Roz.K

Valentines Day. It’s a day that you either love or hate. Whether in a relationship or not, it can be so stressful because of such high expectations that one feels need to be met each year.

Today felt like a normal day to me, I woke up, did some reading, research and then went off to work (yes on a Saturday!)

It didn’t even feel like Valentines day to me walking the streets of central London! When I got into work the presenter had brought in heart shaped candy which served as a reminder to me of what day it is, as well as the theme of her show!

I am single and feel that this day is totally overrated. But do I feel like this only because I am currently single, or is this just my truth? A slight piece of me cringes when I see a post or reference made to V-Day, but at the same time in my eyes I would want V-Day to feel like at least once a month in my world. If I were in a relationship on this day I’d prefer to spend time with my other half, have a lovely home cooked meal made with love and to  just relax and watch a movie, something simple.

How do you top going to The Shard, The Ivy or flights all around the world?! I feel that Valentines day is a marketing ploy that a lot of us feel that we have to buy in to. Let’s go back to basics and remember what being together is all about.

Try not to allow this one day to make you feel stressed or even question your worth or relationship. Allow Valentines day to be everyday and when the actual V-Day comes around, you won’t even notice!

Signed with Love,

Roz

It is so easy to forget how far we have come. We look back to the past of hurts and bad choices but we do not look forward enough to our goals and visions and what we work so hard for.

This week has been a week where I have had to do a lot of thinking and to pick myself up as I was being dragged backwards. This was tough for me as I am generally a happy person who appreciates life and do not take anything for granted.

I thought it would be good for me to remind myself and for others what to be thankful for and to remember how far we have come in life.

As I write down my acheivements I suggest you do it too when your feeling a little down in the dumps.

• my degree
• my work ethic
• my culinary and baking skills are off the chain!
• Weightloss as I have lost 4 stone in the past 3 years and kept it off and still going strong *fist pumps*
• my job and always being able to get work
• for 6 years at a major corporation and still enjoying every minute of it
• for traveling to America and having the most amazing life changing experience
• for being well travelled and seeing so many different countries with more to come!
• For being good with my finances
• For having a goal and setting my mind to it and always achieving even if it does take a little longer than expected.

Wow! I feel better already when I look at how far I have come and knowing that there are still places I have to go literally and figuratuvelly speaking.

Love yourself and give yourself a pat on the back, don’t beat yourself up, just move on and do what makes you happy.

So we are still in the season of Lent and have done 19 days successfully!

As this is the time for self examination and reflection rather then focus on what Jesus did, I wanted to take a moment to think about me and my life.

Here are some questions that I am going to answer and you can too:

What is important to you?

God is important to me as well as my family, my health and well being. Radio is important to me as allows me to be creative and make a product that others can enjoy listening to. Helping others is also important to me and seeing people happy and content really gives my life purpose.

Who is important to you?

My mother as she is a strong woman who despite her circumstances gave myself and my siblings a great quality of life, she taught us about, love honor and respect and how to be there for people, even if they were never present in our lives. She is amazing and is like my Mother Theresa and each day I pray God’s Blessings over her for all that she has done for my family and others even when they have thrown it back in her face. She is a selfless woman that does not believe in tit for tat and I pray I can be like her and more.

My family, friends and the real genuine people I am Blessed to have in my life. For me it is the little things that make me so appreciative of the people I have around me.

What could you do better?

I could be more pro-active when getting things done, apply myself more and not think of others being better then me or above me regardless of their age, experience, gender race or background. What my new motto should be without sounding like I am trying to copy Nike is to literally ‘just do it!’

More confidence in myself and my abilities and not allow that to hold me back as regardless of how we look we all have insecurities (I’d like to think Beyonce’ has some too right?!)

How could you be better?

I could be better by learning to be fearless and embrace the fear but do it anyway so I can look back and say at least I tried.

I could allow all the years of giving up certain things for Lent to be a everyday lifestyle and not something that I will struggle to do once a year. I can do better by not worrying about what others or society thinks about me and to be me and do me!

Heres to another 21 days left where I think we should make an effort to make a resolution for good during this Lent and apply it to our every day lives, whether it is reading your Bible more, not going on social media as much, gossiping, or self wallowing and feeling sorry for yourself when really and truly you are blessed to even be here and able to read this.

I am not perfect and neither are you, but together we can make a difference in our own lives and others by making small changes each day and before we know it it will be like second nature.

Lent– in the Christian Church is the period preceding Easter, which is devoted to fasting, abstinence, and penitence in commemoration of Christ’s fasting in the wilderness for forty days and forty nights (6 weeks). It runs from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday.

Lent is a time when many Christians prepare for Easter by observing a period of fasting, repentance, moderation and spiritual discipline. The purpose is to set aside time for reflection on Jesus Christ – his suffering and his sacrifice, his life, death, burial and resurrection.

So….. for the past 6 years or so now I have been observing Lent. I remember the first time I observed Lent I gave up social Media which was only Facebook for me back then. I decided to do this as I felt I had spent too much time on Facebook and allowed social Media to consume a lot of my time. Another year I did Chocolate. We all like a bit of chocolate and lets say I liked a whole 150g bar! Due to this I decided to abstain from that for the 40 days.

Thereafter I mainly did Chocolate but added a twist to it where I didn’t have Chocolate, Crisps, Biscuits, Cake and basically anything nice, sweet and delicious, all I was allowed to have was either jelly or yoghurt, this was because I had developed what one would call an addiction to all these things, so for me I felt that removing it for 40 days would help me kick the habit!

So fast forward on to 2014 and I wondered what I would do for Lent this year, even whilst in America (which I still very much need to touch on) I was like I still have this sweet tooth but I can’t do the same thing again?! I even wanted to do social media again but for me at this stage in life it is not really much of a sacrifice as I do not depend, rely or go onto social websites as much as I use to, and when I do it is for work related purposes.

So back to Lent 2014. I really wanted to challenge myself and do something I have not done before this year and after a long chat with my sister and sister in-love we decided that we shall indeed go Vegan! Yes I said it VEGAN! For all that know me I absolutely love a challenge no matter how hard it is or how hard it may seem in the long run, so as of Wednesday 5th March I am Vegan for the next 40 days!

Due to the fact that I have gone Vegan I of course still have to cut out the sweet stuff which is very much what I needed to do anyway!

I intend on really trying my hardest to maintain some sort of diary of this whether daily or weekly but it would definitely be interesting for me to look back and reflect on this and I will explain why in the next blog.

Here’s to going Vegan! Wish me luck and I’ll write you soon!

RK. xXx

If you were suddenly independently wealthy, how would you spend your time? What positive change would you bring to the world?

I have always said that I would not want to become rich or win the lottery so this for me would probably bring me instant stress as opposed to me being ecstatic!

To answer the question, first of all I would want to go away on a nice relaxing break to a hot destination to get away from things and clear my head in order to figure out what I would actually want to do with all this new found money.

If God were to Bless me with wealth I would definitely use to it better those in need and invest the money properly rather then spend it on materialistic things.

When I say I do not want to win the lottery a lot of people think I am straight up weird or crazy for saying this but I would honestly rather be comfortable with my career job and enough money to pay my mortgage, bills and give me food to eat.

I would have course make sure I am comfortable so I can pay off my house or buy a new one that I can leave for the kids, nothing extravagent like a mansion, a 3 bedroom would do me just fine!

I have always been a fan of traveling and adventure and have visited a fair amount of countries in my years and would love to explore more, this money would enable me to do so.

The bonus in me instantly becoming wealthy I guess would be for me to be in a place where I could then help others.

There is so many people in the world that need help and for me it would have to begin at home and that would be in Ghana. I would want to help build more schools, provide the teachers with more training, build more orphanages and invest the rest of the money where I can.

This is the honest truth as boring or modest as it may sound to some!