Bombshell Academy SuperBlog

Someone posted a lovely quote yesterday and I thought it deserved a blog all of its own. I often come across people that say they can only be happy when they’ve found the right person and I explain to them that the key is to find happiness within yourself first and then the relationship will come along. This quote sent to me reminded me of this fact and it is described so well that I needn’t say anymore……

“Some of the biggest challenges in relationships come from the fact that most people enter a relationship in order to get something. They’re trying to find someone who’s going to make them feel good. In reality, the only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take.” ~Anthony Robbins

Happy Bank Holiday

Claire xox

Tags: Anthony Robbins, Bank Holiday, Blog, Challenges, Fact That Most People, Happiness, Relationship, Relationships, Xox

my boyfriend is 42 today, yes thats 3 months younger than me but I dont quite think he qualifies as a toyboy with those credentials.  Being 42, however, we both have history -it stands to reason doesn’t it? I’ve been single for 3 years and have not exactly been a nun and he’s had a colourful past too. Does this bother me? Of course not but while talking about colourful histories it did occur to me that I have finally discovered what I think women want in a relationship! Well I know what I want anyway!

I want to be the most……..Yes – you heard me right!  I dont actually care whether my lovely boyfriend has had 10 or 10, 000 girlfriends in the past, I really dont mind, but I need to know that I am the most……. lovely, sassy, kind, thoughtful, fabulous, I really dont mind even if its something bad, like ‘most useless cook’, ‘most bad at ironing’ (actually I dont do ironing so this is maybe a non starter), or ‘untidiest’ it really doesn’t matter what it is but I crave to be the ‘most’ at something as I feel this sets me apart from everyone else that he has dated and surely this is a good thing?

This kind of thinking has crept into our schools I know, we now dont have outright winners at sports days because that offends all the others that didn’t win, but we now have prizes for absolutely everything, the best tryer. the most improved, the best studier, the most enthusiastic- everyone wins a prize that make them the best at something. 
Well it appears now that  I too am a product of this ‘most’ philosophy and  crave to be the best at something to set myself apart.

Maybe, thats what we all want in life – none of us wants to be the same as everybody else because when we are we are just one of many, our whole culture these days is about us all being unique and individual so anything that groups us with everyone else is a sign that we are not living to our true potential.

Do I need to be different to shine? Not really – If I’m honest I want to be the best girlfriend he’s ever had but on a personal level I just want to be the best person I can ever be. Each of us is unique and individual and we bring different elements of ourselves to a relationship, its actually a shame that we have this hankering to be recognized and set apart from everyone else in this way, isnt it enough that the thing we are different at and completely unique at is actually being ourselves in all our fabulous, glittering glory?

Ok – so maybe I dont have to be the sexiest, most gorgeous, most perfect girlfriend he’s ever had – maybe just being the most perfect ‘me’ is actually enough? Wow-what a lot of pressure that takes off me, because actually being ‘me’ is one thing I am spectacularly good at……..

Tags: 3 Years, Credentials, Girlfriends, Histories, Outright Winners, Philosophy, Prizes, Relationship, Sports, Toyboy

One of my fave films ever is the matrix, in it the psychic lady ‘The Oracle’ told Neo that being the ‘one’ was like being in love, ‘no one can tell you that you are in love, you just know it, through and through, balls to bones.’  So if two people just know it , through and through when they are in love why do we feel the need to tell the other person all the time, why do we bother?

The other day I sent a message to the man I love, about how I felt and what I wanted for the future, it was a message sent from the heart and the message I got back was “I don’t know how to answer that’.  In truth the message I sent was not meant to have an answer, it did not need an answer, I was just relaying what I felt, and it occurred to me how many times we say things in order to specifically get a response  and whether those particular words should, in fact, be left unsaid.

I certainly know myself that I have said things to people for the exact purpose of hearing something comforting or reassuring back, after all how many people have said a simple thing like ‘I love you’ for the specific reason that they wanted to hear it back from the other person.  We can spend ages formulating words and sentences in our heads and think we have the perfect sentence and then we run through our minds exactly what our particular favoured response would be, generally something romantic straight out of Mills & Boon! Well I don’t know about anyone elses success rate in doing this but I think mine is running very close to a big fat zero!

Now the very real danger of working out all these ideal scenarios in your head is that the person almost never says what you want them to, after all they are not you, their minds and words work in a completely different way than yours. You can end up not only being disappointed by their response but actually doubting their feelings for you, because after all, in your head you’ve concocted the perfect answer that someone truly in love with you would say – right??? WRONG!!! The truth is you’ve just come up with something that is completely imaginary.

Have you ever wondered why so many wonderfully romantic lines come out of the movies? Because its not real!!! All those wonderful, romantic lines delivered just at the right moment have taken hours, days, probably months and even years to make perfect – and that’s the difference – our lives are real, they only happen once at that moment and cannot be re-written or re-taken.

Don’t work out perfect scenarios in advance, don’t try and figure what someone will say, just live in the moment, enjoy everything here and now and you will find the answers and words you receive to be unique, wonderful , heartfelt and meant entirely just for you, which is surely way better than any movie script you could come up with.

So for me, I say ‘I love you’ because I feel as though my heart is just going to burst with overflowing if it doesn’t come out, I say it neither expecting nor wanting anything in return, I say it just so it will be heard and felt…..

Claire xoxo

Tags: Amp, Balls, Bones, Boon, Fave Films, Feelings, Heart, Man Love, Matrix, Oracle, Perfect Answer, Psychic Lady, Scenarios, Sentences, Success Rate, Truth

I’m sat in the middle  of nowhere in the Fens whilst writing this blog, I’m not originally from this part of the world  (hence my slight obsession with a certain Football club called Reading) but I find it incredibly beautiful and unique, if you’ve never been here it really has the biggest skies you’ve ever seen and I think there is something strangely magical and peaceful about big skies – it feels open and wide as though you have a huge amount of lovely space all to yourself and that is blissful…

It occurred to me the past few weeks how important space is within a relationship, and at no time is this more important than right at the beginning. Recently a friend of a friend of a friend (you get the picture) started dating someone new, the first date was a drink in a pub and that went well, the next date was the following week and involved a sleepover (yeah ok maybe too soon but hey ho) and then the 3^rd date was the following week again and another sleep over and thats when things went wrong and I’m sorry to say that it was the female part of the relationship that played it all wrong. From date number 3 she was not only completely in love with the date and best friends with everyone that knew him but she had crossed the line from casual, having fun, get to know each other to bunny boiler in about 24 hours.

The poor guy didn’t answer his mobile for a few hours and rather than be a sane person and wait for contact the woman phoned and text constantly to the point that when he finally did charge his phone up and was in a position to contact her he didn’t want to! She put him off her in one evening and he went running for the hills! Now I’m not psychic and have no idea if this relationship was going somewhere if she had acted more ‘normal’ and laid-back but I do know that it would have had a whole lot more chance of success if she hadn’t done this. Not only did she do all the texting/phoning but she also poured her heart out by email saying that she was only acting like this because she had been hurt and was insecure, blah, blah, blah – Big Mistake! We all want to think that the person we are dating is perfect and wonderful and it’s a huge turn off  when you’re told early on that they are not – leave all that for heart to heart WAY down the line…

We’ve all done it, we’ve all made fools of ourselves over someone we are really keen on and acted like the crazed girlfiend when they haven’t answered a text for hours on end, only to find that they were actually dying to talk to you all day but had mistakenly forgotten their phone or lost it etc. I’m sure we have all been on the other side of the equation too, when someone constantly texts you or emails you etc and you actually quite liked them to start with but the intensity just makes you less and less keen because they are coming across so pathetic and needy, and no one wants needy!

We live such fast-paced hectic lives that sometimes its easy to forget that relationships take time to develop.  We want everything at once, including the fairy story of meeting someone new. After all,  at the movies we see someone meet, fall in love, have children, have an affair and get married to someone else in the space of 90 minutes and celebrities seem to get married and live happily ever after (yeah right!) after knowing someone for about a week so why can’t it happen for us? Its called real-life!

I admit its tricky sometimes to get a grip on reality, just this week I’ve even done it myself, I’ve got in the habit of seeing the boyfriend nearly every day lately and its been like this for a few weeks, but this week circumstances are such that we cant see each other for a massive 4days!!! Well the first day I could have quite easily wound myself up and convinced myself that he’d completely fallen out of love with me because he hadn’t answered a few text messages, but when I told myself to get a grip, in reality it was actually about 12 hours since I’d actually seen him and probably only about 3or 4 hours since I’d heard from him! Not only that but he drives a lot for a living and being the (to his complete credit) sensible and safe soul that he is he doesn’t use his mobile at all whilst driving (lesson for us all there!) So in reality the time I hadn’t heard from him was minimal, and to be fair when I was living in the same house as my ex we could go for days more than that without talking! Lol

And space isn’t a bad thing, having your other half wondering what you are doing and where you are is all part of the fun and keeps them interested, we all want that excitement in our relationships and our partners, its what keeps it all alive!

The moral to the story is to keep the chill pills on hand, let love and relationships develop at a nice slow pace and don’t be so anxious to constantly move on to the next step, once again we all need to learn how to enjoy the ride of life rather than try and reach the final destination in a flash, because once you are there where else do you go?!?

Claire xoxo

Tags: Best Friends, Bunny Boiler, Email, Fens, First Date, Football Club, Friend Of A Friend, Having Fun, Heart, Laid Back, Number 3, Obsession, Relationship, Sane Person, Sat, Sleep, Sleepover, Space Invaders, Texting, Whole Lot

It’s tricky being the new kid on the block, and the new girlfriend for that matter, and I think its especially hard when you are older. You all know I’m 42 and I have a LOT of history, and of course so do the people I date. Now I’ve been with the same lovely man for 3 months and he IS genuinely lovely, he’s the same age as me, give or take a few months and has a LOT of history of his own, and there the ‘problem’ comes, or should I say challenge…..

In the last 3 months I’ve met lots of friends and even relatives of his and it’s all good, but people like to talk about past experiences, episodes and relive fun times etc, this is fine but of course commonly a certain persons name comes up and an ex’s name keeps occurring.I’m not saying this is one-sided, far from it, I spent 15 years with the same person so he features quite heavily in my history but I do try and refer to him as the anonymous ‘ex’ as much as possible.

Well the other night whilst out I must have heard a certain persons name, we’ll call her ‘Y’ over 100 times, OK, it wasn’t 100 times in fact if closely analysed it was probably only 2 or 3 times in reality but it felt like 100 times and you know yourself, when you are listening for a certain word it seems to appear everywhere – well by the end of the evening I had sufficiently wound myself up and made myself feel as though everyone on earth was getting at me that I could have stamped my feet and screamed at the top of my voice “Stop talking about bloody ‘Y’ “

I managed to hold it in until we got home, and boyfriend knew instantly something was eating me – this is partly due to the fact that I wear my emotions on my face and find it impossible to hide how I’m feeling and partly due to the fact that boyfriend seems to have a radar that detects my bad moods at 20ft which I suppose is a good thing but doesn’t give me much chance to concoct a really good defense in my head of how I’m feeling!

Anyway, mild argument ensued and I do mean mild because neither of us are big arguers and problem resolved in minutes, but I did end up feeling a bit of an idiot for my reaction, after all, why should someone not be able to talk about their history and the personal journey that has made them into the wonderful person they are? In fact if that particular series of events hadn’t happened in that exact way then he probably wouldn’t even be with me, and that doesn’t bear thinking about quite frankly.

The actual meaning of history is ‘the study of past events’  the key word there being ‘past’. We all have a past and its made us become the people we are, the only bearing it has on our present and our future is how we react to it, and this includes how we react to other peoples pasts. We all have a history, past events that have had an impact on our lives and the people we originally had those experiences with become a part of us good or bad, this doesn’t mean that there is any less feeling or emotion for those that we are with now, in fact sometimes past events make us appreciate those people we have in the present a whole lot more.

I agree its tough when everything you think of they’ve done ‘first’ with someone else, or places to visit have always been visited with someone else and it inevitably brings with it a little resentment or jealousy but the truth is it just doesn’t matter. I’ve eaten chocolate cake hundreds of times and it doesn’t mean that each piece is any less lovely, in fact I can’t actually remember the very first piece of chocolate cake I had….. Ok, thats probably a bad example but you get the essence of what I’m saying?? Whether you experience something with someone the first time, the last time or the 100th time, it just doesn’t matter, the important thing is to just make the moment count.

For now, I have chosen to put my ridiculous insecurities aside and embrace the stories and history that have made the man I love into who he is, how his character has been created and changed and how he has evolved into the person he is today and I have decided that the best way to move forward is to start creating our very own history and make it as memorable as possible….

Claire xoxo

Tags: Bad Moods, Earth, Emotions, Experiences, Fun Times, History Course, Kid On The Block, Lot, New Girlfriend, New Kid On The Block, Radar, Relatives

Whilst out this weekend I was sat in an Indian Restaurant with my lovely boyfriend watching all the young girls walk into town for their night out on a Saturday evening. Now one of my favourite hobbies is people watching so I was in heaven but whilst watching all the girls walk past dressed up in their short skirts dressed up for a ‘night on the pull’ I just couldn’t help myself criticizing what they were wear ing, and guess what the biggest fashion crime was???? You’ll be completely amazed when I tell you but the biggest crime against fashion was in fact black shoes!!!!!!   Now we all know that a decent pair of black shoes is a staple to any wardrobe but I have to tell you now that I have 3 pairs of lovely black shoes, including a delicious pair of Jimmy Choo patents and in the last 3 months I have worn black shoes about twice!  The old adage is that they will go with anything but the truth is if you want to look completely fabulous they actually go with very little. The girls I saw at the weekend had all sorts of outfits on and one particularly blonde haired girl with a lovely figure had a gorgeous grey dress on that showed a huge amount of leg but it was completely ruined by her black shoes -I was tempted to leap out of the car (we were in the petrol station at the time) but I didn’t think my fashion advice would be very well received no matter how well intentioned it was given. The high-heeled black shoes this girl had on just made her look shorter than she was and made all the attention go to the black feet on the end of her legs – it looked daft quite frankly.  I wanted to sa yto this young girl that if she invested some good money in decent pair of nude shoes she would ‘pull’ much more because her legs would look a million times longer, or even better if she bought a fabulous pair of blue, green, orange or even yellow shoes then she would immediately look elegant, edgy and altogether more individual than every other girl out that night -how come we have to wait until our 40′s to learn such magical gems of information?

My advice to any woman would be to go out and invest in a gorgeous pair of really colourful, fabulous high heels and wear them with pride no matter what colour the outfit or handbag. I have got over the whole hang up of matching handbag and shoes and the old wives tales of wearing shoes one shade darker than the bottom of your hemline, if you still think that then chuck out that thought immediately!!!!

I have a fantastic pair of yellow shoes – to me only good things happen in yellow shoes (and they have) I wear them with brown, pink, green and black dresses and every time they look awesome.I have a gorgeous pair of royal blue louboutins that go on my feet if ever I dont know what else to wear, and they always look amazing.

It’s time to stop thinking about whether things match ladies – its time to think about whether they make you feel  awesome!!!!!

Claire xoxo

Tags: Black Feet, Black Shoes, Decent Pair, Fashion Advice, Green Orange, Grey Dress, Haired Girl, Jimmy Choo, Million Times, Old Adage, Pairs, Patents, Petrol Station, Saturday Evening, Short Skirts, Staple, Wardrobe, Yellow Shoes, Young Girl, Young Girls

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Have Fun xx

Tags: Academy, Bombshell, Dating Guide, Dating Quizzes, Finding The Right Man, Highs And Lows, Intelligent Approach, Love Dating, Man Of My Dreams, Minefield, Nonsense, Online Dating, Online Fun, Single Girls, Success

Even when you are mostly confident, sassy, and fabulous its almost impossible not to have certain insecurities just like everyone else, and my insecurities have well and truly come to the fore recently and given me an almighty slap and taught me an invaluable lesson  which I will share in the hope that you can learn from my mistake….

My new relationship is moving on at lightning pace, and going from strength to strength, so much so that he has met my parents (my Mum I think is in love with him now nearly as much as me) and I actually took the biggest step I possibly can by actually inviting him into my home. This really is a giant step for me because my home is definitely my castle and if anyone comes here it means that they have to meet all my dogs (this is a test of endurance in itself). Not only that but its a big step for me because all the time I don’t have anyone at my home I feel like I can always walk away with no consequence and hurt, I’m able to disassociate myself from the other person almost immediately because they’ve never been that much in my life, but the difference this time is that I actually do want him in my life. The other thing to keep in mind is that I live in a very old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere with all my dogs and donkeys and my house is not exactly palatial,which is an understatement on a mahusive scale and because of this I’d actually convinced myself that the moment he left me he would send me a text saying that he didn’t want to see me anymore. Just for the record I dont mind being dumped by text -I quite like the cold randomness of it really. Anyway, yes I’d convinced myself that it would undoubtedly be over so when I saw him again I was still partly bracing myself for said dumping… It didn’t happen, which is good of course but while I was in this ‘imminent dumping’ state and feeling all insecure,paranoid and slightly barmy I did something I am completely ashamed of……  I looked at the messages on his phone while he was out of the room!!!!!!! I know, I know, I can hear you all scream – OH NO, CLAIRE YOU IDIOT!!!!!!!!!!

I think part of me was just looking for evidence to feed my current state of paranoia and in my idiotic state of course I found a message to upset me – I read it out of context and of course didn’t stop to look at the date of it (months ago!) and as soon as I felt upset I knew I’d brought this on myself, because now I not only had to confess why I was upset but how I had managed to upset myself as well – the shame and embarrassment actually made the upset pale into insignificance! 
I need to add at this point that I trust my lovely boyfriend 110% and that means a lot to me because I’ve been on the end of the whole cheating lark in the past and its really not nice.

Of course my boyfriend  was his usual fabulous, understanding and thoroughly amazing self but it actually could have all gone so horribly wrong and it would have been all my own fault for being nosey and paranoid and insecure.

So – my moral and lesson to learn is that nothing good ever comes from snooping, you find things you were never meant to see, get hurt by things that were never intended. I’m all for openness and honesty and having no secrets but sometimes I think you have to really put trust in your other half that they have your best interest at heart and that they care about you enough not to share absolutely everything with you because they know some things will hurt.

When you’ve been single and independent a long time like me its really hard to hand over the control of some of your feelings to someone else, because thats what you are doing by putting all your trust in them, but its something I am still learning and working on and day by day I am doing it more and more, and it feels good…….

Claire

xoxo

Tags: Consequence, Curiosity, Dogs, Donkeys, Endurance, Farmhouse, Giant Step, Insecurities, Invaluable Lesson, Lightning Pace, Love, Mistake, Parents, Randomness, Relationship, Slap, Strength To Strength, Understatement

Apparently the greeks never wrote obituaries, all they did was ask if the person lived with passion. Passion,whether in love, work, life can both make us look foolish but also make us feel and look great. I wonder how many people we know so well today, Gallileo, Einstein, Da Vinci would have still been known if they hadn’t lived lives of passion, passion for what they really believed in and felt.

So what IS the biggest passion killer? Well this past week I’ve come across it twice, in 2 completely different scenarios and its the fear of rejection. On many occasions when I talk to people about having/maintaining confidence it comes down to the fact that to varying degrees we are all afraid of being rejected, there are very few people that can honestly live their lives without caring what other people think about them and without wanting to feel loved and accepted by those around us.

I’ve said before that confidence comes from finding out exactly who you are, your values and beliefs and really liking what you discover, its the acceptance that you are completely true to yourself and you are the very best version of yourself that you can possibly be. What is it about rejection that people fear after all? Do we expect that everyone we meet we instantly like? Life just doesn’t happen like that, we meet hundreds and thousands of people on a continual basis and some we like, some we dont, some we match with and some we don’t. Of course its easy to think about rejection in a logical way in every day life like this but when it comes to big emotions such as relationships and love its a whole different ball game…… (see what I did there with Wimbledon on in the background?)

Even the best of us build new relationships based on past experience, we just cant help bringing our baggage and issues along with us, so what would it take to leave all those suitcases firmly at the end of the road each time you embark on a new journey? Well personally for me its learnings and acceptance. I take the positive out of each situation, what did I learn in that relationship, what do I need to know in order to improve things next time, what would I have done differently? Notice these are all learnings about me, how I can improve myself. I also like to acknowledge and completely accept that I will never know what was going on for the other person in the relationship, I will never 100% know how they felt about me, how they felt about themselves,what their actions meant or what life journey they have planned, I acknowledge that, accept it and let it go because that is about their journey, their life and not mine.

So how can you live with passion? Decide today that there is no such thing as rejection, just go for things 100%, do it from the heart, and throw those fears out the window, because I guarantee that all the times you do, the joy,the memories and the experiences  will make the very few rejections pale into insignificance…..

“There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living “- Nelson Mandela

Claire xoxo

Tags: Ball Game, confidence, Continual Basis, Da Vinci, Einstein, Emotions, Fear Of Rejection, Greeks, Hadn, Hundreds And Thousands, Learnings, New Journey, Obituaries, Occasions, Passion, Relationships, Scenarios, Suitcases, Values And Beliefs, Wimbledon

Whenever I am at a loss to know what to write I put it out to the Universe and Hey Presto she provides me with something completely awesome to share, and this time is no exception.

Yesterday I was happily decorating, painting my chimney a colour called Teal Tension,and which incidentally looks fab! I’m embarking on a massive house make-over because I want my lovely boyfriend to come and spend time at my house and at the minute the house is an embarrassing shambles. I need to mention that I have not invited a boyfriend into my home the entire 3 years since I’ve been single. I’ve always thought of my home literally as my castle and up ’til now its had a very deep moat and very solid draw bridge. It has been the place I’ve come to be myself, hide from the world, reconnect and rejuvenate myself and a million others things that have all been very solo occupations so letting the drawbridge down and inviting someone into my world is a huge thing for me. In order for this to happen though I need to decorate like a demon! The last time I decorated was when I had become newly single and I decorated out of anger! lol And you can definitely tell! All the walls are fairly dark and drab and the house really doesn’t represent where I am now and thats why its so important for me to change it -it needs to be happy, confident and bright and reflect where I am right now – so thats my current mission.

Anyway – back to the topic of this post, while I was painting I had a text message, it was from a guy I’d seen a few times in the past, you know the sort of person, you get on great but circumstances always seem to conspire against you for a full on relationship. After the usual preliminaries of How are you, What have you been up to etc I thought I’d better mention that I’d met someone, not only had I met someone but that I was completely smitten! This was met, of course with complete shock, for all the years I’ve known this guy I’ve never felt more than luke warm about someone and then he said he was really pleased for me , to which I replied thank you, and a tacit goodbye, a bridge had just been burnt.

Once again this is new territory for me, closing off relationships that are not compatible with where I am heading but its not scarey, the way ahead is sunny and bright. Sometimes I think you have to burn your bridges in order to forge ahead on a particular path, its all too easy to hang on to the past because its familiar, tried and tested and seems safe but I think while you hang on to it its taking up valuable emotional space inside of you that you can replace with something more exciting and ultimately more fulfilling.

I’m sure I’ve heard a quote before about not looking to the past but I couldn’t find it to put here so I will have to rely on my own words of wisdom – You cannot head comfortably into the future when you are looking behind into the past.

Back to the wallpapering…..

Claire x0x0x

Tags: 3 Years, Anger, Burning Bridges, Chimney, Circumstances, Demon, Draw Bridge, Drawbridge, Fab, Last Time, Lol, Moat, Occupations, Preliminaries, Relationship, Shambles, Shock, Tension, Text Message, Universe