Pleasing everyone but pleasing no-one. A Happy Hour Conversation with Louise Storey

This week I'm talking Louise Storey about the way she's managing to have that rare balance of taking care of her family as well as having a fulfilling life creating and doing things out in the world. Louise is a co-founder of the Clear mind Academy which helps carers within education, social and healthcare organisations.

Louise describes herself as a recovered stressaholic, she had a successful career in IT and then gave it up focus on her family and to care for her son Jack, who  has learning disabilities. Since discovering the three principles, Louise has a life of happiness, creativity and ease.

Louise made so many brilliant points, many of which I'm sure you'll relate to. These were my faves:

• Working towards achieving happiness in the future
  Louise talks about something that seems so common these days: how she was postponing her happiness in the present moment so she could work towards achieving happiness and success in the future. She's since realised that the only place happiness can exist is right here and now.

• Feelings are a symptom not a diagnosis
  When we are you feeling stressed, sad or angry - that's not a diagnosis that we're a stressed, sad or angry person... our feelings are simply a symptom of your thought in that moment. I LOVED that point so much that I posted about it on our Facebook page, where it seemed to resonate with many of you.

• Pleasing everyone but not pleasing anyone
  Louise describes how her life used to entail running around, trying her best to please everyone in her life, to meet their expectations (and hers) of what a good parent, daughter, wife, friend and colleague should be like - but feeling she was failing, and damaging her own health in the process. Since discovering the three principles, Louise has settled down into feeling happy in her own skin and knowing that just being fully present with the people in her life is creating more pleasing relationships than she's ever experienced.