An enormous WELCOME to my very first post!
I thought I’d be brave and dip my toe into the blogging world….so I have! Mainly to write about our transition from the UK to Houston but also to highlight some (hopefully) inspirational stuff on the way! I must warn you though – it won’t be a literary masterpiece. More like colloquial scribble! Anyway, here goes!
As you may know, it’s been a weird old time for us preparing for something that was meant to be happening and then wasn’t! We moved out of the house, sold the car, pulled the kids out of school, sent our belongings off to the States and then a day before we were meant to leave…BOOM! The US weren’t ready to have us yet! Not without the correct paperwork anyway! So for the last four months, whilst that’s being compiled, we’ve been living out of a suitcase, borrowing cars, staying mostly with my in-laws and attempting home schooling (more like ‘unschooling’!)
It’s certainly been tense at times, to say the least, but there’s been something that’s really helped through the ‘what ifs’ (worrying about what the future holds) and the ‘if onlys’ (dwelling on the past). When my mind goes wandering into the future, I can get anxious! Very anxious! Or when it goes back into the past, I can feel really very sad. Either way it does my head in! The past is done…..there’s nothing I can do to change that. And I’ll just have to wait to cross future’s bridge before I worry about what the conditions may be like there.
So I bring myself back to the present moment. How? I’ll give you an example……I’m sitting in a car jam, which’ll make me late for my appointment, and I start getting stressed about it. But what can I do? That stress won’t make the jam disappear or get me to my appointment any earlier. So I send a message to say I’ll be late, then take a couple of very deep breaths in and deep breaths out! I start looking around…..seeing what’s there…..listening for sounds…..becoming aware of what I’m sitting on and how that feels. Why? Because it helps me realise that right in that moment I’m actually absolutely fine. And that rebalances me. (And I notice the stress disappearing!) I may very well be arriving late for my appointment…..but at least I’ll be arriving happier!
My best teachers on this? The kids……and our dogs! They’re all naturals at it! Plus Eckhart Tolle’s book The Power of Now has been hugely inspiring. If you haven’t read it …..I highly recommend it! It’s certainly transformed my thinking!
For now, thanks for reading! I hope you’ve enjoyed it. I’ll be back in touch again soon.
Until then, may we….
Bye…for now!
Naturally Yas 