Ageing is something we should all be grateful for and yet, so many worry about ageing and strive to hold it at bay.

Now most of us would love to age well, by that I mean have good mental and physical health, still look good and have great relationships and lifestyles. This can be achieved if you are conscious of how you live.

Ageing well as a woman encompasses embracing the physical, emotional, and mental changes that come with each stage of life. It involves prioritizing health, cultivating self-awareness, and fostering resilience to navigate the challenges that may arise.

Women can achieve a fulfilling and vibrant life by focusing on holistic wellness, building strong support networks, and nurturing a positive mindset.

This journey encourages women to redefine their narratives around ageing, empowering them to embrace their experiences and wisdom while fostering a sense of confidence and purpose.

We age every day imperceptibly but it’s happening all of the time. There are certain times when we will seem to escalate in the ageing process.

Women tend to experience the most significant physical changes as they age during their forties and fifties, which is often marked by the onset of menopause.

During this period, hormonal fluctuations can lead to a range of changes, including increased wrinkles, weight gain, sleeping patterns can be affected, and diet and exercise can all go awry. Women can also experience an increase in joint pain and stiffness, all making them feel older than their years.

Living your best life will mean something different to everyone but there are some common traits we can all adopt to make sure we are living our best lives. Setting and pursuing your goals and dreams is one of the simplest and easiest ways to begin. Doing what you love will mean living a life you love that motivates and excites you. Be true to your values and embrace opportunities to help you grow. Prioritizing your well-being and happiness, and cultivating positive relationships with yourself and others.

True happiness comes from within and is not reliant on external factors such as material possessions or other people.

To be truly happy, it is important to cultivate self-love, practice gratitude, live in the present moment, and pursue activities and relationships that bring you joy and fulfilment.

Additionally, setting and achieving meaningful goals, taking care of your physical and mental well-being, and maintaining positive relationships are key components of experiencing lasting happiness in life.

Are you someone who works on your gut instinct? Do you listen to the feelings inside and make opinions based on how you feel about them? If so you are someone who listens to your higher self.

A higher self is that innate part of you the powerful inner guide inside of you that works for your best interests. When you are aligned in life, that is your higher self, working for your best interests, in a positive, productive way so you live the life you want to be living.

The higher self is associated with multiple belief systems. It is seen as an omnipotent, intelligent, conscious being that is a person's true self.

What does the term ageing well mean to you? Is it looking good, feeling great, having plenty of energy or still being driven and focused into your twilight years?

Society often drives home the message that ageing well is all about looking young. They feed the belief that ageing well is a purely aesthetic quality, having wrinkle-free skin and looking like you are in your 20s.

The fact is, ageing well is more, much more than this. It is a whole holistic package. It is of course how you look to some extent but also how you feel, behave and what you believe.

Someone can be 25 going on 85 if they have the wrong mental attitude, no matter how young they look. Whereas, someone in their 80s can have the mental attitude of a 30-year-old and can still come across as young and vibrant.

Anyone who has suffered or is suffering from disturbed sleeping patterns associated with menopause will understand straight away the issues this symptom can bring.

You are lying there at night, staring at the ceiling counting down the hours until you have to get up or tossing and turning pleading with yourself to go to sleep aware of how tired and irritable you will be the next day if you don’t get some sleep.

If you suffer from food obsession, you could find that it is starting to rule your life. You might constantly question how to stop obsessively thinking about food, or be constantly on the lookout for the best diets or ways in which to change your life so you are no longer ruled by food.

An unhealthy preoccupation with food can start to have consequences in all areas of your life, from your job, and health to your relationships. You can find yourself thinking about meals that you are going to be eating instead of concentrating on work, spending too much time planning meals instead of being with family and you can discover that it takes up too much space in your mind, leaving you with little room to think about anything else.

There is, of course, the major issue of health. An unhealthy obsession with food can leave you either overweight with health issues or underweight with health issues, which in both instances can be mental problems as well as physical problems.

Seasonal adjustment disorder or seasonal affective disorder is a type of depression that comes and goes during the seasons. Most people who suffer from SAD do so during the winter months, though there are people who can feel fine during the winter months and who suffer during the summertime. SAD can often be known as winter depression because it is more prevalent during the winter months.

You walk into a room and forget why. You can’t remember the name of someone you have just been introduced to and feel mortified or, you are fed up with constantly looking for things you have just had and can’t remember where you put them.

These everyday occurrences seem innocuous enough but you can’t get rid of the nagging feeling that something is wrong with you and you are starting to lose your memory at a young age

There can be no doubt about it the last few years have been an incredibly stressful time for many and with so much looming on the horizon, you may be wondering about how to increase your resilience to stress and anxiety for 2023.

Globally, there has been a pandemic, war, talks of recession, rising energy, fuel and food bills and a general sense of uncertainty, so it is no wonder that many people are starting to feel stress and have anxiety levels rising as we start to approach 2023.

We all know the scenario, you wake up and before you even check your clock, you know that it’s going to be 3.00 am and that you will then spend the next hour or so, tossing and turning, trying to get back to sleep, all the while your brain will be ruminating on all of the things that you really don’t want to be thinking about. Everyone will have been in this situation at some time or another but why does it happen? And what can we do to stop it from becoming a regular pattern?

Self-worth, one of those buzz words that we hear so often now, but what exactly does it mean? There seem to be so many “self” words, from self-worth, self-confidence, self-esteem, self-care, that it is hard to distinguish one from another.

Self-worth comes from within, it is an internal sense of being that is achieved by acquiring self-love, self-acceptance, and self-understanding.

CBT or cognitive behavioural therapy is a non-medical treatment that focuses on how what you think and believe has a direct effect on how you feel and behave. It teaches you tools and techniques for coping with the problems that you are experiencing. CBT as a treatment involves talking with someone to identify any negative thoughts and patterns that you may have and then investigates ways that you can change your thinking and feeling enabling you to make changes in a positive way behaviorally in the future. CBT treatment combines cognitive - things that you think and behavior - things that you do. It is a common treatment for a range of mental problems such as anxiety and depression.

We can all feel lonely from time to time it is a normal human emotion and there are many reasons for it. One person’s experience of being lonely may be different from another, each experience will be personal to the individual. Many people choose to be alone, they prefer living alone and they are happy to be away from busy social situations. For many though, loneliness is not a lifestyle choice, the ONS in the UK has found that 45% of adults feel lonely from time to time which equates to roughly 25 million people.

We all race through life wanting the perfect job, home, partner, family, and social life. In order to achieve all these wishes though, we put a huge amount of strain on our mental and physical well-being. But how many of us have ever wondered if it is all just smoke and mirrors, if this perfect life that we are all seeking is just a mirage and that we don’t need to be chasing after the perfect life because what we all have is pretty good anyway.

We have all had that feeling at some point or other in our lives…..a feeling of worry, fear, nerves, apprehension. It's a normal human experience and part of who we are and where we have evolved from. Anxiety... it’s something that everyone will experience at some point in their lives, irrespective of who they are and what they do, it can strike anyone regardless of sex, age, or background.

Say the word Menopause and for many women, it strikes fear and dread into them. Once referred to as “The Change”, words that were laden with doom and gloom, this time in a woman’s life is rarely discussed and information about passing through this stage is sometimes hard to access. Many go through the whole experience and aren’t told anything about what to expect either before, during, or after.