Lessons I learned from the movie "28 Days"

A few years ago I stumbled upon the movie "28 Days", starring Sandra Bullock et al. I was in a video shop in Auckland and it looked like a good way to waste a few hours, so I hired it. Little did I know that there were a few good life lessons to come from this odd pairing of Sandra Bullock and Viggo Mortensen. 

If you haven't seen the movie, Sandra Bullock plays Gracie, a walking disaster alcoholic party girl with a party boy live-in boyfriend named Jasper. She's been a mess most of her adult life, but after she trashes her older sister's wedding, crashes a limousine into a house and destroys a wedding cake, she ends up sentenced to 28 days in a rehab facility.

The movie obviously reveals that Gracie has issues with prescription drugs and alcohol, which together with the partying, she is using to block out the pain and hurt of her past. She ends up in a group of addicts of all kinds - sex, drugs, alcohol, you name it - and it takes a nasty accident for Gracie to learn how to ask for help.

There's another rather famous actor from most of my favourite Adam Sandler movies (watch it and figure it out for yourself, I can't give everything away!) who plays a counsellor and recovering addict. He is asked in a group session how one would know when one is ready for a relationship. His immortal words in response to this question are not too far off those I have used to paraphrased his response into:

"In a year's time, get a plant. If the plant is still alive one year later, get a pet. If the pet and the plant are both alive a year after that, then you're ready." 

I have no issues with pets - I've had cats most of my life and my current fur baby turns nine this year. I've had her since she was 10 weeks old, moved her over from NZ with me and she's never too far away at any given time. 

I've previously had a pretty rocky road with plants. That is, until last year, when I went on a horticultural bender and bought a Happy Houseplant (a Dracaena) which I named Harold. A week later, I bought an Aloe Vera plant and another succulent - both of these were low maintenance and a bit spiky, just like me. Fast forward another month and my collection of succulents increased by a further six plants! Finally, for Christmas last year, I bought myself a baby lucky bamboo plant. 

I'm proud to say that my plants are all still alive and Harold in particular is a very happy houseplant indeed He's tripled in size and will definitely need a re-pot soon as he's getting too big for his current abode. I've named his other two stems Harriet and Harry - who will be moving to pots of their own soon. I may even take one of them to work to green up my office. 

We're four months down, I haven't killed any plants and my cat has been alive for 8.5 years. I guess I'd be ready for a relationship in eight months or so - if I wanted one, that is.

I'm pretty happy flying solo. I can go where I want and do what I want, when I want. I don't have to worry about anyone getting grumpy sitting home alone if I do six yoga classes a week (well, except for the cat, but she forgets when I get home). I can go away and my neighbours will feed the cat. I don't have to worry about someone else sneaking naughty food into the house. I have the blankets and bed almost all to myself as well - although sadly the cat steals at least one third of the bed. 

If someone came along who has beliefs and values that are truly in alignment with mine, then that's awesome. If he happened to love all the things I love to do, even better. I'm not convinced this person exists and I'm not changing myself to suit a man who doesn't gel with my groove, so until such time as this magical guy rocks up to my front door with a yoga mat under one arm and a slab of coconut water under the other, while singing MUSE songs and standing in tree pose, I'm happy steering my own ship in the direction that I want to go. 

Gracie finally figured this out at the end of the movie - about 90 minutes of real time or several weeks in plot time. It's taken me nearly 37 years, but I can safely say that I know I am on the right course and there's wind in my sails. 

Leonie Dawson's Amazing Life Workbook

I've been feeling a little stagnant lately. I can't tell if it's my energy channels, my aura, my inner child or nadis. Too much to think about, not enough action. 

I know that I'm tired from working six days a week (mentally, physically and emotionally tired) and I'm thrilled that I now have two days off work (it's a beloved long weekend, hooray!). 

A little downtime certainly won't go astray. 

Although my year is pretty well mapped out with destinations (physical and mental, literal and figurative, etc, etc and so on and so forth), the journey is as they say the most important part - I know exactly where I'm going to end up, it's just that the getting there part (and the reasons why) hasn't been well fleshed out yet. Well, until 20 minutes ago!

I have literally just stumbled upon Leslie Dawson's 2014 Amazing Year Life Workbook, thanks to a friend of mine. I actually now possess the digital versions of both the life and business workbooks, which is pretty awesome. However, I feel like I need physical copies so I'll be off to print them out at the local stationery store this weekend. 

I've started with the life workbook and lo and behold, one of the first things to do is "The Very Important 2013 Closing Ceremony". I have been saying for a fair few weeks now that I need to drag out all the crap I hid under my yoga mat in 2013 and deal with it, bid it farewell and move on; in order to move forward and truly enjoy 2014 - "The Year of Me" - as well as finally get my hips to move the right way in various yoga asana!

I will spend tonight closing off 2013 and then tomorrow and Monday planning my 2014. There's a few private matters to attend to as part of the 2013 closing ceremony, so I'll be taking this offline. 

Change is good

Last week I had a whole lot of change and new stuff thrown my way in a big heap. 

It was scorching hot in Melbourne and I wasn't coping too well with overnight temperatures of around 38 degrees celsius, let alone four days in a row above 40 degrees celsius. I'm from NZ, so is the cat - we didn't cope too well with it. We did however learn some valuable lessons for next time it happens. It's Melbourne, anything can happen and with the weather here, it probably will. 

I had changes at work, which I didn't have the capacity to deal with immediately on occurrence, as I was in work mode. I compartmentalise things and put them in neat little storage containers in my brain to deal with later. This work change box flew open during yoga, while I was upside down. It then ran around and around in my head all night and into the next morning. Not exactly impeccable timing, but whatever!

On Friday I was meant to go to a 2014 New Year goal setting workshop thing, which was cancelled five hours out from the start time due to "extreme heat". I spent quite a bit of time on Friday morning custom pimping a notebook to take with me to this workshop. The glue wouldn't stick as it was about 40 degrees inside my house. I was sweating just trying to get it done and the contact book covering adhesive wouldn't sit flush. 

I was already physically and mentally exhausted from hardly any sleep because it was too hot in my house. I was sick with heat exhaustion on the Wednesday and Thursday. I was dehydrated, tired, wiped out and over it. I hadn't eaten a proper meal in days because it was too hot to eat hot food, so I was having fruit, yogurt, sustagen, rice cakes, lots of coconut water, water and electrolytes, and the odd bit of pasta bake. 

On Friday morning, I had a meltdown. It all ended in tears. I found myself emotionally exhausted, racked with sobs and crying my eyes out. I needed to let it out, before it took over. I cried, I wailed and then I phoned a wise man.

I have swept some stuff from 2013 under my yoga mat, and some of that crept out and leapt in my face.  I have now given myself a deadline of 31 January to deal with the rest of it constructively, before I carry this heavy load around on my back for any longer. Or more correctly, it's sitting in knots inside my overly tight hips. 

I've been reading up on tight hips and it turns out women tend to store their stress in their hips. If you're tight in the hips, you probably have stored up stuff that needs to be dealt with and let go of.  I'll be doing a hip opening series later this week to try and force an emotional release through yoga, as there's more to come out from under my mat. 

My bolster has arrived and now that I've spent six hours of today re-arranging the house to give myself dedicated areas for chilling out, craft/study and yoga; I can get on that bolster in hip-opening poses and get this garbage out! I feel better for having spent my whole single day off this week moving furniture and opening boxes of stuff I haven't looked in for ages. But, procrastinating although necessary as this was, I can't put off doing this emotional release work forever. 

Bottling stuff up, sweeping it under your yoga mat, stuffing it in the closet or playing deaf/dumb/blind won't work forever. I compartmentalised my junk and now it's time to sort and toss it. I didn't bottle it up, I just stored it until I was strong enough to deal with it. 

I feel that time is now, so it's time to begin the process of letting go. 

Gratitude

One of my intentions for this year is to be more grateful. Late last year, Kikki-K had a sale on their journals and I purchased the set of the old design (Happiness, Goals, Wellness, Gratitude) as I don't really like the new design. On New Year's Day, I opened the Gratitude journal and started a process that I've so far kept going for 12 days. Every day I will write three things I'm grateful for and why.

There's only about 77 pages in the existing journal, so at some point I'll have to suck it up and buy the new style journal, but until then I'm rocking the old design. It's so nice to be able to reflect on the little things, big things and awesome things that happen each day.

And on that note, I also started another daily process of collecting all the great things that have happened each day and sticking them on a post-it note, then into my 2014 Great Things jar that I received for completing a three-day yoga intensive from 29-31 December. My yoga teacher Emily gave us each a jar, which I promptly came home and pimped out with a banging jar tag. 

Yoga has certainly reignited my creative fire and I've done a lot of crafty stuff so far this year. 

Long may it continue. 

Creative Expression

One of my favourite things to do on a Sunday is work on craft projects. I also like making stuff, pimping stuff and spending time making extra stuff special. I love putting a part of me into each project and it helps me stay busy, grounded and balanced. Some yin to all the yang activities I do each day, etc, etc and so on and so forth.

My yoga studio has it's first birthday this week so I spent (literally) hours hand pimping a 3D birthday card to say congratulations, thanks, well done and hooray!

Here it is.

The gold edging on each page alone took three hours. This was a real test of and exercise in patience. I just cranked up the yogi tunes and got it done. I wanted something that looked hand made, was totally hand decorated and is an outward expression of gratitude for all the hours of love and kindness that Emily has put into creating and developing our yoga studio and yoga family.

Having a creative outlet is important to me, as it gives me time on my own to just make stuff. I don't get to do anything too creative at work (other than draw on the chalkboard / inspiration wall once or twice a month), so craft stuff gives me a sense of balance and helps me defrag my brain. Plus, with the fiscal resources required to live out my dreams and achieve my goals this year, it also keeps me occupied on weekends so that I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything by choosing to stay home and save every last cent that I can!