7 lessons I have learnt to help me be braver in life and love.
Last week’s article explored the concept of making a choice and the burden of indecision. Learning to make decisions effectively also means that you are ok with risk, that you are open to the endless possibilities that might happen. We often fear making these decisions because we are so busy listening to the old stories playing in our minds and doubt ourselves. When it comes to making choices concerning family, relationships, career etc, we need to embrace being vulnerable and the ‘risk’ that comes with making our decisions.
Today’s post is all about what we can learn when we embrace taking a chance.
And the biggest chance of all? Well, that’s easy… it’s matters of the heart and love.
Taking a chance on love in lockdown
My journey with love has been quite an adventure; many heartbreaks and speed bumps along the way, especially in my 20’s and early 30’s. Living in our covid world, I have heard people repeatedly say ‘it’s impossible to meet someone if you are single now’. However, my experience has been the opposite. I actually met my husband right in the middle of a Melbourne lockdown in 2020. Little did I know that a stroll within my 5km radius would be my LAST first date. Within less than a year of dating, we were engaged and got married in 2021 after lockdown number seven!
And here comes the ‘crazy’ bit…. My family has never met him! His family has never met me! They all live 20,000 miles away in Ireland. The last time I met my family; I was single, in my mid-thirties and focused on research and my career. It truly has been a leap of faith and the best chance I have ever taken. Instead of trying to control it or make the story go a certain way, I tried to just embrace it and see where it lead. I could never have predicted it would go this well.
I now look back on my journey and there are so many lessons I would love to tell my 30-year-old self to help her take more chances with life and love.
- Listen more to YOUR internal compass. How do you feel about your choices? What do you really want? Just trust your instincts.
- Take note of your thought patterns. Are you just replaying old stories in your mind? How is this helping/hindering you?
- Let go of controlling the story and the expectations. No one knows what their next chapter will be. Just keep coming back to the here and now and enjoy it!
- Embrace the unknown and get excited about what might be. You don’t know how good it could be.
- You don’t have to have the same path as everyone else. Neither path is better or worse. Your story is your story.
- Let go of trying to please everyone and get approval/validation. Everyone is so caught up in their own story that you will never achieve this and you don’t have to. You do you!
- Learn to love time with yourself. The most important relationship is the one you have with yourself. How do you talk to yourself? How do you treat yourself? This is where the work is.
This list of lessons is by no means exhaustive or new knowledge to a lot of you. Hindsight is also a wonderful thing and I fully believe the chapters we live in happen for a reason. These experiences give us the chance to grow and develop if we choose.
Right now in our pandemic world, it might feel heavy and hard to even think of taking a big risk or chance, but what if we were just 1% braver with our life choices??
What chances would we take?
What would we do more of?
What would we let go of?
Everything you want in life is there for you RIGHT NOW …if you dare to take a step forward! Take it from the girl who found a husband in a pandemic!
MC
#lockdownlovestory