Be careful - no, be very specific - what you wish for

Three years ago I wrote THIS ....

It's about having wanted a garden, putting my name down for a local garden plot, and some years later getting to the top of the waiting list, getting my garden and realising I didn't enjoy it or choose to spend my time there.

At the time I wrote it, I was really writing about how we show by our actions and our choices what's really important to us, and that I wasn't choosing the garden.

And at the time, I still loved the idea of having this garden and thought that perhaps it just wasn't the right time for me ... so I went back on the waiting list.

And again at that time, I half suspected that I somehow just preferred being on the waiting list - so I could enjoy the anticipation of the garden and how next time I had it I would be totally at one with it, growing plants to pick to cook for dinner that same day (the way I enjoy it when I'm at my parents, where my dad gardens and there's the vegetables, the orchard, the fruit trees).

Anyway.

Here we are three years on and I got the key back to the gardens and my own little raised bed patch!

And again, I day-dreamed about picking the tomatoes and the herbs and the pak choi and all of it, ready to cook fresh that night for dinner.

Ahhhh AND IT'S SO OBVIOUS, ISN'T IT?

I was setting the wrong goal, asking for the wrong outcome for me, working towards the wrong dream!

I didn't want to garden and grow things.

I wanted to pick the freshest vegetables and salads and herbs and fruit to eat and cook with.

So I gave the key back again and despite being offered a return to the waiting list I said no this time.

At the same time, a part of the communal gardens where I live, was being turned from overgrown bushes into a beautiful space with raised beds, mostly for us all to help ourselves and enjoy the produce - a communal kitchen garden that I see every day when I look out the window.

I love watching it all grow - and I love taking a courgette, a handful of mixed salad leaves, a few tomatoes ... to make dinner.

So be careful what you wish for  ...

Or rather, be very specific about what you wish for!

Set a goal for having a garden and no doubt you'll get a garden.

But if you really wanted fresh produce from the garden, well, that's a different goal ... 

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I've had this happen before - in another, very beautiful way - a different way, a different example but the same principle.

Several years ago, I set a goal, my DREAM to have a house on the beach.

I want to be able to be by the sea more often, to be able to walk out the door and be there on the beach - in my dream especially in winter, where it's empty, a huge beach to walk along, watching the waves and the surf, drinking in that air, hearing that crashing noise of the sea ... just being there and having that on my doorstep.

So there it was - my beach house dream.

I journaled and meditated and kept it in my mind's eye, I could SEE it ... and I changed my passwords so every day I'm typing and retyping 'mybeachhouse'.

And then .... my sister and her family moved from where they were in a smaller house high on the cliffs above the sea to a much larger house right there, round the corner from the beach. They have spare rooms and one of the attic bedrooms I always feel is 'my room'.

I realised that I had it then, I had my 'beach house' by being able to stay with my family where they have room for me - any time really I want and I get to be with people I love too.

Without worrying about keeping a house looked after while I'm not there, without worry at all.

So it might not be 'my' beach house, but then again it is.

It's where I get to go and be on the beach - oh and yes it is exactly the beach of my dreams too.  It's where I love to go to walk and write and escape and dream - and chat and laugh and have fun too  - how perfect, how much more perfect really than it being just me.

I've realised I need to be specific about what my goals are if I want to achieve them.

I got 'my beach house' - just in a different way than I'd been imagining.

And I got the garden I wanted ... and realised it wasn't the garden in itself that I'd been after - it was the produce from the garden.

I really love these little lessons in being super-clear with myself exactly what it is that I want and dream of and choose to call in and bring to life.

Be very, very specific about what you wish for! 

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Saying YES to your dreams

A week or so ago I wrote this post about how getting to achieve your goals means saying NO a lot of the time.

To things you don't want to do, to stop being a yes-person people-pleaser, but more importantly also to things you DO want to do!

So, you're gonna have to prioritise!

And if you SAY you want to reach that goal, then y'know, you do actually have to CHOOSE to spend the time on actions that will help you reach that goal (rather than socialising, watching TV, family gatherings, sleep, whatever it is).

But .... and this is where I think I might have misrepresented myself in the great urge to try to combat all that, 'but I'm soooo BUSY!', (poor little old me) negativity people say as an excuse (oh I do hear myself do it sometimes too of course).

Fine, don't go for your goals then, but don't WHINGE about it!

Anyway, digressing ... because what I WANT to say is actually that ...I think I misrepresented myself.

It's not a negative to say no.

It's not (usually!) hard to get less sleep, to be here writing and creating at my Macbook and talking with people rather than watching TV.

And why?

Because actually, it's not about - really - saying NO.

It's ALL about saying YES!

And that's what makes it easy (well, usually!).

Saying YES, a great big huge YES to my dreams and my goals.

THAT's what this choice is all about.

And yeah, often it's a hard choice, it's occasionally a lonely choice, but it's 100% MY CHOICE to say YES to making the choices I make that are the ones that will move me towards reaching my goals.

I want to share what I've learned and I want to impact MILLIONS!

I want to make the Tiniest Thai Diet the most successful, globally recognised, way of changing your mindset forever around food there has EVER been.

I want to share my message, and write and speak and connect with people.

So YES, I say NO a lot ... and yes I push myself.

Because I'm really, truly, actually saying YES to my dreams by doing so.

It is about saying NO ... to make space for the huge HELL YES to creating your life.

Reframe time - if you thought my previous post was berating you for not turning down things you want to do - well, I didn't mean it that way.

I meant, and mean, that to make that choice a YES rather than a NO means always keeping the goal in mind.

Keep taking the actions needed to get the results you want.

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Sometimes it's about saying 'no' to reach your goals

Some people are going to be reading my posts about Supreme Self Care and thinking ...

'Yeah ok for you, you don't have x y z you have to do',

'HOW does she find time?'

'Well, that's ok for you, you don't have kids to feed and get up for school'.

Well, no, I don't, no.

But I do know that I do have plenty of other responsibilities (as we all do) and I don't have unlimited time.

Or do I?

I believe in the concept of Einstein Time (read The Big Leap - a fave book that changed my life and concept of time).

And I really, really believe in the concept of CHOICE.

That means I prioritise my self care stuff, and my writing, and my doing ALL the things I really care about and am passionate about.

That means I also say NO a lot.

To fun things as well as the learning to say no to things you really don't want to do but (used to) feel obliged to.

It's easy to think that learning to be someone who can say 'no', means saying 'no' to things you don't want to do.

Ha! MUCH more it means saying 'no' to things you DO want to do.

I say no to TV.

I say no to parties.

I say no to meet ups with friends and family.

I say no to that book I want to read.

I say no to sleeping another half an hour.

To going to bed earlier and to getting up later.

Etc, etc, etc.

It means - when I SAY prioritise, I MEAN prioritise.

No, it's not easy.

I never said it was easy.  I said it was SUPREME self care to take the best care of me.

It means really thinking about what it takes to put you first - and not JUST your physical, emotional, spiritual .... also your CREATIVITY.

I believe we all NEED to be creative beings, whatever that looks like for you ... and for me, I need time and space to even work that out.

It means prioritising you and what you want to do ... and the results and goals you are going to achieve.

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What's going to be your word for 2016?

I haven't done this for long really - just a couple of years - but coming across this exercise in setting an intention for the year ahead has had a huge impact on me and my life.  

It's also led me to so, so much more learning and friends and ideas and creativity and ways of seeing the world.

And it's so simple.  

Just setting an intention for the year ahead, and choosing a word that embodies that intention. 

Now, just two short years later, I see a lot of my friends and people in my communities all set their word/s and intention/s for the year ahead and it's fascinating and inspiring to hear what they're planning. 

When it first started for me, it was something I read about midway through 2013.  

This was a big year for me - a year of huge change, the year I realised it was up to me and no one else to grab my life by the horns and create the life I want - to take charge, to take responsibility, at last, for my own life.

It was a momentous realisation and one that I am passionate about talking about and sharing as I know that if I could be sleepwalking through my life for so long, then so can others and just as I found some people and ideas that inspired me to find out more - I want to talk about it too and share what I'm learning.

So it was midway through the year that I heard about deciding on a word for the year.  

I had just made some big decisions and given in my notice at a job that wasn't right for me at all.  However, I'm glad I did that job that wasn't right for me.  It was the final straw, it was then that I had the realisation that working, working, working and being so down and and yes a bit downtrodden by life to be honest wasn't what I wanted.  And nor was the reckless, carefree, slightly hysterical level of socialising and partying that went before - just other ways to block out the emptiness of not knowing or realising how to affect what happens in your life.

So, pretty momentous really, realising that it was me, just me, and only me, who could take charge of my own life.  Be the figurehead of my own ship. 

Anyway, my word, my intention, call it what you like, just jumped into my head that day in July 2013, when I was winding down what I didn't want to do and looking ahead to what I did.  

And that word was ALIVE.  

And ... exciting! It's honestly not over-stating it to say that's what happened to me that year, at least in how I felt it (I probably didn't look or seem that much different externally really).  

I took in big breaths of excitement and hope and awareness and possibility ... and came ALIVE (again).

It worked really well for me, having this intention set, this word of my own.  I started talking about it to friends and family, and my sisters both set their words and intentions for 2014 too. 

My word for 2014 was BOLD and that, that was just perfect.  

I learnt more, I took more in, I tried things out, I was open to trying and bold suited me absolutely perfectly ... 2014 was so full of boldness and possibility that nearing the end of the year I could barely contain excitement for all that 2015 would bring.  Honestly, I couldn't wait to get there! 

But then something happened.  I think I'd been too excited.  I couldn't settle on a word, on an intention, and that felt really odd after how naturally and easily the last two had come.  I tried on a few: Soar then Play.  Then Play didn't feel action-oriented enough.  I tried on Action. I tried on Play Fierce. 

A couple of months into the year I was trying out so much, trying on so much and feeling confused and tired and unexpectedly let down by the promise that 2015 had seemingly failed to show.

I look back now and I think my intention - having looked back at my actual actions - was EXPERIMENT. Or DISCOVER.  

But at the end of 2014 I was rushing headlong into something but without actually know what that was.  And that's fine too.  I know that having had that experience I'll think very differently if and when a word or feeling or intention doesn't come easily again.

But this year, for 2016, I've known my word for a while.  She snuck up on me and got close and I've been living with her for a couple of months now.

My intention for 2016 is GRACE.  

I am going to live in a GRACEFUL way and be GRACEFUL too.  

(I am after all a Tuesday's child, full of grace ... don't you know?)

Words mean different things to us all, so to clarify - for me, grace is a combination of generosity, elegance, calmness, kindness, lightness, thoughtfulness and ... hospitality - for want of a better word. Perhaps warmth would be that better word.

It's behaving and thinking and being - in a way that nurtures and leads through lightness and ease. 

It is going to shape how I choose to react to things and inform the ways I move forward on things. It feels a grown up part of me, but still with an essence of lightness and playfulness, but more mindful.  

Yes, more grown up. (But still with a lot of drive and passion behind it of course). 

So that's my intention for 2016.  

And if you're happy to share, I would LOVE to know what your word for 2016 is going to be - and what it means to you. 

Let me know in the comments (way, way, way down the bottom of the page) or of course, pop in to my FB page and comment there.

Whatever you decide, I wish you happiness, love and adventures in 2016.

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