Hello and welcome to Amazing, Brilliant, Gorgeous, Wonderful. I'm Cheryl. This is your five-minute pause for overthinking, overdoing, and pretending you're fine when you're quietly going knackered. Okay. So I've called today's episode Just Make the Lemonade. Um, and it's about how we've managed to overcomplicate things really. Um that were never meant to be hard. And what happens when we gently strip things back? No fixing, no forcing, just a calmer way of looking at what's already been weighing you down. So breathe. Right, let's get into this. You know, those moments when you realize life be has become more complicated than it ever needed to be. Like standing in the supermarket. Oh especially when I think of like waitros or Marks and Spencer's and staring at ten different kinds of lemonade and wondering why you suddenly need a degree in citrus management just to quench your thirst. You know, when I was little, I mean really, really little, lemonade was, well, lemonade. Three ingredients sugar, water, and lemons. That was it. No sparkling rose hip infused version with Himalayan salt or essence of elderflower. It was just lemonade. We'd squeeze the lemons, add sugar, mix it with water, and off we go out onto the street to sell it. It was simple. Yes, I know I was teaching you how to suck eggs there, but sometimes you just need to go back to basics. It worked, yeah? And it made us happy. We'd save our pennies for a bike, or we'd donate it to charity or to get some sweets. We didn't overthink it. We didn't need branding or hashtags or a vision board for hydration. We just made lemonade. But somewhere along the way, I don't even know when, we turned everything from lemonade to life into a project plan. Yes. Now, don't get me wrong, I love progress. Progress is progress. You know me. But these days everything's got bubbles, colourings, or an identity crisis. Even Lemonade. Lemonade has a marketing team. And it got me thinking, when did we start believing that more automatically meant better? You know, the way I see it, we've carbonated our lives. We've added preservatives, we've over flavored our routines, and then we wonder why we're exhausted, we're confused, we have identity crises. You know what it feels like, you know what it feels like. Standing in the supermarket aisle, whether you're waiting for the checkout person or the automated tills, and you're in the aisle and you're paralyzed, paralyzed by all the options. Ten bottles of lemonade I counted in Marks and Spencer's yesterday, all promising to refresh, revive, and reinvent you. And you just want to scream, I just want, I just want a drink. That's what modern life does to us. It turns simple things like outrageous unconscious joy, love, love emotion, purpose into a menu, and half the time we don't even know what we're ordering anymore. In my work as a clinical hypnotherapist and a nutty coach, I've learned this. People don't actually need to change everything. They don't. Most people think they do. They just they just need to remember what's already working, and oftentimes when we have a problem, it's like we can't see what's working. It's not about adding more, it's just about clearing the fizz. Often when clients come to me, I don't hand them a new recipe for their life. I simply help them notice the processes that they are already using very well. They are very good, they've already got expert knowledge of these processes, and it's about me identifying with their help the useful ones and helping them to do those things on purpose. Yes, that's right. That's as it's as simple as that. Well, actually, it's not as simple as that, but you know what I mean. It's like saying you already know how to make lemonade, you've just forgotten it's supposed to be simple. Okay, yeah, all right. Maybe I'm simplifying it a little bit, but you get the idea. We've all been there, haven't we? Caught up in the myth that complicated equals clever. Simplicity, in my opinion, is so underrated, whether it's in our minds, our relationships, in our to-do lists, we add too much sugar, too many flavors, and then wonder why it all feels sticky and we feel sick. Sometimes you just need to strip it back all the way back to the essentials lemon, sugar, water. Honesty, kindness, consistency. So here's my invitation to you today. What's your version of lemonade? What's the thing you've been overcomplicating lately that actually just needs to be brought back to basics? And here's a nostalgic twist. I grew up in an era of R White Lemonade. Remember the advert? I'm a secret lemonade drinker. Okay, don't pretend you just didn't hear me saying in your head. Oh my goodness! As a child, I love that you could return the glass bottle to the shop and get 10p back. It felt like magic. You recycled something and you were rewarded. Funny, isn't it, how we've forgotten that lesson two. We knew how to recycle, we just stopped doing it. So maybe it's time we started recycling our own simplicity, our joy, our outrageous, unconscious joy, our basic common sense. You know, the world doesn't need you to be fizzy, it doesn't. It just needs you to remember how to make lemonade. So next time life starts feeling like a carbonated chaos of choices, take a breath, go back to basics, make it simple, make it yours. And if you're wondering where to start, just make the lemonade. Now, if something in today's episode landed with you even quietly, that matters, but you don't need to do anything dramatic with it, just notice it. Because clarity doesn't arrive with fireworks. It usually turns up when you stop overcomplicating things that were never broken. And remember, every step you take, no matter how small, is a step towards a brighter, more balanced future. Trust in your journey and remember, progress is progress no matter the pace. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.