I have just returned from a five week break. I went to Nepal with my partner, and it was a very interesting, enjoyable and challenging-in-parts experience. We did a 10 day silent meditation retreat which I am sure I will share learnings from as time goes on (it was possibly the hardest thing I’ve ever done!) but we also relished in the change in daily habits.
We were regularly offline, which allowed for more talking, more noticing the surroundings, more reading and more listening to music. We parked any work pressures and just focused on the order of each day ahead. We ate different food to what we usually eat, and we stopped drinking alcohol for a large proportion of the trip.
Effectively it was a circuit breaker from the usual pattern of life. I do actually really love my daily routine; my work, my home, my social circles, the classes I go to, the food I eat and the drinks I drink. But the process of stepping out of that routine for a month was invaluable.
It helped me to assess, from a distance, what changes I want to make. Those changes are small, but I know they will be impactful. I’ve decided the television needs to be turned on much less, and I’ve joined my local library in order to continue the reading I got into whilst away. I also intend on thinking less, by that I mean, worry less about the wellbeing of material items. I shall dance more, and I shall laugh more.
I feel like we can intellectually decide that changes need to be made, but sometimes it takes a break (and sometimes that’s a break away, or a break up, or even a break down) to get the space to re-think things and make changes at a deeper level.
Continuing life as we always have isn’t often that healthy, we can get into patterns that don’t serve us and we can be quite blind to those patterns. Finding ways to step back, review, and make choices makes for a richer, more alive experience.
With love as always, Hannah and Team Bird
Image by Rohit Tandon https://unsplash.com/@sepoys