An Insight

It's as though this year has been preparing me for this journey. It's shown me how adaptable I am, how independant I can be, how magical life is when you look at it from the right perspective.

As the end of the year creeps closer, I'm pondering over the year of 2020.

The lessons I've learnt that I'll take with me forever.

I was once scared of being alone, of not being able to entertain myself, so I ensured I was surrounded by others at almost all times (even whilst in the toilet I'd have the door open!). As I got stood down from my job the realisation set in that we weren't allowed to visit others in this very unknown time. I took it day by day, re-learning what makes my heart sing with happiness, I kept a solid yoga practice to help give my day purpose and,of course, to keep fit and healthy both physically but more importantly mentally.

I started to surrender to the idea of being alone, to exist in a space where time didn't exist and the day of the week was completly irrelevant. Instead of doing activities for the end result I started appreciating the process. I sat down in a pair of old overalls and painted but this time with no pressure, it didn't matter what it looked like, I was just enjoying creating. Cooking, this is something that really changed over 2020, I once struggled to enjoy my time in the kitchen as I had very little time to spare, this meant I wasn't willing to explore different recipes because if I failed that would mean I'd just wasted x amount of time for nothing. Well this totally flipped upside down as I found the simple joys of creating delicious (or not so yummy) food that would nourish my body and look aesthetic all at the same time.

This year I realised that my projection is my perception

Accountability, that's one of the main lessons I learnt, that I'm in control of how I react, what I think, how I move, and what I say but the next step of my growth was actually looking at who I am and trying to unlearn everything I believed I was to create the woman I want to be.

As romantic as that sounds, holy shit this is fucking hard work. Ripping yourself apart to actually see the parts you normally numb or ignore is so confronting, at times it's easier to surrender to the pain and go back to ignoring it. But that's the point, I believe that it's the stuff you work hardest for that becomes the most rewarding. Its the relapses that help you understand why you are the way you are, and to hold yourself with love and compassion for being you.

A dear friend gave me some words of wisdom that has become one of my mantras of the year. Saying 'that's just who I am' is giving yourself an excuse to act that way, to not take accountability for who you are which, in turn, makes it really hard to become the person you want to be.

Everytime I caught myself saying these words, it helped me search a bit deeper into why that was my belief, and by understanding myself that bit more helped me challenge that part of myself, trying to rewire the way I thought about certain situations.

Whilst my mind was blowing up full of new ideas of who I am, and ways to achieve who I want to be it was finally time to put all my lessons to practice and see how I would go whilst trying to physically and mentally declutter my life to make way for the life I want to live.

I had to detach from everything I thought made me who I was; my plants, my furniture, my crystals, my books, my clothes, nick nacks that is collected over the years, old friends and family.

I'm learning that who I am comes from within, not from what surrounds me.

This year has felt like it's been preparing me for my future, getting my physically, mentally and emotionally strong enough to live alternatively.