Make It Happen: Live your best life

Realise you have the power to let go of all those excuses, and seize back control of your life. Write down some of your favourite or most well-worn excuses on separate pieces of paper and then write on each why you don’t need it anymore. For instance, if one of them is that you don’t want to go to a gym because you think you’re too fat and you’ll l

To me, ‘no’ might just mean I haven’t asked the right question, or asked it at the right time, or in the right way.

Recognise that you’re basically a good person, and while you might make some mistakes, make sure you learn from them and choose to change your behaviour as a result. Make yourself even better.

So how do you build self-belief? For those who’ve been criticising themselves for a long time, it takes a bit of work to start turning that around. But it’s worth the effort. Have you ever noticed how some people who are not particularly talented or smart have so much confidence they just power through life, apparently without experiencing a moment

If someone pretends to be perfect, how on earth can you ever relate to them?

But Oprah is right on message all the time. ‘There are no mistakes,’ she told Harvard graduates in an address in 2013. ‘There really aren’t any . . . There’s no such thing as failing really because it’s just life trying to move you in another direction. You get just as much from your losses as you do from your victories.’

If you want to change your life because you hate yourself, your habits, your body, your weight, your job, your lack of motivation, anything, it’s going to be an uphill battle, I can tell you that now. It’s always far harder to battle negativities than to forge positively forward. So if you reframe your ambitions in terms of wanting something better

‘Sorry, I didn’t think ahead or plan that properly’, or ‘I didn’t handle that well’ or ‘You know, I could have done that a lot better, let’s go and fix it now’, then that’s a really important anchor. So when people mightn’t like you or you get publicly criticised, you can go, ‘No, no. I know I’m a good person,’ and it doesn’t hurt, or dent your con

What are you good at, and what would you like to be better at? What do you enjoy doing? The best and most successful journeys start from a place of love. Accept that you’ll never be perfect, but just strive to be the best version of yourself.