We don’t have a reset switch but what would happen if we did?
In the last 5 years I have had time to think and reflect quite a bit. When my technology hangs or when it goes into a loop I hit reset or reboot. But what do we do when we are stuck? Too often we are too busy to notice and don’t even look up. It’s only when something happens that jolts us out of our routine that we reassess where we are and sometimes rethink our path.
Value your family and friends whilst you are all on this earth.
In 2009 my Dad got sick whilst visiting me in London from Ireland and we nearly lost him. I love the bones of my Dad, he’s my hero and then in an instant I became the responsible adult but I was also scared.
Everyone is an individual, to understand them, walk in their shoes.
My relationship with my Mum changed during this time, we became friends. I began to see Mum as a person in her own right not just as part of a pair and someone I had taken for granted (as we all do) for most of my life. She was often quite vulnerable and confided in me a lot and was terrified that she would lose her lover, her husband, her friend, my Dad…..
Value life and use it well as you only get one (that’s what we think we know).
My Dad’s health scare influenced me to hit Pause in 2009, it made me realise that I wanted more from life and that I hadn’t really found my place. My world as I knew it somehow shifted focus (I genuinely think that something rebooted inside me).
Sometimes stopping takes us forward.
Yes I was doing ok, but I wanted to leave a mark and somehow help others. I decided to stop, look around, slow things down, to take part and give more. To walk instead of run, to listen more, to value people more and to do my life list (bucket to some) and start ticking things off now rather than later.
We don’t have to follow the trend or what others say.
Who says you can’t buck the norm, what is the norm anyway? Where does it say that’s the only way?
There is more, so be more.
To say Yes more, to smile more, to share my knowledge and experience and just to be more.
Take Stock.
Up until that point it was warp speed for me, but I realised I wasn’t happy. I had lost the joy somehow and I was on autopilot, everyday was on repeat with a sprinkle of variety and I had been enticed by the money treadmill where I was a number in a sea of numbers. I needed to question my life and what I really wanted.
The unknown is scary but regret is worse, taking a risk often reaps rewards.
I still don’t know where I am going or what I want but I live each day and try to do something new and challenge myself. I do know what I don’t want and that is to regret not having lived my life my way because I was too busy making a living that I forgot to make a life……..
Originally published at medium.com