Up until the age of 35 I think I had life pretty much figured out
Don't misread this though, that doesn't mean my life was easy
Did I have a great childhood? No
Did I have things that were challenging? Yes
But overall, I thought I had my sh1t pretty much sorted
I had a 6-figure job, some amazing friends and I was travelling the world for both work and pleasure
But then it’s like I got hit by a literal train
If you’ve been connected to me for a while, you’ll know that at the age of 35 while working I suffered an almighty burnout
One that saw me in bed and off work for 8 months (and I worked for myself!)
And along came the “lessons” in life that I thought I had to learn.....
An abusive relationship
A witnessing of a serious suicide attempt
Infertility
A friend killed in an explosion
A business failure
The loss of a great love and his stepson
Fast forward 5 years back to today....
I’ve realised something absolutely fundamental
That the first 35 years of my life I wasn’t actually living a true version of me
The running around, 6 figure, 24/7 working, jet setting version of me was a version I’d created as I thought that was what success looked like
But I wasn’t living my true values
One of my values I realise now is Love
So why was I running away from relationships? Why wasn’t I having children or at the very least going to get checked out the reason I wasn’t becoming pregnant?
Why wasn't I giving love first instead of waiting to receive it?
Do you recognise any of this in yourself?
To become empowered and to change my life, I realised I had to sit with these feelings to understand what was going on
And here I was in lockdown, with nothing else to do apart from feel these emotions I’d much rather have ran away from
So, I started doing some meditation and some writing
And all of these emotions started pouring out of me, like I couldn’t write fast enough
The best way I can describe it is my life prior to 35 was like a jigsaw puzzle…
You know when you first open the box and you get that plastic bag with all the pieces in. You tip it out and you have to go through finding the outside pieces with an edge to start the puzzle off.
Well I figure the first 35 years of my life was me putting the outside edges in place
But then I looked at all of the other pieces of the puzzle in the pile of colours that made absolutely no sense.
There was no clear way to put the pieces together even with a guide, it was still a jumble
The last 5 years of my experiences I’ve finally figured I’ve been laying the rest of the jigsaw pieces out and sorting them into colours and the potential places they might go
But most importantly at the very centre of my jigsaw puzzle there’s a red heart which I’ve just added the finishing piece to
The rest of the puzzle isn’t in place yet, that’s what my next 35 years is for, where’s the fun in it if you know exactly which piece fits where from the start?
But I realised that the whole time everything comes from that middle section of the heart.
The family I want, the transformation, the truth of what I’m here to do and who I am helping.
Every single decision I’ve made along the way got me here today. In the house I’m in which I love, with the amazing people around me and my wonderful friends, my nephews and nieces who I love like my own and helping people every single day to live different lives.
I feel like I’m waking up from a dream
The challenges we have in life are usually when we’re out of balance with our core purpose or meaning
Call mine a mid-life crisis, a transformation, a sense of grief or waking the f up
It doesn’t matter
What matters is that I finally listened
I finally understood that I had to stand still for a while
The main thing I learned?
The signs were all there from the start I just wasn't listening
People were coming into my life to help me realise that I needed to make some changes
Grab onto the help that presents itself to you with both hands
Don’t fight the change as it’ll keep on at you until you do
It’s taken me 5 years to get through this phase of my life
And when you figure out that life isn’t just the edges of a jigsaw puzzle, but they are the middle pieces too
The pieces that reveal the pure beauty as the image unfolds.
Conclusion
Now that you know how a mid life crisis can happen anytime and that you have the puzzle pieces you already needed all along. Accessing them is the key.
Love
Nikki xx
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