Personal progress review
Regardless of the British weather, 2024 has been an epic summer of experience and excess for us. We celebrated 20 years of marriage in July with an incredible once-in-a-lifetime family trip to Bali via Kuala Lumpur, the location having been decided by incredible fortune by us winning a raffle prize. We have also visited family in Guernsey, stayed in a shepherds hut in the Lakes, attended outdoor & indoor music concerts and revisited summer childhood memories now my daughter has hit her teens. I’ve been living at 100mph but hadn’t really noticed the speedometer creeping up until my mood, productivity and motivation started to dip. And I began to pay for it in other ways too.
A ticking clock.
Being self-employed with a maturing daughter who is naturally wanting to spend less time with her parents we appreciate the next few summer seasons will probably be the last family ones for a while so have maxed this one out. I hadn’t really appreciated it at the time but spending 24/7 in hotel or small space accommodation inevitably means I don’t meditate daily. Sure, I find moments of mindfulness throughout the day but my formal sitting practice generally slides on holiday and this has the biggest cumulative impact on my mental health. And after 7 or 8 weeks of losing that up first thing morning meditation practice, it simply falls out of your psyche. You don’t prioritise it when in fact it’s exactly times like this - when you can’t be bothered to sit - that you need to do it most. The procrastination in itself is a clue you’ve reached ‘don’t care’ stage & you need to urgently reinstate some self-care. My daily non-negotiables had become maybes.
Letting the basics slip.
It wasn’t just the meditation habit that slipped. The humidity and heat, a lack of pavements and excessive numbers of wild dogs meant running in Bali was pretty much impossible so I couldn’t manage my stress or clear my head through exercise. And the jet lag interfered with my sleep pattern. Insomnia, unusual for me, was a powerful teacher of just how important strong foundations are in supporting our mental & physical health and happiness. At times my diet has been pretty awful too, relying on petrol station offerings or service station fast food. A result of my sleep, diet, exercise and meditation quality dropping, my irritability and reactivity started to impact my relationships. It was time to take stock of what had occurred. Look at how I was behaving, and do some growth-tracking, because it felt like I’d started to slip backwards into some bad habits, old ways of thinking and reacting.
Taking a few steps back.
I needed to take a few steps back to realise what I’d stopped doing. Hot yoga classes. The daily 45 minute woodland walk before starting work. Meditating for 20 mins. Daily journalling. Eating 30 varieties of plant across the week. 2 litres water daily. Sometimes it’s harder to spot what’s missing, but it’s THE most powerful indicator of what is awry. For me taking some time at the end of summer to reflect on the journey it’s taken, and how I’ve shown up for it, has been uncomfortable. But then healing isn’t linear, Ive heard it described as more of a spiral - revisiting old patterns and stories again and again until we are ready to make lasting change & release them.
It is a powerful reminder of just how important it is for us to not compromise on the daily activities, decisions & moments of self-care we all need to bring the best of ourselves into the day as we live it fully, moment by moment.
If you are interested to learn more about these and other techniques, the science and the bio-hacks our holistic program and I myself use, to begin your own path towards self-healing, then do reach out for a free discovery call.