiki, Women’s Soul Circles, Self-Love School course multiple times, including reading multiple personal development books in this process. It was then I learned everything before this time of my life was out of FEAR, not SAFETY.

I developed My Mantra along the way:

I am Safe. I am Loved. I am Worthy. I am Wanted.

For March: Lets dive in deeply to all the ways safety appears in our life.

And if you truly FEEL it!

Follow along with me on my Social media accounts here:

www.instagram.com/author_tanyalnewton

-- First -- Emotional Safety --

This came slow. I had what I now refer to as “The Disease to Please”.

I cared FAR to much, FAR too often of what I could do or who I could be, OR even worse, who or what I NEEDED to be for someone else.

My own thoughts and feelings took back seat, never the steering wheel. Now, I consider myself, “A Reformed People Pleaser”. The easiest way to create this in your life. One word. Ready?

BOUNDARIES.

I created mine. Finally!

To do this, you need to know what you stand for. Core principles and values.

Make the list of your own. Today, if possible.

If you don’t know what you stand for, how can you expect others to know what they are?

Then communicate these. If someone disrespects it. Tell them. If someone crosses it. Tell them.

It’s not easy when you start, because people in your life have always had you a specific way. But if you don’t want to just be what you are for them any longer, and want to be more for yourself, you have to learn to enforce them. It’s going to be uncomfortable. For EVERYONE! But if nothing changes, nothing changes. So, get clear.

Crystal Fucking Clear.

I don’t believe in cutting someone off straight away. First time round, shame on you. Second time round, shame on me. This is going to be vulnerable work to do. Please show yourself a fuck tonne of compassion while beginning it. But I believe it’s one of the biggest keys in emotional safety.

Look for others within the community to be the non-judgmental support system while you create this techniques. Women’s healing circles, with my divine spiritual “woo” mentor was a huge vibe along with the other women attending. Through Self-Love School I sat in every emotion without judgement. Learning it just wanted to be felt. Thanking the emotion for coming. Spiraling up to something else. Breathwork helped me get into the core suppressed emotions and have a physical release of these emotions trapped in my body. In time, I began to validate myself. My skills, knowledge, worth. Instead of looking outside myself for validation. I found it all connected on the inside of who I’d become. Who I'm still becoming. Committed to self improvement daily.

-- Second -- Physical Safety --

Looked like for me, setting up more good habits. Things like good quality sleep, to rest and restore your body. Eating cleaner and getting exercise. Limiting toxic substances. I remember if I said, “I NEED a drink”, I very intentionally would NOT have one. Addictive personality, so I controlled it, not allowing it to control me.

I created comfortable spaces to create from. Reading chair & a writing area. Box breathing with essential oils in my shower. Dance parties in my kitchen while cooking dinner. More self care, massages and reiki and facials, so my outside matched the inside of how I began to feel.

-- Third -- Mental Safety --

This was a bigger area again. Changing the inner “mean girl” and turning her volume down. I learnt how to NEVER speak or think unkind thoughts or feelings about myself. We all have that voice inside us, and I believe what we think and speak about ourself becomes a love language, if and ONLY if, we choose kindness.

I began practice of mindfulness. Gratitude. Journaling. Grounding. In therapy, learnt about Capacity! Use it daily now, always checking my own first. Then what other resources of mine get used. Time, Energy or Money or the combination of these. Get Clear on this too.

Reducing my mental overload by limiting screen time replacing it with reading on Personal Development. I created and committed to becoming a “STUDENT FOREVER”! Understanding the most dangerous sentence you can say is “I already know that”. If you are hearing information again, something you have learnt before, there’s more you need to apply about that to your life. LEAN the fuck IN!

Then came daily affirmations and Compelling Life Vision Statement. Becoming part of a non-negotiable morning routine. As much as waking up full of GRATITUDE that my eyes opened again and I have another gift of a day laying before me. I stopped judging the thoughts and feelings, began to approach them with observation and curiosity instead. Tools like speaking to myself as my own best friend. Smaller practices I sprinkle into my life like walking on the grass or beach walks on days to be in nature, to soothe my own soul.

-- Next up -- Relationships --

Thankfully I had some incredible friendships that were all for the changes I was making for myself and supported my learning and growth. Several things I learned took on the flow on effect in their lives also. Learning to communicate, to express a need or want became easier over time. But there were the “friendships” that ended, as it became clear my boundaries wouldn’t be respected moving forward. Who I had been for them in the past were the basis of their expectation of who I remained. That reformed people pleaser in me learning I could say “NO” and not die, holding onto what I firmly believed now as my truth, they were not a fan of “the NEW me”. The friendship needed to end and it did. That’s perfect! I know now I deserve and am worthy of better friendships. Safe spaces became the areas I craved being in. Where you can be seen, heard and space held for you, just to be YOU! The messy at times, fumbling through it, still learning, You.

My forgiveness letter to myself and acceptance of being a woman doing the best I can with the information available to me at the time, didn’t let me off a hook for past actions, but gave me closure of the past. Knowing I’ll do better with all the tools I’m committing to learning more about. Keeping myself accountable to this “growth mindset”. Having someone to call you out on your bullshit when you slip back to old beliefs or thought patterns. I call them, “my unreasonable friend”. Get at least ONE!

-- Lastly -- You the relastionship with you --

I finally became the priority of my own life. “Make yourself the priority, no one else will.” This is another mantra of my new life. And I personally believe everyone should think this for themself.

I grabbed the steering wheel of my own life. Finally! Love and care for yourself first. It’s like the oxygen mask on the plane. You FIRST. Others next. I found art and the cover of my book is one of the canvases I painted. It was pure creativity. Me time. Me, the canvas and the paint. All the other thoughts went on pause for a bit, while I focused the energy to this process. Sometimes we need the break from all the other things running around our head. This could be going on a run for you. Or cooking a meal. Or an ocean swim. Or reading. A puzzle. Find a thing inside you that Sparks a bit of pure JOY! Just for you. Only for you!

Safety meant for me healing. Slowly. Sometimes quite painfully. But healing all the same. Safe to go within, over and over, again and again, deeper and deeper. Knowing that I am Safe. Safe to do this work. Safe to continue to do this work. Safe to be seen. Safe to be heard. Safe to be held. Safe to be vulnerable.

And finally…

Safe to be LOVED.

With Thoughts & Feelings… T

“My love language is safety. And feeling emotionally safe means collecting evidence that I can be my Authentic, Messy, sometimes Dysregulated and Struggling human self & STILL be valued, cared for and not abandoned.

Daniell Koepke

Love month…

February contains Valentine’s Day and is heavily associated with all things hearts, roses, chocolates and of course that 4 letter word… LOVE

But the feeling friends, is what I want to discuss. And in no way am I surprised I want to talk about the feelings, I’ve already written a whole book on my thoughts and feelings.  You can find that here: www.authortanyalnewton.com.au/buy_your_copy

With that said. how many “loves” can we have, with all the ways we can feel love and can be loving. How we show it and how we receive it. How it just exists. Probably in more ways than you realise.

Romantic, of course and that will be shoved in your face in T-minus 2 minutes, as it’s the 1st of February as I write this. Something that is supposed to be beautiful between people in love. becomes heavily commercialised. Biggest day of the year for my previous profession of being a florist is Valentine’s Day. With the “hope” that everyone’s “love language” is gifts.

Even this seems funny to me, that we’ve worked out all of the love languages and yet commercially we only recognise gifts. Let’s face it, acts of service, can’t be monetised. But by all means, head into a local shopping centre and be stuck with all the hearts, roses and chocolate, while the songs on loud speaker are all suggesting it. Like something is wrong with you if you don’t have this “type” of love currently in your life. Quick, Go… NOW!! Find your love. Find that passion with that one person. Fall truly, madly, deeply. Shit! I think I even just quoted one of the songs playing, either a line from it or the name of it.

OR, we can realise there’s more love around and while that’s on the way to you or not for you at all. You choose. For me, it’s Soul Mate or nothing.

To me it seems so silly, the pressure to recognise this one day in the whole month of this whole year, about this topic, especially when I see it everywhere.

Naturally, I HAVE to ask, “Why should it only be “one” kind of love we think of on this day?”

What about all the other types of love we could be looking for in our life every single day, not just this one day to never feel alone. The way we love our friends is a great example.

I love (no pun intended) the single girls have started Galentine’s Day for yourself and your gal friends. All the single ladies to feel less alone or lonely. (Oh, that last part - alone or lonely could be a story brewing in my head all by itself right now, thanks for that!)

But the greatest loves of my life are and will always be “my girls”! My sisters by choice, not blood. They have loved me harder through so much shit, and I’ve returned the favour. And we’ll continue to do so, back and forth. I try to do this daily, not devote it to once a year on the 14th of this month.

You could have love for your family, and this may come easily to you. Me, not as much. There’s the wishing them well and hoping they heal element in this for me, being 5 years since speaking to either my mother or sister. Further reasons on this can be located in my book.

But on the flip side of this, my gorgeous son called me just yesterday for a great chat and loved the effort he made doing that. And felt loved by his act of service. Alert!! 22 year old young men (all men alike) call your mum if you can today. Tell her you love her. It fills the warm place in her heart more than you can imagine.

What about the way we love our child and the specific things that ONLY you can know that creates their love back to you and their safety to feel that way.

What about the way you love: your pets, or plants or job/work/soul purpose or car or fishing or swimming or hiking in nature, or the beach, or your incredibly comfortable couch, or playing a game of chess with a friend, or reading a good book on a rainy day, (I can suggest one) or music or dancing or making some art.

Or for me… The way I love COFFEE and writing. Give me a coffee, pen and paper, and I’m a happy girl!

It really is EVERYWHERE!

You just have to look.

But… I think there is one that trumps all of them and now from my own personal experience, I believe the most important love…

The love you have for yourself!

Some of you know, if you’ve read my words before, I learnt quite intensively how the fuck to love myself. I actually got schooled on the subject and the best part… IT WORKED!!! Me first, loving me first, opened my real capacity to love anything outside of that.

There’s a terrible cliche that we refer to about the only 2 guarantees in life being death and taxes. Guess what? There’s a third. Ready for it?

We are absolutely only here with ourself our entire existence. That little voice you have inside your head, chattering away will be there ALL day, EVERY day until we are GONE!

The bonus, we also control that voice. You can love yourself fiercely (or not) through that voice. You can train it the same way you train an animal. Sit, walk, fetch. Listen, learn, LOVE.

I invite you now to follow me in February for more here: www.instagram.com/author_tanyalnewton

Let’s talk… love, Love, LOVE

with Thoughts and Feelings… T