Hi Friends,
Well, December has been a bit of a ride. Then again, so has much of 2021. I remember this time last year thinking, 'ok, 2021 is going to be better. After all, this pandemic can't go on forever.' How wrong was I? It's human nature to want to find answers and solutions when life throws challenges our way. We use rationale and logic when sometimes, there is no rationale or logic from which to garner any clues as to how we find our way through an unfamiliar maze.
For me, I have learned that in order to gain some semblance of control over my situation, I need to start small. I will think about what I can do in this very moment to help me not, as U2 once sang, feel stuck in a moment that I can't get out of. When my husband and I were struck with COVID a couple of weeks ago, we knew that the virus had to take its course. And boy it did. What started out feeling like a mild cold quickly took a turn for the worse and we were both bed-ridden for a few days. But we have a little boy to take care of so we focused on that. We focused on the bare necessities--like feeding him and making sure he was ok even if that meant relying on the tv to do the majority of the parenting. All I'm saying is, when we don't have the answers for life's bigger challenges we have to get miopic in our focus. Sometimes that's literally putting one foot in front of the other. Or in our case, take one breath at a time.
There is a lot to be thankful for this year though. This is when we rack focus--a technical term for camera movements but one which I often practice mentally. We look at where we are today and then get wide in our perspective to compare our situation to where we were a year ago. With the virus, we now have vaccines. We have a better understanding of what we are dealing with (despite how some governments may waffle in their national directives).
As the year draws to a close, my husband and I will look at how far we've come from the moment we decided to change the direction of our lives. That helps us recognise that life is always moving, always changing, even if we don't see it or feel it. Think of it as an undercurrent of energy working hard to help us along our life's journey. Our job is to get clearer on how we want to live, how we want to feel, and start to take the steps--no matter how slowly or how small--towards that goal.
For me, that has come in the form of being certified as a life coach. This is something I have wanted to do for a very long time--perhaps even before I became a journalist, even before I even knew that life coaching was even a thing. I knew I was always interested in people so I started to read books--one at a time. I took an introduction to psychology course online. And then, when I was ready, I took the plunge and signed up for life coach certification.
Achieving this goal has given me that sense of purpose I had been wanting for a long time, a sense of purpose that is aligned with who I feel I am. As a journalist I was always so deeply curious about how people thought, felt, the origins of their journeys and patterns. Those interviews became my classroom, the masterclass if you will, in asking the questions to gain a deeper understanding of who we are and how to draw a road map to get to where we want to be.
Today, I am using those skills and the newly acquired ones from my certification to help anyone looking to gain an understanding of who they are, what they want, identify their goals and values, help them get unstuck, and how to get that life they so desire. And me achieving this goal started with simply writing some thoughts down and calling it a blog.
See, I truly believe that actions, no matter how small, can reap huge rewards--one of which is to truly know that life is working in our favour. We just have to do our part to help it along.
I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a very healthy and prosperous 2022.
Thank you for accompanying me on my journey thus far.
Monita xo
