Letter #52 - When You Feel Too Much

To the reader in you,

So I jumped straight from finishing a book to writing this. Because I realised something strange that I hadn’t ever noticed before. I’ve written about my love of books and stories and the hopefulness of it all, but today I realised there’s something else in the mix. The right story at the right time can fix a lot. 

But first, some context. I’m a pro when it comes to compartmentalising. Everything has its box and its time and its place. You put the feelings away and if they’re important, you deal with them and then go on your merry way. That’s what I do, at least. But I was reading today and I started to feel, not sad, but sort of wistful. There wasn’t really anything that I was thinking of or anything that triggered it. Or so I thought.

It was the book I was reading. It was the story and the experiences of the characters, that led me back into my head and sifting through all those locked boxes that exist there. Until I found the one that made me feel what I was feeling. And so here I am, in this weird mood, that hasn’t been triggered by the present, but by a past moment, long forgotten but never dealt with.

It made me think, maybe a little too much, but it’s what I needed. Fiction is important, especially to people like me, who hold things a little too tightly and who try to bounce back a little too quickly. Because in those moments of reading someone else’s story, we catch a glimpse of ourselves that we get to address in the privacy of our own head alongside our imagination and the two can meld together in that weird way that dreams do. When you’re asleep but you know you’re dreaming but then the dream just gets strange and trippy. 

We can address it for as long or as little as we like and at the end of the day, no one but us has changed and that makes it all feel slightly less big. I don’t even know if any of this makes sense to anyone outside myself. But just incase it does, here I am, saying I get it and if the only way you can dwell on your own life is after reading about someone else’s, then do it! 

I think that’s a big part of why I started writing stories. To make sense of the things I was feeling when I was feeling them. And then when I would stop writing, too busy with life, I’d find myself floundering, my head barely above water, because I wasn’t letting it out. And usually if I was too busy to write, then I was too busy to read! And that’s a vicious cycle. 

So I guess my realisation isn’t too earth-shattering, but finding that thing that lets you out of the confines of your head is always a good thing and it should be cherished for what it is. Especially if you’re private with your thoughts and feeling and try to lock them away. We all need something that saves us from imploding and for me, that’s words on a page. 

What saves you from that? What is the one thing that you can always fall back on to help you think about your life and release you from the stresses that you keep hidden away from everyone else? I’d love to know. It feeds the inquisitive (nosy) people-watcher in me!

Until next time, be inspired...

Love, Z

Letter #51 - Patience is Power

To everyone, at any stage in life,

I’ve been thinking about my life a lot recently, about how I’ve gotten to where I am and the various detours that the universe threw my way. I think I’m at my most self-aware but confident in that self, than I’ve been since I was a teenager I think. A big part of that has been patience and practicing it daily. 

Patience is this virtue, up on a pedestal, and I think that that can make it so inaccessible when people need it most. When someone says they aren’t a patient person, generally I’ve found that that means they haven’t learnt how to be. Patience is on par with self-control. And in civilised society, the majority of people have self-control. For example, we don’t go running into stores and stealing everything we want; instead we have the patience and control to get to a point where we can fund our purchases. We don’t walk out of meetings that aren’t going our way or lash out when we dislike something. So we have indeed got control and one step up from self-control is patience. Or at least that’s how I see it.

It makes the act and even the art of patience slightly more understandable. It isn’t a virtue that only the best of people can obtain. It is like any other ability. We practice until we’ve gotten better at it. It’s like a muscle that needs to be worked.

For me, this was a daily practice. I love my lists and so I would list the things that would make my life amazing if I had them/could achieve them. Then I would state what I had done that day to work towards that aim. If I hadn’t done anything, then I knew where I was going wrong and it was usually then that my patience would wain. But seeing it on paper would help.

 

If I hadn’t worked on that goal, how could I expect it to magically manifest?? Whenever I was working towards something, I felt patient because I knew I was putting something in and as a result, eventually I would get something out of it too. Soon the practice of patience became almost second nature and I could judge how I was feeling based on how patient and grateful I was on any given day. 

Seeing the way my life is in this present moment, has made me really appreciate patience. There are things I’ve been working on or hoping for, for close to a decade and only now can I see the results coming to life. Even now, they aren’t the finished results and I’ve got a long way to go with the things I’m trying to perfect or achieve. But I keep marvelling at time and how it passes when you have the patience to just let it happen.

If it wasn’t for those patient moments that I cultivated and learnt to master, I would have given up on some things a long long time ago. But doing so, wouldn’t have taken me to a better place, or rather not a place that I would have wanted to be in.

So I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who told me to be patient (basically my mum...constantly). Life ebbs and flows and if you’re in a moment where it’s not really flowing your way, keep going and be patient that your hard work will pay off.

It really helps when we think of how long our lives could be. Thinking of that always grounded me. There’s so many more years ahead, hopefully, so if you’re not there yet, doesn’t mean you never will be.

But none of that means that I don’t have my moments! I have many many moments where I just cannot be in a positive and patient place. I want to whine and have a bit of a rant. But all of that is fine! You don’t need to be saintly to practice patience. All it does is give you a bit more power in your life. All it means is that you don’t spend every moment looking to a non-existent future, while forgetting the present in which you need to work to make it a reality.

I just work on not letting the bad moments consume my day or my life, like I used to. I need to give an honorary mention to Gary Vaynerchuk, who preaches so much positivity that you can’t help but take it on board! And another mention to the friend who introduced me to my first Gary Vee video that started this whole thing. You started an upward spiral that just makes me more self-aware.

Anyway, clearly I missed blogging because this post got away from me entirely! Enjoy this nearly 1000 word post and I hope you can find a way to cultivate a bit of patience into your life. Those bad little things, once they stop seeming like the end of the world, everything opens up, the good things become great and the bad things don’t seem as world-crushing.

Do you have any practices that work for you? Things that make the day better when it’s awful, or ways to just change your perspective?

Until next time, be inspired...

Z