I don’t know if this is true but someone recently told me that some indigenous people who travel by air apparently stay at the airport of their destination for some time, just to wait for their souls to arrive too. True or not, I really like the symbolism and can totally relate.

Since august 2018 I have worked full time as a communication consultant for a swedish energy company. During christmas I took a break of one week but otherwise I have been working pretty much for eight months straight. Today marks the first day of a two-week break from work and the only thing I long for right now is to find my equivalent of sitting at the airport for a while.

Work has been taking up a lot of space in my life, both mentally and physically. I am still navigating my way as self-employed, increasingly understanding the tax and law-side of it (which makes me appreciate entrepreneurs in this country even more!). I am also learning about the role of business consultant and noticing the differences between consulting and being employed. And then I’m educating myself to become a Holistic Counselor which will allow me to professionally work with people. I will soon travel to Italy for my final course week and after that I only have to write a thesis in order to complete the education and acquire my accreditation.

I have been quite terrible at balancing work/efforting and free time/relaxing since I started a new chapter in my work-life as entrepreneur. As a result my being and my body are moving very fast and I feel clearly that it’s time to step on the brakes a bit more. So I ask myself: what do I want to do to truly relax from work? My mind can come up with many things but when I look at them closer they might be things that I do because many people do them to relax. It’s easy to fool myself in thinking that if I do this particular thing (walking in the park, exercising, going to a spa, to name a few) that this will somehow be right. But then I go a bit deeper inside myself and listen to what I would describe as the voice of my true self, the one that so clearly is connected to my gut. And most of the time I end up doing something totally different to truly relax. Yesterday for example, instead of taking a walk I drove to a candy store and slowly filled an insanely large bag with all the candy I like, went home and ate it while watching TV series on my couch. Not so healthy and not something that a lot of people might share perhaps but it was exactly right for me at that moment and it gave me a feeling of pure joy and relaxation. The same mechanism but much bigger happened also when I decided I wanted to quit my job and move to Spain. All logic said I should not do that but I went ahead and did it anyway. It became one of the greatest adventures of my life so far.

When I move too fast and lose balance, my being doesn’t follow and my body aches. When I ground myself in ways that feel right for me, suddenly a lot of things feel effortless. I remind myself of something I recently read in my social media feed:

You often feel tired, not because you’ve done too much, but because you’ve done too little of what sparks a light in you.

Today what will spark a light in me is following my waiting at the airport-desire by idling around in my garden and enjoying the first signs of spring. The trees in my garden are slowly blossoming and so am I, awake and aware. To be continued!

Photo: Arno Smit – unsplash.com