So 2016 is nearly upon us and as usual there are the posts about how crap this 2015 has been for people and how 2016 has to be better. Me however, I am going to be thankful and grateful that I have had this year because so many of my friends haven’t.Things might not have gone as I had originally planned, but they have gone how it was meant to be for now.
I am taking time to reflect on what I have in my life rather than what I haven’t. There are people in parts of the UK that have lost their entire homes to flood waters and yet they are not thinking of themselves, they are thinking of their neighbours.
When we moved to a new area in Dorset in March and I knew no-one. I had to leave my job that I loved and friends that I had made as the journey to and from work everyday, would be just too much. Rather than be upset, I looked at it as a new challenge, a chance to start afresh and this is just what I did.
When I left my old job I realised how much of a difference I had made to my customers lives. I was a customer services team leader and account manager for Premier business audio and I loved my job, my work colleagues, my customers and my customers loved me. Sure we had some ones that didn’t like me, but then not everyone likes each other, but the ones that liked me, made up for it.
When I moved to Dorset from Wiltshire, I got a new job and I applied to go to university. My new job only lasted a few months as I was accepted to Bournemouth University on a Post Graduate course for Mental Health Nursing which I would start in 2015.
I also got to go to Turkey for 2 weeks spending some quality time with my husband. A holiday in the sun, something, quite a few years ago, I thought I would never get to do. Life has certainly changed for me over the past few years, sometimes for the worse, but always for the better in the end. You see I became a buddhist nearly 6 years ago due a relationship change and I have never looked backed.
For years I had always played the victim and I revelled in the attention my victim mentality got me, but then I realised that people started to get fed up of me constantly being negative and they started to distance themselves from me. One day I watched the film “What’s love got to do with it” about the life of Tina Turner and how Buddhism saved her. I went to a gathering one day and I haven’t looked back since. I love meditating and chanting as it brings me inner peace.
It’s not been easy and the negativity does creep back in, especially when I see people being what I think is idiotic or having a victim mentality and then I snap myself out of it because you never know what is happening behind closed doors. Whenever I feel like i’m slipping back, I remind myself of how lucky I am or think of grateful things in my life. Every morning I think of at least one grateful thing in my life to start the day off.
The things I am mostly grateful for are my children, my 2 crazy dogs and my amazing husband. They are the constant light in my life. If ever I need help with anything, my husband is always there for me.
I’ve not always been the person I am today and there are things i’ve done in my life that I am truly sorry for, however I refuse to pay for them for the rest of my life. There’s only so many times you can say sorry for something. One of the things I had to do first to be able to move on in my life is to forgive myself. This isn’t the same as blaming others and not yourself, it’s about taking responsibility for things and forgiving yourself and learning to love you as a person. I’ve never really liked me as a person, heck I didn’t even know who Mel was for quite a long time as i’ve always tried to be what others wanted me to be, the good wife, daughter or mother.
It’s funny how things happen. When my marriage broke up in 2010, I went shopping for the first time and I stood in Tesco’s thinking what do I like? I mean for years I had bought what my dad liked, what my children liked, or what my husband liked and yet, I never actually knew what Mel liked and that was a very strange, scary and yet liberating feeling. It was like I had been born again and I could start looking at the world for the first time.
I had counselling with an amazing counsellor and I became a buddhist and that’s when things started to change for me. When you look at the world through negative eyes, only negative things happen. When you look at the world through positive eyes, there’s a whole new world of opportunities to explore.
So today I sit here with the thoughts of 2016 on my mind and what I want to achieve from it….. So here is my draft list:
- Not procrastinate as much as I do.
- Study harder as a student nurse.
- Be more tolerant of people, even if they’re not tolerant of me.
- Be more assertive.
- To not make instant judgements on people.
- Be the bigger person and apologise, even if I didn’t do anything wrong in the first place.
- Be more positive.
- Try to make people around me more positive.
- Eat more healthy.
- Not drink as much caffeine and drink more water.
- Exercise more.
- Do at least one random act of kindness a week because there are people worse off than me.
My journey through life 