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Imagine

IMG-0839So here it is. I have made it to the end of my personal working year. The end of the working year is a strange idea when you are in the wellness business. My personal work is my business, so although I may be powering towards writing the last few words of this post trying to put into perspective a 12 month cycle for a customer facing debrief, the work is far from over.  In fact it has only just begun. My head is already spinning around a year in review. The big lessons. How to integrate what I’ve learned into next years planning. How to plan differently. Who to partner with and of course much much more…..

What I find incredulous is that I started out this year hoping to write a blog post each week. Which I’ve kept up with far better than I expected.  I have certainly committed to the process. This time last year I was trying to plan blog posts, schedule them in time with the seasons and my own forced ideas of personal progression, only to find out that the spontaneous nature of my creative intuition has been my premier guiding force.

I found that even though I had started a huge amount of posts, that when I sat down to write or complete them that I simply wasn’t inspired enough to get the words out of my head onto the paper. The things I thought were important didn’t some how  live in the forefront of my mind at that moment. I have often misguidedly thought of myself as deeply liberated and if anything this year I have learned the opposite about myself. That I am very much confined by the idea of what people might think of me. Being a bride has amplified that awareness and I hope in the long run to have broken down that limitation for my benefit. This year blog writing for me has been transformative and become about flow, instinct, personal journey and quite frankly not giving a fuck about what anybody else thinks. That I need to write what I need to write when I need to write it. Sometimes that means I’ve been way ahead of the game and other times it means I’ve been way behind it. What has been the greatest thing about blogging here is emotional freedom it has given me to express myself. What had stated out as a brave step in personal exposure has become a gradual liberation of my personal opinion. Which can at times be totally contradictory. Good Luck with that.

2018 It’s been wild. It’s Scottish wild, here that I refer to – that it’s been a totally out of control bordering on misadventure, with most of the planets going backwards it’s hard to imagine that the celestial beings that roam our skies have not played a hand even for the most detached humans. Luckily though it is where the magic happens. For life to be spectacular it has to have some darkness and intrigue to be able to see the fireworks right?

I’m hoping that the Brexit fiasco is last of what encroaches on my personal life after all a shift in statehood is a big moment in anybody’s life. Along with marital status and nationhood. It’s been a big year…..

Now my need to collapse into myself grows. It’s the end of the year. It’s time to reflect, reward and plan for the next. To expand the time scales and begin to manifest again. As you wonder at it all. The big messages, the major fuck ups, the small victories. And in fact new Scottish words to describe it all clusterburach. Just the other week I was saying to a friend of mine that is 2018 had a meme it would be getting slap in the face by a seal with and octopus. Yes it’s been that kind of year, and lets face it who saw that coming!!!

There is so much to let go of in order to catch another star, to ride a bigger wave and swim in deeper oceans. We are all trying to hold on to so much….. while time slips gladly by. It’s only time, non-linear, perfect time that might only be another illusion to unblock. Maybe we can be it all. Maybe we can understand it all. To do so we have to be able to lose it all. There only moments after all, days, weeks, months, years and decades just strung together in such a way that we can watch them fade aways. Lose the attachment and wonder what could I be if I let go of more. The world turns and we all learn a little more how we change with the seasons and that we have our very own seasons to live through.  So on that note I’m giving myself the next few weeks off if you hear from me consider it a Holiday bonus. I might even surprise myself. Have a great few weeks.

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Merry Merrymas

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Well it’s time for me to take a ritual break. It’s one of the wonders of being self-employed you know. That you decide when you work and when you don’t. And I’ve decided that I’m taking from the end of this week to the second week in January off. I won’t be off off because taking time off of from writing The Life Doula blog helps me create time for other things. I love what I do. This is just a way of making time for contemplative practice and making sure that what I am doing is in line with who I am.

I like to use December as an uber planning meeting. I clean out the house, I de-clutter, I make home improvements and I plan the year ahead. Sometimes I feel rather over ambitious with my streamlining and sometime the big goals wish list can feel rather whimsical. Yet the main thing is, is that I set intent. I know exactly what I want to achieve from the next year before I get there and honestly sometimes I amaze myself. Not just with the process of planning the year, also when I make my way into the future discover that I achieved far more than even I had hoped. I love that sweet sense of unexpected success that goes hand in hand with a year well lived.

I’ve created my own personal ritual that revolves around the end of the year and I love it.

Tomorrow night I will be doing my last talk of the year too. Which will help people discover and create rituals in their life. Ritual can sound like a whole load a fooey whoo whoo that involves dancing in the moonlight, washing your face in the midsummer dew or in some parts of Scotland setting fire to a Viking long ship. Yes that’s actually thing.

For me though ritual is about finding connection, most significantly with yourself.  Ritual can take on all sorts of forms, from cleaning your shoes to brushing your teeth. It’s find a way to get in tune, listen to our inner workings and making space for something new. It’s wiping the slate clean for another attempt with the best start possible. About putting everything in place, that we might gain clarity, wisdom and insight. You don’t need, candles, you don’t need crystals, you just need intent.

In Scotland my country of origin, New Year (Hogmany) is the best celebrated winter festival and probably the best loved. There is a real belief that on this night of any night of the year that we can all start again. That we choose exactly want we want from life, that we can decide to bring love, joy and laughter into the world and let go of all our yesterdays in the hope of a better tomorrow. Everyone is included and whatever you decide is totally personal just for you. So in this December I’d like to invite you to consider what do you need that is just for you….?