interests – Lessons I learned after I turned 30

Revolution-31 days of Yoga #Namaste

Good morning and Happy Sunday! God I love lazy Sunday mornings.

I’m very happy the sun decided to come out this weekend after a windy rainy week. British Summer eh.

I love my food and yesterday I enjoyed a Rubenesque toastie (I LOVE Sourdough bread) in the sun with a friend (at Mettricks Guildhall) which was too delicious not to share with you all.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BXapVCzBapN/?taken-by=eleni_zenonos

I can talk about food for ever (I wish I could be a food blogger travelling around the world taking photos and tasting delicious local dishes, that’s the dream!) but today is all about the 31 day yoga programme I’m doing at the moment.

Is designed and run by Adriene Mishler, an American actress and yoga teacher and as the name suggests is daily yoga sessions for 31 days. Her Yoga Youtube channel has 2.4 million subscribers!!

It’s pretty amazing that thousands of people across the world including me tune in to Adriene’s channel every day and follow the same journey.

A friend told me about it a while ago and since I’ve tried yoga before and enjoyed it (although I still struggle with balance!) I thought I’d give it a go. I’m one of those people that feel that the world slows down when exercising and I’m clock watching eagerly waiting for the workout to end so I didn’t think I could commit and do it every single day.

BUT I was pleasantly surprised. I didn’t give up, I’m on day 15 today and I absolutely love it.

Every session has a theme (yesterday was about forgiveness and today is on being fearless!!) and lasts for about half an hour. Time flies by and I never realise, that’s how good it is!

It is designed for everyone, from beginners like me to pros. Some of the poses can be challenging but as regularly mentioned at each session is not about nailing the pose. So if that put you off Yoga, give it another go, and shift your focus on relaxing and enjoying the mental and body exercise rather than perfect every pose.

Adriene is an awesome teacher. She is funny-her spontaneous singing and accidental innuendos make the practice even more fun-, she guides you through every pose and as she always says is not about getting it right or getting physically fit (although that’s definitely one of the perks that comes with it), but is practising the theme of each day and above all, although not explicitly said, mindfulness.

I’m a big advocate of mindfulness (I highly recommend A mindfulness guide for the Frazzled by Ruby Wax) but I found it hard to practise it. Well, not anymore!

Every time I get on my mat, after a minute or two I forget all my worries and things I have to do and I concentrate on my breath and being aware of every inch of my body. And miraculously all negative thoughts just disappear!

I felt the physical benefits from the first couple of days. My muscles across my body from legs to arms feel tighter and I’m aware of my posture almost all the time. AND my balance is getting better. I can’t wait to be able to do the tree pose without falling!

My daily session is on of my favourite times of the day and although there are days that I struggle and my balance and concentration are off, I look forward to it every day!

Yoga will definitely be part of my life from now on.

If you fancy giving it a go or you are just curious to find out more all details here and here.

I quite enjoy blogging lately and I’ll try and do it even more regularly.

I have no idea what my next post will be about though! If you have any ideas you are more than welcome to comment below.

Have a great Sunday!

Namaste

My Lynda.com experience

My God it’s been a long week.

But the weekend is almost upon us!

One of the things I’ll be doing this weekend, since I have shockingly little pocket money to spend in August (but I did get my Christmas ticket home, so I’d rather starve, totally worth it), is educating myself on Lynda.com

I first heard of Lynda.com a couple of years ago through work as the University subscribed to it and all staff could use it for free. (if your employer/university does not offer free access to Lynda, you can have a free month trial and then pay a monthly or annual fee).

Lynda.com is an American online education company owned by LinkedIn and it’s been running since 1995.

I have to say I wasn’t that impressed back then as there was not much on what I was interested in. From what I can remember there were some courses on Photoshop, Photography, some generic managerial skills tutorials etc and basic Excel training type of courses.

I was recently browsing on Groupon’s training/online courses section but since I ran out of money I thought I’d give Lynda.com another go.

I was blown away by the sheer quantity and range of courses on offer from music writing, drawing, WordPress, advertising, singing, to more technical ones such as civil engineering and programming.

Courses can be filtered by authors, software used, subject, companies, duration, type but most importantly skill level. So is perfect for total beginners who want to learn a new skill or professionals who want to improve their existing knowledge or skills.

The course duration varies but most are between 3-5 hours. Each course consists of chapters and each chapter is broken down to video lessons that are about 2-10 minutes long.

All courses are run by industry experts and include demonstrations, exercise files and plenty of examples.

Every video lesson comes with a full transcript and there is a notes section where you can add your notes at any point of the lesson and is saved along the relevant part of the video so you can go back and re-watch it if you wish.

You also have the option to watch the lessons offline if you are on the go.

There was so much choice I didn’t know what to do first but I decided to start the series of vocal training run by the late Jeannie Deva, a famous LA celebrity vocal coach.

I have no aspirations to become a professional singer but I love singing along with my guitar and I always wanted to improve my voice but face to face singing lessons are painfully expensive for me so I was very excited when I found out that Lynda.com now offered vocal coaching courses!

I’ve completed the first series of lessons on Warm Ups and Cool Downs and I’m now on the second series learning how to sing songs better.

I absolutely love this lady from the way she talks, the techniques she invented, her intelligence and intuition to her sense of humour.

In her first couple of lessons she demonstrates how to massage your neck and face to relax your singing/talking muscles-very useful-,she goes through a number of exercises on the piano with you and she often brings singers in to demonstrate the right way of performing each exercise.

I’ve learnt A LOT from her already, even basic physiology.

Did you know that the largest part of our lungs is actually on our back and not the front??? So if you want to fully fill your lungs with air when breathing pay attention to the movement of your ribs not your tummy/diaphragm.

And of course the infamous lip trills/lip bubbles came up.

Throughout the lessons she encourages you to send her videos with your progress which I was excited to do but unfortunately she died about 2 years ago. I would have loved to meet her…

But her legacy lives on through her incredible work and some of her lessons are also available on Youtube if you are interested.

After I complete the vocal training courses, I’m starting a series of lessons on music theory, guitar playing (of course I can’t afford guitar lessons either!!) and also storytelling, that may be a great way to put my unlimited imagination to good use.

I’m well impressed with Lynda.com and I’m very happy I was given the opportunity to learn new skills for free through it.

LinkedIn you did well!

I’m super excited about my next post as it will all be about the 31 day Yoga Revolution programme I’m doing and the Yoga teacher running it, the incredibly funny and witty Adrienne.

Until next time!

Eleni

I got my Google Digital Garage certificate!

Thank God is Tuesday!

Monday was painful to begin with, one of my least favourite days of the week. But the sunshine, Yoga, a bit of guitar playing, GoT (what an emotional roller coaster episode 3 was!) and bedtime reading made the day better.

Instead of one super long post on things currently occupying my free time, I thought I’d be better to break it down and write for one at a time.

I’ll start with the free online Digital Marketing course offered by Google.

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking into short courses on Digital Marketing. I love the web and I always wanted to find out more on how search engines and online marketing work, the difference between SEO and SEM and all these magical things happening behind my screen…

But I’m on a low budget for the next year or so, so I can repay my loan and be free to move on and try different things without any money worries. The last 6 months haven’t been easy, I really miss my credit card but I know it’s for the best. To sum up, I can’t really afford to take any paid course right now.

Anyway back to the subject!

I found a couple of free online courses on digital marketing on Lynda.com but I didn’t get the chance to check them out yet because I came across Google Digital Garage- https://learndigital.withgoogle.com/digitalgarage

I’ve never really heard of it before but I thought I’d give it a go, since I could get a Google certificate by the end of it. It’s for free afterall, so I had nothing to lose.

It consists of 23 topics, with each topic containing 2 to 7 video lessons. There is a short test at the end of each lesson and a multiple choice assessment at the end of each topic to test your knowledge. Each topic you complete you get a badge and when you collect all 23, there is a final assessment you need to pass to get their certificate.

If you fail any of the tests, it allows you to try again until you get it right.

The topics cover a range of internet marketing branches from search campaigns, e-commerce, analytic tools, social media, video ads, to local and international customer targeting.

It starts with the very basics, so you might not learn much in the first couple of topics covered, but you’ll definitely learn more than you ‘d expect by the end of it.

Some of the lessons include professionals talking about their experience on how they built their online presence which for me were the most interesting part of the whole course.

The presenters talk clearly but I found that they sometimes talk slower than you’d expect and they use their hands A LOT and for me that felt so unnatural- it feels like they were told to do it but in their effort to do so they went over the top- it became a bit irritating at times. It might just be me, have a look a couple of the lessons below and let me know what you think.

You have the option to read the transcript rather than watch the videos if you prefer. I did that for some lessons, when the hand movements became overwhelming and I couldn’t focus and watch anymore.

You can watch all the videos on Youtube but if you wish to get the certificate you will need to watch them through the Google Digital Garage website, so you can complete all the assessments.

It took me about 2 weeks to go through all the topics and took the final assessment last Sunday. I’m happy I passed at the first go, it gave me a sense of achievement.

There is a vast number of free online courses and I think this is one of the most decent ones. I think is a great Google initiative.

Google Digital Garage also runs training sessions and 1-to-1 mentoring (unfortunately not in Southampton). https://learndigital.withgoogle.com/digitalgarage/f2f#/Training%20sessions and have a physical store in Sheffield where anyone can pop in for free face to face coaching.

If you just started your business, freelancing, struggling with getting traffic and/or converting it to customers or if you just fancy learning more about digital marketing I definitely recommend it.

Next post on Lynda.com

Have a lovely Tuesday afternoon.

Eleni

A week of great food, Richard III and the Addams Family.

What a week it has been!

A couple of weeks ago my frustration reached dangerous heights because I can’t do what I really want to do as fast as I’d like to, mainly due to financial reasons (money doesn’t bring happiness, I know, but it definitely helps) and felt very unproductive.

So I decided to take advantage of the free courses through the uni on Lynda.com (I’m on the second series of singing training with the great late Jeannie Deva), got back into learning Italian with DuoLingo and started the free Google Digital Garage suite of digital marketing lessons (you get a certificate in the end, which makes a difference).

And for mental and physical wellbeing I’m doing Adriene Mishler’s 31 Day Yoga Revolution (awesome!) and keep reading. I’ve recently finished When breath becomes air by Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon who was diagnosed and died of cancer at the age of 37. Incredible man, surgeon and writer. It’s worth a read.

But more on the book and the rest of my activities on my next post later this week, with more details and links if you are interested.

This post is all about the Richard III play I saw at the Salisbury cathedral and the Addams Family at the Mayflower.

A couple of months ago the big boss Dave, Donna, Suzanne and I, after our Opera taster (first time I’ve ever been, and it was incredible) were looking for our next culture excursion. Donna has previously seen productions by Antic Disposition (http://www.anticdisposition.co.uk)/) a London-based theatre company that runs classic plays in an innovative way, in unique locations.

So we booked tickets to see Richard III in Salisbury Cathedral last Thursday.

We left Salisbury at 4:30pm as we were first having dinner at 6pm at a little Italian place I found great reviews for on Tripadvisor, (https://leonardoslapiazza.co.uk/) especially for their chocolate cake, which I looked forward to trying. I didn’t stop talking about it for days!

It took us 2 HOURS to get to Salisbury, there was horrific traffic, so we arrived at Salisbury at 6:30pm, thinking of what to have for dinner in the little time we had left before the play, maybe a Burger King or any fast food. But we thought to go to the restaurant first and asked them how fast they could prepare dinner for us. Might as well give it a go.

The service was incredible. A big thank you to the manager and the staff for preparing our food as fast as they could. We ordered at 6:40pm, the mains arrived in 15 minutes and I finished mine in 10 minutes, the fastest I’ve ever eaten, in a desperate effort to make enough time to try their chocolate cake.

And I was not disappointed. It was delicious! The unexpected Nutella layer was the icing on the cake (hah I just read this sentence again). I finished my pudding in the record time of 2 minutes and we had 10 minutes to run to the Cathedral.

I got a bit distracted by the cake display and I asked the manager about their cakes. He told me all about how all their food, including their cakes is homemade and they make different ones every day. They had tiramisu, chocolate truffle, mango cheesecake and panna cotta on that day! I’m going again when I get the chance to try more of their puddings.

We finally made it at the Cathedral on time (after the restaurant manager let us out from the back door to save us more time!).

I’ve passed by the Salisbury cathedral before but I’ve never been inside. I was in awe. What a gorgeous building. There is something special, mystical about old buildings that I love.

The play took place in the middle of the Cathedral, with seats set on the left and the right of the ‘stage’ area. We booked seats in the front row and I’m glad we did. I got the chance to watch carefully every actor, their expressions, their movements, everything.

What an amazing production! The atmosphere was breathtaking, the natural light coming in from the large stained glass windows. All the actors were incredible, never broke out of character although we were literally in their faces.

Richard III winked at me when he deliriously gloated about his scheming and plotting (always in character, he wasn’t hitting on me!) and I was given a little flag to wave when Edward V arrived to London to be crowned king, which I kept to remember this night.

I didn’t really know much about Richard III and sometimes Shakespeare is not easy to follow but this play was incredible. I can’t wait to go see their next one. I’d definitely recommend it to everyone!

All in all, it was a wonderful evening I’ll never forget.

A couple of days ago a colleague told us about an offer a friend at Mayflower emailed him about(thank you Michael!), £10 tickets for any seats to see the Addams Family, starring Les Dennis, Carrie Hope Fletcher and Samantha Womack, amongst others.

So I booked great seats and last night, two friends and I went to see the Addams Family. I loved the movie when I was a kid and unashamedly I occasionally still watch it on a lazy Sunday afternoon but didn’t know whether I’d enjoy the musical adaptation.

I was extremely tired, as I woke up super early the day before to do my yoga class and didn’t come home from Salisbury until 11pm, I thought’ I’d probably fall asleep in the theatre, the seats at the Mayflower are very comfy.

But I was pleasantly surprised by the whole production (and I didn’t fall asleep).

Great costumes and sets, a lots of laughter, brilliant singing and the cast was amazing.

The biggest surprise for me was Les Dennis who played Uncle Fester. I’ve only known him as the presenter of Family Fortunes, I didn’t know he could sing that well and he was hilarious!

It’s been a productive, fun and entertaining week. I’m still tired but all worth it.

I now have the weekend to recuperate, get organised and make plans for the next couple of months, including my Christmas ticket home!

Not owning a credit card and saving money is painful but necessary if I’ll ever change career, move on and travel more. But this week reminded me that I can still have fun and enjoy my life as it is in the meantime.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Eleni

Why I love Derren Brown !

Last night I went to see my favourite ‘celebrity’s new show, Miracle. Everyone who knows me probably knows how much I love him as a person and a showman.

Derren is not your typical celebrity, but I am not really a big fan of celebrities (I mostly admire incredibly talented and smart people, famous and not so famous or not famous at all).

The only time I got ‘starstruck’ was when I met the incredible, amazing Chris Hadfield (if you don’t happen to know him, he is a Canadian astronaut who shared amazing photos of our planet, incredible videos on how astronauts live and also filmed Space Oddity, 400km above earth, amongst other incredible things he did).

BJGG_CcCAAEP54p — Chris Hadfield took one of the most beautiful photos of my homecountry.

I don’t really know where to start from. I’ll try and keep the post as short as possible but I will start from the beginning.

I was first introduced to Derren Brown 7 years ago, about this time, by my incredibly intelligent and knowledgeable ex boyfriend. On one of our first dates, we watched one of his live shows on Youtube and since then I have watched all of his TV and live shows, read his books and was lucky enough to go and watch live 3 of his shows!!! I’ve read a lot of his interviews and I do know a lot about him because I admire him.

So guys, if you want to impress a girl, Derren Brown is definitely a good way!!! It definitely got me!

I know that all of it is trickery. The main man admits that himself. But he puts on an amazing show, he is super intelligent, knowledgeable (not many will refer to Epictetus, many people don’t even know who he is!!), quirky, always smartly dressed (it makes a difference) and has an impeccable and sometimes disturbing sense of humour (very similar to mine), to sum up my dream man (a girl can dream!)!

“Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.”(Epictetus)

So, I can’t reveal much about his new show Miracle, because I wouldn’t like to spoil anything for anyone who hasn’t watched it yet but it was AMAZING. Even some who were sceptical about it, were left wondering how on earth he does it!

Derren often uses hypnosis and sometimes hypnotherapy techniques at his shows and I have to admit that it definitely had an effect on me last night.

It made me realise that I am ready now. I am ready right now, I don’t need to wait for anything anymore! I am ready for anything that comes along! I don’t want to wake up one day when I am 60 years old and think ‘What have I done with my life? I spent most of my life working for what? I got a lot of money to do what with it?’

I did a lot of thinking the last couple of months, I did my grieving, I realised and accepted my mistakes and the fact that I messed up A LOT and I’ve been terrible to some people (especially my last two relationships), because I lost myself but I am good now! I am finally myself after a long long time and what a better time to come to this realisation! At my favourite man’s show!

I decided to have a month of celebrations for my 30th birthday starting next weekend!

So thank you Derren Brown!

Love you all! x

What a week!

Last week has been amazing! I haven’t felt THAT happy for months. I can’t share everything that happened but these are some of the highlights!

I will start with something I’ve been meaning to share for a while… after a selection evening and interviewing, I have now been offered a place on intense training to become a Samaritans listening volunteer and I can’t even describe how happy I am!

I always wanted to volunteer and I could have tried anything, but there is something about the Samaritans and the work they do that always captivated me… being there for someone who needs you at that very moment, just listen to what they have to say, take some of the weight off their shoulders… I hope the training goes well and be able to help others.

In other news, on Saturday I got to perform in front of about 400 people as part of One Sound, which was a collaborative performance with choirs across Southampton, Fareham and Bournemouth ran by the awesome Dan and Jack and it was absolutely amazing! I feel so happy and proud to have been part of this. I’d never imagined last December when I watched LoveSoul choir perform for the first time that in a couple of months I’d get to sing with them!

An evening of singing with a professional choir and some of my favourite people, what a way to spend a Saturday night! I love my choir family! 🙂

Most of you have already seen many videos and photos from the evening but here is one of the last songs we all got to perform together (thank you to the lovely lady who recorded it and posted it on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrMl1sFSgtA).

I’d also like to share a short essay my 11 year old nephew written about my aunt, his grandma last week. I’ve done a quick translation as well for non-Greek speakers…

It’s touching and amazing and beautiful how an 11 year old, smart and brilliant child summarised his grandma with ‘she always put everyone else above herself, even at the end’. It’s extraordinary that her selflessness even until the end reached her 11 year old grandson’s soul and was felt by everyone…. I truly believe she lives in us. I hope when I die I’d have touched even 1% of the souls she touched with her love, kindness and selflessness…

One of the reasons I’ve started this blog is to share what I learned and it’s comforting to know that whenever is my time to go, I’ll leave something behind for others…

A while ago I posted about what was the last message you sent (post). Well, after reading my nephew’s essay, I just want to say to everyone who reads this, whatever my last message to you was, that I hope you are well and happy and enjoy life. And do what you love!

After a long long time, probably years, I am back to being myself, a dreamer, living on my own pretty planet and I love it, even if it gets me into trouble sometimes! I don’t really know what life has in store for me and I don’t make any long term plans but I know what I want now..

What I want is to experience this feeling, not sure if there is a name to it, a mixture of excitement, happiness and a little nervousness… electrical, almost magical… as often as possible…

And it can be anything!

That feeling when you walk into the door of a place you’ve never been before…when you walk onto the stage about to sing in front of 400 people…and you enjoy every second, when you try something new for the first time… when a song you love comes up on the radio/shop/anywhere and you just wanna sing along and dance..when you help a friend or a stranger and you can see the gratitude in their eyes…when you are about to kiss someone special and you softly touch their cheek (I’m a hopeless romantic, will need a whole new post for that!)… when you board a plane waiting to fly into the sky… when you arrive and can’t wait to get out and explore…when you wander in a city with no worries in the world, exploring its beauties and discovering secret gems… when you buy something pretty and unique and you are about to open that box…when you finally nail that song you’ve been learning on the guitar or finish a drawing and can’t wait to share it with your friends, when something nice you’d never expected happens-I do love surprises and life is full of them…(these are just some of the things that make my heart go crazy, you know what makes yours 🙂 )

…that feeling your heart beats so fast you can feel it or even hear it…

that feeling when you don’t think of anything else but that moment you experience, when the lights around you switch off, the surroundings fade and you can only see and think of what is there in front of you at that very moment and nothing else, that moment you feel truly alive…

I want to feel this every day if possible… the best feeling in the world!

I’ll close the post with what an old friend used to tell me “You are the boss of you. You can do whatever you want” and it’s true, life’s too short, do what makes you happy and don’t forget to smile!

Love you all! x

PS. Thank you to Rob, Helena and Lesley for the photos! xx

My little poem for World Poetry Day

They say we only live once,

and that should be enough.

Be happy, life goes on.

Keep moving on.

It’s OK to struggle every now and then.

‘Cause we are only humans and we try our best.

Love with all your heart and live life to the full

You never know when it’s your time to go too.

Always remember to trust and

love yourself.

Do what makes you happy

and forget the rest.

Eleni

My choir family…

I am not a singer. I have an OK, average voice.

I love singing, with my family and friends. I sing at work, in the bathroom. I can’t imagine my life without music. But I hadn’t sang in a choir since high school!

A couple of years ago I joined our workplace choir, after a lovely colleague and friend, Lilian, went to a taster session and came back excited, she couldn’t stop talking about it!

Since then, I spend an hour a week of fun and laughter, forgetting about all work and personal worries and just sing and have fun. None of us is a professional singer but we spend an hour of week together, having a blast. And I absolutely love it, probably the best time of the (work) week!

So, a year ago I decided to join a community choir. I knew nothing about it. I didn’t know what to expect. I was worried that most of the members take singing very seriously and I’d probably not fit in.

But I decided to go to a taster session and it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

I truly believe singing in a choir is therapeutic!

I spend two hours a week with the loveliest bunch of people, singing and having a laugh. I made amazing friends (that’s how Shebz and I became best friends!) who care and support each other. I absolutely adore my choir family!

If you are thinking of taking up a new hobby, join a choir, you won’t regret it!

Do this simple exercise…

I recently had an amazing experience I can’t fully share for various reasons.

But I’ll ask you to think… if you could choose three things, any three things, group of people, concepts, objects, activities, anything that you can’t live without…what would these three things be?

Now… try and put them in order from the least to most important…

And now imagine if you lost the thirst most important?

The second most important??

The most important???

How would you feel??

That’s how hundreds of thousands of people who have lost some or everything in life feel right now. It makes you think doesn’t it?

These are my three:

3. Friends. I absolutely adore my friends. They are amazing human beings who I can’t live without. They’ve been there for me at my best and worst and I’ve been at their best and worst. I love you all. I feel lucky to have you in my life.

2. Family. What more can I say. I love my family to death. I’ve been blessed to have an incredible family, close and extended and I’d be devastated if anything was to happen to them.

1. Love. Love of my family, my friends. Love for what I do every day. Love for people. Love for life. Just love.

I feel incredibly lucky and blessed to have all three.

This simple exercise reminded me not to be judgemental. You never know what others are going through.

It reminded me not to take anything for granted and appreciate life more….

I hope it has done the same for you.

Love you all x