So much can happen, often unrecognised or glossed over as we keep making baby steps towards the vision that we have for The HOW People.

So, it is time to stop, to step back and look at our highlights from 2022 before we take a bit of a break over the holidays. 

Here they are. 

Our Five Gold Things. 

#1 CONNECTION

On a beautiful sunny day in September, Esme, a 16 year old from Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA - who has been in our HOW membership community for two years having found us completely randomly - and her family came to Mumbles to visit us. She brought us new hats from her trip to Iceland. We laughed, ate and swam in a seaweed filled ocean.

She then travelled around the country and met up with other girls she’d met through the membership, making real life connections with people who will be friends for life. Tonight she is leading an art session for us as one of our HOW Mentors. One of our core values is CONNECTION. Reaching out and meeting new...

Do you want to BE more? GET more? STAY more?

Then it’s time to get curious.
These are my top tips.

YOUR HEAD

• Notice your head chatter and remember that you’re in charge here! What’s the ratio of the kind words to negative ones?
• Remember a time you were confident? What were you doing? How were you doing it? If you’ve had confidence before – you can get it again.
• ‘Fake it till you make it’. Bet you’ve heard this gem.  Believe you can be confident. Not that you can’t or aren’t. Remember, you’re in charge of how you feel.

YOUR BODY

• Think of it like an instrument – you need to tune it up to get it working properly
• Breathe full and deep into your belly
• Feeling jittery? You need to shake it off. Put on some music and dance big to change the energy in your body. (20 star-jumps will do the same thing!)
• When you talk, make the sound come from your chest rather than from your throat
• Vary your tone, rhythm,...

This month we are introducing a slightly different newsletter and blog post to go alongside the popular WFRDB (Watch. Follow. Read. Do. Buy.)

Remember, If you want to receive our newsletters automatically, sign up via the link on our website and we will plant a tree as well as making sure you get a jam packed newsletter every month. 

This is a bit of a behind-the-scenes round-up of the goings on at HOW HQ. Because someone recently asked us 'What are you up to at the moment?' and we realised sometimes it isn't always obvious from our current newsletter. 

So, this is a snapshot of what we are up to.

The main projects we are working on with links on how to get involved or how to sign up.

This week we have 4 things we'd like to tell you about:

1. Mindset and Mindflex Workshop for girls 11-16 years old: Monday 13th June 7pm

Last week, we attended TEDx Swansea and one of the speakers said… "Wouldn’t it be good if children were...

Love it or hate it phones, social media and the digital world is here to stay.

There is no avoiding it.

We all need the connectivity that has been created over the last 30 years.

This is an education piece. The importance comes in helping our pre teens and teens  how to live with and develop good habits when using these brilliant advances in technology.

Forty percent of 10-11 year olds are spending at least 30 hours a week on their cell phones. Nearly two days worth of screen tech time.

All of this often comes without learning, guidance and instruction. As parents we often cross our fingers and hope for the best while checking occasionally.

Would we hand our car keys to a 17 year old without a few lessons first?

The introduction of phones can cause havoc with friendship groups, group chats, constant checking and FOMO particularly those at the end of primary school going up to secondary school. 

But.. can you even begin to imagine a pandemic without the the wonders of the...

2 years ago today co-founder Dr Jo Watkins did her first ever live zoom/interview and about home schooling during lockdown.

This involved pulling a ridiculous face, itching her cheek, saying ‘Ummmm’ a lot and failing to remember to brush her hair… not much has changed then.

This was nothing to do with HOW but Jo was getting asked a lot about education at the beginning of the pandemic having home schooled her own kids for a period of time

At that time, in terms of HOW, we had

- Cancelled all our live events and surf sessions with Gwen Spurlock
- Had no functioning website
- Software that we couldn’t navigate confidently
- No course
- No membership
- No online presence to speak of
- We had not interviewed any speakers
- We had not done any live sessions with the girls
- We had not done any collaborations other than surf locally and one talks night

Our current business model was not even thought up yet.

It would be great to quantify what we’ve done since.

...

This a story about someone wonderful, doing something totally spontaneously that will change their world forever and enhance so many other people’s really tough worlds in the process.

Tomorrow, on HOW Inspire membership call, we were booked to have a session with one of our great friends and GP coaches Dr Kathy Morton chatting about periods, PMT, the ins and the outs and how we manage them but she messaged to say she wasn’t going to be able to make it last week.

She was on her way to Poland to see if she could help with the awful situation unfolding on the border with Ukraine.

This was not in the game plan for her last Monday. She was watching everything unfold as we all are, feeling helpless and desperate to do something.

The stories about Kathy, or ‘Our Kathy’ as she is called by so many other people’s children, are too many to tell but essentially, she is one of the kindest, most selfless, honest, humble, loving, empathetic, generous and funny people...

HOW can routines help anxiety in our teens?

As adults we make a lot of decisions every day.

Decision fatigue has been present for so many of us over the last few years. Even the simplest of things took a whole series of decisions during the pandemic.

We are not the only ones making decisions.
Teens have lots of decisions to make everyday too.

Smaller decisions like:

What to wear
What to eat
Whether to have a shower in the morning or later
Which piece of homework to finish first
Which messages to reply to first

And bigger decisions:

What options to take
How to revise for a test
Whether or not to go to a party
Who to meet up with on the weekend

Too many decisions to make = an increase in anxiety

Reducing the number of smaller decisions you make leads to being calmer and less stressed giving you time to focus on the other tasks.

One trick for our teens is to have some "certainty anchors” built into your day.

These are things that make parts of our day solid, anchored and...

What is happening in Ukraine is devastating and we can’t imagine what their communities are going through. There may be some of you reading this who have family or friends there who are having to leave their lives behind to seek safety and refuge.

There are no words. 

Although you will see some of our usual content this month, we thought it was important to address what is currently happening in some way even if there is no way we can do it the justice it deserves.

As well as taking the opportunity to support those in the midst of the conflict, we also know that many of our young people are struggling with the worry and anxiety that the news is bringing.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time recently that the news has caused worry and, sadly, it won’t be the last and many of you may be finding it difficult to explain these events to your children whilst dealing with your own concerns and worries.

Sometimes knowledge and understanding can make it easier for...

Changing schools.

Starting a new club.

Volunteering .

Going to university for the first time.

A new job.

A month of work experience.

Eeeek.

We totally get it.

Doing something new.

Doing something different.

This makes everyone feel a little bit uncomfortable.

There aren’t many people who relish that idea of doing something new without feeling a tiny smidge of discomfort and anxiety.

Our confidence is drawn from evidence of the things we’ve been able to do or achieve in the past. Once you have done something once or twice you are more sure you can do it again.

To do something we haven’t done before, we need to draw on something else in our armoury.

Self Confidence.

This is the part of us that makes us secure about ourselves and our abilities.

To know that we will do our best, turn up with a smile and have a go.

This week we are going to be sharing our top tips and ways to deal with these situations that we will all find ourselves in at some point.

#doingsomethingnew...