My aha moment

If you’ve been following my blog then you’ll know it has taken me a long time to recover from adrenal fatigue. I wasn’t crashing after work anymore or on the weekends but I was still finding it really hard to get motivated or have the energy to workout and I was procrastinating a lot!

My naturopath had suggested I switch to a low carb, high fat diet which I started at the beginning of July but only lasted 9 days before I gave in to emotional/stress eating! I started the diet again last week and so far haven’t had any uncontrollable cravings :) I don’t know if the change in diet is making me more alert and energetic but I have been noticing that I feel more and more like myself.

What else has changed? I finally started meditating again. You can read last week’s review here. I started meditating at night because that was when I could fit it in but I don’t think I was getting the full benefits. Plus I was falling asleep half the time! So I knew I should meditate in the morning but I was only just getting into a routine to wake and workout. I caught up with some girlfriends the other weekend and had a really good chat with them. They knew everything that I had on my plate and that I didn’t want to give anything up. But they could see I was struggling. They suggested I alternate my mornings between meditating and working out and see how that went.

So on Monday I woke up and did my meditation. On Tuesday I woke up and meditated and then worked out. And that was my routine for the rest of the week. I guess I just had to let go and let it all fall into place.  Letting go has been really hard for me to do. It’s not that I’m a control freak. It’s the organisational Virgo in me. I have to plan things and then I have to stick to the plan. But then it got to the point where I was avoiding my plan because I knew I couldn’t do everything on it or procrastinating when I did try to tackle my to do list.

A few weeks ago I joined a 21 day virtual summit to reboot your life through interviews with female coaches giving life changing hacks and success tips. I haven’t watched all of the interviews but I have gained a lot of insights into myself and a lot of knowledge to put into practice. Some concepts have been a bit too ‘airy-fairy’ for me but I still listened with open ears. I do consider myself to be spiritual and would like to delve into this world a bit more but I’m still too mainstream I guess lol! There was a strong focus on self love which was just what I needed. Being a ‘people pleaser’ I worked really hard last year to put myself first. I think I did get to a ‘selfish’ stage and this year have been trying to find the balance between self love and my love for others. Being a major support for someone with depression in my life has made it hard to find this balance and has most likely been one of the major causes of stress in my life. There are some situations that just aren’t going to change any time soon and I have to accept that. But acceptance doesn’t equal less stress.

Add to that the fact that I have been living out of my comfort zone for pretty much the whole year. Becoming a consultant has definitely been a challenge for me. While I haven’t started my own coaching biz yet I do still have my own biz and for an introvert like me it has meant constantly stepping out of my comfort zone and facing so many different fears I didn’t even realise I had. But it has been great because I am learning so much about myself and business that I will be able to use when I finish my Lifestyle, Food and Wellness Coaching course and venture out on my own. I have to keep reminding myself that the benefits far outweigh the emotional pain of constantly expanding my comfort zone. I still don’t know if I caught a virus and that was the tipping point for my body or if my body was so exhausted that my immune system was shot so it just took one bug to floor me. Either way it has been a wake up call that I need to start a self care routine.

Meditation is becoming a big part of that. I have taken a few hot baths which has been relaxing and I finally tried my local yoga class. It wasn’t at all what I expected and I probably won’t go back but I did feel relaxed at the end and I guess that was the whole point. My inner dialogue had kept asking for mediation or yoga and now that I am finally listening it has quieted and I feel more at peace. I also feel excited again about new ideas and new barriers to break down. This weekend I finally approached local businesses to either leave my business cards in their shops or talk about having a bit more of a presence there. This is something I have been wanting to do all year. And the response was better than I could have imagined. So what was there to be scared of? Nothing. It was just me holding myself back. And there’s the aha moment! Have you had a similar journey? I’d love to hear about it, please comment below xx