Well, that’s another decade done and dusted as a new one beckons us in only a week!
I had brunch with a dear friend the other week who asked me about where I was in my life 10 years ago, and what I was doing back then. Perhaps it’s a combination of getting older and being more prone to forgetting, or me just not wanting to go down memory lane, but it was empowering to remember my triumphs, but also quite thought provoking to recall aspects of my life and even character traits, where it seemed like some things hadn’t really changed.
Some things that I’ve been percolating on since our discussion:
- Do we celebrate our wins enough?
- Do we change, or just become more of who we really are?
- Do our disappointments stay in our system for a decade?
- Isn’t reminiscing so bloody bittersweet?
Earlier this year, I was issued with a new passport and remember comparing the photographs of then versus now. There are so many layers between a decade where you earn your stripes through less collagen and more wrinkles, and eyes that become deeper set with the added wisdom that only experience can bring.
I had a similar thought when I was reflecting on this year alone, and likened it to one of those renovation shows where I always love to scrutinise the BEFORE and AFTER pictures. I love the way my mind expands with endless possibilities of how to change things up that I could never have envisioned myself.
In real life, we don’t always come up with the solutions ourselves, but part of the journey is in responding to what the Universe has delivered to us, or in some cases, deliberately kept away from us. It usually translates to us not getting that job, or a relationship ending or falling in love with someone who is so far from our usual type, that this becomes an important part of why the connection is actually sustainable for once.
I don’t know about you, but I feel that this year has been a huge internal renovation for me. Old configurations I’d inherited that were wonky and rusty got gutted out and were replaced with a new infrastructure that is sturdier and built to be sustainable along with more reliable fixtures.
But unlike those renovation shows I love to watch, there’s no BEFORE or AFTER picture to document the changes or the progress. I can’t physically show you the differences, but boy do I feel them.
All my old stories that I used to use to justify aspects of my life or use as get-out-of-jail-free cards are no longer usable. It’s like going to a store to use a voucher that actually expired 6 months ago, and the salesperson doesn’t care if you want to speak to the manager, because company policy is company policy and the expiry date was RIGHT THERE for you to see the whole time.
The end of year wrap up comes with so much joy about my favorite summer season and the long beach days that fill me with happiness and inspiration. I have so many great offerings for next year that I’m excited to share with you in the next newsletter.
As I finish off a few projects and sign off for this year and decade, I feel a combination of emotions that are equally as varied as they are complex. There’s a sense of lightness and peace that stems from my acceptance of what currently exists in my life, as well as a feeling of tiredness that usually accompanies the end of December and all the ‘extra’ that often comes with it.
Many of my clients have been feeling burnt out and are looking forward to doing less in the coming years, as well as doing it slowly. Slow achievement typically means greater reward, yet we live in a society that demands a lot from us in a short space of time, where we feel like we are on call for longer than we used to be, and the accepted turnaround time for a response is quicker than its ever been.
It’s from this state of exhaustion that we enter the holiday period which is habitually associated with seeing more of our family members than we usually do.
Our nerves are so frazzled and the container that houses our nervous system is so empty, that our buttons are easier to push and our social gatherings become the place where all our new age spiritual wisdom goes to die.
If we live a life that is so full and overflowing, we cannot consciously stop ourselves from constantly ‘borrowing’ from our energy reserves. Then it becomes increasingly difficult to process the delicious messiness of life, as there’s no space to integrate the learnings.
That’s when we find ourselves over reacting to little triggers, or missing the red flag because we were too off kilter to listen to our intuition in the first place until we have the bad experience that inevitably becomes a cautionary tale for others.
But hey, it’s the cautionary tales that become the ubiquitous stories that we become known for, and this just adds to our wisdom and sprinkles our personality with the charm that we then become loved and adored for, right?
If we’ve only crossed paths via this newsletter this year, I want to thank you for reading most of them and staying in touch with me. It’s not something I appreciate lightly, nor do I take I take your time for granted. For those that I hugged in person via a 1:1 session or a workshop, thank you for choosing to cross professional paths with me.
And until we cross paths again in 2020, I’m sending love to you and your journey of unfurling,