How insecure have you been feeling lately? How does your social media look? Is there a link? Last week I did a poll on my Instagram stories and it turns out 70% of us feel more pressure to appear perfect online the more insecure we feel. Shocked? Me neither. At first I was shocked but as someone who spends most of her time in the online world the dust soon started to settle and the answer seemed obvious. Did I really think those perfectly filtered selfie series didn’t have a darker story to tell. I got the urge to do the poll after dipping my toe into the world of TikTok. Amist the f ..read more

  Halfway through the year feels like a good time to reflect on what my word of the year has taught me so far. Every January I choose a word of the year. If this idea is new to you then you can read more about how it works in my book Enough or in this blog post. The aim is to live alongside a guiding word for an entire year instead of choosing new year resolutions (which never work out). The word should be a careful choice depending on where you are right now and where you want to be. Your  word should reflect what you feel you need more of in life to get you to where you’d like to ..read more

  My relationship with jewellery has been a rollercoaster. I started taking it seriously after watching Legally Blonde at the age of 15. My silver Tiffany charm bracelet was my pride and joy and made me feel very Elle Woods, which was my look at the time. Following that came my faux diamond encrusted J pendant necklace which was rarely off my neck. Nights out were times to have fun with Topshop style costume jewellery but I always came back to those key pieces I treasured. When minimalism took over my life I declared myself ‘not a jewellery person’ and I decluttered almost every piec ..read more

  Last month I paid a decorator to paint my bedroom. It felt so indulgent, wasteful and the emotional barriers I had to get over to finally create an event in my calendar were frankly ridiculous. Who did I think I was? What was I thinking getting someone else to do a job I could do myself if I stopped being so lazy? How could I be so wasteful with money? Normally I do any painting myself so I felt the need to justify my choice intensely. Laid reading in bed, admiring how beautiful my favourite room in the house now looked and inhaling the fresh smell of paint, I agreed with myself this ..read more

  I’d been waiting for this trip since I unwrapped an Athens guide book on Christmas morning. It’s been a while since I collected so many photos I love from one place I’ve visited. Covid obviously hasn’t helped but thank goodness the world is finally opening back up again. We’re all free to indulge in our wanderlust once more. I wanted to share a few details from this trip with my mum and give all these photos a home. The meaning behind my mum’s gift was to create memories in the present so it only feels right to celebrate them. We spent three nights in Athens, staying at the Wyndham Gra ..read more

  Hello, my name is Jessica and I’m an emotional spender.  According to habits expert Gretchen Rubin there are two types of people; over-buyers and underbuyers. The over buyers amongst us default to buying stuff on a whim to feel better about ourselves where as under-buyers veer towards deprivation and can easily take an age to talk themselves into buying even the basic necessities. Which one are you? Without a shadow of a doubt I am an over-buyer. Always have been and sadly people don’t change overnight. I learnt to shop my feelings as a way of soothing myself at an early age, and ..read more

  If I’m going to write about living a more meaningful life then I can’t not write about relationships, and not just the relationship we have with ourselves, which yes is an important one, but the fundamental relationships we have with others. This is something I’ve felt tentative about until recently because of my own issues but the thing is - when we feel happy in our relationships our life satisfaction orgasms. As a result we find ourselves feeling more settled, content and less eager to fill our lives with the meaningless. Healthy relationships are a key ingredient to a meaningful l ..read more

  Your future self will thank you is a phrase we’re all used to hearing - and probably rolling our eyes at. It’s intentions are honest enough, to encourage us to forward plan and make sacrifices in the present so we can reap the rewards later on. Save 10% of your income each month and your future self will thank you is a standard example.This kind of forward thinking is how I wrote my book. I can think of no better example of delayed gratification than writing a book. The painstaking drudgery of trying to choreograph so many words over a period of months (potentially years) but then the ..read more

Enough is available to order online here and is also available in all good bookstores   It wasn’t long after I started this blog that I began dreaming bigger. Doing things that scare you has that effect. Once you conquer one fear and realise you’re capable of things that once frightened you into freeze mode you move onto the next thing until you find yourself standing at the bottom of the mountain you truly want to climb. For me that was writing a book. Last month that book got published. Writing a book wasn’t the journey I expected it to be. It didn’t happen exactly as I had hoped or ..read more

This post is a paid partnership with Organic Basics. All thoughts and opinions are my own, unedited and unaltered as always.   Keeping exercise simple is how I make it happen. When getting dressed for the occasion feels like a chore or makes me feel anxious I’m less likely to do it. Overflowing drawers of random workout pieces I’d accumulated throughout the years of my various exercise phases only caused me confusion and overwhelm. On the flip side, having a small but curated collection of workout clothes that compliment one another and make me feel good is often the carrot I need to gi ..read more