Matthews Holly - The Happy Me Project

For Brooke and Texas, my incredible daughters who inspire me and impress me every single day. I love you girls, youre awesome in ways you cant even comprehend!

Dedicated to Ross, I miss you pal.

Contents

My mum, Clare, my dad, Brian, and my incredible sister, Beki. I wouldnt be anywhere without you guys. I love you completely.

My extended and totally amazing family The Wilkinsons, Osbournes, Blairs and Goughs youre the best. Special shout-out to Dionne, Rob, Matty, Ashley and Xanthe for having the girls while I wrote this book, and my Aunty Denise for all her support and love.

Thanks to Junie Poonie, Mantra Jewellery and my incredible photographer friend Kayleigh Pope (for always taking the best photographs of me and joining me on random escapades).

To my wonderful friends for putting up with me never texting back and ghosting all WhatsApp groups.

Thank you to the team at Awesomesauce Marketing for setting me on the right track and helping me make sense of my chaos. To Jen at Fuzzy Flamingo for helping me put my initial proposal together, which helped me get this book out in the world. BBC CWR for letting me chat to the listeners every week and to Channel Mum for their incredible support in the most difficult times. To Sapna my VA, a total superhero who has made my life easier, my wonderful clients and The Happy Me Project community, I appreciate you all so much.

A huge thank you to my wonderful editor Holly for her excellent name and making this the most lovely and supportive process, while always being honest with me. To Bloomsbury and all of the team who made this book a reality what a bunch of total legends.

And finally to Brooke and Texas for being the most resilient, awesome girls in the whole world and for (sometimes) allowing me the peace and quiet to actually write this book.

At 12 years old I was a closet meditator, finding my own way to deal with my issues. I found some classical music on a cassette at home in a drawer and began listening to it regularly, secretly turning it on, then closing my eyes and calmly breathing in and out. I didnt know what I was doing, it was guesswork at this point, but these early attempts at meditation seemed to help.

It was 1998 and I was kitted out in Adidas tracksuit bottoms and Nike Air Max trainers. I had scrunchies in my high ponytail, which was scraped back off my head and sticky with hairspray. I had not long been cast in an award-winning kids TV show called Byker Grove a cult programme that at its height was averaging 5 million viewers per episode. I was struggling to find the balance between suddenly spending half my time filming and the rest of my time going to a normal school in working-class Newcastle upon Tyne.

Self-help, mental health and meditating were definitely not things my friends were talking about and, without access to the internet, I was very much making it up as I went along. Thankfully for me, the world has moved on since then and I am now firmly out of the meditating closet and fully immersed in finding tangible ways to help myself and others to feel good. In fact, Ive made it my profession, as a life coach, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) practitioner and hypnotherapist.

The self-help space can sometimes feel a little woo woo and preachy, with some of my more spiritual counterparts whooping, hollering and talking about God. There isnt, of course, anything wrong with this if it feels good to you, but if youre anything like me then the flowery and over-the-top type of personal development just doesnt really appeal. Thats where this book comes in.

In it, I share my own journey, what I have learned along the way, and some tips, tricks, tools and ponderings so that you can navigate yourself through your own hectic and challenging lives and still enjoy yourself along the way. Some of these challenges will be huge life events, such as deaths and illness, and others will be the mundane struggles we all face, such as the never-ending conveyor belt of dishes and washing that are part of everyday living. Or perhaps you are someone who compares yourself to strangers on social media and suffers from self-esteem issues as a consequence. All of this can impact how happy we feel. Whatever youre facing, this book can help.

I will be straight talking and sometimes brutally real with you and I invite you to embrace this approach because sometimes we need tough love. Just know that its all done with the best of intentions and a genuine desire to help you create a life that feels more happy and less crappy. Ive written this book to help you gain some insight and guide you through some of the challenges that you might face.

As many of us have the attention span of gnats due to our excessive, and often unhealthy, addiction to social media and smartphones (Im totally guilty of this, too, dont worry), I have structured this book to be as user-friendly as possible. It consists of 60 short, sharp chapters with a list of actionable steps you can take at the end of each. You are not expected to read in a linear fashion from cover to cover. This is your book and it should be read in a way that feels right to you. Pick it up, put it down, flick through it, get the highlighter pens out and mark your favourite bits, read it on the toilet, take a ton of photos and share them on your Instagram page (make sure you tag me @iamhollymatthews, so I can thank you and watch your progress). Do whatever feels right.

If youd like to delve a bit deeper into any of the points or studies Ive mentioned in this book, then Ive popped all the references on my website: www.iamhollymatthews.com/references/. I wanted to veer away from making this a heavy academic text, so we could keep things as simple as possible (but theyre all there for you if you want to know more).

Why me?

I dont profess to be the oracle of anything. Im not some self-development guru who takes myself seriously and expects everyone else to. Im going to tell you from the very outset that I am flawed AF.

Some days I cry, some days I doubt myself. Some days Im consumed by the guilt of being a mum of two daughters and worry that Im messing them up in a way that they will possibly be discussing with a therapist in the future.

I am far from perfect. I tell you this because none of us are perfect and I want us to be on the same level here, human to human.

What I do bring to the table, however, is 20-plus years of trying to make sense of who I am and the benefit of having delved into a lot of the self-development stuff thats out there in the world. As mentioned already, Im also a professional life coach, NLP practitioner (sounds fancy, right?) and hypnotherapist, and someone who has always been obsessed with how our minds work.

Growing up wanting to be an actress meant I was extremely driven and often felt very different to my friends and peers. I know that sounds egocentric, but I just often felt like I was playing a game, pretending to understand their world and acting out the part accordingly (many years later I was diagnosed with ADHD, and so perhaps this had an influence on some of these feelings).

I became a professional actress very young and believe me when I say that being on TV while going to a normal school made me a target. I spent half of my time filming and half of my time at school and would often sneak home after filming (telling the driver who was meant to drop me off at the school gates that I had forgotten my PE kit or homework), so that I didnt have to face being whispered about or picked on for being the girl off the telly.