It is February 29th, leap year day.

Regardless of their physical age, some people just don’t “grow up”. Just how old are you emotionally, mentally and spiritually?

The phrase “grow up” is a bit of a misnomer - it implies that there is something wrong with not being group up - and also that being grown up is our ultimate destinaiton.

It is about GROWING, not being grown up.

Let today be the start of a new you. Time to start growing!

A few days ago, I came across the above couple in Regents Park. They were literally taking their dog, Dino, for a ride around the park.

Dino the huskey dog is now 15, which apparently makes him over 90 in human years! Suffering from arthritic knees, he now gets treated like a king every day.

Talk about unconditional love! This reminds me of a great book by Don Miguel Ruiz called “The Mastery of Love” - and he talks about how your pet such as a dog never holds any grduges against you, is always excited to see you and totally loves you unconditionally.

Now what would it be like to love everyone unconditionally? Would you ever be mean to your loved ones, if they were your pet?!

And who is going to cart you around the park, when YOU are 90?!

It is a beautiful Sunday morning here in London - crisp but gloriously sunny. It feels really quiet and peaceful outside and I can even hear the birds from my garden.

A while ago I wrote about how Sundays mornings were the best time of the week for me.

As I resume my “normal” lilfe after the loss of my father, I am filled with gratitude for this morning. Today feels like I am getting back my energy and ready to move forward with my own life and to pursue my dreams once again.

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Last Saturday I was lucky enough to hear live a lecture by Professor Muhammad Yunus at the wonderful St James Church in Piccadilly London. Professor Yunus was honoured and recognised for this life changing work amongst the poor of Bangladesh with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

I was especially lucky to have had front row seats – and you can see more pictures on my Facebook profile.

It was quite an inspirational day - here was an amazing man with the lofty ambition of eliminating poverty from the world and to one day make it simply non existent - so that we would need “Poverty Museums” to show future generations what life used to be like for the majority of people on earth. They will wonder why poverty existed so long in humankind – and how there could have been so much inequality in the world.

That really is a question that bugs me too so often – why is there so much poverty and inequality in the world. And more importantly what we can do about it?

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This is the final article in my series for Valentines Day.

I have already discussed just what is love and also shared my tips for finding the “special one” and also how to make an existing relationship even better - especially check out the last one about how to make your relationship even better with some key lessons from lions

Which leaves the final scenario of how to live and enjoy your life as a single person. Somehow I feel that a lot of single people may feel lacking in something when they are single.

I have known friends to jump from one relationship to another, whereas others have remained single for years. Quite often I have assured friends and coaching clients that it is indeed okay to be single!

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It is Valentine’s Day today, in case you had not noticed.

What with all this media hype and commercial overkill, you must have been living in a cocoon for a few days not to have noticed that it is the time of the year where a lot of normally sane people go out and spend a fortune on flowers etc for their loved ones.

I am all for celebrating love- and everyday too and not just on 14th February. It is just the commercialisation of the day that doesn’t sit well with me. It also plays on people’s insecurities around being single and pressurises couples to go out and do something.

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Continuing my theme for Valentine week, I am amazed at the pressure put on people to go out and do something for Valentine’s Day.

There are currently so many single people out there and I know many who feel this pressure to be with someone.

Are you single? Do you want to find the “special one”?

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It is Valentine week, and as usual in the Western world we are bombarded with all sorts of commercial pressure to go out and spend a fortune to show the true merit of our love for someone.

I am guessing that this is now also the case in the rest of the world, as the developing world clamours to catch up with the “enlightened” ways of the West

I find it amusing to see so many people rushing around to prove their true love for that “special” person in their life.

To me, love has been commercialised to the extent that we have forgotten just what love means anymore.

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Over the last few days I have finally got back into the stride of things and getting on with my life once again after the sudden passing away of my father.

It has been a slow but comfortable process and what I have learnt is that I could simply not have hastened this in any way. Try as I could I just could not summon up the energy I needed.

In the last two months I have experienced quite a cocktail of emotions, ranging from utter desperation, sadness, remorse and then gratitude, joy, love as memories of my father and the knowing that he was no longer around kept cropping up.

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It has been two very surreal and eventful months.

After the sudden and untimely death of my father, where do I even begin to descibe the last few weeks?!

Suffice to say that it has been like being in a dark fog for weeks on end, interspersed with the occassional bit of light heartedness and fun.

But sooner or later, I know that I have to move on with my life, not withstanding the gnawing pain and the sense of great loss.

What has been amazing and so heartwarming has been the support from family, friends, and strangers. I will write another post another time about the messages of hope, kindness, love and sympathy that I have received.