7. Go spend time alone, somewhere in nature.

George Santayana said, “The earth has music for those who listen.”

If you struggle to find time to be alone, maybe you struggle with the whole notion of your thoughts and the way being by yourself makes you feel.

Maybe you don’t, maybe you are just busy.

Whether you’re just busy or whether you struggle with the thoughts that arise as you sit in a space of silence and aloneness, we all need to settle in a space where we are okay with just being.

The habit of contemplation, the habit of simply being, is not an easy skill for our tech obsessed and over stimulated senses.

I live less than twenty paces from the ocean, yet I struggle to walk out into nature and allow my thoughts and life to breathe.

Will you commit to finding an hour and going into a space of nature and allowing the thoughts to just come?

To soak up the view, to bathe in the beauty of nature and make a habit to just be.

To rest.

To love your messiness.

To be.

6. Arrange dinner in the city with a group of people.

I know I kind of believed that my husband would knock on my front door someday, or I would have this crazy story where we both meet randomly and he would be instantly amazed by me.

The reality is, we just used to hang out with each other, in a group with many different people. After church, we would go to a restaurant and we would eat. We would chat. We slowly got to know each other, with no expectation from either side that we would eventually become an item.

How often do you hang out with groups of people?

How often do you meet new people?

Do you go to work, come home, hang out with the same people every day, each weekend?

Old ways won’t open new doors!

You need to step out and create opportunities to meet new people. Organise a dinner and get everyone to bring a plus-one, somebody who is not already taken. Organise a barbecue for no reason other than just to hang out with people.

That is your task for today; create opportunities to meet new people.

5. Cook a recipe you have never cooked before!

Sometimes we just need to do something we have never done before. For no particular reason, but to just enjoy the process.

Start a new ritual: maybe fill your weekend with something homey, invite someone new to taste it with you.

One of my favourite scenes from a movie is in ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ when she cooks the blue string soup.

She had all these grand plans, but her delightful dinner besties ate the blue soup with glee and pronounced her culinary expertise.

New memories can only be made when we do something we have never done before.

So have a go.

Bake some bread.

Make a Moroccan feast.

Start a dinner club with a few other singles in your local community.

Do something daring!

4. Write a letter to yourself.

It is time for you to write a letter to yourself.

In my latest book Dear Single Self, I asked a group of 30 women with very different stories to write a letter to themselves. The way we speak to ourselves is powerful. It is funny sometimes we are kinder to everyone else and the way we communicate with ourselves can be extremely toxic.

Today is about loving you. It is about speaking words of life and love over yourself.

Sometimes we are desperate to hear things spoken about our future and the best person, with the greatest insight and knowledge is actually ourselves. The question is are you brave enough to go there?

 It is now your turn. Get out a nice piece of paper. Light a candle. Grab a cup of tea or coffee. Take a deep breath and just start to write.

What is it that you have truly believed about yourself in this journey?

What is it that you need to rediscover again?

Who has influenced you either negatively or positively?

Or ignore all of these questions and just write.

Give someone the letter in an envelope with a stamp on it and ask them to post it to you, whenever they believe the time feels right.

“Loving yourself invites others to love you. Respecting yourself invites people to respect you. It all starts with you.”

Mandy Hale

This series is called Yestember you can find the rest of the posts here. It is all about saying yes this September and doing things that take you out of your ground hog day, of your ordinary life. These segments are from Amanda’s latest book Dear Single Self. Join the fun by searching #yestember and #dearsingleself