New Year… Mindful New Beginning

I have recently got back from a trip to Thailand (which I have yet to finish posting about-as I managed to tick off several of my bucket list items including Riding an Elephant, visiting the Big Buddha in Phuket and seeing my Uncle’s Tudor English Country Pub for the first time).

However, I wanted to acknowledge that it is now the start of a new year, and is almost a year since I lost my dear old Dad to End Stage Heart Failure. After he passed away; I promised myself a mad crazy fun-packed year of excitedly ticking off a ton of my more extreme bucket list items and planning lots of crazy adventures and I am pleased to say that I achieved what I wanted to, and even exceeded my own expectations with all of the crazy things I accomplished along the way; but I think it’s important and also right to recognise that this level of extreme living Is somewhat unsustainable and impractical long term.

Plus, I am not a one trick pony who simply wants to live life on the edge of my seat pushing myself from one extreme to the next all the time like some kind of adrenaline addict. I am going to treasure the memories of the past year, and I will take them all to the grave with me with a smile on my face one day, but for now at least, I plan to slow down and take time to achieve some goals that are more focused on my personal and spiritual growth.

I recently signed up to another 8 Week Mindfulness Meditation course and just went for my initial pre-course group welcome session this afternoon. I attended the course some 16 months ago, not long after I lost my step father, and it really helped me to learn a lot about myself, but to be honest I didn’t do a lot of the home practice meditations which are key to achieving the most positive outcomes for stress reduction, personal growth and relaxation; so when I received the invitation to re-attend the course this week, I decided that it would be a wonderful opportunity to re-visit my practice with the intention of focusing on becoming more relaxed and finding myself properly. Whether I will achieve this in 8 weeks is doubtful, but I hope to at least make a good start on stripping things back to basics and letting go of a lot of the things that get in the way of living in the moment and accepting things as they are and just being.

I hope to share some of my progress with you along the way, but thought I would set my intentions here too, so that you understand that there will be a slight shift in the way this blog progresses… I will still be posting about a lot of the fun things I have done and need to catch up on, and also the things I have booked; but this will no longer be the sole focus of my blog. I hope you will stick around to see why both sides of the blog are necessary parts to my journey of self discovery and happiness, but if not, you can filter out any posts marked in the spiritual and personal growth goal category to the right.