This has been in my drafts for 6 years now but it could have been written today because everything in it still resonates. I’m posting it now so it’s easier to find when I no doubt will feel similar again in the future.
“This is my apology to friends who have sent me messages recently that I either haven’t replied to yet or that took me a very long time to reply to… I’ve been in hiding mode.
For the long apology read on. For the short apology: I’m so sorry, I’m trying to pull myself out of hiding and catch up with you all.
My closest friends will probably recognise that I do this every now and again. I’ll suddenly be even more crap at replying to messages than normal – sometimes it’s weeks or months before I respond. Or I’ll not make plans with you, or make it out the house to meet up if we do. And I want to say I’m truly sorry for when I do that; I genuinely love and appreciate your friendship but I’ve gone into hibernate mode and hidden myself away.
Sometimes I hide away because I’m mentally and physically exhausted and just getting up and surviving the day is all I can achieve.
Sometimes I hide because I don’t know how to answer the inevitable question of ‘what have you been up to?’
Sometimes I hide because I’m overwhelmed with things to do yet I can’t seem to work out where to start.
Sometimes I hide because being in the real world surrounded by people reminds me that in my world I feel alone.
Sometimes I hide because I’ve just lost interest in everything for no reason and I don’t want to bring anyone else down.
And sometimes I haven’t worked out the reason why, it just happens.”
What I want you to know:
If I’m rubbish at replying to your message, or I haven’t seen you in ages, please know that I do love you and I’m grateful for your friendship but I’m probably in hiding for one or more of the reasons above until I sort my own head out and I hope you understand.
I’ve been thinking a lot about grief and loss recently. I’ve worked through my thoughts and feelings on my experience of grief and loss in my own head and through counselling, but I’ve never written any of it down.
So here it goes…
I grieve every day. Not always for the same things, but always for something. The grief that never leaves me is for the people I’ve lost in my life; my dad, other family members and people I knew but wasn’t particularly close with, yet whom still impacted my life and changed me and my thinking in one way or another.
I grieve for the relationships and friendships that have changed no matter how hard I try to not let them. I’m grateful to still have these people in my life in any capacity, but I’m sad for the ways things are different as we grow older. I know life moves on and we all grow at different paces but there are milestones friends are now experiencing that I can’t relate to and that changes our relationship even if we don’t want it to.
I grieve for previous versions of myself which are long gone; for the life that could have been, and that I always thought I would have, if certain things hadn’t happened or if I’d made different decisions.
I grieve for the years I lost and the time I can’t get back when I was in a depressive fog; existing but not really living.
I grieve for the confidence and optimism I lost at 22 that if I’m honest I’ve never really regained. For the younger version of me that expected to exist in a world where walking at lunch in the city I grew up in wouldn’t lead to something traumatic.
I grieve for happy moments once they’re over; even though I know I’m truly experiencing happiness in that moment, I’m sad knowing it won’t last.
Despite all this, I know that I’ve learned from these feelings and emotions and I know it’s shaped me into the person I am today.
I know it’s made me gain perspective and maturity I would probably never have had so early in life if I hadn’t gone through these experiences.
I know how important it is to feel all my feelings and to think all my thoughts because that’s part of the process.
I know it’s important to accept situations for what they are and to keep moving, or I’ll end up stuck – back to existing and not really living.
I know it’s important to talk about grief and loss and death, because it’s all too often hushed and seen as too morbid but talking about it openly isn’t shameful.
I know that even though people and experiences might be lost, I still have memories that I can relive over and over again. I take a lot of photos in my life and this is part of why; it helps me relive happy moments and it’s a coping mechanism for the sadness I know I’ll feel when that moment is over.
Things I want to remember:
Grief is inevitable – it’s a part of life. Everyone will experience it in some capacity and at some point, so we need to talk about it. It’s not a shameful secret.
It’s never ending. You might get better at managing your response to it and at handling your feelings but it’ll never go away.
Feeling the losses in your life is not mutually exclusive with experiencing happy times; they can, and do, coexist.
I’m two weeks back into full time work and I’ve tried to write this blog a few times in the past month but have struggled to condense my year’s worth of learning about myself into something short enough to digest. This isn’t as succinct as I’d like but these are the 7 things that have come to my mind first when I’m asked about my year off so I guess that means they’ve all had a big impact on my life. They are learnings that I want to take with me and remember going back into work and beyond, so this is as much of a note to my future self as it is to anyone else who’s interested in what I’ve learned!
1. The environment around me significantly affects my ability to function, concentrate and think.
I noticed pretty quickly after I finished work that I needed both a clear physical and mental environment before I could actually be productive. Perhaps naively, I thought I would finish work and straight away I would have all the time in the world to do the things I’d set out to do. However, because I still had lots of things on my mind and had tidy-yet-somewhat-cluttered spaces in my home I couldn’t concentrate properly on reading or learning. Cue a massive decluttering spree that Marie Kondo would be proud of I’m sure. So I now know I feel much calmer, relaxed and more able to focus when I have a clearer space around me (physically and online). I’ve also set up a OneNote for my life so that when I have things cluttering up my head I can stick it on the relevant list to do, or think about, later; that way everything is all in one place and I can get on with my day and not worry that I’ll forget about it.
To remember:
Make sure you invest a little bit of time keeping your physical, online and mental environments clutter-free and you will feel calmer and more able to focus.
2. It’s okay if I change my own plans.
This one has been a tough lesson for me. I’m not much of a planner usually but if I do say to myself I’m going to do something I’m pretty stubborn with myself and always feel like I absolutely have to do it. This year I had many plans of learning, reading, volunteering and travel. I’ve probably only achieved half of what I set out to do, but I’m learning to be okay with that because I’ve still achieved a lot. I’ve done some online courses, I’ve read a lot, I’ve had a few holidays but more than anything I’ve learned about myself and I might not have learned the things I have if I had been focused on getting the original things done just because I felt like I had to.
To remember:
Don’t stress yourself out by thinking you have to stick to something just because you said you would. If the reasons why you want to (or don’t want to) do something have changed that’s completely fine.
3. Habits rule all.
It may sound boring but sticking to a routine, even when I don’t have to, and creating good habits is key to me being productive and achieving my goals. When I first finished work last year I just enjoyed doing things when I wanted to, but after a couple of weeks I realised I wasn’t really making progress on my goals and time was getting away from me. So I sat down and wrote down a daily routine to give myself some structure. I found this incredibly helpful in making sure I could balance all the mundane tasks that needed doing, the more enjoyable, relaxing things, as well as doing reading and learning that I’d set out to do. I also created new habits like watching a TED talk with my morning coffee to inspire me for the day ahead- this has become such an automatic routine in my day now that I’ve kept it up since starting back at work. I’ve also learned a lot about habits not just from my own experience but from ‘The Power of Habit’ by Charles Duhigg which is a brilliant read.
To remember:
Making good habits and giving yourself a routine to follow will help you be productive. Give yourself the time to set them up in the first place and stick with them until they become automatic.
4. Everything in life is an opportunity to learn.
I’ve worked on my mindset a lot this year. I’ve often been told that I appear to be a really positive person but inside my own head things don’t always play out in a positive way, and like many people I worry a lot and can have a cynical default setting. But having read quite a bit on how mindset really does impact on how we feel about many aspects of our lives I’ve switched my default setting to see everything as an opportunity for growth and learning. This has been quite a hard one for me, and I’m sure it’ll be a challenge to take forward in a work environment, but the more I practice seeing opportunities to learn rather than a success or failure the more I hope this will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Linked to this is a phrase I read in a book recently – ‘life is not a zero sum game’ – and it’s stuck with me. What others around me are doing or not doing should have no bearing on me.
To remember:
Life is on a continuum not a two-point scale.
Everything is an opportunity to learn and grow.
5. Exercise is as good for me mentally as it is for me physically.
This is probably an obvious one but I honestly didn’t believe the impact it could have until I made exercise a habit. This has been a slowly developing realisation after doing various home workout programmes the past few years but I truly began to believe it when I started personal training. I’ve never been one to get that rush of endorphins people talk about after physical exercise but I have started getting feelings of being proud of myself for what I can do. My PT has always had faith in me when I didn’t have it myself to do certain movements or use certain weights and that’s helped me over time to build my own confidence. I love seeing the small steps of progress I make in the gym and that’s taught me so much about enjoying the journey rather than just focusing on the end goal. And this approach to physical progress has transferred over into the way I approach many other things in life now (see learning no 4 above 🙂 ). In addition, spending time doing exercise gives my mind the space to wind down and relax. This has helped me in particular after my second day back at work where I felt overloaded and overwhelmed with information, I was tired and had about an hour free between finishing work and meeting colleagues for dinner. Even a year ago I would have defaulted to watching TV thinking that would help me relax but instead my habit kicked in and I did a quick workout. I came out the gym feeling like a different person and with a much clearer head.
To remember:
Enjoy the journey and celebrate small steps.
Even if you’re tired, go and do a workout and you will feel the benefit of a clearer mind.
6. Assume nothing.
I’m learning to make no assumptions and no judgements about anyone. It’s always annoyed me when people make assumptions about me before they really know me, but I’ve definitely been guilty of doing it to others in the past. Maybe it’s to do with my approach to living life more slowly now but I think I’ve been better at recognising when I do this and challenging myself to find out more information before having an opinion. You really don’t know what someone else is going/has gone through unless you’ve asked them, yet we all make quick judgements which essentially are made up of assumptions. So I’ve tried to make ‘assume nothing’ my default and that way it also encourages me to find out more about the person.
To remember:
Assume nothing until you know more.
7. Stay true to your mantra.
Another mental trick I’ve picked up is to have my own mantra to live by (I know, cliché and all). It’s pretty much a very short summary of the values I hold of how I want to live my life but in a succinct enough phrase that I can easily remember it! Now when opportunities, or anything really, crops up my mantra pops into my head and it’s easy for me to do a quick check to see whether the opportunity or thing is aligned to my values.
To remember:
Your mantra is there to help and remind you of what’s important.
I’ve been made to think about this question in two very different situations in the past couple of months. The first time was when I started with my personal trainer. Alongside all the health declarations on the form I had to fill out was a couple of pages for me to reflect on what I would like my life legacy to be. It may sound morbid to some but I actually find it quite liberating. Now that I know what impact I want to have on the world that should help guide me with everything I do.
And the second time I’ve been prompted to think about my intentions was during a free online course called ‘The Self-Aware Coach‘. The course is aimed at those in leadership or coaching roles but in my opinion the content is just as valid for anyone and everyone because it’s largely based on self-awareness – and wouldn’t we all benefit from everyone being more self-aware?! Anyway, the course gets you to reflect on what your intention is in any given situation: is it to serve your own interests or is it to serve others?
Ever since I first came across Simon Sinek (author of Start With Why) I’ve tried to carry the ‘what’s my purpose’ thought with me in many situations, however I admit these have largely been at work. I had never really thought of doing that with my personal life too. So after this recent course and having to write down what I want my legacy to be for my PT here are my learning points and reflections.
1. Know your values and be intentional about life.
There are various different value ‘systems’ e.g.
Egocentric – I’ll do what I want
Traditional – do the right thing, obey higher authority
Opportunistic – achieve, succeed, be the best, full of opportunities and competition
Relational – community and wellbeing of everyone and the system
Everyone will have a different preference for one, or maybe fall within a few.
Know what your values are and then be intentional about living with them in mind – your interactions with others are an example of what you value.
2. It’s not about absolutes.
Simply put life is a journey, it’s not about being one thing or another. So next time you feel like you need to be the expert about something or you feel incompetent for not knowing something, remember that everything is a learning process. It’s a continuum. It doesn’t necessarily have fixed start and end points. Sometimes you’re further along that journey than other times – but wherever you are, that’s fine. Just be self-aware enough to know where you are.
3. It’s all in the mindset.
Applying mindset to your work:
Is it a job (a means to an end)? Is it a career (advancing yourself further up the ladder)? Or is it a passion or calling (a part of who you are and aligned to your values)?
I’ve learned a lot about mindset from Carol Dweck (author of Mindset) but I hadn’t really thought of it in this context before. It’s my choice how I view my work and I need to remember that.
The last couple of years I have fully jumped onto the hygge hype. I realised that I have pretty much always sought out a lot of what is typically thought of as ‘hyggelig’ in order to feel calm. I love candles, I love being cosy with blankets, I love moodlighting, I love fika (coffee and a sweet baked treat) etc etc.
So when I saw Meik Wiking (author of The Little Book of Hygge) had written another book it went to the top of my Amazon book wish list. This time the book (The Little Book of Lykke) talks all about the pursuit of happiness, how we could measure it and what factors make up happiness. Lykke is Danish for happiness in case you’re wondering.
Each chapter takes you through a different factor which have been found to have a large impact on happiness, using research or real-life examples. Happiness tips are given throughout and at the end of each chapter are short examples from around the world.
What I learned from this book:
1. You can view happiness from three different dimensions. Hopefully this will be a helpful reminder for me for when I’m feeling low or sad, to assess whether that is a ‘right now’ feeling or an overall feeling.
Affective (or hedonic) – being happy right now
Cognitive – being happy overall
Eudaimonia (ancient Greek for happiness) – based on Aristotle’s perception of happiness whereby the good life is meaningful and purposeful
2. Six main factors impacting happiness include:
Togetherness (or sense of community) – having a sense of being able to rely on others or to share experiences
Money – it isn’t always true that money makes you happier, inequality has a big (negative) impact on happiness, does being happy result in higher income or does a higher income result in happiness?
Health – the positive impact of cycling, forest bathing, mindfulness and having free healthcare
Freedom – of movement, of expression, of how to spend our time, of control over our work-life balance
Trust – people who trust other people are happier. Success is not a zero sum game. Inequality leads to mistrust, competition, resentment and anger – and reduces empathy
Kindness – being caring, having a sense of purpose, committing random acts of kindness and associated helper’s high, gaining perspective and practising gratitude. ‘Kindness breeds more kindness’
3. Cooperating is good for the survival of our species, so we are wired to feel good when we engage in it. Social skills, cooperation, empathy and trust are all part of the school curriculum in Denmark.
A couple of my favourite tips from the book:
To get more exercise into his day, after ordering a coffee Meik walks up and down five floors whilst waiting for his coffee to be ready. And, every two hours in front of the computer ‘costs’ him twenty-five push ups! (I feel walking would be easier to implement than push ups!)
Create a smile file. Somewhere to write down every nice comment you’ve received from colleagues, clients, bosses etc. We all tend to remember criticism far better than praise so the smile file would help people become more aware of positive comments too.
Encourage praise among colleagues to increase trust. ‘Employee of the week with a twist’ – the title goes to the colleague who has made their colleagues shine or told other people about their achievements.
