THE BEST YOU www.thebestyoumagazine.co
TRANSFORM • MOTIVATE • ENRICH • EMPOWER • ENJOY
JANUARY 2016 / Price £5.99
Be Inspired
DAVID
BOWIE THE LIFE OF A MUSICAL INNOVATOR
MICHAEL SIR CLIVE WOODWARD NEILL WHAT IT TAKES TO COACH A WINNING TEAM
MEET THE SUPERCOACH AT THE BEST YOU EXPO
NICOLA ADAMS
FORGING HER OWN PATH IN THE WORLD OF BOXING
DR MIKE DOW
HOW TO FIX YOUR BRAIN FOG FOR GOOD
PLUS: ARE YOU IN THE RIGHT GEAR?
THE BEST YOU www.thebestyoumagazine.co
TRANSFORM • MOTIVATE • ENRICH • EMPOWER • ENJOY
JANUARY 2016 / Price £5.99
Be Inspired
DAVID
BOWIE THE LIFE OF A MUSICAL INNOVATOR
MICHAEL SIR CLIVE WOODWARD NEILL WHAT IT TAKES TO COACH A WINNING TEAM
MEET THE SUPERCOACH AT THE BEST YOU EXPO
NICOLA ADAMS
FORGING HER OWN PATH IN THE WORLD OF BOXING
DR MIKE DOW
HOW TO FIX YOUR BRAIN FOG FOR GOOD
PLUS: ARE YOU IN THE RIGHT GEAR?
EDITORIAL | BERNARDO MOYA
Exclusive content and shots on iPad, iPhone & Android devices
A LIFE WITH MEANING At The Best You, we recently launched a national survey to try to find out if, in general, people are happy with what they do, whether they feel fulfilled and if they actually think that all of the work and ‘effort’ they invest into moving their lives forward really are worth it. We will share some of the data over the coming months, but the bottom line is that we found out that only 15 per cent of all the people we surveyed loved what they do. More than a third of the people we talked with would like to change the industry that they work in, and more than 25 per cent would like to do something else but just feel it might be too late to do so.
Bernardo Moya, Editor-in-chief
Follow me: @Bernardo_Moya
So, with a new year ahead of us, it really is time to ask ourselves what our true meaning in life is. Life is too short to have any regrets and our objective at The Best You is to simply help you to achieve that. I take this opportunity to invite you to attend The Best You Expo – as we say in our tagline, it’s an opportunity to arrive with questions and leave with answers. I hope you will join us on 27-28 February at ExCel in London, to begin your own journey of selfdiscovery. Additionally, this issue we shine a spotlight on the career of musical genius, David Bowie; focus on the grit and determination of boxer and Olympic medallist, Nicola Adams; and chat with Sir Clive Woodward ahead of his appearance at The Best You Expo.
To enjoy additional digital content, video and online galleries, download The Best You App at thebestyoumagazine.co
With articles from supercoach Michael Neill and Benjamin Bonetti, plus Juice Master Jason Vale’s January detox plan, this issue is packed with inspiring ideas and advice for the year ahead!
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CONTENTS | THE BEST YOU | JANUARY 2016
REGULARS 03
EDITOR’S LETTER
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WE SUPPORT...
Bernardo Moya welcomes you to this month’s issue of The Best You
Shelter, the charity which works to provide everyone with a roof over their heads
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BOOK REVIEWS
A few of our favourite recently published books – plus your chance to win some great reads
FEATURES 22
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DAVID BOWIE
A lifetime of challenging convention
SIR CLIVE WOODWARD
Building and leading a champion team
NICOLA ADAMS
Forging her own path to sporting success
16 TOP 6 FITNESS GURUS
Motivating us to get moving
INNER YOU 10
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WHAT WILL YOU CHANGE IN 2016?
Make a start at The Best You Expo on 27-28 February
THE SPIRITUALISM OF CONAN DOYLE
Matt Wingett charts the Spiritual journey of the Sherlock Holmes creator in a new book
ENJOY LIFE 16
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TOP 6 FITNESS GURUS
The men and women who lead the fitness industry
THE GOOD NEWS
With so much of what we read in the papers being negative, The Best You brings you some good news
JANEY LOVES...
The Best You columnist Janey Lee Grace picks her favourite things
22 DAVID BOWIE A master of reinvention
EDITOR/PUBLISHER Bernardo Moya DEPUTY EDITOR Daska Davis ASSOCIATE EDITORS Cynthia Phillips and Gail Kingsbury MEDIA DIRECTOR Allan Banford DESIGNER Monica Notarnicola TECHNICAL CONSULTANT Martin Carter ADVERTISING advertising@thebestyou.co
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CONTENTS | THE BEST YOU | JANUARY 2016
LIVE LOVE LEGACY 40
INSPIRATIONAL STORIES
Meet the men and women who have received a helping hand from the charity Shelter
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UNLEASHING THE HUMAN POTENTIAL
Supercoach Michael Neill explains why the route to happiness comes from within
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THE BEST YOU EXPO
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Reserve your place at the personal development event of 2016
WHAT DOES IT TAKE…
…to be a milliner? The Best You chats with Rachel Trevor-Morgan about making hats
FEEL & LOOK GOOD
46 HATS OFF! Meet the Queen’s milliner
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HAPPINESS, WITH A LOW CHANCE OF BRAIN FOG...
Dr Mike Dow helps us understand what’s making our brains feel sluggish –and how to beat it!
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TAKE THE JANUARY JUICE CHALLENGE
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Jason Vale encourages us to get onboard with his New Year health challenge
UNDERSTANDING STRESS
Benjamin Bonetti explains what stress is – and helps us to overcome burn out
WEALTH & RICHES 58
50 FOG CLEARING Dr Mike Dow fixes the outlook
MAXIMUM EFFORT
Are you operating in the right gear? Steve Cockram and Jeremie Kubicek explain why it matters to our success
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NEW YEAR’S BUSINESS RESOLUTIONS
The Best You’s expert business panel advises on their top tips for succeeding in 2016
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BELIEVE THE HYPE
Sharon Hadley believes that there is a place for mindfulness in the workplace
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THE ROCKY ROAD TO SUCCESS
The Best You looks at people, past and present, who worked hard for their moment in the spotlight
21ST CENTURY LIVING 68
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VLOGGERS MAKING A DIFFERENCE The Best You recognises vlogstars doing good
A TECH NEW YEAR
Bryan Szabo reviews the latest gadgets
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CONTRIBUTORS | THE BEST YOU
DASKA DAVIS
is deputy editor at The Best You. This issue she writes about new research by The Best You into whether readers think they will leave a legacy, and their mental health. “It was interesting to see that most people are on a path towards personal development, and The Best You Expo on 27-28 February is the perfect place to realise our ambitions.”
MICHAEL NEILL
is an internationally renowned transformative coach, teacher, radio host and bestselling author of four books including The Inside-Out Revolution. Ahead of his appearance at The Best You Expo, he shares an insight into his inspiring work as a Supercoach.
@michael_neill
DR MIKE DOW
is co-founder of GiANT Worldwide, teaching and consulting with senior executives and their teams all over the world. He is an acknowledged expert in the field of Jungian Type Analysis. He is committed to ‘Applied Leadership Learning’, seeking to give leaders fresh insights and tools that will make a real difference immediately.
@stevecockram
is a Canadian-born freelance editor and writer who specialises in helping authors realise their full potential as writers. He believes that everybody has a story that should be told. His appearance on the acknowledgement page of dozens of titles proves that the voice he is helping budding authors to find is a precious thing indeed.
@eidolonink
@TheBestYou
STEVE COCKRAM
BRYAN SZABO
is the New York Times best-selling author of The Brain Fog Fix, and has contributed to numerous television shows including PBS The Brain Fog Fix, E! Sex with Brody, VH1 Couples Therapy, LOGO That Sex Show and TLC Freaky Eaters. This issue, he chats with The Best You’s editor, Bernardo Moya about why our brains feel fuddled and how we can fix it for greater clarity.
@DoctorMikeDow
BENJAMIN BONETTI
is the founder of the DNA Coaching Programme and one of the world’s leading authorities within the self-help arena. He has been involved professionally in hypnotherapy and coaching for more than ten years and helped thousands of people in his various clinics and more than 1.8m with his award-winning hypnosis audios.
@BenjaminBonetti
JANEY LEE GRACE
is a spokesperson for the organic and natural health world. She is known to over 8m listeners daily via BBC Radio 2, and is the founder of janeyleegrace.com, a consumer website recommending the best in the natural, organic and eco world. She is author of five best-selling books, including two Amazon #1s.
MATT WINGETT
is a Portsmouthbased author who is also an NLP master. He uses skills learned from hypnotist Paul McKenna and NLP co-creator Richard Bandler in his work. For The Best You, he writes about his upcoming book about the Spiritual beliefs of Sherlock creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
@MattWingett
@janeyleegrace
JASON VALE
– aka ‘Juice Master’ – is the best-selling author of 11 books on health, addiction and juicing. His most well known book – 7lbs In 7 days: The Juice Master Diet – knocked The Da Vinci Code from the top spot. Jason is on a mission to ‘Juice The World’ and help people to turn their health around using natural means.
SHARON HADLEY
Sharon Hadley is business and finance director at the Mindfulness Network CIC, manager at the Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice, Bangor University and a guest facilitator at Bangor University’s Business School.
@BangorUni
@juicemaster
The Best You is published by The Best You Corporation Ltd, 5 Percy Street, W1T 1DG. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect The Best You Corporation Ltd, policy. The Best You Corporation Ltd accepts no responsibility for views expressed by its contributors. Advertisements and reader offers are not endorsed by The Best You or The Best You Corporation Ltd.
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Be Inspired
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INNER YOU GET READY TO CHANGE Be at The Best You Expo!
Connect with the wonderful, special and powerful inside. Learn ways to get your mind and body in balance, bringing out the rich core of your being. Discover the secrets that will enable you to take charge of your inner life and become The Best You.
Put your company in this space! To sponsor this page and be part of The Best You, email us at advertising@thebestyou.co
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MYSTERY SOLVER Conan Doyle’s Spiritual life
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INNER YOU | THE BEST YOU SURVEY
WHAT
WILL YOU CHANGE
IN 2016?
THE BEST YOU’S SURVEY REVEALS HOW HAPPY WE ARE WITH OUR JOBS, OUR LIVES AND WHO WILL LEAVE A LIFELONG LEGACY… Do you love your life and what you do? Are you happy and fulfilled? Are you working on your personal development? The Best You’s survey reveals that most of us want to make positive change in the year ahead – and The Best You Expo on 27-28 February is the perfect place to start…
New Year, new you is a phrase we often hear, but how many times have you promised yourself that THIS year will be the one you make real changes to improve your health and wellbeing? Before you reach 31 December and lament yet another year passed with the same issues still lurking, grab your calendar and resolve that 27-28 February will be the dates that you take action to shake off the past and move forwards. At The Best You Expo at London’s ExCel, you have the opportunity to hear, meet and talk with some of the biggest and most inspiring names in personal development – Robert Holden, Barbara De Angelis, John Demartini, Sir Clive Woodward, Janey Lee Grace, Jason Vale, Michael Neill and Daniel Priestley are set to appear and share their knowledge, experience and expertise with visitors to the expo. Over two days, packed with 48 workshops and 140 exhibitors from leading coaching and personal development companies, you will
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find the right support to create transformation in all areas of your life.
MAKING A DIFFERENCE Towards the end of 2015, The Best You undertook a survey of its readers to ask whether they want a career in which they will leave a legacy in the world. Although 45 per cent of respondents said that they hoped to, they thought it unlikely, and only 16 per cent thought they would. Being too old or lacking the skills or bravery to make a difference were cited as the most common reasons that prevented people making a difference to their life, although 34 per cent of people said they would look at getting a job in a different industry. More than 80 per cent of The Best You’s respondents said that they believe in personal development
to work on their goals to improve their happiness, reading books, attending seminars and seeking out blogs, vlogs and podcasts as sources of inspiration and life coaching. And 77 per cent of those who were surveyed said they or someone they know have suffered from depression, with 64 per cent seeing a GP for help. Therapy, talking with family and friends, reading books and attending seminars were seen as valuable sources of support in overcoming mental health problems.
REALISE YOUR LIFE GOALS The Best You Expo will provide
a unique and exciting forum to hear and connect with experts in all aspects of personal development. Never before have so many companies come together to share their insights into improving your life and achieving your ambitions. Register now at thebestyouexhibition.com to reserve your place at the best personal development event of 2016. 2016.
Make sure that you are a part of this event – register now at thebestyouexhibition.com to reserve your place at the best personal development event of 2016.
THE BEST YOU’S READER SURVEY JOB SATISFACTION When it comes to your job/career right now, would you say that you love what you do?
PERKS OF THE JOB Our readers say that the best ideas that would make everyone feel happy at work are… • • • • • •
Flexi-time for everyone Regular pay rises Better work/life balance Continuous professional development Employee benefits An office with natural daylight
LEAVING A LEGACY Overall, do you want a career in which you make a difference to the world/leave some kind of legacy?
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT Would you say that you believe in personal development? i.e. working on yourself and your goals in order to be happy.
MENTAL HEALTH Have you, or anyone you know, ever suffered from depression?
Reading books and blogs are the biggest source of personal development information, followed by YouTube videos – check out The Best You TV for inspiration!
INNER YOU | MATT WINGETT
As he prepares to crowdfund a new book on the Spiritualist beliefs of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author Matt Wingett discusses the inner life of the man who created Sherlock Holmes, and uncovers what led him to believe in ghosts, telepathy – and even fairies
THE SPIRITUALISM OF
CONAN DOYLE 12
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To pre-order your copy of Conan Doyle and the Mysterious World of Light, and help Matt Wingett get it into the shops, support his crowdfunding venture here https://www.indiegogo.com/ projects/conan-doyle-and-themysterious-world-of-light/.
There’s a famous line in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four in which the world’s first consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes, asks Dr Watson:
“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”
It’s the archetypal statement of Conan Doyle’s great rationalist creation, Sherlock Holmes, but many people are surprised to hear that Conan Doyle dedicated the last ten years of his life to Spiritualist missionary work. All the while, he continued to write Sherlock Holmes stories. For me, this striking fact was a puzzle, and I set out to solve it in a new book, Conan Doyle and the Mysterious World of Light to be published in March 2016. Conan Doyle’s earliest experiments in the paranormal came when he was a young man, living in the southern English seaside resort of Southsea. Here, he met a local architect, Henry Ball, with whom he performed numerous telepathy experiments. Doyle became convinced he could communicate his thoughts without words to Ball, but drew no Spiritualist message from the results. Instead, he theorised a “secretion of thought” emanated from one brain and detected by the sensitive brain of another – in many ways like the wireless transmission invented in the following decade. At first, Doyle was very much a materialist. A medical man, trained in the scientific method, he was convinced, as he put it, that when the “candle went out, that was an end of the matter.” When he attended his first séance, he was less than impressed: “It seemed to me that we were collectively pushing the table and that our own wills were concerned in bringing down the leg at the right moment,” he later wrote. His turning point came when he met Mr Horstead, a medium who seemed able to draw facts from his innermost soul. Crucially, Conan Doyle was not thinking about the facts Horstead read in him, so it couldn’t have been simple thought transmission. The writer pronounced:
“I can only say that if I had had to devise a test message I could not have hit upon one which was so absolutely inexplicable on any hypothesis except that held by Spiritualists.” During Doyle’s early years in Southsea, he made his first public announcement of his conversion to Spiritualism in Light, a journal of the occult, mystical and paranormal. Doyle maintained his relationship with Light up to his death – and it was through the articles and letters he wrote for the publication that I realised I could track his Spiritualist beliefs over many decades. Every important Spiritualist event of his life is reported within it – very often in his own words. After years of Spiritualist dormancy, in 1916, Doyle went public again. Many have suggested that the Great War, or the death of his son Kingsley in 1918 as a result of injuries sustained in action, caused Doyle’s conversion – but Doyle was deeply fascinated and convinced by Spiritualism long before. As a scientific man, he was not alone. Alfred Russel Wallace, the close friend of Charles Darwin, who independently devised a theory of evolution and prompted Darwin to write On The Origin of Species was a Spiritualist. So was Sir William Crookes, who laid down the foundations of nuclear physics. Marie Curie investigated Spiritualism, reasoning that if tables could lift off the ground of their own volition, a new energy source must be responsible. Conan Doyle, however, took his belief to a new level. Spiritualist ideas provided him with fascinating horror story material, including tales of reanimated Egyptian mummies, astral projection, psychometry, evil hypnosis and hauntings. They also provided the spiritual ingredient he needed. Though he was raised a Roman Catholic, he was put off Christianity by the Jesuit priests at Stonyhurst College where he studied as a boy. Spiritualism filled that emotional need and opened doorways to, literally, whole new worlds to explore. In 1920, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle left the UK to perform missionary work in Australia and New Zealand, convinced that Spiritualism was a New Revelation sent by God after the unprecedented scale of deaths in the Great War. He spread that message throughout the world. Conan Doyle and the Mysterious World of Light tells that story in detail, in Conan Doyle’s own words as they appeared in Light. Many of the articles in it have never before been republished, and the book gives a fresh insight into the mind of this creative genius, who became the world leader of the new religion of Spiritualism.
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Be Inspired
40 16
GO-TO GIRLS Wonderful women vloggers
MOVERS AND SHAKERS Top 6 fitness gurus
ENJOY LIFE
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THE GOOD NEWS
Laughter, humour, travel, love – these are the things that add the sparkle that makes life worth living. Climb a mountain, give to others, start a family, embrace life. What are the things you wish you had done but haven’t yet? Life is no rehearsal – enjoy life every day.
Positive stories to share
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HAPPY NEW YOU Janey kicks off 2016
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JANE FONDA Top of our list is the fitness queen herself, Jane Fonda. In 1982 her first exercise video, Jane Fonda’s Workout, burst onto our screens, becoming the highest-selling video of the time. It spawned a generation of lycra and leg-warmer wearing aerobic exercisers, and Fonda went on to release a further 21 workout exercises that collectively sold more than 17m copies. Now 78, she’s still in amazing shape – proof that a lifetime of exercise really is worth the effort.
TOP 6
FITNESS GURUS
ARLENE PHILLIPS
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As the US gave us Fonda, the British found a fitness friend in Arlene Phillips who released her Keep in Shape System record, also in 1982. A dancer from the age of three, she led the jazz dance advance, which she taught at the iconic Pineapple Dance Studio in Covent Garden. A renowned choreographer who worked on the film Annie and Duran Duran’s Wild Boys video, the album was an essential part of any 80s teen’s record collection.
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RICHARD SIMMONS Proving that anyone can do it, Milton Teagle Simmons, AKA Richard Simmons, rose to prominence in the US with his high octane, weight-loss aerobics programme, Sweatin’ to the Oldies. Having lost 123lb (56kg), his mission has been to help others step out of the misery of obesity, and he estimates that he has helped shift a combined 12m pounds over the decades. Today he uses social media channels to continue to reach his fanatical followers.
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ENJOY LIFE | TOP 6
Exclusive content and shots on iPad, iPhone & Android devices
MATT ROBERTS When you count Naomi Campbell, Natalie Imbruglia and even Prime Minister David Cameron among
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his client list, you know why Matt Roberts – AKA Mr Fitness – is in the premier league of personal trainers. Saying that there is no excuse for laziness, Roberts is reported to rise at 5.20am and work to 8pm but looks at least a decade younger than a man in his early 40s.
DIANA MORAN Better known as the Green Goddess, Diana Moran was spotted by a talent scout as the corporation prepared its line-up for the launch of BBC Breakfast. So-called because of her trademark green leotard, she had us all stretching before we started the day and quickly rose to become a household name. Sadly Diana was diagnosed with breast cancer, but is now a regular as the agony aunt on Age UK’s radio show, The Wireless.
They’ve made us sweat, made us ache… and made us fitter. These are the exercise icons we love to hate for their punishing but perfecting routines
NATALIE JILL
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With her inspirational ‘Throwback Thursday’ Facebook posts and Instagram shots of her über abs, Natalie Jill shows that clean living and exercise can be transformative. Just five years ago, the Californian was rock bottom after her divorce but used social media to post her own journey to health and fitness. Along the way she’s gathered almost 479k followers who adore the functional fitness fanatic.
WE SUPPORT
Shelter was founded 50 years ago to speak for the millions of ‘hidden homeless’ living in overcrowded slums, left behind by the country’s post-war recovery…
Since then, Shelter has been campaigning for a safe, secure and affordable home for everyone. But, despite Shelter’s many successes over these years, there is still more do be done in order to tackle the new housing crisis that this country is facing today.
Parents who are concerned their children’s health is being affected as a result of poor conditions, or who are falling behind at school after being moved into temporary accommodation outside their local community. The triple blow of the country’s chronic housing shortage, rocketing rents and cuts to welfare support has left many ordinary families across the country fighting to keep a roof over their heads.
Shelter is here to make sure no-one has to fight bad housing and homelessness on their own, and tirelessly campaigns to prevent it in the first place.
Everyone needs a place to call home, and currently more and more people are struggling to find or keep their home. Shockingly, as Shelter enters its 50th anniversary year, over 100,000 children are homeless and living in temporary accommodation.
Shelter helps four million people every year, battling bad housing or homelessness by providing free expert support and legal advice through the Shelter website, helpline and face-to-face services.
Every day Shelter hears from families whose rents are outstripping wages, or who have been evicted through no fault of their own. Couples still living with their parents, unable to save for a deposit or think about starting a family.
Shelter’s services across the country mean they understand the issues affecting people every day and use this knowledge to drive campaigns, calling on the government to make sure everyone has access to a safe, secure and affordable home.
This year marks Shelter’s 50th anniversary, but there is still so much more to be done. Join Shelter today and together we’ll strive to make sure everyone has a place called home. Visit shelter.org.uk for more information about how you can support Shelter’s work.
ENJOY LIFE | THE GOOD NEWS
LAID-BACK WORKING It’s January, so we’re easing back into the work routine, but the Altwork Station makes it feel far easier. The workstation can be adjusted to a multitude of working positions, from standing to practically lying down to suit individual requirements. Whether you’re looking to sit less, or ease your back problem, Altwork takes office furniture to a new level. altwork.com
JUST THE TICKET An innovative scheme in Kentucky, USA recently offered errant motorists the chance to reduce their parking fine in return for donating tinned food to local food bank, God’s Pantry. We love the idea of contributing instead of grumbling about a fine. www.godspantry.org
FLEXIBLE FRIEND
THE
Exclusive content and shots on iPad, iPhone & Android devices
GOOD NEWS
If the power of Superglue fails you, there could be a new way to fix your specs, patch up the kids’ toys or make a trusty tool. FORMcard is a reusable thermoplastic material which can be melted in a cup of hot water and shaped to fix objects. As it cools, it hardens but can be reused again. Currently being crowdfunded on Kickstarter by inventor Peter Marigold, FORMcard comes in a variety of colours including glow-in-the-dark. petermarigold.com
SPACE TO LEARN Outdoor learning takes on a new dimension with a space-based science classroom. Ardusat has partnered with a satellite data company Spire to enable school kids and science clubs to create an experiment, send ‘educational payloads’ into space with a satellite and then to study the data that it collects. ardusat.com
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ENJOY LIFE | JANEY LEE GRACE
JANEY LOVES... The Best You’s columnist Janey Lee Grace presents a round-up of the latest products, ideas and innovations catching her eye this month
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YOUR LIFE IN 7 DAYS
BUY ONE, GIFT ONE…
As you sit down to map out your New Year’s resolutions, I’d like to chip in one important suggestion – don’t set yourself up to fail! Instead of ‘resolving’ to do a whole host of things you feel you ought to be doing, focus on what you really want. I was the fairy godmother in panto at Christmas (oh yes I was!) and I so wish I could wave a magic wand and make all your wishes come true but the reality is many of us aren’t sure what we want and if we are then we often procrastinate and don’t get started. By mid January most resolutions are broken and we end up reaching for the biscuits.
Thankfully Christmas is all wrapped up (hopefully) present wise, but here’s one initiative that you can take into 2016 – the idea of buying and also giving to charity, as the January sales kick in (Boxing Day or even Christmas Day I read is massive for online shopping!). There will no doubt be a frenzy of buying, and the ‘buy one get one free’ mentality abounds. Jasmin Julia Gupta has another suggestion – she is known as the ‘twingiver’ and has a wonderfully simple mission; to encourage the concept of ‘buy one gift one’.
Nothing brings this home more than the analogy of ‘Your Life in 7 days’. Years ago a normal lifespan would be seen as ‘three score years and ten’, meaning we will hopefully make it to the age of 70. Of course most of us hope to live a lot longer, but bear with me. So if each decade represents a day, and we are born on a Monday, most people reading this will be over twenty or so by Wednesday already, some of us are into Thursday, even (ahem) Friday or into the weekend. It really focuses your mind as to how you are spending your time. If there’s something you know you want to do, when will you start it? If not now, when? We all must prioritise what it is we are really here to do, define our purpose and get cracking. By the way if you are on ‘Sunday’ I wouldn’t worry about that one bit – many game changers are. Here’s hoping we will all make it to a ripe age and beyond, still feeling young, still feeling energised by living our purpose and passion, but why wait to find out? If you know what you are meant to do, start right away. Remember you don’t have to get it right, you DO have to get it going.
HAVE A DRINK! And instead of those biscuits treat yourself to a juice cleanse to kick-start your energy. I’ve just found the brilliant healthy juice company which delivers organic cold pressed juices to the door, no excuses!
www.thehealthyjuicecomoany.co.uk If you are planning a ‘dry January’ or a detox, then make it hassle-free. Amanda Nelson, the ‘Easy Detox Expert’, has some tips that are easy to fit into a hectic schedule. She also suggests eating only fruit and veg until midday to keep the body’s natural detoxification cycle. Detox with an Epsom foot bath too. Add a cup of Epsom salts to a basin of warm water and then dangle your feet in the solution for 15 minutes. As well as absorbing magnesium in through your skin, toxins will be sucked straight out of the soles of your feet. Check out Amanda’s 365 programme at
She has started with something close to her heart with her company Twin Hats, a social enterprise, and is also the founder of a cancer hair care charity. She is the UK’s leading expert on hair loss due to cancer treatment and was director for hairdressing with Trevor Sorbie International where her global hairdressing skills took her around the world, working with fashion designers and celebrities (she actually cut the hair of all of the guys in Take That – very cool!). Now her focus is on a different kind of VIP – Very Important Patients and Cancer Hair Care leads the way in supporting people before, during and after hair loss due to cancer treatment. It specialises in support for children and young people but also offers services to women and men. So while it’s still chilly, treat yourself or a loved one to a Fairtrade hand-knitted woolly hat and Twinhats will donate the profits to commission the perfect hat for a child with cancer.
www.twinhats.co.uk
DON’T MISS THE BEST YOU EXPO I’m so thrilled to be asked to speak at The Best You Exhibition. I can see I am in great company alongside Jason Vale, Sir Clive Woodward and Gill Fielding. I love these kind of events where you can make some great connections and be re-inspired all over again to literally be the best you! I look forward to meeting you there, I’ll be speaking about how to get clarity on your USP and how to use it to attract PR and media attention for the work that you do. See you there!
www.easydetoxexpert.com
C O M E A N D M E E T J A N E Y AT T H E B E S T YO U E X P O. . .
COVER STORY | DAVID DANIELBOWIE CRAIG
As David Bowie releases his 25th album, Blackstar, on his 69th birthday, we look at the life of one of the most influential recording artists in the history of rock ’n’ roll
TELL THEM
I WILL LIVE MY DREAM DAVID BOWIE
D
avid Bowie’s life shows how a single aspiration, a dream, can pull an apparently ordinary individual to stellar success.
In many ways, it’s the story of the power of chutzpah. Born in dull, post-war Brixton in 1947, surrounded by rubble and bomb craters in a shabby, unremittingly grey landscape, little David Jones wasn’t close to his mother, Hilda, but was indulged by his dad, Haywood, who worked for Barnardo’s charity. School reports after their move to Bromley depict an ordinary child. Nothing hinted he’d become one of the most enigmatic creative forces of the late 20th century. In 1955, Bowie first encountered rock ’n’ roll, which offered escape from the grey bleakness of austerity Britain. Age 11, he teamed up with best friend George Underwood to perform songs on the ukulele for his scout troop. The pair practised Buddy Holly numbers at Bromley Technical College, where Bowie’s reports assessed him as ‘a pleasant idler’. He learned saxophone, listened to music and chased girls. When Bowie lied in order to split Underwood from a girl he also liked, Underwood punched him – permanently paralysing the iris muscles in one eye, and producing the famous mismatching eyes that became his trademark look. Bowie forgave his friend and in return, Underwood invited him to play sax and occasionally sing in The Kon-Rads, an old-style dance band. Surprisingly mature, The Kon-Rads accepted him because he was punctual – not something most musicians were renowned for. The youngest member of the band, Bowie was the first to recover from setbacks – a common trait of successful people. He was also restless, pushing the band to write original material. But in 1962, after the band failed during a studio trial for Decca, Bowie left, and with Underwood formed The King Bees. Next, he concocted a letter to entrepreneur, John Bloom, explaining
why he needed The King Bees, arguing, “Brian Epstein’s got The Beatles and you should have us.” Amused, Bloom asked colleague Les Conn, to check them out. Conn helped them find gigs, and release a single, Little Liza Jane. When it flopped, Bowie realised once again the band wouldn’t cut it, and walked out, despite their having appeared on pop TV show Ready Steady Go. To Underwood’s shock at his departure, he replied: “It’s numero uno, mate.” Bowie always followed his own agenda, without sentiment. His traits of restlessness and single-mindedness were tempered by another: his sexual ambivalence, which often tipped from charm into flirtatiousness. When it came to winning over anyone who might prove a useful contact in a business filled with gay men, it was a winning combination. Though ambitious, Bowie admitted he didn’t have the skills of other great performers and songwriters, once describing how he persuaded a band to write songs so he could see how it was done. In this way, he honed his skill as a musician and songwriter, but his was a long journey with numerous misses – few near, many very distant.
One habit of mind served him well – positive visualisation. Bowie would often grow excited by imagining himself in the future, regaling his band with stories of future mega success. This kept him focused on his longer-term goal, and was in many ways a counterpart to the letter he sent Bloom as a boy.
Over time he began to make headway. He shed his surname to avoid confusion with Davey Jones of The Monkees, opting for Bowie after becoming obsessed by a character in a Western. www. t he b e s t youm ag azi ne . co
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COVER STORY | DAVID BOWIE
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In 1967 he signed with Deram Records and released The Laughing Gnome, a novelty song that flopped dismally. Next, he brought out his first album, shifting between styles as if to demonstrate his versatility. One song, When I Live My Dream, was a powerful number which foreshadowed Bowie’s future talent. But after the album flopped, he finally decided to leave the business for good and become a dancer. This was possibly the best move Bowie could have made. Starting an affair with male dancer Lindsay Kemp, who adored his music, the pair discussed philosophy and psychology in a hothouse of ideas. Then, he fell for Hermione Farthingale, with whom he lived in genteel tranquility in Kensington. During this period, the influences he’d encountered over the preceding years coalesced, and he wrote his first great song, Space Oddity. His second album, originally called David Bowie, and changed to Space Oddity in its 1972 re-release was rushed out to coincide with the 1969 moon landing. Though the single of Space Oddity did well, the album flopped leaving Bowie once again looking for new inspiration. His next album saw him sharpen his offer, bringing a team together, including producer Tony Visconti to work on The Man Who Sold The World, which reached number 26 in the UK album charts.
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David Bowie in Ziggy Stardust 1973
Meanwhile, he persevered, spending long days mastering the piano. Finally all the elements of musicianship, performance style, lyrical brilliance and his unique view of the world came together in Hunky Dory, his first truly great album, in which numerous eclectic influences drove his creative engine to new heights. Alongside his desire for fame he had always harboured a fascination for the bizarre and strange. In childhood, he was obsessed with science fiction, watching The Quatermass Experiment on television from behind a sofa so his parents didn’t know he was up. During the 1960s, he flirted with esoterica, witchcraft, Nietzsche and Buddhist philosophy. Finally, in the extraordinary album Hunky Dory, these influences met in mentions of Himmler, Aleister Crowley and Homo
Superior, to name but a few allusions. The album is recognised as one of the best rock albums of all time.
But such accusations always seem to miss the heart of this enigma.
His working method as “the tasteful thief” (as he called himself) was at last revealed: everything he experienced entered his creative palette to be used and recycled.
Before a project is complete, Bowie’s mind runs ahead to the next.
Just so with his next album. Inspiration came during a trip to New York, where he met Iggy Stooge (later Iggy Pop), a drug-addicted rock star apparently heading for oblivion. Adapting his name and that of the Legendary Stardust Cowboy by whom he was also fascinated, Bowie created a new persona and band, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. He stole the chord sequence for Starman from Judy Garland’s Somewhere Over The Rainbow, and mixed his sexual ambiguity to make a classic, groundbreaking album that reached #5 in the UK charts. Bowie had arrived. His career over the decades has been so varied and extraordinary, but the roots of his success can be traced to these early years. So, what makes Bowie great?
Some of the answers comes from his ability to adapt. His ability to charm both the girls and the boys gave him power in relationships, leading some to accuse him of inventing the gay element in his character for exactly that reason and describing him as a cold user.
Another element of success is his restlessness, which has been present throughout his career.
His many faces – The Man Who Fell To Earth, Ziggy Stardust, the Pierrot of Ashes to Ashes, Mr Lawrence, Major Tom, Aladdin Sane, The Thin White Duke and many others – bear witness to perpetual change. He is rock’s chameleon.
He’s an extraordinary mix. Diffident, calm, centred, self-knowing, transcendent, inspired and, some have said – citing family schizophrenia – verging on insane. But Bowie is no mad man.
David Bowie and Kate Moss photoshoot by Ellen von Unwerth in 2003
Yes, his work can be disturbing, dislocating and often groundbreaking, but that is because he looks forever into the future. As if that one eye that is paralysed open is seeing himself in the future, where he waits for the rest of the world to catch up.
2013
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FEATURE | SIR CLIVE WOODWARD
Prior to his appearance at The Best You Great Minds Seminar on 28 February, former England Rugby Union coach Sir Clive Woodward – who is famous for bringing the Rugby World Cup home to England in 2003 – tells Bernardo Moya about his life, his attitude to coaching, and what exactly makes a champion
SIR CLIVE WOODWARD:
MAKER OF
CHAMPIONS For Sir Clive Woodward, the turning point in his life came when he went to Loughborough University. Before then, life had not been fun. “School wasn’t very good to be honest. I went to this pretty tough boy’s boarding school called HMS Conway – a Merchant Navy boarding school. I was there from 13-18 and, you know, it was a pretty tough place to be honest.” He remembers it as a ”nasty place on Anglesey in the middle of nowhere, where they “played, rugby, rugby, ruby.” At the time, Woodward wanted to be a footballer, but the school was really designed to produce merchant seamen. “I was never, ever going to go into the Merchant Navy because you don’t go into the Merchant Navy if you’re good at sport,” he says. Neither strong academically nor in sports, for someone with the young Clive Woodward’s passion for football, it was the wrong place to be and he remembers running away from it on several occasions. He did get his A Levels there, and after a brief stint working in London and playing for the Harlequins Rugby Club things began to change. Partially on the strength of his performance with Harlequins, he got into Loughborough University. It was there he met the first great coach in his life, Jim Greenwood. ”He absolutely was the turning point for me in many ways,” Woodward beams. “Firstly, as a rugby player because it was just amazing to play in this team at Loughborough with a bunch of guys who were my age. He was the best coach I’ve ever had, still is. He wrote a book, it’s probably the only rugby book I’ve read on coaching, called Total Rugby. I got to know him very, very well and he undoubtedly had the biggest influence on me as a person, definitely as a player.” After Loughborough, Woodward went on to play for England, and eventually became the national team coach, famously bringing England to World Cup Victory in 2003 in one of the most dramatic finales to a rugby game ever seen. So, how did he do it? What skills does a coach need? One thing Woodward is adamant about is the ability to continue to learn and “capture knowledge” so you can use it to your advantage. That’s why he has written a software programme called Capture, specifically to do the job. “The moment you lose your real passion for study, for knowledge about your subjects then you had better do something else.” He calls himself a “sponge” for the way he absorbs so much around him. And the people he coaches. Why does he look for in them?
“You’ve got to always, always be pushing the boundaries. You’ve got to always, always be trying to find new things, new ways of doing things,” he says.
Talking about The Best You Great Minds Seminar he’ll be delivering on 28 February, he says: “I have a saying, and I’ll say this at the conference: talent alone is not enough. Talent gets you into companies, into sports teams – but you’ve got to understand the people you’re competing with have also got talent.”
And beyond talent, which is the raw material the coach works with, what makes individuals great – what makes someone the best? “I have four words. You’re either talented, a student, a warrior or a champion.” Being talented alone doesn’t mean you’re going to be successful, he explains. Students enhance their talent by studying, learning and understanding knowledge. Above the student is the warrior, which is “someone who’s got the previous two things but can play under pressure”. And for that final step, to become the champion at the top of the pyramid?
“A champion is someone who has got all those things and the ability to work hard,” Woodward tells me. He has attitude. “I like the word attitude, he says. “I like people with the right attitude but you’ve got to define what you mean by attitude and the attitude is all about hard work. So if you’ve got those three things on top of talent, you’ve got a chance of being successful.”
And what about the team-making process? “If you’re leading a team, you’ve got to absolutely be very clear about how you are looking at people,” he explains. “Everyone fits into one of those four areas. Very few are champions, to be honest. You’ve got to be very, very special to become a champion. Lots of people can get to a warrior status, but I’ve called very few people a champion.” So, in building a winning team, one of the coach’s skills is to identify where each person fits on that pyramid. To create a winning culture takes more. “The most important thing about any winning culture is you have to get the buy-in from every single person in the team. By that I mean it’s got to be a two-way thing.” Part of setting a culture is to agree the rules the culture operates in. Woodward gives the example of punctuality as a discussion point. He asks his team to discuss what punctuality means and then discusses it with them. They all agree the rules together. “Okay talking about having a winning culture and winning World Cups that’s fine,” he says. “Anyone can talk about it, but what does it actually mean? What actions can you put in a team of people or individuals and start to portray we’re really serious about this?
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“We have hundreds and hundreds of things. We create team sheet rules. It can only become a team sheet rule if you’ve got 100 per cent agreement with the team. Once you define what punctuality actually means, everyone’s got to sign up to it. Then you as the leader, you’ve got to lead on it. You’ve got to absolutely make sure it’s adhered to. There’s no excuses then because if every member of the team has an input, one of them can’t say, ‘well actually I don’t like that’ or ‘that rule doesn’t fit with me’.” Woodward is careful, however, not to say that agreed rules are all that makes a winning team. “Culture’s important, but again you’ve got to not get too carried away with it. I think winning teams create their own culture just by, you’re up, you’re winning a lot of things. But you certainly can’t create a winning team just because you’ve got the right culture.” The secret, then, is to get the combination and the order right. That’s what make a coach like Sir Clive Woodward.
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AT A G L A N C E :
SIR CLIVE WOODWARD
1980
•
Born January 1956, in Ely, Cambridgeshire, the son of an RAF pilot
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Sent to HMS Conway school because his father disapproved of his ambition to be a footballer
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First rugby club was Harlequins where he did well as an 18-19-year-old
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Studied sports science at Loughborough University
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Played as a centre for Leicester from 1979-1985 and made his England debut in 1980
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Began coaching the obscure team Henley in 1990, and soon moved on to become assistant coach at Leicester
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In 1997, he took on the job of England coach
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Transformed the team over the following six years, culminating with the Six Nations Grand Slam and the Rugby World Cup, both in 2003
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After rugby, he worked as coach at Southampton FC, and in 2006 became director of elite performance for the British Olympic Association
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Continues to coach on performance in many areas, including coaching businesses as well as individuals outside of sport
2003
2015
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The life of Nicola Adams is a tale of success and overcoming on many different levels. She’s a black woman boxer following her sport in a traditionally maledominated world. She comes from a poor background. She is bisexual, in a world which still judges people for their sexuality. And she had to overcome serious injury to gain acceptance into the British Olympic team. Her tale of Olympic gold is a truly inspirational story. Adams was born in 1982 in Burmantofts, an area of high rise council blocks in inner city Leeds – in her words, “not the roughest, but rough enough”. From early on, she would sit with her dad, Innocent, to watch boxing matches. “It was always a big family thing, everyone would sit around and watch the big fights, we’d always have the re-runs on of Muhammad Ali boxing and Sugar Ray Leonard,” she says. As a girl she marvelled at the power of Ali. “I just thought wow. He gets in there and absolutely destroys all his opponents, then outside of the ring he was like a totally different person.” When she was 12, her parents split up, leaving her mum to support the kids. She discovered boxing “by accident”, she recalls. “My mum couldn’t get a babysitter and wanted to do aerobics, so she took me and Kurtis, my younger brother, down to the gym.” There, she found an after-school boxing class. Perhaps the boxing gave her stability in the aftermath of her dad’s departure; she describes the club as, “almost like another family”. Even this early, Adams knew she’d found her life path. She was convinced she would win Olympic gold, even though at that time women’s boxing wasn’t even an Olympic sport. In fact, women’s boxing was illegal in Britain until 1996, the year she started in the sport. Back then, respected boxing managers described women’s boxing as a “freak show.” Even as late as 2008, British world welterweight champion Jane Couch was banned from fighting in the UK because medical opinion was that, “PMT made women boxers unstable”. Adams isn’t particularly interested in the politics of women’s boxing – or of her sexuality. Her family was aware that she was bisexual by the time she was 17, but it was never an issue in her household. Her family was always supportive. When Adams was 13, her mother nearly died from meningitis. Adams looked after her brother Kurtis during that tough time. After her mother’s recovery, she supported Adams’ boxing, even though the cost of kit as her amateur career progressed meant her mum couldn’t make ends meet. Adams then worked on building sites and even got bit parts in television shows Emmerdale and Coronation Street and carried on, an amateur dedicated to her sport, still firm in the conviction that one day she would win Olympic gold.
NICOLA
ADAMS:
NO KID GLOVES
In 2009, her chance to realise her dream came true. Women’s boxing was accepted as an Olympic sport. That same year, Adams was about to leave home for a fight when she fell downstairs. She carried on and won the fight, but the next day the pain was excruciating. She had broken a bone in her back. Bedridden for three months, unable to train, and in agony she didn’t believe she would box again. She forced herself to go to the final Olympic trial, even though she hadn’t boxed for a year. With three morphine patches on her body, and painkillers to keep her going, she passed the trial. Over the coming years she got back into form. In 2012, she realised the dream she’d had since childhood and became the first ever women’s boxing gold medallist in the 51kg category. She has since won gold at Commonwealth and European Games. Nicola Adams has a bubbly personality and winning smile. She avoids political discussions; for example, she avoids discussion of feminism or sexual politics in sport. Instead, she focuses on matters that will get her where she wants to be. She is a boxer, but she won’t be put into any neat boxes. “I’m just me,” she says. “I like boxing, and acting and doing my charity work.” Keeping it simple, going for what she wants, following her passion and being straightforward with others – these are the traits that have made her a pioneering figure in women’s boxing.
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FEATURE | NICOLA ADAMS
The Best You looks at the career of Olympic medallist Nicola Adams, whose success in recent years has inspired a new generation of female boxers
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This month we are giving away a wide range of fantastic books. If you’d like to be in with a chance of winning , simply email your name and contact details to prizegiveaways@thebestyou.co with the name of the prize you would like to win in the subject title before 31 January 2016*
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NUMEROLOGY BY MICHELLE BUCH For the first time ever, the revelations of heaven from a near death experience reveal how we can live healthfully in our bodies on earth – and the information is backed by a leading doctor.
HEALTH REVELATIONS FROM HEAVEN AND EARTH BY TOMMY ROSA & DR STEPHEN SINATRA
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Health Revelations From Heaven and Earth brings divine wisdom together with the science of how we can live as god intended. Fully corroborated by Dr Sinatra’s four decades of medical expertise, these divine lessons bring heaven and earth a little bit closer.
NUMEROLOGY BY MICHELLE BUCHANAN
Discover the fascinating metaphysical system of numerology, and how it can support you to understand yourself better and make insightful choices in all areas of your life. This book explores how to work out your numbers and read a chart, your seven personality numbers, your karmic lesson numbers for growth and development, using your forecasting numbers to look at the year ahead and the energies it holds for you.
WIN! We have one copy of each book to give away. TERMS AND CONDITIONS One entry per household. Entry implies acceptance of rules and conditions. No purchase necessary. Open to all UK residents aged 18 years or over, other than employees of The Best You and companies associated with it. Draw will be conducted by The Best You Corporation. Prize is as stated and will be awarded to the entry drawn at random on the draw date. No cash alternative is available. No correspondence will be entered into. Delayed entries will be deemed invalid. Winners’ names may be published and the winners may be required to participate in publicity. Promoter: The Best You Corporation.
HANAN
KINDLING THE NATIVE SPIRIT BY DENISE LINN
World-acclaimed expert on wisdom traditions and space clearing, Denise Linn shares ancient and modern methods to deepen our connection to the natural world. Kindling the Native Spirit reveals secrets to enhance your connection to the mysterious forces around you. It’s a mystic map that guides the way for you to follow in the footsteps of the wise ones who have gone before you. And in a deeper way, it ignites the majestic native soul that dwells within you, which in turn re-establishes your relationship to the sacred whole.
Standing on Tower Bridge, holding her baby, ready to jump, was Mary Daniels’ darkest moment. This book tells the story of what happened next, the journey to ‘self’ that she never saw coming and the discovery of nine simple, yet powerful, questions that truly saved her life.
WILD AWAKENING: 9 QUESTIONS THAT SAVED MY LIFE BY MARY DANIELS
Need some inspired thinking? Enter our lucky dip and we’ll send one winner a book from The Best You’s bookshelf.
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BOOK Be Inspired
REVIEWS
With the power to entertain, enrich and empower your life, books are as important today as they have been for millennia. Here’s what’s catching our eye at The Best You this month…
GO SLOW You’ve undoubtedly heard of slow food, but how about the ‘slow maker’ movement? Championed by actor Tom Hanks – who developed a typewriter app – and Richard Polt, author of The Typewriter Revolution, the movement focuses on sustainable forms of creativity and a shift from the immediacy of digital output. In fact, Polt says that while technology needs constant updating, he prefers to use a typewriter to capture his thoughts, before scanning the page and uploading it to his blog.
“I think there are real problems and we’re all aware of them now,” says Polt, “that our digital activities erode our privacy, and they erode our ability to focus and concentrate, and they create a lot of superficial connections to other people but they’re not necessarily good for deep connections”.
“At the typewriter you find out who you are”
– Tom Robbins
BOOK REVIEW | SIR CLIVE WOODWARD
WINNING!
BY SIR CLIVE WOODWARD
Winning! tells the story of an unforgettable journey that began in September 1997 and took the team from the lower ranks of international first-class rugby to the top as World Cup Champions. Sir Clive Woodward and his team mounted a campaign of vast change, great learning, team building and clear vision to achieve their aim. ‘We would question everything, change anything and leave no stone unturned,’ he writes. Winning! talks about the team’s journey of innovation and discovery and will reveal exactly how it happened, the fundamentals of their success and how these principles can be applied to any human endeavour. We changed the way we coached, the way we played and, of equal importance, how we operated off the field.’ Bringing his business management skills to the game, Woodward simplified the entire approach to the structure of the team and created new management systems both on and off the pitch.
”There is much more to the man than single-minded determination” Sunday Telegraph
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BOOK REVIEW | MICHAEL NEILL
THE INSIDE OUT REVOLUTION BY MICHAEL NEILL
In this ground-breaking new book, bestselling author Michael Neill shares an extraordinary new understanding of how life works that turns traditional psychology on its head. This revolutionary approach is built around three simple principles that explain where our feelings come from and how our experience of life can transform for the better in a matter of moments. Understanding these principles allows you to tap into the deeper intelligence behind life, access your natural wisdom and guidance, and unleash your limitless creative power. You’ll be able to live with less stress, greater ease and a sense of connection to the larger unfolding of life. Welcome to the space where miracles happen... Are you ready to begin?
“The finest success coach in the world today” Paul McKenna
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BOOK REVIEW | DR MIKE DOW
THE BRAIN FOG FIX BY DR MIKE DOW
Is stress preventing you from enjoying your daily life? Do you find that you’re becoming more distracted or forgetful? Are ‘the blues’ sapping your spirits? Or do you simply feel not quite like yourself? If you want to reclaim your focus, memory and joy, you’re not alone. There are millions of people fighting against the epidemic of brain fog that’s sweeping the nation. The good news: it’s not an irreparable condition – rather, it’s a side effect of modern-day living. Many of the foods we eat and the habits we have do not support our brains. We no longer get what we need in order to produce essential brain chemicals that keep us energised, calm, focused, optimistic and inspired. And even worse, our choices could lead to long-term problems, like dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, depression and anxiety. Sadly, if you look at the way most of us live, it seems almost as though we’ve chosen a lifestyle deliberately intended to undermine our brain chemistry and our health. Fortunately, there is a solution. The Brain Fog Fix is an easy-to-follow three-week programme designed to help naturally restore three of your brain’s most crucial hormones: serotonin, dopamine and cortisol. Rebalancing these chemicals will in turn enable the rest of your brain’s chemistry to reach optimal levels.
”Sugar and inactivity don’t just lead to belly fat; they damage the brain. Mike’s plan helps readers revitalise their lives” Jorge Cruise, New York Times bestselling author of The Belly Fat Cure
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BOOK REVIEW | JEREMIE KUBICEK & STEVE COCKRAM
5 GEARS: HOW TO BE
PRESENT AND PRODUCTIVE WHEN THERE IS NEVER ENOUGH TIME BY JEREMIE KUBICEK & STEVE COCKRAM
Be present, connect more effectively, all while being as productive as possible. 5 Gears: How to Be Present and Productive When There′s Never Enough Time teaches you to shift into the right gear at the right time so that you can grow in your relational intelligence and increase your influence. This revolutionary text introduces you to the five different gears, or mindsets, that carry you through various facets of your day. These include: • • • • •
First gear when you fully rest and recharge Second gear when you connect with family or friends without the involvement of work Third gear when you are socialising Fourth gear when you are working and multi–tasking Fifth gear when you are fully focused and ′in the zone,′ working without interruption
Using these gears consistently allows you to bring a new level of relational intelligence to your life that offers a competitive advantage in our task–driven world.
“No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have not capacity for living now” Alan Watts
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Be Inspired
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GO-TO GIRLS Wonderful women vloggers
INSPIRING STORIES A roof over their heads
LIVE LOVE LEGACY What do you want to be remembered for? What are your relationships like with those around you? How does life treat you‌ and how do you treat your life? There is so much good in you. Enrich your life with the passion you feel and the connections you make.
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HAPPINESS HERE Meet coach Michael Neill
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TURNING HEADS Life as a master milliner
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LIVE LOVE LEGACY | INSPIRATIONAL STORIES
INSPIRATIONAL
STORIES Shelter believes everyone should have a home. Each year it helps more than one million people – here are three families which it has supported
FRANCES CA’S STORY
Francesca and her two children became homeless after her mother, who they were living with, unexpectedly became a guardian to two young family members and there was no longer room for her family. With nowhere else to go, they were forced to live in one room of a hostel for seven months. “It was an incredibly difficult time for us. My daughter’s grades suffered because the baby would keep her up all night. It was also hard for her to keep her friendships going because she couldn’t bring any of them over to play. “When you’re in a hostel it doesn’t feel like you’ve got a future, you can’t look ahead, you can’t see a way out. It’s like being in a big black hole and there’s no light.
Luckily I spoke to an adviser from Shelter who eventually helped us find a better place to live. If it wasn’t for them, I don’t where we’d be now – we’re so grateful to have had their support.”
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M I C H E L L E & K E V I N ’ S S TO RY Michelle and Kevin live in Cambridge with their four children. When they were threatened with eviction, a call to Shelter helped the family to stay in their home: “When my husband was forced to go self-employed, we lost £200 a week and couldn’t manage any more. We cut back on everything and were paying as much as we could, but got into rent arrears. The landlord phoned to tell us we were going to be evicted. I was so upset – we’d been in the house for 11 years.
“I rang Shelter in tears and spoke to an adviser, who was really supportive straightaway. I was still scared and worried but I did feel, for the first time, that there might be light at the end of the tunnel. It was such a relief. Shelter helped us to remain in our home on a new payment plan for the arrears.
“It makes me so emotional. If it wasn’t for Shelter there’s no way we’d be in our home. We had three weeks of pure hell trying to deal with the situation and it was so scary, especially for the kids. We didn’t want to lose our home and thanks to Shelter we’re still here.”
Bill Murdoch, 52, from Birmingham lost his job as a bus driver after suddenly losing the sight in one eye last year. Things started spiralling downwards when he missed two payments on a loan secured against his home, and he contacted Shelter for help. “I’d always done my job with a smile on my face but once I lost my sight, it was over. The bills started to mount up and, even though we’d had been making the payments without fail for years, the loan company told us they were going to take away our home. “Coming on top of losing my sight and my job, stressed doesn’t begin to describe how I felt when our home was under threat. I have never been more terrified than I was on the day the court order came.
The only thing that gave me hope was when I contacted Shelter who helped us through the court process. If it wasn’t for that, we’d have lost everything.”
B I L L’ S S TO RY *Images shown are representative only
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LIVE LOVE LEGACY | MICHAEL NEILL
Watch Michael Neill’s TEDxBend Why Aren’t We Awesomer talk at thebestyoumagazine.co
UNLEASHING
THE HUMAN POTENTIAL 42
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Michael Neill is founder of Supercoach Academy, which teaches from the inside out that happiness is just a thought away
My company is called Genius Catalyst Inc., and the primary purpose of our work is to assist people in uncovering this innate wisdom and supporting them in ‘bringing their genius to life’. There are three primary obstacles which keep us from accessing this deeper intelligence on a regular basis:
1. NOT KNOWING IT EXISTS There is a story in my wife’s family that when her mother got her first car, she complained that it wasn’t working properly as it struggled to get up over ten miles per hour. When they took it back to the dealer, he pointed out to her that she’d never taken it out of first gear. Similarly, if you don’t know that there is a deeper part of the mind that will help you to navigate your life with ease and grace, you can easily be excused for not looking to it. Yet whether we consciously attribute them to a deeper intelligence or not, our best ideas, major innovations, and life-changing insights have invariably come to us ‘out of the blue’ or we ‘just suddenly knew what to do’. This is our deeper wisdom in action, delivering exactly what we need when we need it in order to go beyond the current limitations in our thinking.
2. NOT KNOWING HOW TO ACCESS IT
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When I first became a transformative coach, I noticed that the clients who reported the most positive and pervasive life changes were those who stumbled across an incredible resource inside them – a deeper intelligence that manifests for each of us as our own personal wisdom and genius. This quickly became the guiding vision in my work – waking people up to this deeper creative intelligence which is always available but rarely called upon.
Did you ever go to the seaside as a child? Most people I speak with have had the experience of carving out channels in the sand to funnel sea water in whatever direction we chose. In the same way, when we ask ourselves a question and then allow ourselves time and space to reflect, noodle, or daydream about it without attempting to force an answer, the question itself becomes a channel for a river of fresh thinking and insights to flow.
While many people want a step-by-step process to follow, in my experience that only puts another barrier between you and your innate genius. It’s even simpler than you think – wherever you aim your curiosity, wisdom and insight are sure to follow.
3. NOT KNOWING WE CAN RELY ON IT One of the biggest obstacles we face in unleashing the deeper potential of the mind is dismissing this impersonal intelligence as an ‘emergency-only resource’, thinking that we can effectively navigate our lives the majority of the time with critical thinking alone. In fact, critical thinking, logic, and analysis used on their own are as likely to paralyse us into indecision and inaction as to move us forward. While I have had experiences throughout my life of being ‘saved by insight’, pulling a rabbit out of my hat at the last possible moment, it seemed to me that it was something that just happened in those rare moments when my back was against the wall and my intellect couldn’t pull me through. Yet more recently, it’s become apparent to me that not only is insight always available, it’s as reliable in solving small problems as big ones. For example, on a recent flight I was handed a packet of almonds by the stewardess. Hungry though I was, that packet foiled every attempt I made to open it, from ripping it with my teeth to squeezing it in an attempt to pop it like a balloon. Suddenly it occurred to me that as insight was a natural function of our innate intelligence, I could turn even a problem as mundane as this one over to it. Within seconds of letting go of trying to figure it out, it occurred to me to poke it with my pen, and soon I was enjoying my snack and marveling at the simple yet practical gift of the deeper mind. And this is the ultimate promise of the human potential – that the infinite intelligence of the universe is closer than you think, more practical than you expect, and easier to tap into than you imagine.
Supercoach Michael Neill is author of The Inside Out and his TEDx talk, Why Aren’t We Awesomer has been viewed more than 139k times. He will be speaking at The Best You Expo on 27-28 February at London’s ExCel – visit thebestyouexhibition. com to reserve your place and hear him talk.
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LIVE LOVE LEGACY | RACHEL TREVOR-MORGAN
Ahead of National Hat Day on 15 January, we chat with awardwinning milliner to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Rachel Trevor-Morgan
WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE A
...MILLINER?
www.racheltrevormorgan.com
TELL US WHAT YOU ARE WORKING ON AT THE MOMENT? We have just completed our spring summer 2016 collection. It is always an exciting time of year thinking of new designs for the season ahead. We have also been working on individual commissions for winter weddings and events as well as making up stock for Harrods whom we supply. We spend a lot of our time on the spring summer season as it is our busiest time of year for weddings and racing – we need to make sure we are prepared! WHAT DREW YOU TO MILLINERY, AND WHAT IS IT THAT YOU LOVE ABOUT IT? I was initially interested in theatre costuming and fell into hats slightly by mistake. My mother always wore a lot of hats and I thought millinery would make an interesting career. I have always been drawn to beautiful objects and exquisite craftsmanship – millinery combines these two elements wonderfully.
There is so much artistic licence in millinery and so many beautiful materials and textures you can experiment with. I love what I do every day! I love the whole process of designing and making, and the relationship that you build with individual clients. WHAT MAKES A GREAT HAT? I believe a great hat is one that has a perfectly balanced design as well as being beautifully crafted. You need to consider what occasion it’s for and what overall look you want to achieve. I am best known for soft, feminine, elegant hats and headpieces. All of the flowers on our hats are handmade in house – each petal is hand cut, dyed and shaped. By making all the trimmings in our studio we can ensure a unique look for each client. WHAT INSPIRES YOUR WORK? My inspiration changes all the time. I love the 1940s and 50s and the golden age of couture when hats were de
rigueur. Nature and beautiful flowers are also endlessly inspirational. Working with my clients throughout the year always sparks new ideas for future collections. Hat design is all about balance and proportion. Understanding and seeing how hats work for individual clients is a skill that has become very instinctive to me after 25 years in the business. OF ALL THE HATS THAT YOU HAVE CREATED, WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE AND WHY? I can never choose just one favourite as it changes all the time! There might be a new shape or silhouette that becomes a favourite for the season or sometimes a colour might be a latest obsession. For my new SS16 collection I have designed an oversize petal Jackie O pillbox a rich purple colour, which I love! I have some hats that have great significance for me, for instance the first hat I made for the Queen in 2006 for her 80th birthday service at St Paul’s… that was a great moment!
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Be Inspired
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CLEAR THINKER Dr Mike Dow’s brain fog fix
FEEL & LOOK GOOD Feeling good about yourself has a hugely positive impact on your appearance, persona and the response you ignite in others. Explore new ways to enhance the impression you make and enjoy the benefits of a positive self-image.
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JANUARY JUICE PLANS Jason Vale’s New Year start!
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STRESS MANAGEMENT Benjamin Bonetti on stress
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FEEL & LOOK GOOD | DR MIKE DOW
Mike Dow tells Bernardo Moya why he decided to help others the best he could, and how his Brain Fog Fix can help people get to where they want to be
HAPPINESS WITH A LOW CHANCE OF BRAIN FOG... 50
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“When my brother was 10 years old and I was about 15, he had a massive stroke,” Mike Dow tells me. “He has a very rare brain disease and we spent a lot of time in children’s hospitals. What really struck me from an early age, was I really wanted to do something to help others, and I also got interested in the development of the brain and how you heal it.” That single moment when he was growing up in Honolulu, in many ways defined the life direction of Dr Mike Dow. A strong streak of selflessness, dedication to understanding the brain – and the ability to communicate his message in fresh new ways through his books and television programmes are the result. Dow comes from a medical background – his father was an expert in prostate cancer, he tells me. Perhaps this, as well as his brother’s illness led him to volunteer in a women’s and children’s shelter, where he saw, firsthand, people going through psychological struggles and trauma. This altruistic spirit and his own curiosity all came together when he was 21 and he went to his first therapy session. Twenty minutes in, he realised, “I could do this, not on the weekends in my spare time, but as my main profession – it was a great lightbulb moment.” He went on to do a degree in marriage and family therapy and a doctorate in psychology, and was asked to host a US television show called Freaky Eaters, which dealt with dysfunction around food. He wrote his first book, Diet Rehab, as a spin-off from that project, but the work he is most proud of draws together his study of the brain and the whole human, and is called The Brain Fog Fix. So, brain fog – what is it? “More and more people just don’t feel like themselves,” he explains. “They have a little bit of anxiety, maybe a little bit of ADHD, maybe a little bit of depression they just don’t feel like themselves.”
interactions they experience online with real, rich relationships. “The statistics are reflecting that... 25 per cent of Americans say they have no close friends,” he says – and that has its health repercussions. People, too, are addicted to the quick fix of the more aggressive dating apps which offer no depth in relationships. He doesn’t think technology is bad, he tells me, but that there are some people who don’t know how to use it wisely.
The Brain Fog Fix address these and many other issues. Over three weeks it takes the reader through a course of actions – each week focusing on a different aspect of the whole human being – mood, energy and spirit.
from tablets and computers fools the pineal gland into thinking it’s daytime. Exercise and other areas are also addressed. In the spiritual week, meditation and positive interactions are part of the process – being in charge of mood and focusing on the inner world. Together, those three weeks make for a powerful positive impact – lifting the brain fog so people can see more clearly what they are doing in life. And is it hard to do? There are “simple fixes” he tells me. “So, that’s good.”
“In the first day of The Brain Fog Fix you’re really using cognitive behavioural strategies to change the way you think but you’re also changing the way you eat,” he says. That means omega 3 superfoods for the brain and seven servings of vegetables and whole fruits a day. So you’re going to do things like eating an omega 3 super food every day. Week two focuses on energy. “You’re going to re-programme your circadian rhythm,” he says, explaining that the blue light
The Brain Fog Fix by Mike Dow is published by Hay House
He goes on to tell me that’s probably the majority of Americans and maybe British people too. It comes from a variety of factors, some environmental, to do with the 24-hour nature of mass media, diet, sleep habits and the effect of apps and hi-speed social media and spiritual practice. He cites an example: “We know that loneliness can double your risk of Alzheimer’s disease. By cultivating healthier relationships you’re really not just taking care of your psychological health and your heart, but you’re also taking great care of your brain.” He explains that social media has ironically made many people more lonely. They mistake the lower quality
Watch Bernardo Moya’s interview with Dr Mike Dow at thebestyoumagazine.co
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FEEL & LOOK GOOD | JASON VALE
le at ce master Jason Va Come and meet jui y. rar bru Fe 28 27on The Best You Expo ts/ xhibition.com/ticke https://thebestyoue T YOU EXPO THE READ MORE ABOUT TURN TO PAGE 44 TO
BES
TAKE THE
J
ANUARY UICE
CHALLENGE
Jason Vale has a plan to set us up for a healthy new year… and beyond!
Amidst a time of good cheer, festivities and plenty of food and drink, January can seem extremely far away… yet we fail to remember that the time really does fly in a haze of overindulgence. In this case, being prepared is key and having that little something to look forward to in dreary January is just the light on the horizon when it comes to getting back on track health-wise. As we all know, the ‘New Year, new you’ craze hits everybody like a ton of fruit and veg come the first of January, yet what this often lacks is the ‘staying power’ to make positive changes for life and not simply just for a few motivated weeks.
Enter Jason Vale’s Big January Juice Challenge – the biggest guided FREE juicing extravaganza on earth! Available to absolutely everybody across the globe, this annual juicy event has continued to grow to a considerable size, where last year’s event saw 40,000 people from over 100 countries… and a whole host of utterly incredible results.
Join the biggest global juicing extravaganza on earth! To sign up for free please visit: www.jasonvalesbig juicechallenge.com
How does this help to encourage healthy lifestyle changes, we hear you ask? It’s simple… the options are tailored to each and every person’s needs when it comes to the aim of the challenge – plus the entire challenge is guided by the ‘Juice Master’ himself, Jason Vale, and the juicy team. In effect, you are receiving free coaching, free access to ‘behind the scenes’ videos, free recipe videos taken fresh from the best-selling apps and of course the free support of thousands upon thousands of people. From all of this you will effectively be receiving all of the juicy tools you need to develop and maintain a plan that you can follow… for life!
C O M E A N D M E E T ” T H E J U I C E M A S T E R ” AT T H E B E S T YO U E X P O. . .
THE PLANS Unlike juice challenges scattered throughout the year, the Big January Juice Challenge allows you to choose from a range of five plans devised by Jason, with this year’s selection including:
Here’s one to try… Taken straight from Jason’s 5-Day Juice Challenge, this delicious little juice is just one of the recipes you can find within the plan… it’s the gorgeous
Green Refresher!
The 3-Day Juice Challenge The 5-Day Juice Challenge The 7-Day Juice Challenge Soup ’n’ Juice Me! 7-Day Soup, Juice & Salad Plan 14-Days from Super Juice Me!
Ingredients: 1 apple (Golden Delicious or Gala) 1 pear 1/4 cucumber 2 large handfuls spinach leaves 2-3cm broccoli stem 1 peeled lime 1 small handful ice
This year the challenge features a wonderful twist…
Instructions:
Upon signing up to Jason Vale’s Big January Juice Challenge, you’ll automatically be entered to Juice Master’s BIGGEST competition yet, where you can be in with the chance to win one of two tickets to the USA premieres of Jason Vale’s Super Juice Me! You could be in with the chance of joining Jason in either New York or Santa Monica in April 2016, with everything covered including flights, accommodation, transfers, a VIP pass to a premiere, plus a meet and greet with Jason before the event!
To find out more please visit:
www.jasonvalesbig juicechallenge.com
WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT… Here’s a sneak preview of the plans involved in Jason Vale’s Big January Juice Challenge…
The 3-Day Juice Challenge
Jason Vale’s ‘3-Day Super Juice Detox’ has become one of the most used ‘Juice Programmes’ in the world. The app went to #1! The 3-Day programme can be found in Jason Vale’s best-selling recipe book, Keeping It Simple, which is available as a normal book, e-book and of course at your local library.
The 5-Day Juice Challenge
Jason Vale brings you his easiest and most effective juice programme ever designed to reshape and reinvigorate your body in just five days. Lose the weight you’ve always dreamed of without restricting what you can eat or drink at the weekend. The culmination of over a decade’s worth of research, 5lbs in 5-Days is a new and fresh approach to juicing and the ultimate guide to kickstarting rapid and healthy weight loss, boosting your energy levels and motivation, and maintaining optimum health.
Juice everything by sandwiching the lime, broccoli and spinach in between the apple, pear and cucumber to ensure maximum juice extraction. Pour over ice and enjoy!
The 7-Day Juice Challenge Jason’s 7lbs in 7-Days Juice Master Diet has been described as ‘The most
successful juice diet of all time’ selling more than 3m copies to date. The book went to number one of all books on Amazon and on Play.com it even knocked the DaVinci Code from the top spot! The 7-Day Plan is highly motivational and a hard-hitting programme to help the individual taking part to lose weight, but to also have higher energy levels, clearer skin and be set free from the dieting trap forever.
Soup ’n’ Juice Me! 7-Day Soup, Juice & Salad Plan
Soup ‘n’ Juice Me! is the kick-start plan guaranteed to help you lose up to 7lbs in just one week! This exciting ‘7-Day Launch’ will clean your system, rid the body of any ‘withdrawal’ from ‘druglike’ foods and give you the tools and mental clarity to continue a healthier and juicier lifestyle! Soup ‘n’ Juice Me! is a simple and flexible plan that replaces two meals a day with a juice, smoothie or soup for the first five days with mouthwatering salads on the weekend and plenty of encouragement to eat healthily afterwards.
14-Day Super Juice Me! Plan
Super Juice Me! is Jason Vale’s most comprehensive programmes to date and comes off the back of his groundbreaking documentary Super Juice Me! One Disease – One Solution. The Super Juice Me! 14-Day Juice Plan is designed for people who have large health or weight challenges. Always check with your GP first before embarking on a plan of this nature.
Here’s one to try… The Anti-Oxidant King Ingredients: medium pineapple (peeled) 1 apple (Golden Delicious or Gala) 1 large handful spinach 1 small bulb raw beetroot (remove hard ends) 1 handful mixed berries (fresh or frozen) 1/2 banana 3 ice cubes 1/4
Instructions: Juice the pineapple, apple, spinach and beetroot. Add the banana, berries, juice and ice to the blender and blend everything until smooth.
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FEEL & LOOK GOOD | BENJAMIN BONETTI
Stress for me is encountered when the boundaries within a certain area are being stressed. Just as the fibres on a rope become stressed when tension is applied, the same happens within our thinking and physiology. The more pressure there is, the more tension there is; the more tension, the greater the chance that there will be some form of catastrophic failure.
Benjamin Bonetti explains what stress is – and how understanding it can help us to achieve the unachievable
Having treated and educated a number of people with an adopted stress state, one thing has become very clear: these individuals all adopt a state that shows one or more of the following conditions/behaviours. Consider whether any of these match or relate to you: •
General lethargy – a general lack of motivation to get up in the morning, and so on.
•
Muscle tension – a feeling of tight muscles, especially around the head and shoulders.
•
Generally unwell – a feeling of being unwell, yet no specific symptoms to help diagnose the problem.
•
Snappy and irritable – a tendency to get into arguments with loved ones over petty issues.
•
Lack of focus – a lack of concentration in general, and the inability to finish even the most simplistic of tasks.
•
A sense of feeling lost – a sense of being alone, exacerbated by a lack of motivation to socialise or spend time with friends and family.
Important note: it’s perfectly normal to have any one or more of the above symptoms. Accept this and switch your focus from this point forward towards betterment, not procrastinating on the past state. So what happens when your stress levels go beyond the manageable level? If your stress levels get beyond being manageable, it’s time to seek further professional advice from your local doctor or health care professional. It’s important to be aware that there are times when ‘stress’ is not the primary issue and it can be a symptom of something much more.
Stress is nothing more than a behavioural state. Each one of us has our own set of stress triggers. For some, getting stuck in traffic and arriving late at work triggers a stress response; for others, it takes something akin to being chased by a lion to trigger a stress response. However, the stress response is the same in all of us, irrespective of the trigger.
The stress response is a process controlled by the sympathetic nervous system, which is basically the part of your neurology that gears you up ready for a ‘challenging’ situation. Stress is very often considered to be a modern day infliction and a result of our fast-paced modern lifestyles, but it is in fact an innate response that has been
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fundamentally important to the survival of mankind throughout the ages. In the days of our pre-historic ancestors, the stress response was simply a ‘fight-orflight’ response that prepared us to stand our ground and fight for survival in a life-threatening situation or turn tail and run for our lives! The stresses we face today in everyday life are unlikely to be matters of life and death, but the response in the human body remains the same… our sympathetic nervous system still prepares us to fight or take flight for our very survival. The physiological response to stress: In response to a stress trigger, a hormone called adrenaline is released from the adrenal glands. The presence of adrenaline in your blood supply then generates several physical reactions, all intended to help you survive the life-or-death crisis you’re facing!
The physical reactions include: •
Sugar being released from the liver into the blood to give your body an energy boost in preparation for the fight or the run for the hills!
•
An increase in your breathing rate so that you can take in more oxygen.
•
An increase in your heart rate to speed up the delivery of the extra sugar and oxygen to your muscles and brain.
•
An increase in your cholesterol levels to help thicken your blood and make it clot more easily should you suffer an injury.
•
A slowing of your digestion processes, as the digestion of food is deemed a non-essential function in a crisis situation – your energy is needed elsewhere.
In prehistoric times, all of these physical reactions were crucial to survival when faced with situations that represented very real and immediate danger, such as being stalked by a sabre-toothed tiger. The ‘dangers’ we face in modern life are much less immediate – chasing a looming deadline, traffic jams, or just not having enough hours in the day to tackle everything that needs to be done, for example. This means that your body is now subjected to a much more prolonged stress response. It’s this prolonged exposure to the physical reactions of the stress response that’s responsible for stress-related illnesses.
Under normal circumstances, the daily running of your body is controlled by the parasympathetic nervous system. When your senses detect that you’re facing a ‘challenging’ situation, your body switches systems and the resulting flood of essential hormones and chemicals allows you to perform at your peak when you need it most for defence/protection. Why do we have different stress thresholds? We are all genetically different, not only physically but also emotionally, so we all respond differently to everyday happenings and events. A stressful situation for one is not necessarily stressful for another, but we all have our own thresholds beyond which the stress response will kick in. The more we build our understanding (by means of education) and improve our overall health and fitness, the more able we are to adapt to the demands of our lifestyle and to raise our stress threshold in the process. To learn how to manage stress, it’s essential to understand and accept that stress is something we all encounter. We all have a ‘built-in’ stress response; managing stress is just a matter of working out a system that best suits you, allowing you to then utilise it when required. Education and the consequent ability to work out your own stress strategies will not only maximise your potential to work and perform to a higher level, it will also boost your confidence to face ‘stressful’ situations head-on and achieve what in the past may have felt unachievable.
This is an edited extract from How To Stress Less: Simple ways to stop worrying and take control of your future by Benjamin Bonetti (published by Capstone Wiley).
UNDERSTANDING
STRESS
IN E V LI
N O D N LO
INSPIRING PEOPLE
TALKS
Royal Institute of British Architects
6 January 2015
LAST REMAINING TICKETS
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Don’t miss these fantastic speakers at our upcoming Inspiring People Talks JESSICA HUIE Award-winning entrepreneur and founder of Color Blind Cards and JH Public Relations. In recognition for her contribution to diversity and influence on her community, aged just 34 Jessica was awarded an MBE.
GILL FIELDING Fielding Financial was founded by Secret Millionaire, Gill Fielding. Throughout her wealth-creating life Gill had often had the idea of creating a ’wealth collective’ group and it finally came into reality – as many great things do – from a sideways challenge.
Coming soon…
SAVE THE DATE! 27-28 February 2016 The Best You Expo ExCel London
PETE WILKINSON Pete has an MBA from Newcastle Business School, is a published author, an Ironman triathlete and successful business owner. He personally helps 1000’s people each year to Be Unstoppable and will share his unique approach with you in January!
RACHEL KELLY Rachel Kelly is a writer and former journalist on The Times. Her memoir Black Rainbow was published by Hodder & Stoughton in April 2014 and won the Spear’s Best First Book Award in October 2014.
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How to get going in January
WEALTH & RICHES Building your career or business can bring both financial reward and personal growth in every aspect of your life. Seek out advice and support to ensure your success today and for the future.
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MAKE IT YOUR YEAR Advice from business leaders
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MINDFUL WORK A good place to think
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WEALTH & RICHES | STEVE COCKRAM
MAXIMUM
EFFORT
Super busy, but not making any headway? On holiday, but can’t switch off from the office? You could simply be operating in the wrong gear It’s January, and getting back to your optimum level of productivity is taking a little while. Or you’re secretly thrilled to be back at your desk and making swift work of your chore list. Which feeling fits your modus operandi? The answer could relate to the ‘gear’ that you function best in, according to a new book, 5 Gears: How to be Present and Productive When There is Never Enough Time by Jeremie Kubicek and Steve Cockram. The authors have identified five gears to describe the stages at which we operate – first being a contemplative mode, when we recharge; second when we connect with another person deeply and meaningfully; third when we are most sociable; fourth when we are multi-tasking and getting jobs done; and the fifth when we are hyper-focused or ‘in the zone’, working on a single project.
Most of us feel more comfortable in one or two of the gears, explains Cockram, and for executives that can often be fourth and fifth, a zone where being ‘busy’ feels important and worthwhile. Yet he challenges that it’s third gear where all business happens, pointing to the effectiveness of leaders in networking and creating connectivity.
We can all probably recall a moment when we have been in each of these gears, but it is the ability to be cognisant of being in the right gear at the right time – and consciously shifting into the appropriate gear that is important. In fact, as the book’s sub-title suggests, it’s about using the gears appropriately that enables us to be in the moment, optimise our effectiveness and remain connected to our loved ones.
In fact, he points to the example of his co-author, Kubicek, as someone who is most comfortable in fourth and fifth. “Our families decided to rent a country estate together when we decided to write the book,” says Cockram. “We’d been friends for a number of years and we were each others’ coach.
“There is also reverse,” says Cockram, “to be able to admit you’ve made a mistake, apologise and be responsible. When we do this, people’s respect for us increases.”
When we started working together it became apparent that he didn’t know how to rest, he was useless at first gear and was like an energised bunny when we wanted to connect as a family.
5 Gears: How to be Present and Productive When There is Never Enough Time by Jeremie Kubicek and Steve Cockram is published by Wiley.
“The language of gears came about as we started to explore different roles. I am task-focused and I like to hit the day early and get through things, and by the time Jeremie would start the morning I’d want to discuss ideas and make decisions, while he’d be wanting to grab a coffee and get started slowly. Luckily we’re both good at reverse gear and saying sorry.”
intentional in the gear you’re in can help others to do so too.
It’s knowing which end of the spectrum fits you best, and working hard on the ones that don’t that are key to success, believes Cockram. “You meet introvert thinkers or workaholics who don’t know how to socialise, and they hate third gear,” he says. “Or really caring and sociable types who struggle to be in first gear. Most people have two gears they’re really good at, and one they can fall into, but two which they struggle with.
Cockram says that he doesn’t believe anyone has all five gears working to the same level, and that success is comprised of nature, nurture and choice. “Most leaders learn by trial and error,” he says. “We always look at geniuses or celebrities and think they have it all, but having worked with many big brand CEOs, the truth is nobody finds it easy.
“Transitions are key to connectivity – be conscious about which gear to be in each context and take a minute to switch. Spending one or two minutes to refocus can be all it takes to make the change.
“Leaders define culture, and a leader who knows and cares about people is far more effective in creating a productive workplace. It can be a learnt skill, but it makes it easier for others to adopt the same care and connectivity throughout the business. Being
“It might be tempting to outsource your weakness, but ultimately this will undermine your productivity and it really is more impactful to hone and refine the skill yourself.”
“You can get better but it has to be a conscious decision to work on it. Life is constantly throwing us curveballs and under pressure we usually default back to our former selves, but if we know what we’re doing and why, the reset doesn’t take so long.” Cockram says planning from the lowest gear up is usually the best way to get back on track.“Book a holiday or break,” he says, “otherwise work takes over. First and second gears enable you to look after close family. Third gear is about hospitality but fourth and fifth gears are the product of these things, enabling you to move forwards. “At the end of life, being a father, husband, friend and son are most important things. Nobody wishes they had spent more time at work, but building deeper relationships is what it’s about.” So maybe booking that vacation isn’t such a bad idea at all – knowing that we have time planned with loved ones could be just the remedy for the January blues and cranking up our productivity once more. www. t he b e s t youm ag azi ne . co
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NEW YEAR’S
BUSINESS
WEALTH & RICHES | THE BEST YOU
RESOLUTIONS Will 2016 be the year that you enjoy business success? Follow the advice from The Best You’s business experts and see what you can achieve “Know who your clients are. I cannot tell you how much time I wasted trying to serve everybody. Cash will only flow into your business when you concentrate on a specific market. You need to establish quickly who you are aiming at and how you plan to reach them. Without this key piece you really don’t have a business at all.” - Jamelle Sanders, life coach
“What do I see as the factor common to growing businesses? They all have founders who are alert and open to entering new markets, launching new products and tying up with new partners. With more than one billion people online across the globe, often looking for British made or designed products, you could say it’s a good time to Go Global.” - Emma Jones, Enterprise Nation
“There are very few natural communicators. I studied Steve Jobs’ speeches for one of my books, and he definitely evolved as a speaker. His style was very visual, and his presentations had few words, but his TED-like approach made his product launches extremely impactful and effective. Anyone can achieve this, it just takes thought, creativity and practice.”
- Carmine Gallo, author of Talk Like TED
“Daily upgrades are something we’re used to in daily life – we turn on our phones and they tell us the latest operating software is available for download. In fact it’s something tech companies like Apple, Google and Facebook do very well, constantly looking to improve. We need to apply the same approach to our thinking, to evolve, tweak and treat yesterday as out of date.” - Richard Tyler, author of Jolt
“The next generation wants more than just a pay cheque and they are much more choosy on how they spend their time and want companies to support their dreams. It’s a good way to do business and even big firms can do it and still be authentic. It takes a lot of guts to stand up to shareholders, but it’s absolutely the way to go in the future.”
- Laurence McCahill, co-founder of The Happy Startup School
“It’s been said that most sales people give up after three or four attempts and buyers take 10 to 11 ‘touch points’ before making a decision; this could be a combination of phone calls, texts and emails. This is one major reason for sales people failing, a lack of perseverance and tenacity. Therefore my tip is to not give up. This doesn’t mean keep calling and being a pest, it means keep calling and giving value and change your approach to try different things.” - Tony Morris, the Sales Doctor “Get in touch with your USP – I call it your YOU-nique brilliance, do a big ‘show-off’ chart and write down everything that’s great about you, it’s critical that you get in touch with all the ‘facets’ of you, imagine yourself as a diamond, which bits are really shining and which bits need a polish! By the way this isn’t an ego trip, it’s about being connected to your authentic self so that you can make the right connections in your work and your life. It’s not vanity – it’s clarity!” - Janey Lee Grace, author of You are the Brand – PR secrets to fast-track your visibility and skyrocket your success
“Once you have a business idea you need to believe in yourself. The more you can do this and in your chances of succeeding, the more likely you are to do just that. Of course, we all have doubts from time to time – the danger is if those doubts spiral out of control, creating unnecessary anxiety and negative self-limiting beliefs, which prevent us from doing something that we really want to do (and, deep down, know that we can do).”
- Annabel Karmel, author of The Complete Baby and Toddler Meal Planner and Mumpreneur
“I always suggest asking yourself, ‘What is my intention?’, before posting – breed positivity, not negativity in what you say and share. Conversely, if people on your news feed are posting negativity, move away. If people are in your face virtually, work out what the trigger is. Focus your energy on positivity. Be a positive stalker and treat social media as a way of spreading positivity, giving someone a like to make them feel great. Whatever we do is mirrored back to us in time.”
- Rebecca Campbell, author of Light is the New Black
“Often we expect others to hold our values, but we have to realise that we can’t control others and we shouldn’t get emotional if they don’t deliver. You have to really know your values and go deep on them, rather than be frustrated at the first hurdle.” - Jo Simpson, author of The Restless Executive
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WEALTH & RICHES | SHARON HADLEY
BELIEVE
THE HYPE Mindfulness has been hailed as a ‘wonder cure’ for mental health, but should it be used in the workplace? Mindfulness researcher Sharon Hadley argues the case for its implementation
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Mindfulness is commonly defined as being in a state of awareness, on purpose, without judgement. In practice this means really being aware and in tune to what is going on with you personally and around you without judging or being critical. This state of awareness is achieved by using a meditation technique to focus on the present moment, acknowledging and accepting feelings, thoughts and bodily sensations. Originally designed as an eight-week programme to reduce stress in a clinical setting, mindfulness is now being used as a therapeutic technique in many areas of society and has received a lot of attention recently…. Although around since the 1970s, mindfulness was really projected into the media limelight in 2014 and 2015 with so much reporting that a Google search for the word ‘mindfulness’ now returns more than 33.2m results in under 0.3 seconds, more than the words ‘antidepressants’ and ‘stress relievers’ combined. Why though, compare against the words antidepressants and stress relievers? Primarily because reducing stress and anxiety levels are two of the main drivers attracting people to mindfulness (another driver being depression).
People are interested in mindfulness both as an immediate support mechanism but also as a proactive and planned approach to enhancing personal wellbeing.
There is strong research evidence to support the effectiveness of mindfulness in the reduction of selfreported anxiety, stress and depression, so much so that in 2009 NICE recommended mindfulness as a treatment for suffers of recurrent depression. However, mindfulness is not without its critics, recently there has been much media, academic and public comment, ranging from individual stories of high praise to open academic criticism for the meditation practice. While there will always be challenges to the impact and benefits of any type of therapeutic technique, there is no denying that mindfulness has been researched with some positive findings. Research across a wide range of disciplines suggests that practicing mindfulness can reduce many states such as depression, absent-mindedness, rumination, and anxiety whilst increasing states such as cognitive reactivity, emotion regulation conscientiousness, self-esteem, empathy, competence and optimism. All of the above impacts could be hugely beneficial on a personal level and certainly at first glance warrant further investigation, although there is acknowledgement that mindfulness is not necessarily for everyone. On a workplace level, the Office of National Statistics reported 15.2m days absent in the UK workplace attributed to ‘stress, depression, anxiety’ in 2014, an increase of 2.1 per cent from the previously reported 14.4m days in 2013. On a wider society perspective, statistics from the Health and Social Care Information Centre advise that there were 57.1m antidepressant medicines dispensed in 2014, another increase, this time a 7.2 per cent increase from 2013. Furthermore NHS spending on antidepressant drugs
rose by 33.6 per cent in 2014 (compared to 2013) to a staggering £282m. There are many theories for the increased reporting of sickness relating to stress, anxiety and depression, some say that it is becoming more acceptable to speak up about mental health issues and previously there was more false reporting, others claim the recession and UK economy increased the numbers of people suffering with mental health problems. Whatever the reason, if you couple the cost of antidepressant prescriptions with the increase in days off sick then there appears to be a clear reason why a recent All-Party Parliamentary Group recommended further research and future implementation of mindfulness in four key areas of society: workplace, NHS, education and the criminal justice system.
Whether you are an individual looking to personally reduce your stress, anxiety or depression levels, or you are an employer looking to support employee wellbeing, even a policy maker or commissioner looking to advise and purchase services; it now feels appropriate that mindfulness is considered as a serious contender in the mix of support services and techniques offered in the mainstream.
Once previously considered an ‘alternative therapy’, this categorisation is now widely challenged, maybe because the definition of an ‘alternative therapy’ is a practice that does not originate from evidence-based research and whilst mindfulness is still young in terms of a profession, the research trials and findings provide an impressive evidence base for the future. With government support and formal NICE approval it could be time to let go of any reservations or preconceptions and see for yourself what all the hype is about?
Sharon Hadley is business and finance director at the Mindfulness Network CIC, manager at the Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice, Bangor University and a guest facilitator at Bangor University’s Business School.
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WEALTH & RICHES | ROCKY ROAD TO SUCCESS
ADELE
CHANGING TO STAY THE SAME
NOBODY’S SECOND CHOICE
Adele began her singing life when she was only four years old, after already having lived through hard times early in her life. Raised in London primarily by a single mother, Adele’s father walked out on the family shortly after she was born. Singing was in her blood, as the young performer enjoyed imitating and belting out ballads more than any other childhood activity.
Jon Cryer was born into an east coast family that had an appetite for show business. They had been successful enough in and around the theatre to be able to provide a path for Cryer’s later career in film and stage. Born in New York City in 1965, Cryer’s education centred on the arts. After high school, and much to his family’s dismay, he chose to further his acting education in London.
Having struggled to find consistent work, Adele’s mother relocated the both of them to a more comfortable living situation in the late 1990s. As their lives stabilised, Adele began to come into her own as a singer. During her teenaged years she attended a performing arts school in London and began to write a large amount of her own music. She had spent much of her singing development honing her talent, however Adele always saw this as learning about artists so that she could develop other emerging performers. Hoping to go into talent scouting, she was never set on launching her own career until much later.
After a string of theatre gigs as a replacement and understudy, Cryer’s name began to make the rounds in Hollywood. He made his film debut in the mid-1980s, again acting as replacement to a more famous actor. This ‘backup’ attitude served Cryer well in his breakthrough role as the main character’s ‘nerdy’ and overlooked best friend in the iconic 1980s John Hughes romantic teen drama, Pretty In Pink.
In the modern age of music however, the internet is king. Adele’s musical fate was decided when one of her early, raw recordings was posted to an online forum. It became a sensation and, much to her shock and surprise, record label representatives very quickly came calling. It was with the release of the song Chasing Pavements from her debut album that her star began to rise, and it is her talent that makes her a rarified star. Adele has endeared herself to the world, maintaining that same sense of surprise and humbleness with which she reacted when she first began to garner attention from the music industry.
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The next several years saw Cryer auditioning for jobs similar to that of his Pretty In Pink role. He was in danger of being typecast and, moreover, was in a string of TV sitcoms that were poorly received and quickly cancelled. He made money, but it seemed that throughout the 1990s, Cryer was tumbling toward the bottom of the Hollywood ladder. In the early 2000s, he was at long last able to overcome his encroaching status as a has-been. But he didn’t just land a role in a successful sitcom. Jon Cryer stepped into a lead role on one of the most successful and hugely-watched TV shows of all time, Two and a Half Men, outlasting many of his 1980s pop culture contemporaries and cementing his place in the centre of the spotlight.
WEALTH & RICHES | ROCKY ROAD TO SUCCESS
JENNIFER HUDSON A GIRL DREAMING
Jennifer Hudson spent her childhood in and around the church, constantly surrounded by family and friends. Born in a crime-ridden part of Chicago, Illinois in 1981, she was the youngest sibling in her family. She began singing in the church choir while still in grade school and, with the encouragement of her grandmother, Hudson spread her wings into local theatre. After honing her voice and performance skills in childhood, Hudson, while in college, found herself presented with the opportunity to sign a recording contract with a Chicagobased record label. Still growing as a singer, she followed her heart to the next stepping stone in her career ascent: an audition for the then-new hit TV show American Idol. Hudson wowed the judges. She flew through the ranks of the competition, as only the most talented of performers can. She was a top ten finalist who had just launched a stunning career. All eyes were on Hudson as she carefully crafted her debut album, with her theatre background strongly preparing her when Hollywood simultaneously came calling. Almost in an instant, Hudson seemed to have gone from “that performer who almost won American Idol” to Academy Award-winning actress for her supporting role in the musical film, Dreamgirls. However a successful music and film career could never have prepared Hudson for losing her mother, brother and nephew, who were all killed in a violent shooting. The family with which she had been surrounded as a child had suddenly vanished, her father also having died when she was a teenager. After taking a much-needed hiatus to recuperate and do some much-needed soul searching, Jennifer Hudson returned to the spotlight stronger than ever, proving that tragedy can be turned into triumph by someone from even the humblest of beginnings.
HENRY MILLER
OWNING HIS OPPORTUNITY
A true American wanderer and success story, Henry Miller was actually of German descent. He was born in Germany in 1927 to a father whose stock and trade as a butcher and cattle rancher would give Miller the know-how for his later success. He began assisting his father’s business at a young age, often acquiring livestock for the operation. After his mother’s death, Miller was driven from his homeland by both his father’s stern hand and his intense desire to build an empire of his own. That empire would have to wait however, as Miller arrived in America with no connections or influence to his name. He was shocked to be met with such hardship at finding work in the butcher’s trade, as the depth of his experience was vast. Such was the life of an immigrant coming to America in the 19th century. Undeterred, Miller then made a harrowing journey to San Francisco by boat with only a few dollars to his name. There he built up a thriving butcher business, buoyed by his superior skills and willingness to go the extra mile with custom meats for prominent foreign immigrants and visitors, of which there were many in California due to the state’s Gold Rush period. Going into partnership with a former competitor, Miller saw his fortunes increase exponentially with several shrewd land acquisition deals that saw the pair raising their own cattle and cultivating a remarkably successful livestock empire. Due to the large swathes of countryside needed to maintain a thriving cattle operation, Henry Miller went on to become one of the most successful land owners the United States had ever seen.
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Be Inspired
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CHANGE MAKERS
21ST CENTURY LIVING
Vloggers with a mission We live in a technological age and the opportunities that new ideas and developments bring to both our personal and professional lives are amazing. Discover fresh thinking and technologies that can enhance daily life.
Put your company in this space! To sponsor this page and be part of The Best You, email us at advertising@thebestyou.co
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BARGAIN HUNT Gadgets to buy in the sales
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21ST CENTURY LIVING | VLOGSTARS
VLOGGERS
MAKING
A DIFFERENCE Exclusive content and shots on iPad, iPhone & Android devices
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At The Best You, we recognise those who are using their digital space to educate, empower and do good for others
ALBA GARCIA If you’re looking for something a little different than the regular beauty vlog channel, switch over to the refreshing SunKissAlba whose mandate is, ‘Where beauty meets health’. Promoting all-natural beauty routines, Alba Garcia was intrigued to research and experiment with nutrition, and the connection between mind, body and nature, after her son was diagnosed with
SARAH NAGEL Need a natural cold remedy? Try Sarah Nagel’s Tomato Tea video recipe. As the talent behind YouTube channel holistichabits, the Vancouver-based star aims to, “Inspire people to adapt a healthy lifestyle, while being entertained at the same time”.
MADS & MIKKEL JOHNSEN Since 2011, Norwegian brothers Mads and Mikkel Johnsen have charted their journey from a self-described lifetime of unhealthy eating to a 100 per cent raw vegan diet. At Sweet Natural Living, the bearded pair document their passion for raw as they travel the world sharing tips for
autism. “We discovered that everything that has helped our child improve his symptoms of autism can also help everyone else,” says Garcia. “So I started applying my discovery towards food and ingredients towards beauty, and I realised how unhealthy my skin products were.” Watch Alba Garcia’s YouTube channel at https:// www.youtube.com/ user/SunKissAlba/ featured
Using honey to highlight and beetroot to dye hair, oil pulling to whiten teeth and turmeric ginger milk to reduce inflammation, the vlogstar has also branched out with an Etsy store selling crystals and handmade jewllery.
Check out holistichabits at https://www. youtube.com/user/ holistichabits/ featured
picking the creamiest avocados in the market, getting rid of fruit flies in your kitchen to the best way to eat a watermelon. While we might not be as committed as they are to fruit and vegetables, we find their spirited shoots uplifting.
Chart the Johnsen’s journey at https:// www.youtube. com/user/ sweetnaturalliving/ featured
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Exclusive content and shots on iPad, iPhone & Android devices
21ST CENTURY LIVING | GADGETS
A TECH NEW YEAR A luxurious tech accessory for the ladies, the Crossbody Case is ideal for those who like to head out on the town but don’t want to drag along a clutch or a purse just for their smart device. The case is only for the larger iPhone 6, but chances are, if you’re looking into a fashionable leather case for your iPhone, you’ve got the latest model. The case comes in three different colours (grey, white, and black), and the pearlescent pattern and shine make the case really stand out, not just as an attractive case for you smartphone, but as an eveningwear accessory. The case also has spots for your cards, so you’ll have everything you need for a night out on the town on your hip. Suggested retail price: £149
VANESA REY KEOPS CROSSBODY CASE
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With the holidays behind us, it’s time to settle in for the rest of winter. It’s also the ideal moment to pick up any items that didn’t make it gift wrapped under your tree this year. Retailers are getting rid of last year’s stock, which means there are some deals to be hunted down. Here’s what to keep your eyes peeled for when you’re out and about…
Perhaps when you go out with friends or for a romantic evening you want to stay connected, but you don’t want to be distracted. This might mean that you put your phone in your bag or somewhere else that doesn’t tempt you to check for updates frequently. Still, there might be a call or an update that you don’t want to miss. Enter Ringly, the smart ring. The ring connects to your smartphone, and you can set it up to notify you you’re getting that important call or the message that you’ve been waiting for. The ring will vibrate gently in a number of pre-set patterns to let you know exactly what kind of notification you’ve received. There’s also a small multi-colour light that will tell you what kind of message you’ve received. It’s stylish, subtle, and it does something that not many smart devices do: it keeps you connected while also giving you space. Suggested retail price: £139
RINGLY
Programmable coffee pots have been around for some time, but none of them are quite as intelligent as the Mr. Coffee® Smart Optimal Brew. Thanks to the intuitive Wemo app, The Smart Optimal Brew puts your coffeemaker in the palm of your hand. This is great news for those of us who have flexible schedules. If you wake up every morning at the same time, a programmable coffeemaker is fine, but if you don’t, having the ability to turn on the coffeemaker from your bedroom, the office, or when you are on your way home is extremely convenient. To top it all off, the Smart Optimal Brew comes with a host of other features that mean you’re not only getting your coffee made when you want it but how you want it as well. Suggested retail price: £99
Maybe you can’t afford one of the latest technology-enriched vehicles, but that doesn’t mean you can’t join the luxury carmakers on the cutting edge of the 21st century. Navdy is the aftermarket heads up display (HUD) that turns your car into a highly intelligent vehicle in a matter of seconds. The windshield display is subtle and unobtrusive, and it sits just within your field of vision so you don’t need to take your eyes off the road when you are receiving a call or a notification. You operate the device with your voice or hand gestures (ones that allow you to keep your hands on the wheel and your focus on the road). It’s not on the mass market yet, but it’s available for pre-order online. Suggested retail price: £219
NAVDY
MR. COFFEE® SMART OPTIMAL BREW
When it comes to cables for our smartphones, most of us don’t think twice about it. We just use the cords that come with the device. For me, this means that each night I fumble around behind my bedside table to find the end of the cord that attaches to my smart device. I’ve never really thought twice about this, but the people at Native Union have, and they’ve made my life easier by doing so. The Night Cable is a simple solution to a simple problem. The makers of the cable have made a three-metre cord (more than long enough for even the most out-of–the-way sockets), and at the useful end of it they’ve included a weighted knot that can be anchored to any flat surface. No need for adhesives or any kind; just place the cable on your nightstand or desk, and it stays exactly where you put it. Brilliant. Suggested retail price: £39
NATIVE UNION NIGHT CABLE
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The Best You is delighted to have Yes to Life as its preferred charity partner. The work it does for people fighting cancer is immeasurable, providing support for people in real need of care at the simplest and most human level Yes to Life is the UK’s integrative cancer care charity and we are here to help people with cancer navigate their way to finding the right choice for them. We provide support, information and financial assistance to those seeking to pursue approaches that are currently unavailable on the NHS. We also run a series of educational seminars and workshops for those wanting to learn more. We want to change attitudes and make integrative cancer care (combining the best of conventional and complementary approaches) readily available so more people have the best chance of reclaiming their health.
Helpline – 0870 163 2990
Our helpline offers free support to those with cancer, their carers and relatives. Staffed by trained volunteers, we do not offer advice but can signpost to experts and practitioners who can.
You give: • •
LIFE - directory
Our directory provides access to a searchable database of therapies, practitioners and clinics working with people with cancer around the world. The interactive LIFE - Talk forum offers a place to share experiences and ask questions about each therapy type.
Financial assistance
We support people to take the complementary approach of their choice. Callers to our helpline are eligible for a free consultation with Cancer Options and we provide small grants to assist with costs of supplements, organic food, equipment and therapies.
There are two ways you can help us: If you want to make a one-off donation then please join our campaign to raise money for our Funding Scheme so we can continue to help the increasing numbers coming to the charity looking for choice.
http://campaign.justgiving.com/charity/y2l/ fundpeoplewithcancer Or you can be our Friend. The best way you can have a direct impact is to donate a regular amount each month. Your money will go directly to helping individual people with cancer and gives them a real choice.
A monthly donation – as much or as little as you can afford Someone with cancer access to approaches they would not have been able to pay for themselves
You get: • • • •
The knowledge that you are helping us support people that really need it Advanced access to tickets to our workshops and seminars A Friends newsletter featuring all our latest news, stories from our beneficiaries and some delicious healthy recipes A Friends badge to display on your social media page to celebrate your contribution and share it with the world
https://www.justgiving.com/y2l/ and click, ‘Make a monthly donation’ We have been sharing stories from their beneficiaries to highlight this diversity and raise awareness of the value of complementary approaches for healing.
You can read some of their amazing stories here: http:// yestolifecharity.blogspot.co.uk/p/ stories.html
www.thebestyoudirectory.co www.thebestyoudirectory.co The Best You Directory is the most comprehensive directory for therapists, trainers, NLP practitioners and hypnotherapists. It’s also a place for customers to find local and professional support.
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TRANSFORM • MOTIVATE • ENRICH • EMPOWER • ENJOY
JANUARY 2016 / Price £5.99
Be Inspired
DAVID
BOWIE THE LIFE OF A MUSICAL INNOVATOR
MICHAEL SIR CLIVE WOODWARD NEILL WHAT IT TAKES TO COACH A WINNING TEAM
MEET THE SUPERCOACH AT THE BEST YOU EXPO
NICOLA ADAMS
FORGING HER OWN PATH IN THE WORLD OF BOXING
DR MIKE DOW
HOW TO FIX YOUR BRAIN FOG FOR GOOD
PLUS: ARE YOU IN THE RIGHT GEAR?