Rambling Yogi

Category: self help

  • A meaningful life

    Let the beauty of what you love be what you do – Rumi

    As we edge closer towards the end of the year it’s natural for people to take stock of the year that was and begin to mentally plan for what they would like the year ahead to look like. This sort of reflection may then lead to the bigger picture question; how satisfied am I with the life I am living? Am I living a purposeful / meaningful life?

    It is my hope that we all figure out what a meaningful life looks like for each of us and that we find the courage to pursue it, even if that means letting others down to not betray what you need in life.

    We’re all a little lost and life requires constant reassessment. Again and again you have to find your values, figure out what matters to you and choose who you want to be accordingly. Don’t let your current sense of identity define who you might be and what you do with your life.

    So where do you start. Here’s an activity to help you assess what’s important for you.

    Imagine you’re nearing the end of your life you’re looking back fondly. You’ve experienced what you wanted to experience, done what you wanted to do and are ending as you were meant to end. Ask yourself these questions:

    What three values made your life the most worthwhile?

    What three goals have you achieved in your life that you are most satisfied with and proud of?

    What three personality traits do you want people to remember you for when you’re gone?

    Here are some examples to help stimulate your thinking

    Values: authenticity, creativity, humour, safety, excitement, fun, social recognition, happiness, self respect, status, passion, balance, independence, friendships, growth, loyalty, trust, community involvement

    Life goals: career success, financial security, travel, adventure, marriage, children, learn a language or instrument, health/fitness goals, volunteer, live aboard, start a business, regularly help less fortunate

    Personality: honest, confident, perceptive, kind, generous, brave, hard working, ambitious, decisive, enthusiastic, open minded, rational, sensitive, affectionate, calm, dependable, compassionate

    How well do you answers align with the way you currently live your life. If you find you’re happy with your answers, congratulations but if things aren’t really lining up it’s time to ask yourself what different choices do you need to make to find your true north.

    But what if you couldn’t land on answers here and you’re not just a bit lost but stuck, overwhelmed and/or unsure of what you should be doing with your life. Then I have another suggestion taken from recently watching the Srutz documentary on Netflix.

    Try working on your life force. Like maslow’s hierarchy of needs the base layer is your relationship with your physical body, the next level is your relationship with other people and at the highest level is your relationship with yourself.

    • Physical body – get your body working better – nourish your body with good food, exercise daily even if it’s just a small walk just move your body, get a healthy amount of sleep
    • Other people – take the initiative – put the effort in to build and maintain the important relationships in your life
    • Yourself – get yourself in a relationship with your unconscious – you enhance your relationship with yourself when you write in journal form and allow your unconscious to come out

    Having tired this myself I can definitely say that prioritising exercise daily and starting journaling again has made a huge difference to how satisfied I feel with my life.

    I hope something here resonates with you and you find yourself walking into the new year filled with unlimited possibilities for a magical year ahead.

    love and blessings

    xx

  • Getting things done

    Getting things done

    It’s hard to believe that it’s been over 5 years since I last wrote a post for my blog. Since my last post I’ve changed jobs, had a baby, lost touch with my yoga practice / reconnected with my practice and written 27 draft posts.

    For one reason or another I just haven’t been able to bring myself to complete a post and publish it. So I thought for my first post in a very long time it would be fitting to explore why we put things off.

    Sure all of us can put things off from time to time and sometimes prioritising things to make the best use of your time is the best thing to do. But chronic procrastination is a different beast! In my life right now I feel like I’m the queen of unnecessarily postponing things, even thought I know I’ll be worse off for not doing them . But I’m not alone – it’s a very common habit with recent studies finding that 20 per cent of adults are chronic procrastinators.

    Despite what you might think, procrastination isn’t a sign of laziness. In fact it’s more about emotion regulation than time management.

    So why do we do it? It relates to emotional self-regulation, that is it’s a way of coping with challenging emotions and negatives mood brought on by certain tasks. So in short we procrastinate to avoid feelings like boredom, anxiety, insecurity, frustration, resentment and self-doubt. The nature of the aversion depends on the task, here are some examples:

    • Hating the task – it’s really tedious, difficult, boring or stressful
    • A lack of confidence or self esteem – the fear of failure or being a perfectionist
    • Being easily distracted – just can’t stay focused on the task
    • Feeling overwhelmed – the job feels too big or unachievable
    • Hitting a creatively blocked – can’t solve the problem or feeling uninspired

    It’s important to take some time to try understand why you are putting something off so that you can take actions that will best support you to get the important things done.

    Here are some things you can consider to help things along

    • Attach a reward to getting the task done. This is essentially the Premack principle – a less desired behaviour can be reinforced by the opportunity to engage in a more desired behaviour.
    • Focus on just the next action. At the start of a task can you consider what the next action would be. Ask yourself, what’s the next action I would take if I were going to do it. Maybe it’s writing the heading at the top of a document or it’s the separating of washing or opening an email. Don’t wait to be in the mood to do a task, let your motivation be built on your action.
    • Set yourself up in a distraction free environment. This might mean just putting your phone in another room or turning off notifications while you are trying to focus.
    • Enlist Help. Find someone to keep you accountable. Tell someone that you won’t do X until you’ve done Y or that you want to do X by a certain date.
    • Build your skill set. If you’re lacking confidence in a particular area are there any courses you can take, people that you can learn from, opportunities to practice and get feedback. No one is an expert at anything straight away, so try to support yourself to crawl before you walk. And if you find yourself stalling out of fear try and tell yourself the mantra “progress not perfection”.
    • Look after yourself. It’s really hard to get anything done if you’re feeling exhausted or your anxiety is through the roof. Take a look at how you are living – are you getting enough sleep? are you eating well? do you get regular exercise or send time outdoors? do you meditate or find time to decompress without technology? If you read this list and its overwhelming thinking about all the things that aren’t what they should be then try starting with sleep. That is unless of course you have a tiny human that’s in control of your sleep right now, then maybe it’s getting out for a walk with bub once a day.
    • Practice self compassion. There’s so much to be gained from being compassionate with yourself, particularly when mistakes are made or things don’t turn out the way you had hoped. Finding kindness and understanding for yourself can do a lot to help improve motivation and personal growth. Things that can help build self compassion include guided meditations on self compassion, practising daily gratitude where a least one thing you are grateful for each day relates to yourself and if you catch yourself being critical try flipping that thinking on its head by replacing it with something kind and positive. Of course it’s not easy to just change the way you speak to yourself but like any new habit if you start small and gradually build it up, that small change could build into a lift changing new perspective.

    Before writing this post I’d assumed that procrastination was all about motivation and time management. I’d never considered that it would be more about trying to avoid unwanted emotions. But once I knew what it was all about it made a lot more sense to me; I’ve never been very good at sitting with unpleasant emotions and am a big seeker of ways to avoid.

    So in light of what I’ve learnt writing this post I’m going to put it out there that I will write at least 1 post a month. Here’s to getting things done!

    With love and kindness

    xx

    p.s if there’s any particular topics you’d like to me explore and write about please do reach out and let me know

    The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is now.

    Chinese Proverb
  • Don’t look back in anger

    Don’t look back in anger

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    When my father passed away unexpectedly on Friday 3rd July 2015 my entire world changed forever. I remember the most intense feeling of disbelief, as the ICU doctor explained that he was not able to be revived, my brain when into overload.  I had been with him an hour and a half before hand, they had said he would be out of hospital next week. My brain screamed how can he possibly be gone, it wasn’t meant to happen this way, he shouldn’t have been on his own, it’s too soon, he needed more time, I needed more time, this can’t be happening, he wanted to live.

    Losing a loved one in any circumstance is traumatic, losing them before they’re ready to go is the sort of heart break that will stay with you for life and losing them under questionable circumstances can steal part of your life too if you’re not careful.

    My fathers death was referred to the coroners court for investigation because there was so much confusion surrounding this death and a cause of death was not known. At first I was relived that our concerns around the level care he received were being acknowledged with an investigation. But that quickly turned into anger as I began to form the opinion that somebody was to blame.

    For a long time I blamed myself, I was the last person to see him. If I had of stayed another hour and a half maybe things would have been different. I remember clearly the first time I said it out loud, in a session with my psychologist through my tears I told her that I should have saved him, he always protected me and looked after me, I should have done more. I truly believed that it was somehow partially my fault even though I wasn’t a medical professional. There were so many memories that  haunted me; I would constantly repay moments in my head that I thought may have changed the way things ended.

    With the support of great friends I managed to ease up on blaming myself but redirected the blame straight on to the hospital and all the staff who I felt could have done more. I believed that we had to fight for him so that some positive came from losing him.  The hospital failed him and things needed to change to protect other people. No other family should live through our hell.

    Coroners investigations don’t happen quickly, we’ve spent the last 18 months waiting to here any sort of update on my dads case. Then last Friday my family received a letter from the coroners court saying that after considering the circumstances the coroner had decided not to proceed further with the investigation into my fathers death.

    I never saw it coming. I was completely blindsided. I didn’t really know how I felt about it. My brain started to process; so they’re saying that no one is to blame, that’s bullshit, I’m not giving up.

    As I revisited all the mistakes and the distressing level of care my father received, all the anger and pain I’d been storing in my heart began to pour out. I didn’t even realise just how angry I still was. For the first time I could clearly see just how much I’d been holding onto and I started to see the impact it had been having on my life.

    As I took all of this in and became fully aware of my anger I knew there was no other choice. Fighting and holding on to this anger was having a terrible impact on my life. It was time to let go, to accept that no amount of blame will bring him back and make peace with the circumstances that he left us in.

    Beginning to let go wasn’t some simple ahhh I’ve decided to let it go and now I feel great moment. It hurt like hell. I spent almost my entire Saturday crying, journaling, meditating, listening to inspiring talk about life and then crying some more. I let myself fall into habitual patterns of beating myself up. I spent time agonising over the way I had let my anger and victim mentality drive my life and damage relationships. Then I found the awareness to see that thought patter for what it is and with kindness reassured myself that I did the best that I could in the place that I found myself.

    Sunday morning I woke up and my eyes went straight to a quote I have stuck on my wall. It simply reads “you are entirely up to you”. I felt myself filled me a new sense of purpose, I got a bunch of jobs done, went and ran along the beach and decided to end my Sunday with a delicious yin and meditation class.

    As soon as I slowed down all the memories of my dad’s last few days began to flood back into my consciousness. The usual story was playing then the strangest thing happened I began to think about one particular nurse in a way I had never even contemplated before. She was the one person I felt really made the wrong decision at a critical time and I had hated her more than anyone else. As I lay hugging my bolster I was overcome with a deep sense of compassion for her, for the very first time I thought my god she must have felt awful. Tears ran down my face and I began to wonder how many times she may have questioned her decision. I was deeply concerned about the impact my fathers death may have had on her and in the moment I knew something profound had shifted in me.

    It’s been an unbelievably challenging couple of years but with the challenges has come some of the biggest lessons of my life. The most important being the value of acceptance.  I would of course give anything to have more time with my dad but longing for a reality other than the one I have is a recipe for deep seated suffering.  From here I make the commitment to try and live in a way that honours the amazing person he was by making courageous decisions, actively choosing happiness and believing in endless possibility.

     

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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

     

     

     

  • Self Care

    Self Care

    Taking the time to look after yourself before you burnout and or get sick is one of the greatest preventative medicines out there. Self care in essence is a simple concept and yet so many of us struggle to make the time for ourselves. Perhaps it’s that some of us feel guilty and a little selfish making our happiness and wellness a priority, or maybe there’s just no time in our busy schedule for something that feels more indulgent that it does necessary but for whatever reason self care activities often get put on the back burner.

    I have to put my hand up and say that I’m pretty guilty of getting to busy and forgetting about making time for myself. So how do I keep myself in check, firstly I wrote out a list of all the things I can do for myself so that I have an easy go to and then I try to do a couple of things from the list each week. Quite often when I hit a low I’ll realised that I’ve stopped doing some of the key things I usually do for myself and lets face it sometimes things just turn to shit. In those moments I get extra kind with myself, whatever the circumstance there’s no blame or judgement. There’s no you shouldn’t have dropped the ball or how did you create such a mess I only ask myself what do you need right now…

    Then I return to my list and I plan a few nice things I can do for myself, I change up my routine if I can and I identify if there’s anything that isn’t serving me and needs to go. Letting go of things is of course easier said than done but acknowledging something doesn’t serve you is a great start to freeing yourself from the weight.

    So my all important list, I want to share my list so that you get a few ideas for what you might like to do for yourself and you may even be inspired to make your own awesome self care list. I made sure that my list is a combination of simple cheap/free things and some more indulgent things for when I need a little extra self love. I think it’s also important to have a mix of movement based self care activities – that beautiful body of yours was designed to move – and more meditative activities that allow you to drop into clam and stillness.

    Without further ado here’s my list

    • Stop to take a few deep breaths – there’s nothing more grounding and calming than a few deep breaths
    • Practice Yoga – while it’s super brilliant for your physical body to get the stretch and strengthening that yoga cultivates part of the success of yoga is the awareness and mindfulness that it also cultivates.
    • Drinking my morning tea in silence and really soak up the morning
    • Dry brushing my body before a morning shower – while its great for your skin it’s also a great mindfulness practice
    • Get a massage
    • Go for a walk in nature (bush trails, bare foot beach)
    • Make and enjoy bone broth – It’s probably the closest thing to a hug in a cup
    • Go for run – a little endorphin boost is always a good thing
    • Go for a float session – if you’ve never had a float experience do yourself a favour it’s awesome
    • Have a mindful meal – this one is kind of great, you eat less and appreciate your meal more. It basically means that you eat in silence and as you put each mouthful for food in your month you put your knife and fork down and take the time to properly chew your food once you have swallowed your food then you pick up your knife and fork again. It’s amazing when you’re not used to it how much you will go to pick up your knife and fork before you have finished.
    • Do something silly fun – grab a friend and go to one of those kids adventure places and bounce, climb and laugh like a child
    • Disconnect – turn off the phone. laptop, tablet and have some technology free time
    • Write yourself a love letter – remind yourself of all the reasons why you’re wonderful, you deserve the best of your own love
    • Take a nap – sometimes I’m exhausted but I feel really guilty taking a nap, I worry about all the other things I should be doing but I’ve learnt that the world won’t fall over if I take a short nap and all those things get done a lot better when I’m energised
    • Have a bubble Bath – Lots of bubbles, lots of lavender oil and it wouldn’t be complete without some candles to set the mood and maybe a cheeky glass of red
    • Meditate – if you’re new to mediation or find it a bit of a struggle on your own there are some really great apps that can help teach you techniques and  guide you through your experience. Two of my favourite are 1 Giant Mind and Calm.
    • Clean up – When my head gets messy my space will often get messy too or maybe it’s when my space gets messy my head gets messy either way I always feel so much better when I clean up my room and have things in order.
    • Have a good clean out – Less is more. It always feels so nice to give away things that I no longer need. I love feeling of filling up a garbage bag of old clothes and taking it down to our local salvation army store.
    • Journal – I like to give myself topics to journal about, we did this at our yoga teacher training and it was so constructive that I’ve continued to come up with topics to explore or sometimes I will just write about whatever is relevant at the time either way it always feels great to get things out on paper.
    • Puzzles – I’m exposing my inner nerd here but I love myself a puzzle! Research shows that doing jigsaw puzzles increases the production of dopamine in the brain – the chemical responsible for memory and learning.
    • Sit in the sun – Sensible amounts of sunshine not only help your body synthesise vitamin D but it also enhance mood and energy through the release of endorphins and have been found to lower pressure and help you sleep better.
    • Read something for the pure joy of reading – I often have my head in uni books but it’s great to pick up something that I really just enjoy
    • Getting my hair done or a mani or pedi – ladies you understand why this one is so nice
    • Plan an activity with friends – I love little adventures; It might be weekends away, lunch at a winery, a trip to a market, a little bit of kayaking or maybe rock climbing just something to get right out of the normal routine.

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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