So, I decided to interrupt the regular programming (if that’s what you call it) to write about something different. One thing that you may not know about me, is that I can be a bit rigid and that high levels of anxiety have lead me to a path of being a bit of a control freak. The term control freak is actually kind of awful sounding when you break it down and I always thought people who had control freak tendencies were kind of mean or something. It turns out, your average joe who’s pretty easy going can be one too!

My plan was that I wasn’t going to write anything about my present day life, until my blog was completely up to date (chronologically speaking) and that has been my plan since my blogs inception. Well, here I am, deviating from the plan. That probably doesn’t seem like a big deal, but to me it is as I like to manage the shit out of things so that things “go right” but being this way, can cause me to become a little rigid and not “in the flow”. Anyhow, I’m here, giving being in a flow a go (say that one fast a few times).

You may have observed that I have a tendency to overexplain myself and I think that comes from a deeper desire to be understood or to feel validated. I mean, who writes three paragraphs explaining why they are going to write something? Well, I guess that question answered itself eh!?

I haven’t really talked much about my spiritual beliefs, but that’s probably because they have become more important to me in the last six or so years. I don’t know the stats but most people I know have some sort of belief system, even if that’s that they don’t believe in anything (spiritually). Me, well I believe in the “universe”, and I don’t even know how to begin to explain what this is, but I guess it’s another version of God. It’s a faith in there being something bigger than myself (a belief in there being an unseen presence). It’s a belief that things will work out for me and I’m exactly where I need to be (right now) and to trust the process (of life). It’s a belief that the more you have an attitude of gratitude, the more you’ll attract positive outcomes. I can 100% say that focusing on all that is going well in my life has been quite transformative for me. Don’t get me wrong, there have been times when I can’t fathom why the hell some parts of my life have unfolded as they have, but by changing my perspective and looking at why something was happening “for me” instead of “to me”, I really have been able to look at situations differently. Flipping ones perspective is a gamechanger!

My spiritual journey is still in progress, but the foundation stones are pretty locked in and my intuition is not too shabby. I’m not always on the money, but I’m pretty good at reading the room and noticing when people are feeling a bit off. One of the things I’m working on is trying to make decisions from my heart (and use my intuition to influence my own life), rather than let my brain take over and overthink/analyze the shit out of everything! I seem to be able to tune into other people but when it comes to tuning into myself, that doesn’t seem to be as easy. That too, is something else I’m working on,

One of the things which I strongly believe in, is synchronicity. I feel like the Science Direct quote of synchronicity sums it up quite nicely “In psychology, synchronicity is defined as the meaningful coincidences that seem to have no cause”. I was going to include Jung (a famous psychiatrist dude’s) view on it too but it’s a bit too full on and I couldn’t even break it down into my own words really. My take from it is that these occurrences aren’t just coincidences, and if I am to put my own twist on things, that they have a more spiritual meaning and may be presented to us as learning opportunities by the universe. I don’t know if I have articulated that as well as I hoped, but hopefully you get the gist.

Synchronicity is at its peak for me at the moment, and everywhere I turn I’m hearing the same messages and conversations and/or situations, end up leading up that path, so I thought I’ll give you a couple of examples. The first couple are more around how you can be “in sync” with other people, and although they’re not groundbreaking or astronomical, they are meaningful to me. The others to follow are around the actual learning opportunities being offered to me.

Anyhow, recently, my partner and I were gifted some Elton John tickets and on the way to the stadium we were discussing how the Winnipeg Jets (my partners favourite NHL ice hockey team) mascot is called Benny. My partner was like how cool would it be if Elton named the song after the Winnipeg Jets and their mascot and we laughed as NHL ice hockey is predominantly followed in the USA and Canada and it’s a pretty niche sport, probably not something that Elton would follow in the UK. Anyhow, we rock on up to the stadium and get seated and I just about fell of my chair, when Elton’s first song came on and it was Benny and the Jets.

Another example was when I text my dad the other day (he’s not much of text man nor does he check his phone regularly) and he text back almost immediately and said he was checking for messages and like one second later my message came through. Some may think these are just coincidences, but I think they’re little messages from the universe. I’m not sure what the universe is telling me on those occasions, but I still think it’s pretty cool. How many times have you messaged somebody, and they’ve said, I was just thinking about you. Energy is everywhere isn’t it! What would happen if we reached out to our friends more often when they pass through our thoughts, certainly more conversations about how they were also thinking of you, I reckon.

On a more serious note though, lately the synchronizations that have been coming through are about being kind to myself. That phrase is a bit of a buzz phrase (if that’s a thing) these days and it can get thrown around a bit, but it’s something that seems to be coming through really strong for me. I’ll be reading a book where that will stand out and the next minute, I’ll see a quote for something really similar and then I’ll end up having a conversation with someone about being kind to themselves. There is more than one meaning of being kind to oneself, but the meaning I’m looking at is more around being compassionate to yourself. I’m extremely hard on myself and I don’t like making mistakes and lately if I make a balls up, instead of giving myself grief, I think to myself, what would I say to somebody else if they told me they had made the same mistake. It feels a hell of a lot nicer to hear those kind words that’s for sure and if you pay attention you may even notice that the way you talk to yourself even feels differently within your body.

Another synchronization that has been coming through that kind of feeds into the being kind of yourself theme, is the change theme. Once again, I often find myself being super critical of myself if I don’t feel like the changes I want are being made at a pace that I see as acceptable. I get super frustrated with myself and then feel like I’m not making any progress at all. I start to feel stuck and like things will never change. The issue as I see it, is that I’m being too rigid (there’s that word again) with my goals and aiming for perfection. My new mantra is that I’m aiming for progress, not perfection and damn that feels a lot better than telling myself I have failed if I have a small setback. Let’s face it, the saying you can’t run before you can walk, is super relevant when making goals and it’s a proven fact that you will more than likely fail if you bite off more than you can chew (man I jam packed that sentence with sayings didn’t I?). Just becoming a bit more aware of your inner dialogue is a huge gamechanger as I think we just tend to ignore that inner voice at times, even when it’s been telling you for 4 weeks you need to write a blog about this material.

I think the very last thing coming through, is the going with the flow theme. That’s a bit of a work in progress, but hey here I am interrupting the normal transmission to give you something different, so I would stay that’s a good place to start. Before I sign off, I challenge you to pay a bit more attention to your self talk (that voice chatting to you inside your head) and be kind to yourself. I also challenge you to take notice where the universe is trying to bring something to your attention to think about or take action on. You might chuckle to yourself when you realize the message/sign has been coming through for some time, but you unintentionally ignored it. For me, it was the repetitiveness of the themes and it came up so frequently that I couldn’t avoid them almost. Then it felt like the universe was like a little kid, pulling at my coat trying to get my attention, nagging me and saying what are you going to do with this information which keeps coming up. and I knew that I wanted/needed to write a blog and I eventually realized I had to do it now. And it’s funny because I feel like the pull to write this blog was external and internal, which I think is probably why the pull felt so strong as my inner being felt the call and I felt like the universe kept bringing the lessons up too.

I hope that my rambling have made some sort of sense and maybe just maybe somebody reading this will resonate with what I’m trying to say and maybe even make some observations in their own lives. In the meantime, I will keep being compassionate to myself, aiming for progress not perfection and going with the flow.

I’ll be back onboard soon with life in my 30’s so I can complete my mission of telling my life story and it will be interesting to see where things go after that and if there will be more musings of this nature and maybe I will start flowing into the next chapter instead of sliding.