I'm dreaming of a 32 degree Christmas.

I've posted on this blog before about returning to Perth and always being pleasantly surprised. This year is no exception as we were lucky enough to attend a gorgeous wedding on Rottnest Island the weekend before Christmas, and so stay on for Christmas with my family here.....

 Hubby and I en route to Rottnest on the most choppy boat ride ever.

My sister's gorgeous Christmas tree.

My little cousin very excited the day before Christmas. 

Rottnest

More Rottnest

 En route to wedding

 Floreat Beach

Sweet sweet nectar

Have you ever heard of a nectar list? It's like a challenge to the bucket list. Rather than setting goals and achieving challenges, it's all about acknowledging what you HAVE - the 'nectar' of your existence thus far. A brilliant idea, one I first read about in women's health magazine, but I believe ultimately coined by Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sierra-vandervort/the-nectar-list_b_5753464.html

So. Here's my nectar list for 2014.

1. I've purchased two houses
2. I've reduced my alcohol intake by more than half.
3. I've done my first hip hop yoga class (and many more since).
4. I've married the love of my life.
5. I've ran around Hoan Kiem lake with my friends and written funny post it notes over Vietnamese iced coffee in Hanoi
6. I've changed jobs and found an incredibly interesting / challenging position.
7. I've attended three beautiful weddings.
8. I've eaten at Tetsuya's.
9. I've started the foundations of my own business with my best friend.
10. I've swam in the glorious Maldives.
11. I've eaten fabulous tapas in Barcelona and strolled the streets of this gorgeous city.
12. I've visited - and loved - Hobart. For the first time.
13. I've been spoiled rotten and inspired by my beautiful friends over a weekend in Sorrento.
14. I've written off a car ( a first, hopefully a last).
15. I've attended the 80th of my stoic, loving grandmother.
16. I've eaten at Messina.
17. I've done by 5 km PB.
18. I've seen Wicked for the second time.
19. Michael and I have welcomed our first nephew into the world.
20. I've shopped up a storm in Kualan Lumpur.
21. I've cleared 7 years of clutter and junk away.
22. I've seen my favourite band - The National - in concert.


And I'm not even sure it's the half of it. Pictures to follow!

Thanks 2014. You've been bonza.

Space, space, space ....

I've been thinking the last few days that I need some space - physically, emotionally, mentally. Building space into our lives is necessary - not only to rest and digest, but also to develop resilience.

Don't get me wrong. 2014 has been a bonanza - two houses, a wedding (mine), four other weddings (close family and friends), three countries, a new job (for me and Michael), flatmate moves, new business opportunities and massive lifestyle upheavals. But there's a point where you start to feel like you need to do less 'doing' and more 'being'. For example, I've made all these weird, scatter brained little mistakes lately which are just ... not me, and I think, a sign of stress and overwrought. And I think a sign that I'm crying out for some quiet minutes / hours / weeks.

It's easy, too, to get enveloped in the rush and to lose sight of the bigger picture. For those of you who are in Australia and have watched the news unfold, the Sydney hostage crisis which ended tragically for some in the early hours of this morning serves as a timely reminder - goals, jobs, errands and to do lists will always be there. Things that are beautiful and special can often be fleeting. Put down your lists people! I'm going to do that just now - my dog is begging for some much needed play time.

x

She was a one eyed, one horned, flying purple people pleaser.

The concept of addiction is all around us. People for centuries have been addicted to alcohol and drugs. The concept of addiction has now stretched into our modern world - we can be addicted to social media, addicted to technology, addicted to sex.

But what about the more subtle and subconscious addictions that can manifest without you even realising? These can go months, years, even a whole lifetime without ever being recognised, named, and 'treated'. They might impact your health and happiness in ways that you can't articulate and may never even notice, and you might go through life feeling stuck or not quite right in some aspect of your life.

My addiction? People pleasing.

Yeah. Weird, right?

It started long before I was an adult for reasons I won't get into here, but suffice to say, it's been evident for most of my life. Being perfect, getting the tick of approval, always being there to offer a solution or assistance to anyone, making sure I worry about everything else and everyone else.

Not such a bad thing on the face of it. I mean, what's wrong with wanting to be liked? What's wrong with wanting to help others? Especially when those people are the people close to you - people you'd go to the ends of the earth for, or even watch an Adam Sandler film with.

Nothing, on the face of it. Just as drugs and alcohol aren't problematic, in and of themselves. That's the thing with addiction - it only a problem when it becomes a problem, right?

For me, being a little purple people pleaser has manifested itself in some less than ideal behaviours for me. The perception of being perfect, capable of anything. The fear of asking for help or showing vulnerability. The stress when someone has a problem or issue that I can't fix. The exhaustion of trying to be 'all things to all people' (a concept that anyone who has read the excellent Rushing Woman's Syndrome by Dr Libby Weaver will be familiar with).

This year has really brought this to the fore for me and I can see it causing damage.  I'll get into that in a later post. So how to tackle any addiction?

Action plan - to break the cycle of habit. For the next two weeks, I will:

 - Put a buffer between being asked to do something and responding
 - Asking for help (I will be writing a list tomorrow of all the things I am going to ask for help with)
 - Starting to accept help where it is offered to me


Bananas, right? All seems pretty intuitive, right? Well, not for this little purple people pleaser. It's gonna be hard. Here goes....

Shoot that poison apple through my heart.... no, wait. File that poison apple away for later.

We all know that feeling right? You're stressed. You feel like you're being jolted from one thing to another and it seems never ending and you feel like you don't have a second to yourself and DAMMIT you just feel overwhelmed.

And then.

Just when you think you're at breaking point it hits.

A nasty rebuke from your boss.
A snarky email from a friend / partner  / family member.
A rude stranger on the train.
An unhelpful person in your professional life.

BAM.

It's on. You're indignant. You're furious. You're enraged. You think 'HOW FUCKING DARE YOU DO THIS TO ME CAN'T YOU SEE I'M UP TO MY EYEBALLS / ABOUT TO POP  / CRAZY STRESSED, DON'T YOU SEE WHAT YOU'RE DOING TO ME YOU INSUFFERABLE BUFFOON WHY IS THE WORLD SO UNKIND ETCETERA'.

I like to call these little babies 'poison apples'. A psychologist coined this little anecdote for me years ago. He may have gotten it from somewhere else, hell, it may be a known turn of phrase in psychological circles (though the internet doesn't seem to think so, I checked).

These things come up in life, yes, when you're stressed, yes, when you think you can't handle anything more happening in your life, and yes, when things going wrong. Sometimes they are malicious. But most often, they aren't (because they can't see. They don't know. They didn't realise the world was being so unkind to you).

I used to complain bitterly to my psychologist about things that people did that I perceived as unkind / unfair / downright wrong. On and on I would go, decrying other people's deplorable behaviour and the negative impact it had on me.

So here's what he said (and I'm paraphrasing here):

These things  that people say and do to you are like poison apples. They are bad for you, undoubtedly. The are nasty to receive. They might even be given by someone who KNOWS that the apple is poisonous. But you are the one who chooses to eat the apple. You are the one taking the first bite. You could give the apple back. You could put the apple in the bin. You could even put the apple aside until later and decide what to do with it at a later time. 

Food for thought, isn't it (haha, apple, haha, food). I was forced to think about this today, as I received a rather unpleasant email from a friend. I honestly thought I was seconds away from losing at her, ending our friendship, telling her what an idiot she was being.

But then, I remembered this analogy. Sure, I was angry. Sure,  I had a massive rant to my husband. Sure, I was upset. But after I gathered my rage, I filed the email away in  my 'personal' file and thought - yeah, with everything I've got on my plate at the moment, I'm just going to have to put that poison apple away and decide how to deal with it later. I don't have to take a bite, and if I do, I'm not sure I'll like to outcome.

As an aside, my friend sent me an email before I'd had a chance to respond the original, saying that she was sorry and regretted sending it. By then, my head was clearer. Not only was I less angry, but I was more equipped to get to the root cause of her original email - are you angry at me? is something personal going on with you? how can we fix this? or are you just having a shitty day, like I am? 

Do you ever feel like someone is handing you a poison apple and you have to take a bite and react NOW?

image from illeander.deviantart.com