Making notes with Kikki.K

Last week I got up super early with my lovely interior design buddy Jo Brown (who often helps out with my interior blog posts) and headed up to town for a power breakfast which was part of the Red Smart Women’s Week. Our breakfast hosts were Kristina Karlsson and her husband Paul founders of the amazing Kikki.K stationery brand, which I’ve been a fan of ever since I crossed the threshold of their first store in London. I mean what’s not to love about all that Swedish aesthetically pleasing design and motivational quotes which were totally made for Instagram!

Whilst listening to Kristina talk, what I was even more intrigued about was how empowering and motivational she is in terms of sharing what she’s learnt on her journey to success. She also has oodles of advice on setting goals, starting the day off right and generally jamming 30 hours into a 24 hour day. Of course, it’s not as easy as just getting up an hour earlier in the mornings (which let’s face it is a big challenge in itself in everyone’s busy lives), but when you pop a few of her snippets of advice together, they make a lot of sense.

For Kristina 5 am starts are the beginning of what she calls her ‘holy hour’. A sluice of coconut oil around the mouth and two glasses of water with fresh lemon mark the start of her day, followed by some unconscious writing on her morning pages (obviously in a gorgeous 3am journal). She also makes time for a little meditation, reading and listening to podcasts (the ultimate health podcast is one of her current faves). From there its on to exercise from 6-7am to set her up for the rest of the day.

Kristina’s next piece of advice is to look at your habits. Ask yourself what you can remove from your daily habits that aren’t working well, along with figuring out what habit you can add to change your life. For me I think it’s all about getting off the virtual stuff, getting outdoors and shoe-horning some real-life back into my daily routine, who else is with me on that?

Another gem is to surround yourself with like-minded/inspiring people, and if you find that there are some friends who have the capacity to bring you down all the time, then perhaps it’s time to respectfully withdraw from that kind of relationship and find people who bring positive vibes to your daily life.

With Kirsten and Lori – some of my ‘positive vibes’ pals

Setting goals is one of Kristina’s must-do steps for success. But it’s not about setting a goal and then just leaving it on the back burner to slowly forget about, make sure you look at those goals every day to remind yourself where you are heading. During our breakfast she had us do a ‘Dream Big’ exercise where for a few minutes we just wrote down our dreams imagining you had no restrictions like time or money or location. Funnily enough, in line with my getting-into-the-great-outdoors-more habit change, my dreams were all about living on the beach in the Hamptons and playing with my camera every day… what would yours be if you had no limits?

Of course, along with all this high faluting dream chasing come the practicalities of everyday life, family, work, money, health and all of that. But simply having spent an hour to stop and take a small measure of where I’m at, I really found it a useful exercise and an inspiring breakfast. You don’t have to have a desk full of Kikki.k stationery to get started (although if you’re like me and you can’t resist it then go knock yourself out), just grab a pencil and paper and give yourself a quiet moment to dare to begin.

I’ve added this post to the fab Not Dressed as Lamb #SaturdayShareLinkup where you can find loads of other weekend blog reads in one place… pop over for a peek.