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| Fishbourne, IOW - Lucy Benton Photography |
I’ve always been the sort of person who wants to learn about how other people live their lives. A few years back - think when I became a parent, I started really wanting to live very intentionally.
Over the last few years this has looked different depending on where we are in life. When E was 15 months & we were starting our business, we got rid of the telly. This was a 2 part action. 1) my toddler’s first sentence was “tiddy on pees “ & 2) Shaving off our Sky subscription & TV licence would do our budget good.
We were Live Telly free for 3ish years.
However now we’re hitting our 30s some sooner than others (*cough cough* Mr B! ) I started to think more about doing this intrinsically.
You see as a kid, I had this immense pressure to perform. I had to be the best at EVERYTHING. There was no room for failure. There was no space for emotional weakness. So what followed was me seeing my value & sense of self via my grades and abilities as a student. This changed at Sixth Form, I was struggling emotionally & my old tricks weren’t working, worse still, my grades were slipping. I remember speaking to one of my tutors and she saying “You can get B’s with sheer hard work, for A’s you need flair!” That really riled me up because I was working extremely hard & I still was struggling with the B’s. I used to have flair too. What the fuck was going on?! I barely survived my A Levels to tell you the truth.
This Type A personality wasn’t helping. Although I didn’t realise that until I had my first kid. I was so exhausted. A life time of trauma was waiting to be confronted. You know what guys, I couldn’t do it.
So I hid.
I hid away from the striving, I honestly thought coasting by was the best way to do things.
I was super poorly though, physically & mentally. I was just done in.
Anyways, I’ve done the work... I’ve made the tough choices , I’m on the path to undoing all the harm I’ve done / was done to myself.
I’m also learning that the answer isn’t striving so hard you can’t breathe as you are too overwhelmed, it also isn’t hiding away from the world. The answer is having enough, doing enough & being content with being enough.
To get here though, we can’t just consume for consumption sake, we’ve got to be more intentional about what we buy, what we give our time & energy to.
It doesn’t have to be super drastic. For me though just trying to be more mindful is hard work but it really makes me feel better.
This blog post has been prompted by watching The Minimalists - A Documentary. I think it’s got a lot to say. Very useful things for the time we live in. It’s not too late guys.
I heard this quote on there “Love People & use things. Doing it the other way NEVER works”. This
basically summarises what I need from my life.
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