Twenty-Seventeen... The Year of More Love
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact

What have you failed miserably at? 

2/5/2016

0 Comments

 
So last month I bragged about how easy peasy I found February’s challenge (you can read all about that here… http://www.theyearofmore.com/blog/do-you-remember-charlies-surname) and now I’m here to tell you how miserably I failed at the challenge I’d set myself for March.
 
I could not have done worse if I had intentionally set out to fail.
 
Bad bad bad.
 
So. Very. Very. Bad. 
 
But as Mark Rashid says…
 
Picture
Too right Mark. You’re clearly a very wise man. I like you. I like you a lot.
 
The challenge I chose for March was going to bed at 9pm from Sunday – Thursday nights.
 
I was inspired to do this after reading the following article which discusses the huge physical and psychological benefits of going to bed early.

https://medicineandsergebenhayon.com/2015/09/20/the-science-of-early-to-bed/


It’s not just about getting enough sleep but apparently what time you go to bed is of equal importance. The work our brains have to do is done more efficiently and effectively if it gets cracking on it at 9pm rather than 11pm. I can see the logic in that.
 
But I failed my brain and body for two reasons:
 
  1. March is a mega crazy time for me at work so I’m often working back late or starting early.
  2. I really didn’t put much effort into achieving my goal.
 

Picture
You would think that going to bed early would be appealing if I’m working long hours, wouldn’t you?
 
But do you know that feeling when you get home late from work and you just need to spend some quality time unwinding once you’ve had something to eat and done whatever else needs doing?
 
An expanse of time specifically earmarked to do Nothing.
 
Or to do something relaxing like watching a movie or reading a book. If you get home from work, have dinner and then go to bed within an hour or two, it feels as though all you’ve done is slept and gone to work. And you end up feeling like a mouse on The Great Wheel of Life.
 

Picture
Image from www.cartertoons.com
So I would stay up late even though I knew that getting more sleep was actually the key to helping me get through this crazy work period.
 
It’s a conundrum that’s for sure.
 
I do like the word conundrum. It’s an excellent, excellent word.
 
So 9pm would come and go and I’d still be relaxing rather than going to bed to get a good solid eight or nine hours sleep into my weary mind and body.
 
I think I would have done better at this challenge during a different month so I’m going to try it again later in the year when work slows down a bit. October will probably be a good month so I shall aim for that.
 
Or perhaps I’ll just spend October sleeping in a hammock in Mexico; one never knows what’s around the corner you know.
Picture
Me. In a hammock. In Mexico.
So I had a talk with myself (I do that quite regularly) and reminded myself that I didn’t really fail, I just chose a really bad time to set this particular goal for myself.
 
I didn’t have a Very Good Plan.
 
Sometimes when we set goals, we don’t actually factor in what we need in order to have the best chance of succeeding. Like choosing the Right Time.
 
Clearly I wasn’t very mindful when I chose to do this challenge in March so the odds of me actually doing it were quite slim from the outset.
 
And as they say in the Hunger Games…
 
Picture
Image from www.firstcovers.com
So before you start, ensure the odds have the best possible opportunity of actually being in your favour.
 
Plan.
Plan.
Plan.
 
And ask yourself these questions…
 
Do I believe my goal is achievable?
Do I understanding why I want to achieve it?
How badly do I want to reach my goal?
What do I need to put in place to make it happen?
If I fail, am I willing to try again?
Do I have a supply of champagne to celebrate with when I kick some Major Goal-Setting Ass??!!
 

Picture
Champagne courtesy of my fridge
I wrote about failing to learn how to ride a bike in an earlier blog post http://www.theyearofmore.com/blog/what-have-you-done-because-everyone-else-was-doing-it and how much that lesson taught me. We can have our greatest Life Lessons through embracing our little friend, Failure.
 
He’s here to help us. Truly.
 
I can obviously do this challenge. It’s not like my goal is to perform brain surgery; I simply want to go to bed earlier. And apparently at one time in my life, I was quite exceptional at it.
 
Mum told me that when I was a little girl, I would come home from kindergarten, have dinner and put myself to bed because I was so tuckered out.

That’s all I’m trying to do now. And my job is way more exhausting than kindergarten ever was. Although all that interaction with new little people is rather draining for us introverts.
 
I’m not sure if I was in kindy or Prep but I remember being given a bottle of milk - with a little silver cap on the top that you’d peel off and lick the cream from – and then we’d all lay down for a wee nap. Every single day.
 
Picture
Image from www.runselfierepeat.com
So do I little girl, so do I.
 
Now, I’m sure they probably do something similar at workplaces like Google and Facebook (perhaps minus the milk) but maybe the rest of the working world needs to get back to basics and implement this well-being strategy? My workplace is gung ho this year about Work Life Balance and Well-Being so perhaps I’ll suggest it.
 
Naps all round.
Picture
At work, we each have an Individual Development Plan which we work toward each year. And as the organisation is focusing heavily on staff well-being this year, I decided to put ’10 minutes of colouring-in each day’ as one of my goals for Twenty-Sixteen. I wasn’t quite sure if it would be taken seriously but thankfully my manager thought it was a wonderful idea.
 
So I am absolutely loving being able to colour-in at my desk and not feel as though I’m wasting time or slacking off.
 
Although I’ve been a bit slack with my colouring-in over the last six weeks or so as I’ve been working long hours and have lost sight of those things which help keep me balanced. Which is a shame as it really does make a difference to completely stop what I’m doing and spend 5 or 10 minutes totally immersed in nothing but playing with my pencils and being creative. I can honestly notice a difference in how I’m feeling on the days that I do colour-in at work.
 
So once again, I’m not doing something which I know is ultimately going to be better for me. It’s funny how us humans can do that isn’t it?
 
We go to bed late even though we know sleep is exactly what we need.
 
We eat the wrong foods, date the wrong people and stay in the wrong jobs for far too long.
 
We ignore the gorgeous little colouring-in Desk Calendar on our desks and keep rushing through the ‘To do’ lists of life.
Picture
Clearly 18 February was a Colouring-In kind of day
And just as the Tibetan monks do with their sand mandalas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10084L3Pqsc, I throw away my fabulous works of art once I’ve finished them.
 
To remind me how impermanent everything is. Including Life.
 
If we’re lucky, we get to spend 80 or 90 years being our fabulous selves on this incredible planet.
 
And throughout those 80 to 90 years, we are most definitely Going to Fail on occasion.
 
And that’s okay.
 
In fact, it’s mandatory.
Picture
When I was younger, I was often too scared to take a chance in life because I was so worried about failing and what that would mean. I used to be too scared to change jobs/houses/partners/friends/whatever it might be, because I feared the unknown space that lay ahead. I worried about what would happened after I’d taken that next step – even if I knew in my heart and soul that the next step was absolutely perfectly right for me.
 
I know it sounds ridiculous but I would get completely stuck in my fear around what would happened after that – and I don’t mean as part of that first step, I’m talking about way after. For example, if I was contemplating a new job, I would be terrified of what would happen at the end of that job, rather than focusing on how much growth and experience I'd have doing that role which would lead me on to something even more amazing.
 
So I'd not take the job or not move house or not leave a relationship because of some unknown place down the track. A place which had no semblance of shape or form or space in my life. I find it really strange now but that's how I lived my life until I was in my late thirties.

​My comfort zone ruled my life.
Picture
But occasionally Life sends me a reminder of how I used to deal with the opportunities and decisions presented to me and I slip back into that irrational space of Fearing the Unknown.
 
But greater than my fear of the unknown is my fear of going back to being that woman who didn't trust and act on her intuition. I’m scared of once again being that woman who never wanted to acknowledge her doubts and fears and shortcomings. A woman who didn’t celebrate her accomplishments and creativeness and worthiness; my greatest struggle in life, as I believe it is for many of us beautifully flawed human beings.
 
But self-awareness and experience are a formidable team so I know I will never completely be Her again. She may creep back in on occasion to remind me there's always work to do on myself; and to remind me never to become complacent or to think I'm completely healed or that I can't grow any further. She keeps pushing me to learn and grow and reflect and to take responsibility and to acknowledge where my strengths are and where they aren’t.
 
So although I don’t want to be Her again, I am grateful for her presence in my life and thankful for the continual lessons she presents me with.
 
We sometimes forget that We – our messy, imperfect, inspiring, fabulous, coloured-outside-the-lines, shiny selves - are one of the greatest teachers we’ll ever have in life.
 
Joyful hugs,
 
Karen  xo
 
‘Imagine the choices you’d make if you had no fear – of falling, of losing, of being alone, of disapproval.’ Martha Beck
 
 
0 Comments

What have you done because everyone else was doing it?

8/11/2014

4 Comments

 
So, I’m more than seven months into The Year of More and I realise there have been a Number of Confessions along the way so I thought we should talk about that a bit more (no pun intended).

I haven't exactly kept to some of my goals for The Year of More as I’ve obviously done things which have resulted in the abovementioned confessions.

I’ve bought four items of clothing – a black skirt for work, a dress to wear to a fancy dress party (which I didn’t end up wearing as I was sick and couldn’t go out to have fun) and two pairs of tights. Oh, okay, and a pair of tog/bather/swimmer bottoms as my others were a tad too snug (too much information??).

And they were too snug due to all the chocolate and ice cream I boldly declared I wouldn’t buy.

I’ve also bought a DVD. Okay, so I’ve bought two DVDs. You have this way of just getting this information out of me! The first DVD I bought was ‘Before Midnight’ (you can read all about that here http://www.theyearofmore.com/blog/how-much-would-you-pay-for-love) and the second one was another copy of ‘Enchanted’ as my current copy got stuck inside my DVD player and never came out again.


Picture
And the reason why I couldn’t possibly wait until the end of The Year of More to buy another copy is because ‘Enchanted’ is the movie Mum and I were watching as I sat holding her hand the night she passed away. Well, I was watching it and telling her what was happening. I’d bought a copy to give to her but sadly, she was unconscious by the time I arrived in Melbourne so she never got to watch it. 

I know how much she would have absolutely loved that movie so I watch it every year on her birthday and anniversary. And on other random days when I just feel like watching it. I know it’s silly but it makes me feel close to her. When I was a little girl, one of my absolute Favourite Things To Do, was to spend Saturday afternoon cuddled up on the lounge with Mum as we watched movies on TV. Our favourites were musicals but we both loved a good western as well. And musical westerns, well they were just the bees knees.

By the way, I know I could use the acronym TYoM so you don’t have to read The Year of More in full each and every time but I really like using Full Words. Sorry. I usually write ‘laugh out loud’ too. And ‘oh my goodness’. I just love full written words. It’s such a shame they’ve all been shortened by The Text Message Monster.

Okay, so all these confessions got me thinking about when we say we’re going to do something and we don’t. 

Or when our goals don’t exactly turn out how we might have intended. 

Or when we set ourselves a goal that is simply unrealistic. 
Picture
It’s not that I’m unhappy or disappointed with what I’ve done so far during The Year of More.

I’m more aware of where my money goes. 

I’m saving more money than I usually do. 

I have created The Most Kick Ass Spreadsheet with each day’s expenditure nerdily listed in it.

I’m wearing clothes I haven’t worn in ages.

I’m not spending as much time shopping.

I’m decluttering and donating unused items.

I’m enjoying nurturing my inner child by drawing on my blackboard.

I’m having an enormous amount of fun writing to you about all of my quirky goings on.

And most importantly, I have created more Joy in My Life, which was definitely one of my major goals.


Picture
I’d like to tell you a story.

As you may know if you’ve read my post about my childhood typewriter Ollie (http://www.theyearofmore.com/blog/have-you-ever-taken-a-drop-in-pay-in-exchange-for-greater-job-happiness) I never had a bike as a child. In fact, not only did I not own a bike, I never actually learnt to ride one. I have a vague recollection of someone trying to teach me but I was so wobbly and fearful, I suspect they gave up. Okay, so it was most likely me that would have given up. I wasn’t a very adventurous child. Putting myself in physical danger wasn’t really my thing. 

Picture
So I’ve managed to go through life without knowing how to ride a bike properly. I kid you not, up until I was twenty-one, the only time I’d successfully ridden a bike was in Holland during a Contiki tour of Europe. I’m not sure I exactly tiptoed through the tulips; it was more like fearfully wobbling through them. I’m pretty sure I would have been too embarrassed to tell everyone I couldn’t ride a bike so I just jumped on and hoped for the best. Thankfully it was pretty straightforward. And everyone was probably too hungover to notice if I went off course now and then. Thank you Amsterdam, I love you for being so flat!

Anyway, so fast forward to my mid-thirties and for some bizarre reason I decided to spend my tax refund on a bike. And a helmet. And some crazy contraption to put on my car so I could take The Bike places. 

So I went to the bike store with a friend and carefully selected My Very First Bike. 

He was purple and I was so excited that I finally had a bike.

Picture
The thing was though, I didn’t really want to ride a bike. 

I have a fear of falling. From pretty much anywhere and from any height. So things like skateboards and bikes are as terrifying to me as planes and Very Tall Buildings. Actually, they’re even scarier as I actually feel really safe in planes and once I even managed to jump out of one quite successfully. (It was the biggest adrenalin rush ever.)

Plus I had a Very Traumatic Bike Experience when I was a little girl when I fell head first over the handlebars of some random boy’s bike, attempting to ride down Billycart Hill. 

Billycart Hill was steep. 

And curvy. 

And steep. 

Very very steep. 

And downright scary. I can’t imagine I actually wanted to get on that too-big-for-me bike and ride down Billycart Hill to my possible death, err, to the bottom. But someone would have pried a book out of my hands and I would have done it because Everyone Else Was. It was quite clearly a perfectly terrifying example of peer group pressure. 

I ended up donating a rather large chunk of skin from my foot to the asphalt on Billycart Hill.

Ouch.

Picture
This bike is more my style. I’m pretty sure Dad still has Little Red Tricycle in the garage somewhere.
So why did I spend a few hundred dollars on a bike? And another fifty on a helmet and another hundred on some crazy contraption to put on my car?

Because I ‘shoulded’ myself. 

I thought I 'should' be able to ride a bike because that’s what people do. 

In my mind, everyone else on the entire planet could ride a bike and I couldn’t. And I honestly thought there was something wrong with that.

That there was something wrong with me.

Picture
So the following Sunday morning I spent a ridiculous amount of time figuring out how to attach The Crazy Contraption to Evie (my car at the time) and me and The Bike (see, it’s an inanimate object and I didn’t even name it… that’s a sign right there that all was not well in Karen and Bike World), headed down to a bayside suburb of Brisbane and we went for a ride together along the bike path.

Because I knew I couldn’t venture onto the road with The Bike just yet. We were only on our first date afterall. I needed to take things slowly.

Only problem was, I seemed to have forgotten that I still didn’t really know how to ride a bike. 

And I secretly still dreamt of one with training wheels and a pretty basket with little tassels flying out as I rode down the street. 

On the footpath. 

In front of my parents house. 

Because that’s where you learn to ride a bike. 

Not on your own, on a busy bike path when you’re 35.

Picture
It was destined to end in tears.

And it did.

Mine.

Things went okay for a while. To my utter amazement The Bike and I managed to stay upright for a few kilometres of bike path. 

See, even now, this feels embarrassing to be admitting this happened. But you know what?

Why on earth did I think I would so easily be able to do something I had never been taught?

I wouldn’t try to write a computer program if I didn’t know how.


Or I wouldn’t try to build a bridge if I didn’t know how.

So me and The Bike are coasting along enjoying the view (to be honest, I think I was too nervous to really be enjoying anything) and I thought I was doing okay sharing the bike path with Other Peeps and Their Bikes when all of a sudden two people yelled at me for not ringing my bell or some other such bike related task I’d never been shown.

That’s the thing, if you’re out on a bike, people expect you to know what you’re doing. Which is more than fair enough.

At that moment, the minuscule amount of confidence I had started with, plummeted into the earth beneath The Bike’s shiny new wheels and I knew the odds of us making it to Date Number Two were quite slim.

I took The Bike home and kept him in the garage for years until I finally gave him away.

Picture
And each time I drove into the garage I would see him there and feel bad that I had failed so miserably at something which everyone else seemed to find so incredibly simple and enjoyable. 

That wasn’t a particularly happy time of my life so I found lots and lots of similar failings to beat myself up about as well.

Until something within me shifted and I drove in one night and had what Oprah would call an 'aha moment' - I thought, ‘I don’t need to be able to ride a bike!’ and from then on it became a reminder to never tell myself I ‘should’ be able to do something. Especially if it's something I've spent my entire life quite happily Not Doing. 

And to remind myself that beating myself up isn’t a very kind thing to be doing. 

And to especially remind myself that I am capable of so many wonderful things, so it’s okay to let go of the ones I’m not that good at.

And bike riding definitely appeared to fall into that category.

There’s the slightest of chances I would have been better off sticking with the training wheels and basket.

Picture
Awwwww, how cute!
So, my point (I do finally get to them occasionally), is that we’re not all good at the same things so comparing ourselves to others is quite simply, a ridiculous thing for us to do. But we do it All The Time.   

We compare how we look.

We compare what we have.

We compare what we can do.

Picture
Years ago when I was contemplating a job change, my beautiful friend Nathan very wisely said to me ‘You can do anything.’ I let those words really sink in and to this day, those four little words still have the hugest impact on me. 

But I didn’t hear those words and think, ‘I’m going to climb Mt Everest’ or ‘I’m going to become a brain surgeon’ because for various reasons I wouldn’t, (a) enjoy, or (b) be good at either of those pursuits. But my heart heard those words and knew that there are many skills I have and I can put those skills to great use Out in The World. It's often a case of simply working out what our skills and passions are more than anything else.

Sometimes we spend so much time focusing on what we feel we’re not good at, rather than putting our energy into what we are fabulous at!

And even though I may not have stuck to The Rules for The Year of More as well as someone else who creates a Blog and declares they’re going to do A, B and C and actually does A, B and C, I am really proud of what I’ve achieved so far and I am super proud of the changes I’ve made in my life and the self-awareness I’m gaining about all sorts of wonderful things.

And I’m super proud of the fact that I can openly and honestly share my successes and failings and quirks and vulnerabilities and fears and dreams with you via this Blog. 

Because we all have them. 

The most successful people in the world have failed. 

They’ve been vulnerable. 

They’ve been afraid. 

They have dreams just like you and I.

And some come true and some don’t.

If life is about learning and growing and experiencing, then surely it's better to trip and fall, and question and ponder, and check in with yourself - your heart and your soul - than to simply follow a formula and achieve a goal?

If someone sets themselves the goal of losing weight and they lose 20 kilos by sticking to a strict diet, they may never actually figure out why they put on the weight in the first place.

Or if I had forced myself to learn how to ride a bike, I may never have worked out that I was doing it for The Wrong Reasons.

Picture
I could have gone an entire year without buying an item of clothing or a DVD and never actually learnt anything about myself because I was always so completely focused on the end goal. 

So if there’s something you want to do, give it a go. And don’t weigh its success so much by the end goal, but how you go along the way. 

What do you learn? 

How do you grow? 

How do you feel when you stumble? 

What do you do to pick yourself up and start again?

And if you’re doing something Because You Think You Should or Because Everyone Else is Doing It, check in and ask yourself:

Picture
Whatever you do, do it with passion and heart and you can’t go wrong.

Joyful hugs,

Karen  xo

'Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.'  Louisa May Alcott


4 Comments
    Picture

    This is me

    Hi, I’m Karen Young and I live on the beautiful Sunshine Coast in Australia. I'm a passionate, nerdy, loud, quirky introvert who loves words, elephants, people, the beach, champagne, chocolate, sunsets, trees, travel, books, Joy of every kind but especially Letterbox Joy, Writing Joy and Theatre Joy. I adore being inspired to Live More, Love More and Be More. I love fiercely and hurt deeply. I make mistakes, lots and lots of lots of mistakes! And I learn from most of them although some lessons seem to take me a lifetime to learn so Life is most definitely a constant Work In Progress xo

    Archives

    December 2016
    August 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    September 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014

    Categories

    All
    Being Dumped
    Book Joy
    Chocolate
    Christmas
    Dad
    Dessert For Dinner
    Divorce
    Dresses
    Easter
    Failure
    Fear
    Food
    Job Satisfaction
    Karen-Joy-Mas
    Letterbox Joy
    Love
    Love Languages
    Low Bride DNA
    Mum
    Nerdiness
    New Year
    Self Love
    Spending Diary
    Stripey Bags
    Stuff
    Typewriter Love
    Weddings
    Weight
    Weight Watchers
    Work
    Wrinkles

    RSS Feed

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.