Normally my life trundles along fairly steadily but for several weeks it has been a rollercoaster of emotions. There is clearly something in the air. And maybe there is for a lot of people as we witness some of our heroes and heroines sadly dying – RIP Prince & Victoria Wood this week alone. My own personal rollercoaster is mainly related to us as a family deciding to move out of London. In coaching terms we are at an ‘edge’ – moving from one reality of ‘living in London where we have lots of great friends, happy kids and a fun life’ to another reality of ‘living somewhere to be determined, in a house still to be bought, where we won’t know anyone, having to drive more, commute for longer’.
When anyone crosses edges in their lives it brings up all sorts of edge behaviours – fear, worry, excitement, strong emotions generally, backtracking & questioning the decisions, head in the sand etc. For us, we are trying to figure out where to move to, with constantly changing criteria as we look around different areas, trying to find schools & houses and imagine how life would be in each location. Meanwhile putting our house on the market involves a mega tidy-up and when I say mega, I mean MEGA: I even found notes from a breast-feeding workshop the other day and my eldest is nearly 10! To add to the mix, our current house has decided to fall apart .. it started with the Hob and has escalated from there.
What I’ve found interesting is to step back and look at the impact on myself. My head is really busy at the moment filled with thoughts of houses, locations, what ifs. In turn the impact of this is waking in the night and forgetting things all the time – I am amazed at how many things I’ve missed that normally I’m on top of. And it’s an impact I see in clients quite often when they tell me they are worried about their memory .. in fact it’s just that they have too much going on and have too much to remember.
But I started this blog by saying it’s a roller coaster, and it is. We are having loads of fun as a family checking out different locations, imagining life there, examining what matters to us all. There’s excitement in the air and a sense of adventure and new possibilities. So I’m trying my best to enjoy the highs, accept and recover from the lows, taking positive actions where I can, and trust that it will all work out exactly how it’s supposed to.
Handily my Happiness course this week was entitled ‘Can we find Peace of Mind?’. And, if you’re in your own personal Roller Coaster, a great tip is to practice Mindfulness because when you are truly in the present moment it is impossible to feel overwhelmed. Pls Like / Share incase it helps anyone else currently on the Edge! X