What are you chasing? 

Change can NEVER happen for the worse - all change can only ever happen for the better.

This might sound like utter BS to you - or at least like fluffy new-age woo-woo. But please stick with me for just a moment.

With all change, I mean all of it. Yup, including the breakups, the heartbreaks, the bankruptcies, the loss of loved ones and all the other devastation that feels absolutely and utterly unbearable. 

“This girl is is batshit crazy,” you must be thinking at this point, probably split seconds away from closing this window. Stay! Just for a moment. 

Let me ask you something: Do you feel like you’re living the life you dream up on New Year’s Eve, or when it’s 11:11 or when you blow an eyelash into the air? 

Or are there moments you feel like you’re running in a hamster wheel? Like you are bending with all the responsibilities and it all just feels a bit too much? 

If the latter is more your reality why do you keep going? (FYI I’m definitely not preaching here, I so get it — I’ll tell you more about my own little stories of ‘staying in it’ below...) 

You keep the job. 

You stay in the relationship.

You skip the gym.

You go to that party you really can’t be bothered going to. 

You move the trip of your dreams to next year.

…. And so it goes on and the years pass by. Interrupted by the unpleasant hiccups of stuff that life just throws at us.

What if I tell you that those ‘unpleasant’, devastating changes actually happen FOR you?! 

sad girl

What if I tell you that those changes are leading you toward your dreams? What if you could direct the way you experience the unpredictable? 

Let me give you a little insight into my last 14 days and what’s been going on in my own life around unpleasant changes...

To start, I read two entire books over the Christmas and New Year’s break and I’m halfway through a third. That’s a big deal for me. Like actual reading, not listening to an audiobook while I ride my scooter to the workshop or the next meeting. Side note: Just in case you’re having a quiet-time-envy moment right now, keep reading because you’ll need to have the full details: The Universe sat my ass DOWN and I had no choice but to stop. All I could do the last two weeks was read, journal and draw. 

My girlfriend and I realised mid-December that the speed with which we’ve been squeezing things into our calendars is absolutely unmanageable on a long term basis (assuming that we value our health, our nervous systems, our sanity, our relationship and our friendships). Resulting from that realisation, we booked ourselves into a 10-day fasting retreat over Christmas and the New Year: no internet, no work, no agenda - heaven! So I jumped head over heals into the timeline the retreat leaders had created for us: an amazing program of juices, herbs, naturopathy sessions, massages, sauna, yoga, meditation, sunbathing, journaling and loads more soul candy. I was so proud of myself for having made the choice to slow down and take care of myself, not even realising that I was just grasping onto the next ‘to-do-list’. 

Well - the Bali gods clearly didn’t agree with my sense of achievement around the ‘slowness’ I was going with. And so I slipped on Day 3 of the retreat on a slimy Bali sidewalk into a deep ditch and smacked my shin bone so deeply open that I had to go to the clinic, get stitches, and was completely immobile for the entire rest of the retreat (if you have ever hit your shin bone really hard, just imagine that times 100 and you’ll get close to the sensation - definitely don’t recommend it!) The pain was so excruciating that the slightest thought of work or any factors that had stressed me out prior to the retreat were flat-out impossible to handle. So that was the reason I was reading so much….

Now, why am I telling you all this?! Because I feel like a new person right now. I’m finally listening, going slower and genuinely creating space for the things that bring me true joy. And let me tell you, those joys are so simple! They are evenings with my partner cooking. They are reading books and sitting in the sun. They are going for sunset walks with our dog. They are trying to bake a gluten-free carrot apple walnut pie and fricking succeeding with SUCH yumminess! :)

I had WANTED to slow down so badly and secretly was craving those simple things deep in my heart. But I wasn’t even admitting that to myself. I had decided that other things were more important: my to-do-list, my business, my social commitments, my reputation, and all sorts of other ‘highly important’ things that I had put above my soul’s cravings - until the Universe reshuffled my priorities. 

I ONLY made the changes when I was forced to.

Now I could have given you more extreme examples from when the Universe forced me to change. Like the time my mom had cancer and died when I was 18. I was convinced that the world would most certainly stop forever - only to realize later that I would have never spread my wings and moved to Hawaii for college, and that I have her spirit with me at all times. Or that other time when I didn’t get my work permit in Hawaii after college , which resulted in me moving to Bali (I know the result sounds dreamy but at the time I was shattered, having to give up my entire existence as I knew it), starting my company, coming out, and really starting to be ME. 

My point is, heavy humongous traumatising changes or some stitches, when something in us feels off, then we have to LISTEN. Don’t ever ignore that voice inside that feels like something needs to change. If fear of possible discomfort is the reason why you’re not acting on your gut feeling, then remember: If you don’t act NOW then the Universe might act for you - and usually the changes the Universe brings on are FAR more uncomfortable or even painful than the ones we can make when we live a life in tune with our soul.

And to take this deeper - in the Universe, change occurs when energy is stagnant and requires to be transformed to continue moving on. It can never go backwards. So if you are wishing for something to go back to ‘how it was’ you’d be wishing to go against the Universe’s force of constant regeneration, evolution, transformation and improvement.

So for this year, I’m asking you to make only ONE single promise to yourself: When your intuition, your soul, your prayers are asking for changes, take action to make those changes happen. Don’t wait until the Universe does it for you.

Tell a loved one about the desires that pull your heart, that whisper in your soul. Once we have an accountability buddy we are much more likely to make things happen. Don’t wait! 

I’d love to leave you with a section from the book I’m currently reading - Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho:

“Really important meetings [or changes, for the sake of our current topic] are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other. 

Generally speaking, these [changes] occur when we reach a limit, when we need to die and be reborn emotionally. These [changes] are waiting for us, but more often than not, we avoid them from happening. If we are desperate though, if we have nothing to lose, or if we are full of enthusiasm for life, then the unknown reveals itself, and our universe changes direction.”

May you embrace the magical changes towards the life of your dreams this year!!