You don't know how to love and you have nothing to give.
I will wait.
I will wait and show you the most beauty and I will watch - and you show the most ugly.
I will show you everything.
I will wait until you break.
I have all the time in the world.
Until you realise you can't break because there is nothing to break.
You are nothing, you give nothing.
I will wait and when you give and when you break, you will break here, into me, and I will hold you.
I won't rescue you.
I am everything. I see everything.
There is beauty in the ugly and strength in the weak and so much you didn't ever know about yourself.
You have to break, because you are holding it all in.
Pretending. You don't know who you are and really, you are nothing.
You haven't made yourself.
Here is where I show you everything and if you are the person I know you are, here you will break and make..
You will feel the mayhem caress you, the chaos calm you.
The noise and the heat and the smells start you alive.
And the beauty and calm will enrage you - and you won't know how to cope with it.
You're going to be broken open and only you - and I - know that right here that is ok.
I won't change for you - but I am here to absorb it all - and you can do this.
Right here you can be broken open - you can be wrong - you can be ugly - you can let it out.
You can't not let it out.
This isn’t new, it's not going to come out like pretty tears.
It's going to come out like death, destruction, anger, rage, remorse, revenge.
And love.
And I will still be here.
My tides going out, the stars above, that beauty, the truth.
You don't even know what's true, what's you, what's not true.
But here ... that doesn't matter.
That's exactly what you have to, want to, learn.
To become you.
You're selfish and scared.
That's fine.
I'll hold up the mirror for you.
Sometimes where you see beauty, I show you pain.
Sometimes you can't comprehend and yet I show you ease.
Here's phosphorescence - and you start to live in that moment in your body and just in that moment, nowhere else.
You're self obsessed and scared.
I know.
The sun rises at 7am and sets at 7pm and there is an order in the world.
There is complexity and hardship and this is not a comfortable place.
I will challenge you. I will break you.
You never thought you could.
You thought it was going to be picture postcard - and wondered why it wasn't an easy beauty.
It was so intense it felt strangely bland and it was all too hot, too noisy, too mad, too manic, too too too too too everything.
You wanted to cry, but you didn't.
You wanted to love me, but you didn't.
You steeled yourself because it was hurting you and you didn't understand why.
You resisted me.
You fought against. You tried to create order.
You tried to own.
You tried to make it about you.
And then you cried and you saw that you had no power.
That you didn't know where you were or who you are.
And so you tried out experiences, tried on extremes - you wanted to feel anything other than that which I was making you feel.
Which was YOU.
Some people don't get it. Some don't want to.
I'm proud of you.
You broke, you saw, you opened - and we became one.
I healed you as I broke you.
You became strong when you fell.
I will never change. I am the constant.
Here is not easy.
It is real.
And true.
And sometimes you didn't know what was true, what was me, what was you.
You started choosing and creating truth.
You made the phosphorescence.
And the squid boats on the horizon.
The jungle looking back impassive as you stand in the water.
You made the stars.
You made the sea.
You turned yourself inside out and back to front and confronted you to be home here with me.
We became as one. At one.
I am the land, the sea, the jungle, the people.
The love, the struggle, the hardship, the faith.
The truth, the power, the infinite goodness, the infinite strength and the infinite struggle.
We became one when you stopped resisting me, fighting against me, came back home.
Back home for the first time.
The lights, noise, heat, smells, food, traffic, people, mayhem and sheer wonder of the cities.
The blackness of the sea after a storm and the ravaged sand, and the blue skies and the grey, the angry seas and the still.
I hurt and cried and did things I wish I hadn't and I didn't do things I wish I had.
This is where I learned love and fear and strength and everything.
It is always coming home.
The untamed wilds of my heart came home.
The unnamed restlessness inside me stilled.
I am free.
Being your best version of you
This is what it's all about really, isn't it?
When we really get down to it, this is what's really going on.
We have this yearning inside, even if don't recognise what it is.
This feeling that something's not right, that it's 'off'.
When we're not fulfilling our potential it, somehow irks, it niggles away at you ... sometimes (like me, for YEARS) and you kind of know things aren't RIGHT, but then again, well, they're not WRONG are they?
You're going through life like everyone else, going to work, going on holiday, passing the time, but y'know, as time passes (and passes), that urge gets deeper, that feeling that there MUST be something more.
And for us? It's even worse isn't it? We always KNEW there was going to be more, but never knew what it was going to be, waiting for it to happen.
And now, realising that it's not going to happen.
I'll just keep turning up for work, keep doing STUFF to fill the time, not even GOING THERE with what that deep deep down LONGING is trying to say, that's trying to come to the surface.
When we were younger we just KNEW we were destined for more, but we thought destiny would find us.
After what, 20-something years of living a multiple-choice-life ('I'll choose from this, this or this that I can see in front of me) we realise ... hold on ... what do we REALLY want?
We can CHOOSE.
We can choose our lives, our reality and we can then make that happen.
THAT is being the best version of you, the one that allows those feeling to come up, searches them, finds what we really want ... and then we start to go down that path.
For me, it was both big (leaving a job to create the mind-space and time to play with, have fun with, finding what I loved) and small (what I started with - I just started a blog about Thai cooking - but oh goodness that was HUGE for me - the first creative thing I'd done for years, the first thing I was excited about, the first thing I'd done because it was truly because I HAD A MESSAGE and it wanted to come out and I wanted to share).
The best version of me was to give myself - for the first time probably since a child - time to create and share - sharing was important to me.
I look back now and despite having had an on paper great life with great friends and family and relationships ... I was a bit stuck. I was bored, to be honest, bored with myself.
And I didn't really give anything either, this is a two-way thing! I don't think I gave much in hindsight. Creating and sharing helps with GIVING and giving makes you more open and being more open leads to more creativity, more love, more people, more ideas .. just more LIFE.
And then there was the unsaid unhappiness with the weight gain. I put it on I think now because I was stuck in other areas of my life - it's definitely 'chicken and egg' on this one.
So if you don't want (yet) to start digging deep and working on finding your real inner motivations and creativity but you're unhappy with your body, your fitness, your food, your relationships, your weight ... well, I'd say start with tackling one of those ...
When we start confronting, being honest about, tackling, taking control of ANY ONE area of our lives we're not happy with, it starts a ripple effect.
Taking ACTION at one area of becoming YOUR best version of you, that's all you have to.
For me, as I started creating and sharing ... I became even more aware that I was unhappy in my own body.
I had started to believe that when I DECIDE something and choose actions that will help me get to my goals then that's what happens.
DECIDING is the main thing.
BELIEVING it next.
SETTING THE GOAL and then just EYES-ON-THE-HORIZON focused just taking the actions and choices to get there.
You have to choose. But only most of the time - some times you make other choices (of course it's not a straightforward linear process - we're human!).
But once you've made THE BIG choice, you just focus on the goal, the horizon, and go for it.
Little changes, small results = huge happiness at stepping into being the figurehead of your ship.
One area of life moves to another, you see changes and feel excited and empowered and 'why didn't I do this before?' - and you know, that doesn't matter. You're (we're) doing it now.
Life leads us to THIS point and NOW is the only point that matters.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to be the best version of you (whatever that looks like to you).
Mine included losing weight and feeling really happy in my skin ... and starting to achieve that lead to wanting to be fitter and stronger.
All of it comes together for my big vision for myself as the very best version of myself - I now KNOW I can have it all (as I define having it all for me).
I think we have a tendency - and I don't really know why - to think we can't have it all.
We can be successful in business ... but not look after our health.
We can have healthy, happy bodies .. but maybe our relationships suffer. Etc etc etc.
NOW ... step into IT ALL.
Set ALL THE GOALS! Decide and choose and go for it.
Choose one at a time - I promise, one will lead to another.
Or choose all at once.
And especially for those of us with a few decades of life experience ...
Well, I think once we choose to hear the calling, listen to that little voice, refuse to accept that the weight gain is inevitable, that it's 'too late' to achieve our big goals or whatever it is ... we know ourselves well enough to just go get it all.
In the way that best works for us.
It can be easy. It can be fun.
And step-by-step, keep going, keep taking the steps, be bold, be brave, become YOUR best version of you.
