Be prepared for everything you prepare for to go awry

Seriously, Mother Nature – are you going through the menopause too? Because you’re certainly out of sorts at the mo!

 

This morning I noticed my sandals sitting beside my waterproof hiking boots, and just resigned myself to putting them away. Yes we had 19degree celsius warm sunny days in March. Yes, I was walking Amelia in shorts and a t-shirt but now we are experiencing 1degree weather, with hailstones and biting wind.

 

I had left the sandals out both in a sense of hope and one of preparedness. I was prepared for good weather – yay!

 

But being prepared doesn’t mean the thing we want is going to happen and certainly not in the way we planned it.

 

Now, I’m still all about preparedness because the more prepared we are, the more we are able to adapt and be flexible in the face of changing circumstance. It’s when we are rigid in our plans and unable to be flexible that we come unstuck in life.

 

Because sh!t is going to happen. It’s how you react to it that makes life interesting. Do you greet upset and mishap with horror and resist change with all your might? 

 

Then life is going to be very, very hard on you.

 

If you can; cultivate an attitude of preparedness for anything, have your plans but know you may need to tear them up and start over.  Are you able to learn into a seeming disaster and ask, ‘where’s the good here? What’s my silver lining?’

 

Because there always is one, if we care to look.

 

My pc died yesterday. Which is unfortunate but it could have been way worse.

 

At Christmas I left it in with my local tech company for a clean up. They sent it back exactly the same except they had taken everything I’d stored, (which was a lot – I’m a digital hoarder) – and put it on an external hard drive.

 

I hated them for it. That was not what I wanted and I couldn’t find anything.

 

I barely used it between then and now and when I went to switch it on yesterday, there was no power at all, not a spark of life.

 

But the good news was all my notes, files, audios, courses – all of them were preserved on the external hard drive. And now I get to buy a new laptop and take time to sort through everything I have stored and create a proper filing system with only relevant and useful information saved.

 

Now that’s a seemingly innocuous example of finding a silver lining but I have used this idea of opening myself to an alternative than the one I was planning for when denied it for a few years now.

 

Before that, I got miserable and exhausted if I didn’t get the job, the promotion, the house, the boyfriend whatever it was I thought I wanted. I would lose days, weeks, months and longer pining for something not realising all the opportunities for happiness and fulfillment that I was missing.

 

Now, when I don’t get the thing I want, I know something even better is on the way. 

 

I missed out on a coaching course, but now something even more right for me and where I’m at is showing up.

 

When I was moving house last year, I was still considering staying in England and the one house I wanted, I was too late to put in an offer. And instead the idea came to move back home and am so glad I did so.

 

I was working with a particular client niche and not enjoying it, so clients dried up and I almost started panicking but that pause gave me time to think about who I really wanted to work with and at what stage they are in their journey and now, the perfect people are showing up to sign up and work with me.

 

Everything happens FOR you. Not to you. FOR you.

 

Lean into what happens in your life, expecting good things to happen. 

 

When plans go awry, get excited and curious, what else if going to show up for you now? What different direction are you being guided to. Be open to life’s journey, instead of trying to force your own way forward.

 

Because we’re here for a short time and we are the ones who create struggle and strife in our lives. Accept and look for more. Be like water, flowing over and around, not trying to go through what’s in your path.

 

Psychologists call it a growth mindset. I call it peace of mind.

 

Love,

Cynthia xx