It’s a new home for everyone – not just me – as I Am Fabulous relocates to its new address at Chez Fabulous. With Fab Towers becoming a bit of a moveable feast, it made sense to have a one-stop shop for all things fabulous. Now that the move is over, it’s possible to apply 20/20 hindsight and detail a few of the major insights the relocation process has highlighted, just to round off the whole experience.
· Today’s bargain is tomorrow’s clutter – embarrassingly, quite a few items discovered in the move still had price tags on or had never been worn. Not exactly a bargain if you never use it, is it?
· Have just enough to know exactly what you’ve got – as the not-so-proud owner of two pairs of precisely the same Fendi shoes bought in Cannes a year apart because I’d forgotten I’d bought the first pair, a clearer set of cupboards might have brought that to light.
· Experiences are more valuable than stuff – when I’m thinking about what’s important to me, it’s not multiple-purchases of Fendi mules that cross my mind. It’s always experiences with people or places (in the inner worlds and outer ones).
· Call on your friends and share the load – when it all seems too much, good friends will listen, make you laugh and help out if needs be. That team effort will get you through just about anything.
· Do things when you get the first inkling – the entire process of clearing out would have been so much easier if I’d started when I first got the intuition a move was on the cards, instead of in a mad rush on a deadline.
· Take things one step at a time – if you want to avoid overwhelm, do a project in bite-sized chunks. Of course I tore the house apart until it looked like New Orleans after Katrina, then had to live in chaos for weeks. If I’d tackled a room at a time, it would have been a much more pleasant experience. Do what I say, not what I did!
· Change will show you where you’re weakest – I found myself slipping into feelings of overwhelm far more often than I would have expected. It showed me that overwhelm and helplessness are instinctive stress responses of mine. The antidote was telling myself to put one foot in front of the other and deal with what was right in front of me. It got me through and it all got done in the end.
· Have faith that it’ll all be OK and somehow it will be – despite scaring myself countless times with ‘what if’ scenarios, it all worked out as most things invariably do. There’s less stress if you stay relaxed and don’t terrify yourself with all the things that could go wrong.
· Not everyone’s going to understand your reasons – radical change makes people uncomfortable, so don’t expect everyone to think you’re doing the right thing. As long as you do, that’s the vote that counts!
· Lightening up equals freedom – the less you have, the more flexible you become and the more open to new experiences and options. That goes for stuff as much as for rules about living, judgements and set patterns of behaviour. Less is always more.
· Movement shifts energy and you never know where that might lead – when you make a radical change in one area, there’s always a knock-on effect in another. Watch for an upturn in new insights and opportunities when you’ve taken a leap of faith.
· Your security lies in who you are, not your stuff – we know that intellectually, but we don’t really know it viscerally until we loosen the bonds with our possessions. What makes us happy is the quality of our relationship with ourselves and others. Stuff is a bonus, but it’s no substitute for inner peace.
Apropos of our relationship with ourselves, I’ve come across a memoir by Gail Straub called Returning To My Mother’s House: Taking Back The Wisdom Of The Feminine, which she describes as “the story of how I returned to my mother’s house and reclaimed my own female wisdom, taking back what both Mom and I had betrayed”. Straub adds, “I see now how my story is so many of our stories. It is the story of both men and women who have abandoned their inner lives, leaving behind their hearts where deep, dark feelings reside; putting aside their intuitive imagination where dreams flourish; ignoring the invisible worlds where the irrational and the mysterious offer their incomparable gifts; and disowning the realms of silence, simplicity and solitude where the interior matures. Modern life rarely acknowledges or even allows space for such things. But we ignore these things at our peril, both as individual human beings and as an earth family.”
Recalling her travels in Bali, Straub describes a world where the feminine, right-brained intuitive and creative skills are dominant, in stark contrast to our masculine Western world. She reminisces “Unlike the Western world’s constant emphasis on the rational left brain, the Balinese culture was a celebration of the instinctual right brain. We were immersed in a vital process of dance, theatre, music, painting, wood carving and mask-making, not just as art forms but as interpretations of life. We learned that creativity is so natural and widespread in Bali that there is no actual word in their language for art or artist. Rather creativity is the natural means of honouring the gods and serving the community. Many women came home from Bali to take up forgotten passions of dance, piano, singing, painting, or poetry. I vowed to return to my love of writing.”
Through her writing she has detailed the journey to recovery of her inner wisdom and vital creativity, as well as the story of her mother’s lost authenticity. Remembering her mother’s gradual decline from vibrancy to conservatism, Straub says “I realised that those we love never really die. But what surely did die, long before my mother did, were her dreams and her connection to her innate female wisdom. A gifted and successful artist, with a passionate spirit and a wildly colourful bohemian wardrobe, my mother gradually gave up her vivid individuality as she grew into her roles as wife, working mother and aspiring member of an upscale conservative society. Then, wrestling with a fatal illness, she died too soon. The spiritual loss, more than the physical loss, of my mother has haunted me.”
“This loss of my mother’s authentic self has shaped my life, propelling me around the globe to reclaim what she left behind, to retrace the series of small deaths she suffered each time she abandoned more of her instinctual wisdom. I, too, betrayed my feminine, paying blind allegiance to the flag of the masculine, with its bold stripes of workaholism, speed and overdrive. Luckier than my mother, I realised that my feminine was dying before it was too late, before there was no turning back, before the spiritual dying entered my body and made me sick. With the consciousness and resources of my generation, I came to understand why I had sacrificed my interior life – the rich realm of feelings and moods, intuition and creativity, stillness and contemplation – to the overwhelming seduction of our dominant cultural values. I came to see why I had fallen under the spell of a culture that pays tribute to rational thought and exterior accomplishment, and at all costs, on all levels, encourages and rewards the principles of bigger, more and faster.”
This week, give some space to the reclaiming of your own authentic self with the principles of smaller, less and slower. Choose small goals, activities or treats that remind you of who you are at heart. Remember what inspired you or made you laugh when you were small. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by obligations or stuff, let things go until you feel the sense of freedom and creativity that comes from empty space. Do things slowly and deliberately, taking time to feel the sunshine on your face, the smell of fresh herbs, the calmness that comes from having no particular place to go and nothing to be or do. Do only what makes you feel authentically yourself and say no to everything else. Choosing what feels right to you – regardless of the cultural imperative – is the first step to reclaiming your inner wisdom.
Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.
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