Rambling Yogi

Category: Authenticity

  • Easing into life

    Easing into life

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    The year just past really challenged me to start taking some personal responsibility for the state of my life. I realised just how much of a big difference there is between knowing something and actually putting it into practice. Putting things into practice requires self-awareness, a willingness to let go of current ways, a healthy dose of courage to take action and determination to keep trying. It’s not a easy thing to do and it often isn’t until things fall apart that we’re forced to stop and look at how we’re living.

    These are my big lessons for the year:

    Respect

    In a class recently I was reading out a poem I’ve read many times before but this time one passage resonated with me more than ever.

    As I began to love myself I understood how much it can offend somebody as I try to force my desires on this person, even though I knew the time was not right and the person was not ready for it, and even though this person was me. Today I call it “RESPECT”.

    My first though was my god Clare what have you been doing to yourself and to one of the most important people in your life. I’d been walking around for the last few months with zero respect for where I was at in my own journey and where my partner was at in his. I had all these ideas about what our relationship should be like and who we should be within our relationship. My expectations put a huge amount of pressure on both of us and caused a lot of damage.

    I always had good intentions but I’ve come to realise that even the best of intentions are no excuse for not respecting who someone is and where they’re at. You can’t simply ask someone to be ready and expect them to step up accordingly. In fact, trying to hand someone one of your lessons is essentially stealing from their experience and saying to them I don’t trust you to figure this out on your own.   True growth and change come naturally when the time is right and the person is ready. Needing people (yourself or others) to be different so that you can then be happy is setting yourself up to suffer.

    Accepting someone else really starts with completely accepting yourself. For me accepting myself means reminding myself every day that I am enough just as I am and there is no set of circumstances that will make me more complete.

     

    Reconnecting

    This year for the first time I was challenged about my use of Instagram. When I was asked why I posted all my yoga photos I began to realise that I didn’t really have a great reason. I was quick to defend my daily habit saying that it makes me happy and a lot of people have told me that they like reading the quotes. To that I got the response so you like the attention. And that struck a definite sore spot with me.

    The likes, the comments, the shares I loved it all. The instant little hits of gratification really had become addictive without me even realising. My life had become so focused on my Instagram. I would spend entire days thinking about what I was going to post for the day and looking for the perfect quote. Whenever I would go somewhere new I was always looking for the perfect photo opportunity.

    At first I went into heavy denial. People like the quotes I share, I enjoy taking all the photos and so what if I like the attention. But there was now a sense of guilt with each post. I was now stopping and asking myself why you are actually doing this.  From there I started to get pretty depressed about it. Something that used to make me feel so happy with now making me feel pretty miserable.

    I felt miserable and struggled with this sense of guilt for months. It just didn’t bring me the happiness it used to and I felt like I’d lost a huge part of who I am. That then started to make me feel awful; that a social media account felt like such a huge part of my identity and it became a pretty negative spiral from there. It wasn’t until I really hit rock bottom that I started to get some perspective.

    I decided it was time to do away with the negative frame of mind and time to think creatively. Which brings me to the opportunity cost (the accountant in me comes out). The things you choose not to do, the stuff you miss out on. Basically I began to ask myself what are the alternatives, what can I now do with my time. What does less time on Instagram give me? It gave me a lot more than I expected but the most precious thing it gave me was more space to tune into life and  be mindful. Mindfulness has always been important to me but I had lost touch with what it meant to actually live it.

    While it was hugely confronting initially and I was quite angry, I now see this as one of the greatest gifts I could have been given. It’s balanced me out and helped me to realise what’s actually important to me.

    Uncertainty

    One of the biggest things that brought me undone this year was a fear of uncertainty and change. After having lost my dad this fear got a lot bigger and more real. Having to confront the fact that life is always in flux and the only certain thing is that things will change…well I just wasn’t ready for that. I invested a huge amount of time and energy trying to control things and focusing on what I thought I needed to be happy and secure. In that pursuit I started to lose perspective on the bigger picture and the smallest things became huge issues.

    Things that I knew would help me felt too hard and out of reach.  I didn’t want to accept that I was the only one who could calm myself down and refocus my perspective. I thought that the answer sat with getting certain things in life. Thinking if I just move in with my partner and get a cat then I’ll be happy….really seriously that is what I thought. I need the house, I need the cat and then everything will clam down and I would be happy. I got so stuck obsessing about these life conditions that I stopped being able to see the good things in my life.

    In the very narrow world I created for myself I began to get super anxious whenever I felt like things were out of my control and my needs were under threat. In fact I began to get super anxious about everything, my mind always went to the worst possible scenario, everything was a threat, the smallest things made me stressed off my head and I felt like I had no control over my reactions.

    As it got worse I started to get really overwhelmed. I wasn’t sure what I should do anymore, I just wanted it to stop. I was desperate for some sort of quick fix so that I could get control of my life again. I investigated every possible reason for why it has gotten so bad. I tired changing the pill, quitting coffee, reading self-help books, doing online courses… you name it I was looking into it. I briefly tired a few yoga classes and meditated a few mornings in a row but when there was no instant fix from these things I dropped them again.

    I was impatient as impatient could be, it had been months of things building up to this point and I wanted to find something that would make me better in a day. I wanted there to be one simple answer. In the end it took things falling apart and losing what I was trying to protect for me to see the root of my anxiety.  As is the case with most emotions there was never just one simple thing, there was a complex web of things that contributed to my anxiety and while I hated the place it took me to I value what it has shown me.

    It showed me how trying to control things in order to create a sense of security was actually driving me insane. From there I was able to loosen my grip on trying to control things and ever since then I’ve relaxed my need for certainty and have been able to enjoy life a lot more. Accepting that life will change and I won’t know how or when has made me a lot more engaged in everyday moments. I now feel more able to simply to appreciate life and all it has to offer without expectation or promise.

    It’s been a big year and the biggest lesson of all has been to compassionately accept that I am imperfect and there will be times that I will fall back into old habits, there will be times that things don’t work out and there will be times where I am not my best self. Letting all of that be okay is hard but amazingly liberating. Accepting that I will stumble and it won’t be perfect helps me to cultivate the courage to show up just as I am and keep trying in the face of uncertainty.

    xxx

  • There will be days like this

    There will be days like this

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    There are days where the pain hits me so hard I could almost choke on it. A song will come on the radio that reminds me of my dad and I’m gone – tears are immediately rolling down my face, I can hardly breathe and I find myself doing that loud childlike crying. In the privacy of my car it’s a good release, it helps me to bit by bit comprehend what happened.

    While my brain knows full well what happened, it’s taking my heart a while to catch up, that was until a couple of weeks ago. It was a good girlfriends wedding and the first wedding I’ve been to since I lost my dad. I really hadn’t even contemplated it being a hard day emotionally for me, I was so excited for my girlfriend.

    It started in the church that sinking feeling, the lump in the back of my throat, the first realisation that my dad will never walk me down the aisle, we’ll never share that final smile that says here we go as the doors open. My mind started going to a thousand places but I have quickly reeled it back in not wanting to take away from her amazing day.

    For the next few hours of the night I managed to drop back into normal mode, enjoying the champagne and hanging out with some of my best friends. But then the father of the bride and the father of the groom both got up to do speeches. There was so much in their speeches that I know my dad would have said. All the things that I was going to miss having him around for began to flood in and my heart started to grasp the reality of not having him here.

    My girlfriends took me outside and I let myself cry a little more but not wanting to be so miserable at such a joyous occasion I forced myself to push my feelings back down and went back to an old coping mechanism for numbing. I began to drink a hell of a lot more. I did such a good job of excessive drinking that everything after 9:30pm is completely gone for me; I was proper blackout drunk.

    The next morning, I woke up on a girlfriend’s couch because I’d been too drunk to get my own way home. Not only was I feeling devastated about my dad but I hated myself for having gotten so drunk.  I hated that there was so much of the night that I would never remember and more so I hated that I’d slipped back into something that I’ve worked so hard to stop.

    There was a time in my friendship group I felt like I was the drunk, the liability, the person you couldn’t trust to just have a few drinks. On the outside I played up to the party girl persona but on the inside I hated myself. It became a self-perpetuating cycle; the more I had these completely out of control nights the more I hated myself, the more I hated myself the more I wanted to get blind drunk so that I could disappear and not face myself. It wasn’t pretty and it took my dad getting sick and hitting rock bottom to really force myself out of the pattern.

    For the next few days I hardly slept. I found myself constantly tossing and turning, anxious and upset. I hated the idea of having to really face any of it, it felt too painful to willingly sit with and so I continued with my regular routine and simply hoped that everything would just settle back down in a couple of days.

    To a certain extent it did settle down a little, I stopped feeling like I was going to burst into tears at my computer but it still sat just below the surface and began to manifest itself in different ways. I found myself less able to cope with life, more easily stressed by work, more emotionally reactive to people and quite scattered in general. Still I persevered through the mess not wanting to acknowledge that perhaps I needed to unpack what the wedding had brought up for me.

    But you can only let things sit below the surface for so long before something gives. I thankfully already had a session booked with my psychologist and when I found myself crying on the way there I knew I was in for a tough session. We talked at length about what had happened that night and how I felt. She asked how my dad would have felt about my wedding day would he have been excited? What might he have said in his speeches? Just thinking about it was heartbreaking not only from my perspective of not having him there but also from his perspective. I hate that he doesn’t get to be there, that he doesn’t get to be part of something that I know he would have loved.

    I was finding it hard to answer her questions honestly because the answers felt so painful then she asked me if my dad was excited about having grandchildren one day. I could hardly speak, the thought of him missing out on that part of my life hurt more than anything else. He loved children and was beyond excited about future grandchildren. He would often talk about the things he planned to do with my future children. In that moment my heart broke for him and his dreams that he will never get to live out in this life.

    As I was finding hard to speak my psychologist suggested that I journal about how I felt. She asked me to fully explore what I expected these major milestones to look like with my dad, to go into detail about the part I envisaged him playing and also come up with ways that I could still include him in the future. She suggested that maybe on my wedding day I might like to keep a seat reserved for my dad, acknowledging this presence in a different way and I have to say I really loved that idea. She told me that it would be hard and would bring up a lot of tough emotions but I needed to give myself the time and space to let that pain come out. I agreed that journaling about it sounded like a good idea but when I got home I just felt so emotionally exhausted that I decided that I really couldn’t deal with anything more right now.

    Then the stomach pain started – really severe stabbing abdominal pain that would almost stop me in my tracks. After a week of relentless pain, I went to my GP who cleared me of anything serious and gave no real other explanation expect that sometimes this happens and if it’s still happening in a week come back. I’m a strong believer in emotional issues being connected to physical issues in your body and after that GP visit with no other real explanation I decided that the pain in my gut was perhaps about what I wasn’t emotionally digesting.

    As much as it hurt there was a feeling of disentanglement as I slowly loosened my grip on my shattered dreams. At first I was hardly able to get a sentence down before I fell apart but then slowly as I began to let myself soften into the pain I was able to read back over things and find a sense of peace. I was slowly letting go of the attachment to what I thought my life would be. It won’t ever be what I thought it would be and no one will ever take his place but it will be wonderful in its own way and that I am sure of.

    And as for my stomach the next day it felt about 80% better and it’s almost back to completely normal, you can draw your own conclusions from that…

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    I thought a lot about not publishing this post. Part of me worried about how people would take the honest account of my pain. My initial thought was that I don’t want people to feeling sorry for me and that is the old person who thought that strength was about putting on a brave face for everyone, sucking it up and moving on. But really strength is about vulnerability it’s about being real, talking about the struggle and owning your story. So I give my story a voice here in the hope that it provides a source of strength for others as I believe we are all made stronger by sharing our truth.

    Love and Blessings

    xx

  • A whole new year

    A whole new year

    Without letting go there can be no new space. Without space there can be no change. Without change there can be no growth.

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    People often set new years resolutions in the hope of achieving some sort of self improvement. Whether it be a health goal, a financial goal or perhaps just an all round I’m going to sort my shit out goal, it all comes back to the desire to make some part of your life better.

    In concept it’s a great idea; pick something out that you’re not happy with and make it a goal to change it. So why do new years resolutions almost never last more than a couple of weeks or if you’re lucky maybe a couple of months.

    I think firstly when people set out to make changes they don’t invest much time exploring and trying to understanding why they actually want to change, what the change would mean to them and what has been blocking them from making it happen in the past. So when they begin to set the change in motion it’s really only a surface change which looks good on the outside but fails to break into the deeper, more hidden aspects of their soul; the only place where real change and growth come from.

    The other thing is that when people refrain from habitual behaviour it often brings up uncomfortable feelings. It may stir up sense of anxiety or uncertainty. It may show them parts of themselves that they were trying to avoid. It may even leave them questioning who they are without their old habitual patterns. It is these feelings that often drive people back to their old known ways; there’s a certain safety in that place.

    With all of this in mind my challenge for myself this year is to stop one habitual behaviour with the intention to see what I can learn about myself in the space that is created. For me I knew straight away what I wanted to try and stop. I want to not buy any new clothing for the next 12 months. It may not sound like a bit of a weird challenge but for me I think it’s perfect.

    Firstly it will most certainly be a major challenge for me. Many years ago a boyfriend challenged me to not purchase any new clothing for a week and to my horror I only lasted 4 days before I bought something without even thinking. It’s been a habit I’ve had for so many years now that I really can’t wait to see what comes up for me when I’m just dying to purchase something; to see what I have perhaps been trying to escape for years.

    Secondly I think that it will be a good chance for me to recalibrate and take stock of all that I already have and begin to realise that what I have is enough.  I’m super excited for the element of simplicity that I hope this challenge brings to my life and I welcome the uncomfortable as a special kind of magic.

    Here’s a fabulous new year filled with new goals, new focus, new adventure and lots of magic.

    xx

     

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  • Lessons of 2015

    Lessons of 2015

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    With great challenges come great lessons. While this year has been one the most heart breaking and challenging periods in my life thus far I can honestly say that I have also never felt more alive, capable and on purpose.

    I want to share my big lessons from this year in the hope that they enrich your life in some way.

     

    1. Let go of all the ways you thought life would unfold. Letting go of the plans and expectations you hold for your future is extremely liberating and allows you in live in flow with the universe. I realised the more I agonised over the loss of the future I had always dreamed of the harder life was to stomach. I had never even imagined a life where my dad wouldn’t be around to simply talk to and one day walk me down the aisle. Letting go isn’t a simple little choice you just make one day and then you’re done. It takes self awareness and consistent choice. When you begin to let go and allow things to just be as they are you’ll be blown away by the possibility that stands before you. Sometimes things better than your wildest dreams can just show up but you have to be open to the possibility that you don’t always know where life is taking you. You can fight that and try and control things or you can dance through the journey…the choice is always yours.
    2. Don’t fight with hard emotions. When you’re sad and you go into overdrive trying to shake it off and make yourself happy again you can wind up doing more harm than good. I never really realised until this year how much I truly loathed feeling sad. We’re all probably guilty of trying to numb or suppress undesirable emotions from time to time but doing it repeatedly not only means that you’re living an inauthentic life but it also dulls down all the good stuff. You can’t selectively numb emotions. When you let yourself experience sadness and pain the happiness and joy in your life also intensify. Allowing yourself to really sit with and feel your emotions grows your ability to experience the full spectrum of human emotions.
    3. Don’t get addicted to emotions. This is a follow on from my last point, while you should always let yourself feel what you need to, you also want to have enough self awareness to discern when you’re dropping a little too deep into an emotion or spending a little too much time there. I talk about this mainly in relation to pain and sadness but know that excessive emotion of any kind can be damaging to your body. It’s important to honour how you feel but you don’t want it to consume your life. Know the people, places and things that bring joy to your life, that make you laugh, balance and ground you, restore your calm and heal your heart.
    4. Don’t compare the beginning of your journey to some else’s middle. When I first lost my dad I’d often to talk to people who had been through a major loss and I’d find myself getting jealous of how well they were doing. There were times where I got insanely frustrated and felt like it wasn’t fair that I had to go through all of this, why couldn’t I just get back to good. It wasn’t until I got comfortable with pain and sadness that I began to realise how much I had to learn. Don’t cop out on the lessons in the challenges. As much as possible try and live in your own life and embrace your precious journey.
    5. Slow Down! Time will pass regardless of what you choose to do with it so don’t be in such a rush to get everything done yesterday. You never know when your time is up so be micro ambitious. Care more about short term goals and the everyday things. The only time you have to be alive is in each moment so live for your moments and enjoy each breath. And if you find that you’re living for future goals and wishing away your days I hope you find the courage to make some changes and take back your life.
    6. Know your worth. When I started telling myself “I am enough” each day I was amazed by all the things that came up. I was able to really clearly see all the areas that I didn’t believe I was enough and that awareness began to create a shift in my thinking. The stories I’d been subconsciously telling myself about my shortcomings we’re getting replaced with this new story that I am enough. All the crazy expectations that I pushed on myself in a bid to reach some dreamed up ideal fell away.  I began to believe that I don’t need more in order to be my best self…I was already there. I can’t even begin to tell you how much easier life got.
    7. Get help when you need it and don’t be too proud to accept it when it’s offered. I’ve never been overly brilliant at asking for help or accepting help when it’s offered but I’m so glad that all of that has changed. I knew this year that old habits and ways of coping were just not going to cut it. Accepting and asking for help from family and friends made me feeling so supported and really reassured me that I was going to be okay.  Getting professional help made me feel a bit sick at first but it was truly one of the best things I’ve ever done. There were sessions where I felt like I was making heaps of progress and then there were sessions that felt a bit pointless but it’s all contributed to bringing me into an amazing space.
    8. Make it happen; sort it out. All those things you’ve been putting off – the hard conversations, the mess and clutter, the mile long to do list – just do them. Previously I’ve been a pretty big fan of sticking my head in the sand when things have felt a little too difficult, unpleasant or overwhelming. All the things that I knew I should deal with would buzz around in the back of my brain creating a mild anxiety that I could usually balance out with a bit of yoga and meditation. But when I lost my dad I realised that I just didn’t have the capacity to carry the mild anxiety that lingered in the back of mind and I started to learn to deal with things. It didn’t just happen over night but like learning any new skill bit by bit I got better and better at dealing with things when they came up. I slowly stopped letting things run out for weeks and started taking action.  It feels absolutely brilliant to live in such a bold way.

     

    Take the time to figure out what your challenges have to tell you about yourself and find the lessons hiding in your experiences. You hold the answer to all of your questions you simply have to look within.

     

    Love and Blessings

     

    xx

     

     

     

  • Learning to Live

    Learning to Live

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    When my dad first passed away a number of people who had lost loved ones told me that you never really get over your loss. At the time it felt like I was being told that I was never going to be okay again, that somehow I was now broken beyond repair and I truly hated hearing it. Over the past few months I’ve been pushing myself to maintain my usual routine, believing that if I just kept pushing through I would somehow come out the other side. But the real truth is there is no other side to grief, it’s not finite, it’s not a linear path or a journey to a light at the end of a tunnel. It changes with you and it comes in and out like waves rolling onto the shore. After much soul searching I can finally say that I’m okay with that. I’m okay with no specific end to my grief and I’m comfortable with my pain.

     

    It’s been a long journey to get to that point.  I went through what seemed like a really good period where I felt almost weirdly together and at peace with everything. Looking back now I’d say it was a pretty heavy case of denial. Then the reality of how much I had lost started to set in. I found myself reduced to a crying mess day after day and I began to get really frustrated. I could cope with bits of sadness here and there but being upset every single day really started to take its toll.

     

    Desperate to find some reprieve from the constant crying and sadness I  began to hunt for a fix. I decided that I must be out of balance and so I went to my list of self care activities. I went through all the possibilities in my head: maybe I need to practice more yoga or run more or just get more sleep or perhaps regular massages are the answer…everyone loves a good massage. Now while self care is extremely important to good health it really doesn’t work if you’re using it to try and numb unwanted emotions. You see the problem with numbing is that you can’t selectively numb emotions. Just like yin and yang all of our emotions are interconnected and you can’t numb sadness without numbing happiness just like you can’t really appreciate light unless you have known darkness.

     

    At this point I hadn’t recognised just how much I was trying to avoid my pain. I confided in a good friend that I’d been crying and feeling down every day and that I didn’t know what to do to pull myself out of it. I was desperate for some sort of advice on how to make it stop. What I got instead was raw heartfelt honesty, he told me that I’d just been through one of the most significant and testing periods in my life to date and I can’t expect to just bounce back out of it and think I’ll cope. His words cut me to my core, I was immediately reduced to tears and could hardly breathe. This was the first moment that I realised just how badly I wanted to bounce back and return to something familiar.  At the time I felt so defeated and a big part of me wanted to argue that I could bounce back I just needed to do A, B and C. But instead of getting defensive and at least talking about how I felt, I did what many before me have done and internalised my feelings. I took the argument inside my head.

     

    Still desperate and believing that I could find a way out of my pain I began to go through all the things I was doing in my life that were perhaps too much for me. The list I came up with was pretty much everything and that sent me into a total tail spin. The thought of having to pull back from everything in order to be okay made me feel stressed and anxious. Note to self – Internal problem solving while overwhelmed is not the best idea. So I then found myself in a sad, crying, stressed and anxious mess and it was time to see my psychologist.

     

    At this point I’d been seeing my psychologist for a little over two months and I’d never let myself cry in front of her. And yes I know that it’s crazy to not let yourself cry in front of someone who’s there to help you work through your pain but I’m working on the whole vulnerability thing. In contrast to pervious sessions, this session I was a blubbering mess. I told her how I felt like I’d come such a long way; I’d made peace with all the painful circumstances surrounding my dad’s death, I’d let go of my fixation on better understanding his cause of death and I even felt untroubled by this death being under investigation and yet despite all of this I felt like I’d reached an all time low.

     

    With tears running down my face I went on to tell her my idea about needing to pulling from pretty much everything. The next few things she told me really shifted the way I was seeing things. Firstly she pointed out that part of the reason that I was feeling so frustrated was because I’d been through a good phase and this down phase felt like a step backwards. Because it felt like a step backwards I was then looking for a fix it in order to get back to good again. Secondly she spoke about the necessary role that tears and sadness play in healing. And thirdly she also told me that I didn’t need to stop doing things just because I was feeling down but if I did decide to scale back anything that I’m doing I should change the language that I’m using. She said that saying I “need” to do this because I’m not okay was making me feel like I had no choice in the matter. Instead I could rephrase to I am “choosing” to do this to give myself time and space. It was such a simple rephrase but it lifted a huge weight off my shoulders.

     

    I walked away from that session with a new sense of calm. Over the next few days I still found myself randomly crying every day but I wasn’t as troubled by my sadness. Then another bit awesome wisdom came in the form of a YouTube clip by Marisa Peer called You can be enough.  In this clip Marisa instructs her audience to set two reminders in their phones one for every morning and one for every evening. The reminder is to tell yourself “I am enough”. She also suggested to write it on a mirror that you see each day to really drive the message home. I decided to give it a go for a week and I was amazed by the things that began to happen. The biggest thing that came from it was letting go of many of the unfair expectations I put on myself. Letting go of some of the expectations I held for myself meant that I began to feel a lot more comfortable in my own skin and I was able to really accept where I was in my grief journey.

     

    I can now see that all the time and energy that I put into fighting with my pain was actually time and energy put into my own suffering. Pain and grief are unavoidable parts of life that hold enormous potential for growth and learning. The same cannot be said for suffering. We make ourselves suffer when we wish for a reality other than our own.

     

    Self acceptance has been huge in getting comfortable with pain. Showing up for myself and truly embracing who I am right now and how I feel in each moment has allowed me to detach from this idea of needing to be okay. What the hell does okay even mean anyway! We’re never in a fixed state where everything comes together perfectly and stays that way. Things are constantly coming together then falling apart, it’s the nature of life.

     

    With my new found self acceptance I found myself able to make decisions that really honour what I need from myself right now. I stopped forcing myself to push through things and I was able to discern what was making my life harder than it needed to be.

     

    The one thing that stood out to me was my Chinese medicine course. When my dad first passed away I was in my first trimester of my course. I was determined to not fall in a heap and pushed myself really hard to get all of my assignments done to a high standard and in on time and I did well in all of my exams. This current trimester has been a very different experience. I would sit at home listening to lectures on the physiology of the heart and lungs and relate every last bit back to what was going on with my dad. After a few weeks of continually relating most class content to my dad I became emotionally exhausted and began to disengage with the content to protect myself. I went from being a student that got great marks to being a student that was just scraping through. Acknowledging that I wasn’t doing that course justice, that I couldn’t expect anything more from myself and that I needed some time out to heal wasn’t easy. But as soon as I made the choice I felt a huge weight lift off my shoulders and I knew I had made the right decision.

     

    We often get so caught up in chasing these long term goals we set for ourselves – finishing a degree, saving for a house, working towards a promotion – that we don’t pay attention to how we’re actually experiencing life on a daily basis. I don’t know where this great urgency comes from that makes us feel like we must be in a certain place by a certain age but there’s a huge amount of harm in the hurry.

     

    While I would give anything to have my dad back I can truly say that I’m grateful for just how much I’ve learnt and become aware of over the past few months. I consider his passing my wake up call. A reminder that you never really know how long you’ve got so don’t get so caught up in the pursuit of long term goals that you forget that you’re only really living right now, don’t try and avoid hard feelings they hold invaluable lessons for you and most importantly know that you are always enough, so make sure that you turn up for yourself, back yourself and know that whatever life bring to you….

    You got this

    With love and blessings
    xxx
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  • The Puzzle of Life

    The Puzzle of Life

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    One night I woke up at 2am struck with an idea about life and how it all fits together. Being only half awake I wasn’t sure if it was brilliant or just pain silly but I wrote it down all the same and drifted off back to sleep. In the morning I came back to it and started testing it for flaws and to my delight it held up pretty well. That was several months ago and since then what have I done with this idea? Pretty much nothing! I’ve just sat on it.

    Why have I not shared what I originally through was a pretty damn good idea? Well I still thought it was a good idea, that hadn’t changed but I was making excuses that pushed it back. I was telling myself that I was saving it for a really good blog post and that I didn’t want to write it until I had the time to do it justice but on reflection I think I was just afraid of putting it out there.

    So what prompted me to share now. Last Friday night I went to an awesome workshop run by InsideOut, at the start of the workshop founder Campbell Butterss shared this vision of how life can get small and messy. I thought it was brilliant and I also saw a lot of my own vision in his. That was the start of stepping towards sharing. Later in the workshop one of the facilitators Miroslav Petrovic took me to a place where I had to sit with and breath through the story I regularly tell myself about not being good enough. To sit with all the harsh expectations I put on myself and to breathe into the emotions and the tightness in my chest was invaluable for me. In going into the feelings behind the story I was able to loosen its grip and step through a place of fear.

    After my three paragraph introduction it might seem like what I’ve got to share is pretty huge. The truth is it isn’t really that profound, but I wanted to be real about how much I’d built it up to be a big deal in my head in the hope that people are inspired to share their struggles and break through their fear. And maybe just maybe the journey of sharing holds a bigger message than my idea ever did.

    Now finally to this idea about life; so I was looking for a way to explain how I’d experienced figuring out who I am at my core and how I had detangled a lot of the rubbish that blocked me from knowing my true self. This is how I see it:

    When you’re born you have a few key puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly and that’s who you are in your truest purist form. As you go through life and have experiences you begin to pick up new puzzle pieces. Some of these pieces belong to you; fitting well with your original puzzle pieces and others really aren’t your puzzle pieces at all, they’re often pieces that others have pushed on you and led you to believe are part of who you are. These puzzle pieces that don’t belong begin to cause a lot of problems. You see we’re always trying to complete our puzzles and when something doesn’t fit what do we do? We pull apart the whole puzzle and try and make it work thinking that maybe there was something wrong in the core puzzle and if we do a little rearranging we should be able to make it work. There in lies the mess.

    Over the years we can collect so much rubbish along with our true stuff that it can turn into one big fat epic mess. While some lucky humans naturally get better at discerning what’s theirs most of us get to some point where we end up questioning why we’re unhappy, unfulfilled and struggling with elements of our lives.

    So then how do you then begin to sort out what pieces you need in your puzzle and what pieces just make life harder. Let me start by saying brilliant puzzles take time and dedication there’s no quick and easy fix but it can definitely be worked through. It becomes a matter of figuring out when you picked up certain puzzle pieces then deciding what needs to stay and what needs to go. When that puzzle gets a little less messy and you begin to really be able to see who you are, let me just say that life gets awesome!

    For me journaling, reading all sorts of self help books, my yoga teacher training and working with some psychologists really helped to trace back to when I started having certain limiting beliefs about myself and forming certain views of the world. I think this process of building the picture of who we are is always a work in progress and it’s evolving nature is part of the magic of life.

    If the puzzle was perfect and finished what more would there be to do.

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    Enjoy the journey, laugh at the confusion, breathe into the moment and know that everything happens for a reason.

    xx