2019: Striving to thrive. 2020: thriving!

I haven’t blogged in 2019 at all and I hadn’t planned on writing a year end/beginning blog post. And then I got an email notification on the last blog I posted and it reminded me of the reasons why I started blogging in the first place. Mostly to share my journey but along the way I learnt so much from the people who took the time to post comments and advice and the virtual friendships extending my tribe of people. Had the internet connectivity been better, I might have posted more, shared more. There’s certainly been no dearth of things going on to blog about.

Over the past few years, my life has been dominated by change. Change that I have sought actively in order to live a life that is more in line with the things that make me a happier, better human being. That has often meant taking a long hard look at myself and the things I am doing or allowing myself to be influenced to do. I read this somewhere and somehow it just clicked and made so much sense:

“When things go wrong in your life, always take a look at your inner circle. That’s all you have to do. Take a hard look at the people you are allowing to influence your life. Ask yourself if they are a positive or negative influence in your life. When you have your answer, make a change. You can control this situation, or stop it, by changing your inner circle”

Over the past years, my inner circle has changed radically and that momentum continues. In 2019, I have deliberately let go of more people and grieved their loss. I gained people and rejoiced. I battled my own demons and PTSD and came back from the brink of one of the worst episodes of suicidal depression that I have been through so far. I learnt that it’s possible to live my best fucking life while at the same time also not want to live another day or take another breath. I learnt that help is available when I am willing to be vulnerable enough to ask for it. I found my tribe of people rallying around me like a solid wall of love at my lowest moments. If that is not a blessing I don’t know what is. 

The blessings when we look for it are all around us. I was blessed at work, with great project teams that somehow kept things moving even when the bureaucracy threatened to stall all momentum. I was blessed with friends who accompanied me on grocery shopping trips and end of the week drinks and we laughed and cried and bitched and moaned and soldiered through our weeks of mindless drudgery. I was blessed with teams of healers, mentor and life coaches who worked with me to re-define what ‘thriving’ means for me and then get me on track to do just that. Thrive.

My dream of living completely debt free finally came into fruition through hard work and strict financial management. Going broke and homeless, stuck in a seemingly endless debt cycle, almost a decade ago was the best thing that could have happened to me. Being broke taught me invaluable life lessons and my mistakes were the bricks that built a better financial foundation. It also opened my eyes to the inner circle I had accrued at that point.

In all of these what I have learnt in 2019 the most is probably that – there’s no end to learning. Life keeps on teaching the same lessons until we have mastered it. Then we move on to new things. Me being me, every time I was challenged, I read books on it, researched it, analyzed my problem until I had a plan of action to tackle it that works for me. And as long as I kept putting one foot in front of the other, things kept moving, even when it seemed like nothing was happening. The waiting between the doing to reaping the fruits of my labor is probably what tests my patience the most.

I am still working on identifying new passions and goals that I want to pursue going forward. I am still working on learning to rest, to breathe, to just exist in the pause, to thrive even if I don’t always know what ‘thriving’ looks like. I am still learning to give myself the love that I keep trying to give to others. I am still learning to say ‘no”to others, so I can say ‘yes’ to myself.  I am still learning my lesson on not having to be responsible for everyone around me. I am still learning to let go, to let people walk their own path and learn their life lessons on their own time.

Letting go of that endless sense of responsibility for everyone else around me has led to an unprecedented level of freedom that I could have never anticipated. I have more money in my wallet and more head space to follow my heart and passions. This year, I want to team up with an NGO to start a shelter for victims of domestic violence. I want to travel more widely and have more ‘first time ever’ kind of experiences. I also want to go back to university at some point and change my career into a completely different field from what I am working in now. There’s so much to do and at the beginning of the year now it seems like I have endless time to get it all done 🙂 

So here’s a toast to a fabulous rocking 2019 and an even more wild 2020 coming up!!! May your year be blessed with whatever makes you thrive!

I could not stop grinning on my safari trip. Kenya, 2019. 

A few snaps of the big cats at Masai Mara. They were so freaking gorgeous!!!! Absolutely stunning!