I want to share a bit about how my life has changed in the past few years.  Dear ones in my life that I have known over the last 10 years, or more, say how much of a change they have seen in me. I know that this might sound odd to say but I truly walk around with a smile on my face most of the time and certainly feel joyful every day.

I really do appreciate and enjoy living my life & honestly feel like pinching myself when I take time each evening to reflect on the how the different areas of my life are now. The areas of ; myself, my love, my family, my friendships, my hobbies, my beliefs and my career. I couldn’t make any of these areas better right now even if I tried!

 

Which just humbles me to think about.

 

Now, before you think, who is this over the top optimist??! I can tell you that I write this because this certainly has not always been the case for me.

This is why I wish to pay forward the truths that I have discovered. How, with; thought, action and time, life’s path can become  & BLISSFUL!

New friends that I have met over the last 7 years often say to me that I am one of the most upbeat and easy to be around people that they know.  I had never really thought much upon this, until this year. Workmates too have asked “Cat why are you so happy? You are always smiling!” (Which is not strictly true, of course I do have my moments and reactions) but in the main yes, they are right. I didn’t know what to say at first, I kind of felt sad if workmates found me different to their own friends and family.

 

Yes, I am grateful for the life I have chosen and walk around happy. Why? Simply because I have come to the realisation that my mind can be set anywhere that I place it and only I am responsible for how my life is.  That in each new day and moment, is a new opportunity and chance to choose – to choose how I am being!

It is my belief that life is defined only by:

 

What you are DOING &

What & how are you BEING!

This year I find myself looking back over my path to date and my past RECIPE books.  I have decided to take a very bold move to share my thoughts with others…which to be honest I find really scary.  After all personal thoughts are just that, personal.

 

Yet now for some reason, the fear of people being able to read my thoughts and ideas and therefore, being able to judge them, is actually not that bad – not now that I have actually started pulling together this site. Plus the more I think about it – no one else could possibly judge my writing more than me!

 

HA! This site. It makes me chuckle to myself and at the little self-sabotaging part of me, that has prevented me from doing this a whole heap of time sooner  – to share a truth with you I have dreamt and spoken about Good-VibeNation…for hmm well, well honestly… for what seems like forever! – the thought of it as a concept must have started to go through my head in 2011. I have followed my methods and RECIPE book since 2008. In 2012 I bought this website and now 2014 finally sees me make it happen.

 

I think I have taken procrastination to an Olympic level, the fear I chose to carry of failure, made sure that I did it to the MAX.

 

I have written pages and pages of words and ideas over the last 5 years that have some great nuggets in. Which, when I have shared these as methods with others, I am SO delighted to have been told that when applied, they have helped and uplifted them.  From not such a great place in life, to a place of new opportunities – bringing a sense of empowerment.  Learning that what has worked for me has helped others too – totally bursts my heart with joy – this is my inspiration to share my private thoughts.

With all this in mind and spurred on by one dear friends recent feedback there is no more Mrs Procrastination for me, 2014 seems to have come in for me with a gust of new energy – Year of the Horse – I feel you!

 

I have decided that this year I am going to share my method in the form of this blog. Updating it   it at each new month, moon or sooner – whenever my creative muscle wants to flex. Then depending on how it goes, I really wish that Good-VibeNation  a promoter of ideas and experiences that simply offer GOOD VIBES!!  

For it is my experience that there are many ideas about happiness, but many folk get stuck on the ways they can actually bring it about, day after day.  I wish to share the ways in which I have absolutely brightened my life and how I have chosen and carved out my own path – leading to so much and a wonderful sense of BLISS in my world.

 

BLISS to me is a feeling of peace – peace of mind – where you are totally in and enjoying that very moment.  This tranquil state of mind, that I regularly live in, is one that up until 5 years ago I had rarely experienced.  Not I think since the times when I was a little girl – when all you thought about was play – I would play for hours with my sister and brother in our amazing garden.  Playing marbles and making up different tales with my childhood friend Stephanie and our collection of Sylvanian families, or the hours I would spend lost in a great book.  Life can be challenging as a teenager, I know for me I really didn’t feel at home or enjoy school.  By the time my parents divorced, when I was 21 my mind was full of frets.  The divorce was, as many others of you may appreciate, a total blast apart of the world that I knew up until then.  It was hardly a shock when they did announce the choice to split I guess, after all we had all lived in a house with a lot of bitterness, resentment and arguments for many years.

 

 

However, whatever your age I guess the child in you will always 

 present and wish for everything to remain the same.

 

I know for me I found this change in the structure of our family really hard to accept at first, let alone to start to deal with.  The not knowing of what lay ahead for us all was really daunting; this HUGE adjustment to me and all of my family members was really scary at the time to face.  At 21 – a time when you are apparently supposed to feel carefree and out partying away – I was instead fretting over where and how we all were going to live, mourning the fact that we were no longer going to  a family and no longer had a family home to visit.  Christmas and Birthdays suddenly doubled – which sounds brilliant in words, and are now, given that time has passed, things are settled and the bad feelings have passed. But back then, in reality these celebrations had become more of an issue about ensuring that no one’s feelings were hurt and a juggling act of pleasing both parents.  Guilt overshadowed any decision made about where to spend the holiday’s and holidays became not a leisurely affair but instead came now with a feeling of being fragmented into pit stops.

 

I tell you this, my personal story, not for any reason other than to give you some perspective of life back at the start of my twenties and teen years hardly being an optimists dream!  And ultimately, why I started to search for my own answers to the question we all ask at some point. What is it to be happy?

 

My 20’s and my parents’ divorce was for us, topped off with the fact that Mum was in an absolute state about the break up, despite it  being kind of her making?!  This alone, has been one of the hardest things to deal with in my world – facing the brutal and prolonged unhappiness of my parent – with guilt being the backdrop to our relationship, if my grace & my appreciation of her found its limit. For quite often I would flare up and react with the frustration of seeing a loved one choosing to become and to stay a victim.

For years I struggled with every conversation that Mum and I had, knowing as I dialled, that she would either  in a mess, or  totally depressive.  Which is really not nice, I felt like I was constantly struggling to try to make her happy and everything ok.  The parent/child role had totally reversed.  This was fine for a while, but everyone has their limits!  Sometimes I could cope with it, mostly though I just wanted to scream and shout Mum “what about me and my life?”.  ‘Do you not take any responsibility for your part in creating this?’ It was pretty draining let me tell you, talking for hours about the past, her regrets and constantly asking about my Dad.  This was all so draining in the moment and I followed it up for hours and hours, by dwelling upon it all!  Then as you do, I got the nasty feeling that only guilt can bring. The low, low vibrational feeling that stays with you everywhere you go because I had become upset and then angry (even  it just in my head), at my Mum. Which I guess was just so rooted in the HUGE disappointment to me, that my Mum had basically no emotional time or energy for me, or interest at this time, in what was happening in my world.  She was in truth so entrenched in her own misery and regrets that she had no will to guide or support me into my young adulthood.

 

I felt pretty low and at this point in my life, my head full of all this family stuff.  I was plagued with often daily splitting headaches. A week without one was a good week.  I found it hard not to look at the love and support that friends of mine received from their secure homes and not start to compare. Which is I think is one of the lowest vibe things we do as humans. To compare! It never leaves us feeling good to do this.  Yet when we are low we all do it!  Each week I would feel obliged to check in with Mum knowing that the call or worse – visit – would make me feel pretty awful and just terribly sad for her.

So what did I do to get through this period in my life, well I got busy!

 

I became addicted to working for it provided such a great distraction to my feelings and when I was not working I developed a career level of cleaning my home and environment – to the level of OCD.  I can now see this OCD as a way of me providing a way to control – after all I could not control the bad feelings or my family’s happiness but what I could control was my environment. By seeing it looking perfect, was my way of keeping a safe stable environment for me and this illusion of perfection, was something I was desperately trying to hold onto.  Controlling outcomes was a pattern that I had adopted, following the shock to me & feelings of loss, of the security of our family unit and family home.

 

 

“The BLISS and the BUZZ”

 

 

Can I pause my history for a moment please, if you are still with me, to let me introduce you at this stage to one of the Good-VibeNation ideas called “The BLISS and the BUZZ” – keep reading & hopefully, I can explain what is meant by this… to basically find the balance in life between constantly DOING and allowing yourself to   

 

 

For I believe that when you allow yourself to  , you are simply BLISSFULL!

 

...At this time in my life however, I had no idea of any of this, or the need to create balance. I was in full on busy bee – buzz mode.

 

 

Buzz mode I embraced wholeheartedly at that time because I found it to  the best way to stop myself from feeling or at least to prevent me from admitting the truth about what I was feeling. 

 

Because when you are in buzz mode there is no room for new thoughts. 

 

The fretfull thoughts that you have, just keep buzzing about in your mind  – over and over and over again – as if they are rattling around in your brain. The only way to ignore them was for me to busy myself with work!

 

The really positive outcome of my parents divorce has been that by noticing the bad feelings it has brought up, this has actually provided awareness and discussion to the subject of feelings in my family. Which is a HUGE change from the past where this previously, was certainly not the case!

I can openly discuss feelings now with my Mum in the great place that we have gotten to.  She tells me interestingly that with her own parents, feelings were simply not discussed.  I guess this might  a generational and cultural way of being.

 

So together we are turning away from the British way of ‘carrying on’ and ‘pulling ourselves together’ having discovered that actually it is so positive to speak about and to deal with things.

 

Then the weed of resentment then has no ground to grow in!

 

Time came about 7 years ago for me to finally admit the truth to self about how I was feeling.  Feeling?! Yes, if you have just been scanning this page, you did read this right! We are referring that so avoided word, in traditional British culture…feelings. Good ole Victorian Britain provided many things like the fine houses and majestic royal parks, feelings though…not so much!… R.I.P Grandparents of mine,  though totally forgivable given the cultural vibe of literally having to go through wars – I thankfully – cannot imagine what that must have been like!

 

So yes, to actually go there and TO ACTUALLY admit the truth to myself about how I was feeling as a result of my actions. To address how I was basically feeling about who and what I was allowing onto my life’s path – giving my time to & spending my time on.

This has been one of the hardest blocks that I have had to become aware if in order to start the process of awareness in order to stop re-creating the same past choices and so in order to change my future.

 

I had spent a lot of time up until my late twenties keeping busy, busy, BUSY like a good worker  climbing the corporate ladder,  which served as a great distraction to my feelings.

 

Much rather to procrastinate following my dreams i.e. doing my drawings and children’s stories -the ones that kept on popping into my head. But no – rather than to focus on these, I would tidy my house and I don’t mean just a quick hoover, oh no.  For that would still allow plenty of time to focus on being creative.  No no, once the hoovering, washing and tidying was done I remember that I would find myself cleaning the inside of the windows – and had it not been winter time– I know the outside would have been next on my list to do.

 

I certainly used to   a signed up member to rather than addressing my feelings and realising what it is that would make me happy.  Best instead just keep busy and to shove each new unpleasant feeling onto the pile already stuffed under my metaphorical carpet.

That was until the winter of 2007, when my happiness well had finally run dry. My emotional baggage felt too heavy to continue with life as it was for me then, I could no longer ignore the flat vibe that I felt my life had become.

 

My carpet now contained a mountain! and I was virtually tripping over it!

 

A mountain that was built on facing Christmas and family time – which was to be a joy, now that my family had found their own new and more happy paths – only to be returning from the high of all getting together, to my reality.  A reality based on a job that was now at a level of responsibility that completely stressed me out and which I had allowed to drain me constantly  it on email or if I wasn’t actually working then I was thinking about it and freaking about the importance of the next day. Would I able to do it all? and do it well enough?! Ahhh!! it makes me cringe to remember this time.

 

That was the state of my career choices; the next area that was not blissful for me was the man. Who bless him was a dear person, but in my heart I knew for both of us we just didn’t connect. Bottom line was I didn’t love him. Although by putting myself in a miserable situation, I couldn’t have loved myself that much either! I do believe in the old adage that gives the reasoning that if you do not consider yourself highly enough to the level where it is love, then you are not going to match that in another!  So my love life back then was …again using the gift of hindsitage – hardly a surprise.

 

So there I was in a joyless relationship and job.  My situation was completed by the fact that I had a mortgage on a house that was far away from the people that I wished to  near.

I was feeling at this point well…pretty lonely and firkin scared at which direction to go in.

Rightly so I reckon! – since I had not so far given my life choices much thought.  Or at least in my hindsight I can now see clearly that up till this point in my life I had not thought about my own wishes – let alone dreamt well...

 

I had not set my sights high enough for my own happiness!!