Last week I had a long overdue lunch with one of my mentors,
who always manages to add some sunshine to my day.
Over the past few months I have experienced complete and utter
exhaustion, being overwhelmed and anxious to the point where even I at times didn’t
recognise myself!
Now a few months down the line I’m nowhere near ‘cured’ or
free of the above, but I’m definitely on the path to a much better place.
Earlier this year I had a car accident, which in hindsight
was the straw that thankfully broke the camel’s back. Unfortunately in
this life its takes a negative and frightening experience to slap you about and
tell you to wake the hell up to reality and that’s exactly what that accident did
for me.
For almost the past 2 years of my life I have allowed myself
to become so involved in my professional life by trying to keep up with those
around me and what societies idea of what a young professional female should
be, that I forgot about the most important person in my life… me! Sounds silly
I know; how can I forget about me when I spend every single day with me? But
this is easily done when you become so consumed with the day to day tasks of
work and life that sometimes you forget to stop, breathe and take the time to
take care of you. Well I had been doing that for longer than I can remember and
when I finally realised that this is what I’d been doing, everything began to
change.
As they say change is good, but what I have had to learn is
that change is also flipping hard, especially when the change is so big that
you know that every relationship in your life will change as a result of the
changing of the relationship you have with yourself. This has been no easy ride
and changes by the day, sometimes even by the hour. But with each day I have
learned to understand it all a little more and accept it a little more, but
here is what I learnt and understood last week with the help of my wonderful
mentor.
With change there is always a loss and this is sometimes why
change can feel uncomfortable. I also learnt that throughout life we have ways
of doing things that have always served us well, but sometimes these things no
longer serve us and this is ok. But when these things that we do and may have done
for our entire lives, or the last decade of our lives no longer serve us, it’s
ok to let them go, because there is no point in holding on to something that no
longer works in our favour. Sometimes this can mean letting go of something
that has become a part of you, but this doesn’t mean that you a losing yourself
or even compromising who you are. It just means that you are making space and
opening yourself up to something new that will serve you and will allow you to
evolve, grow and develop in to the person who you are destined to be and that
will help you flourish in your next chapter.
This is simple and deep down this was something that I
already knew, but through having this casual lunch with my bubbly and
supportive mentor, the penny finally dropped. By letting go and cleansing
myself of certain habits and ways that I have always had does not mean that I
am losing myself. It means that I am giving myself the permission and
acceptance to grown into the person I need to be for the next stage of my life
and I should not, regret, mourn or feel anger or fear towards this, instead I
should embrace it and let it be.
These are just some of the lessons I learned last week that
I wanted to share with you… There plenty more where they came from so I’ll do
my best to share them with you when I can.
Love Sara. xxx
