This year has been an absolute whirlwind, as I've mention various times before and through hardships and failures and happiness and loss I've had a few imperative learning curves. I have incurred some major changes in my life and reflection and hindsight are wonderful things...here we go.
1. You can learn from loss.
I can't deny that loosing someone you love is one of the most hardest times in your life. Mourning and grief is universal and as the five psychological stages pass, you can realise that such a weary emotional and mentally straining process can turn into a positive lesson. I learnt a great deal of resilience. Resilience during the moments when it was too hard to talk, to write, to communicate. Resilience when everyday, a pile of emotional baggage was dumped onto an already impending heap.
But I learnt a lesson, a personal coping mechanism that when life gets tough, it's gets easier when you become increasingly more positive and resilient.
2. Being optimistic isn't as bad as people tell you it is.
Me, being self disciplined and planned and linear is not easy and I've always been told that is a terrible characteristic for a person to have... It requires a lot of self control, something that I lack in. I believe that when you go with the flow, when things are unplanned and full of spontaneity, you have the ability to live your life to the full extent. It allows you to do things naturally, you ignite yourself through the things you love and the things you incidentally find yourself passionate about. I feel energized. And I haven't embraced this characteristic until November 2014 and it's honestly created a lot more for me. I think people who know me personally can agree that sponteneity makes everything all that much more exciting. My life has its own energy, as does yours and when it is abused, we feel lost and feel the need for unesecary control.
3. Meditation is powerful.
When the chaos and calamity of the real world gets too much, meditation has the ability to place me in a state of calm, stillness and consciousness whereby I can gain a sense of relaxation from being psychologically and spiritually centered. I used to view it as a 'hippy- herby thing' and underestimated its power. With the recommendation from good friends when times got increasingly overwhelming, it worked, most of the time, to aid reasonable and relative thinking.
4. Spending time alone is a good thing.
I preach this most indefinitely. It is underestimated. The most advantageous way to think and reconsider and reevaluate. My favourite thing to do is to go surfing. To drive for an hour to Freshwater beach with my music blasting , to slip into my wetsuit, grab my board and paddle out the back. I find the water therapeutic... I find nature therapeutic but the water is my safe haven. And as much as I hate being the only girl surfing, I sit and wait for the perfect wave and I have some time to think.
Minds change like the weather and I hope you'll remember one thing: today is never too late to create something brand new.
Elena, x
