Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. Mark Twain
This morning the stars are out because its still blooming 5am and nice and dark as I look out my garden facing window I am currently using the dining room as my office. Its gorgeously calm and I feel so peaceful and privileged to be tasting and entering this day while the majority of the people are still in the world of snooze. I of course realise that this just applies to only a fraction of the world and only people in and around my time zone, thus the (GMT+1)
Today is day 2 and I am absolutely buzzing for sustaining the project by showing up another day. I continue my quest to a transformational me in the coming now 109days as I spotlight and explore my courageous self in these areas:
• Social relationships (partner, children, friends),
• Structuring my time (work, study, hobbies, parenting)
• Prospects (basic attitude, /point of view/perspective, opportunities of growing my side hustles)
• Money and vitality. How I can exponentially transform and how I can boost my health and my net worth through my daily exercise and current day job and other streams of income I am currently exploring and pursuing.
These four areas I am focused on will of course expand and inflate no doubt as I research and sink my teeth into various aspects of my more courageous self project. Yesterday as I read the book by #Sean Whalen’s “How to make sh*t happen” I loved how he summed up all the facets in our lives into 4 areas he calls the “Core 4” He stated that these areas are fundamentally everything that concerns and affects us and getting them into ship-shape is the secret and beginning of achieving and succeeding in all areas per sei.
These #Core 4 are 1. Passion (which is all about our relationships), 2. Power (which in general covers all things body, wellbeing and vitality), 3. Purpose (this is all to do with the mind) and 4. Production (all about business).For my quest journey I found myself wondering how in shape my core areas are holding up. I know I score High in assertiveness and courage in the Purpose and power department but equally poorly or at least work-in-progress in the passion and production department.
Me thinks its actually brilliant that I have actually discovered about this lack and flaw this early in my quest to becoming more bolder than ever before. It’s all good to discover this about your character but it led me to ask why are these two core areas in my life sh*t when it looks like my purpose facet which is faring more or less not too bad?
I definitely know deep down that my relationships are not where they’re supposed to be. So this is a beautiful opportunity and chance for me to absolutely prode deeper into this area and see how this can be transformed moving forward. After all that’s the essence of my quest isn’t it?
So, I want to know how I can be more assertive in the passion area which is my relationships . When it comes to my relationships I am kinda a back seater at the moment. In my young-self days I used to be very passionate and good at building strong and lasting relationships but I suppose as life happens to you things and priorities shift and change and I just can’t do it as easily any more. I just seem to have stopped growing in this area and kept the same friends that I made like decades ago. I’ve met and made very few more recently but I seem to lose them eventually and find myself reverting back to my old loyal. I don’t know maybe in life we settle down with very few people earlier in our teens and almost avoid bonding stronger later in life. Its either that or its just me having lost the touch of picking and keeping people around me. This has jolted me to wanting to actually explore which is which and if it’s the former- fair enough but deep down I suspect its the later- which means I have become rubbish at picking mates, cause somehow I still wish I was as freer as I was before when I had confidence in buckets loads. I therefore think then something needs to change and I need to know where it all went wrong.
Don’t get me wrong I do have a bunch of really great and loyal friends, such beautiful women around me most of the time I need them but I just don’t seem to be up to scratch when it comes to formulating new lasting relationships anymore. I am wondering whether my once bubbly character has just gradually fizzled off.
So this quest seem to betaking me to some really deep corners of my mind where I’m thinking- have I gone soft with age? How did I get here and if its not the best place to be how do I get out of it? I suspect once upon a time I got hurt and I coiled in to protect myself from getting hurt. Its human nature to react this way isn’t ?However I think in life such subtle changes at time they simply creep upon you and ultimately you just can not point to an “event” per sei as to when it actually happened. From my experience working with people going through crisis in their lives – I know I probably picked up some toxic relationships along the way that are to an extent also contributing to keeping me prisoner.
I Read an article from https://www.joinonelove.org/ and it mentioned that dropping any toxic relationship in your life is often more of a process than an event. I find myself admiring badass people that make decisions such as sassing that someone in their life is toxic and without delay drop them straight away. In fact if I am honest I used to be such a badass! Hellow! However, now I find myself having been transformed into this ever careful, ever cautious kinda of person. Normally I would say- its not a bad trait to have picked cause maybe it makes me a more deeper and reflective person rather than an impulsive happy go lucky person. If truth be told, think not- I loved being pollyannaish, cause I wasn’t shallow or rude. In fact I was confident, intelligent ,likable and fiercely ambitious in my assertive optimism besides I actually think i made and kept some wonderful friends I adore and enjoy to date during those seasons of my life. Had I been a poisoned chalice I am sure I would have found it impossible to create these relations by the way they really are awesome and amazing people.
Lessons I intend to implement to journey back to my old self by getting rid of toxic relations I picked along the way will be partly as suggested in a nutshell by the article I read from https://www.joinonelove.org/
- Keep a journal- thank goodness I already do. In fact I have also been writing myself letters reflecting for over a decade now through a beautiful platform called futureme.org and I so look forward to these letters which serve as a snapshot of my emotional position at the time. I must say through these letters I have gleaned that nothing changes much yet nothing at the same time stays the same. Each time I receive one letter from the past- I have been comforted, thrilled and surprised by the ridiculousness of situations I would have considered a crisis at the time.
- Giving yourself some TLC by giving yourself a slack, creating happy ahh moments on purpose and baring negative chitter chatter swirling around your mind. This is when you tell yourself and believe it fully that you deserve better even when all in you is going “you fool you don’t deserve to be happy and this is the best it will ever be for you”. I am going to believe fully that I am worth it and I deserve to be happy and I deserve people around me who will definitely love and support me to that extent, and that they are out there.
- Above all, don’t isolate yourself but at the same time watch out cause sometimes when you reach out to well-meaning friends and family networks, you will be given relationship advice that is not healthy or realistic. All so very true in my case actually. Added on top of that is that I come from a culture that naturally compress and depress women’s opinions and voices. So, it’s uncommon as one of my dear close contact when I sought advise about my fractious marriage once said to me- you can’t get a divorce- there are no men out there for a divorced mum, while the other said divorce is the worst legacy you can give your children. I must admit they both touched a soft nerve cause I believed it. To be fair I do come from a dysfunctional home and deep down believe my parent’ divorce has also become my family legacy. What with all my sibling relationships breaking all around me. So, in an effort to remedy this wrong I have found myself persevering in a bad marriage (or did I say this loud for the first time 😱! Maybe I have. Good day everyone.
This life worth automating 