Uphill

27 Jul Uphill

It’s Saturday. I’m sitting in an armchair in the corner of our lounge with a glass of red wine, while my kids practically inhale their dinner after another Saturday of birthday parties and admin after a chaotic week of school drops offs and pick ups, lunch boxes and extra murals, meetings and deadlines, a bit of exercise, bookclub and social time with friends. It feels like I blinked and I am a week ahead of where I was this time last week, like I was moving at a fast forward pace like a little running emoji. It sometimes feels like I’m moving in automatic mode, on autopilot. You know like when you drive to work on your usual route and then when you arrive, you can’t remember the drive and think to yourself, “did I drive through any red robots?”, or when you have to run your tongue over your teeth as you head out the door, to check whether you actually brushed them? We’ve all done it, I do it a lot! Days sometimes roll into weeks which roll into months and then we find ourselves more than half way through the year. It’s ridiculous!

Then, the other day I listened to podcast which shared a message so profound that I did almost drive through a red robot! “Automatic is downhill. You can coast on automatic.”, said John Maxwell. Wow. When we move through life on autopilot, without much thought for what we want to get out of our day or our week, without much thought for our intentions, we are just cruising along – downhill. I’ve heard versions of this kind of message before but this, it got me.

I don’t want to just cruise along on a long, persistent downhill to the end of 2019. I want to learn and grow as a woman, as a wife, as a mom and in my career. I want to learn from my mistakes and I want to be better tomorrow than I was today. This needs intention. This needs a plan. I love planning (ask my husband if you don’t already know this about me)! To grow and be better we need to zone in on our purpose in this life, plot out how to live it out and then actually live it out with absolute intention every single day. This is hard work, this is uphill. This is acknowledging weakness and mistakes. This is being vulnerable to feedback, even when my son tells me I hurt his feelings for shouting like a crazy person to get to school on time the other morning. This is being present in each day and embracing the good, the bad and the ugly. This takes consistency.

But this uphill route takes us along a path that brings appreciation for small wins and contentment. Challenges become stepping stones to a better view of life. Speed bumps become moments of gratitude for learning opportunities. This is how I want to finish this year and all the other years to come. This is how I want my kids to see me living life.

And it starts right here, right now, with this blog post. I’ve been thinking for a while now about writing again, but just haven’t been able to find the right words. So much has changed since my last post over a year ago! But here I go – I’m back, putting my thoughts out into the world again. Hoping that someone, somewhere will be able to identify with me, learn with me, celebrate with me and, together with me, make the absolute most out of this wonderful journey of life.