Living bravely and adventurously.

One thing the pandemic has proved to us all is that change can happen, unannounced and it can happen at super speed.

Though some fear change as it catapults you into the unknown, or makes you feel out of control, I’ve always enjoyed change. I find it exciting; an opportunity to create or try something new.

I’m addicted to trying new things. It gives me the sense of adventure that I seek in my every day.

While I don’t see the pandemic as an adventure of course, I’m not writing off 2020 altogether like I hear so many people have. 2020 could be your year of opportunity. You could see the change brought by C-19 as time to reflect, look inward and make the changes you know you needed to make all along. Because when your life is stripped back to basics, when there are no distractions, when the shit hits the fan and you’re worried for your life and future – that certainly makes me sit up and notice.

So let’s get the show on the road.

The need for adventure.

I have been hooked on adventure for as long as I can remember. As a child, the light only flickered. I found a sense of adventure in being outside; I’d spend all day playing in the mud, running around, climbing, playing chase. But then, most kids did.

As I grew older, my sense of adventure moved to curiosity and I became more and more aware of the big wide world, and all its beauty. I wanted to protect it. At the age of eight, I set up a club of other kids called The Ozone Gang. Embarrassing I know, but our mission was to literally clean up our estate in my naive yet passionate attempt to clean up the world. I’d march everyone around the place, scrubbing off graffiti from walls, asking for homes to donate cleaning products, campaign against littering while galvanising others to pick it up.

As a young woman, my perception of adventure grew to squeezing every last drop out of every moment – with a dose of debauchery thrown in.

I’d savour travel, holidays, camping, working all hours followed by partying all hours; burning the candle at both ends. I’m not advocating this by the way, but this earnest taught me a powerful realisation.

The excitement these experience brought; that I created myself, made me realise I had the power to feel this fulfilled; this alive at any given moment.

All I had to do was decide, then leap.

The time it all changed.

These days, in addition to variations of all of the above, I feel a sense of adventure through learning a new skill, taking a risk and through my two children.

Yes they can give me a headache, yes they can seem like little ungrateful pricks at times, but to me – children are the greatest teachers. The way they look at life; wide-eyed, untarnished, curious and exploratory – is admirable and magical. I often look at the world through their eyes and listen to the way they describe something that I might ordinarily not notice, possibly avoid or even fear. They help me care less about the stuff I should care less about.

Just DO it.

My kids help me to open my eyes, my mind and my heart. They make me feel alive.

Last week my son wanted to go on the carousel and I instantly put up barriers. ‘I can’t see the person who works it’. ‘I don’t have any change’. ‘There’s no one else on it’. I saw pausing to have fun as an inconvenience.

My son’s reply, ‘do you want to go on it mummy? Do you think it will be fun?’

To which I replied, ‘actually yes, I think it’d be fun’.

‘So if you you want to go on it, let’s just go on it’, he said simply.

And so we did. And guess what? We had so much fun. Y’see, kids just DO stuff. There’s less procrastination in their world, less thinking – more doing, being, enjoying. And who doesn’t want more of that?

During the pandemic, I was working from home like many of us – running a senior full time job alongside a home with two children, a dog and a husband who also has a senior full time role. My husband also had the actual coronavirus right at the start of all this chaos, so it’s fair to say that our household was under immense pressure – suddenly and without warning. It became very apparent that this was not sustainable.

I was pushing my kids away to answer emails (yep, those kids that give my life true meaning), trying to juggle home schooling with work, my husbands work, general house and life duties and nursing my family back to health.

I was desperate for more time with my kids, and they were with me. Being honest, this was not just during lockdown but long before. My husband was understandably ready to implode from too much pressure and, while I felt overwhelmingly sad at the state of the world, my instinct kept screaming at me – MAKE A CHANGE. 

Getting the show on the road.

So…I handed in my notice from my very wonderful, comfortable job in senior management to go with my gut and do something that matched my passion for doing business for good, and on a part time basis so I could see and support my family more, and seek that adventure that I’ve always needed.

Let me take you through that again.

I handed in my notice. From a comfortable job. With a good salary. At a great company. In the middle of a global pandemic.

Yep, I’m that girl.

While I miss the guys I worked with immensely, I missed adventure more and had too little time and headspace for the things that helped me get it and so, I changed my life.

As Brené Brown said, ‘you can have courage or comfort. You can not have both’.

It’s not the first time I’ve placed courage over comfort to put health first, happiness first, family first, me first.

I share some of these bold changes and the gumption it took in my four short stories at the SheSays Brighton event back in March (before it all went pear-shaped and we could be in a crowded room together).

Watch the video here:

Today, I’m now Head of Marketing for The Good Business Club  on a part time basis, I’m taking on other projects and have started to create Regarding Life; the sustainability, styling and coaching bubble that you see unfolding and evolving right here on this blog.

I realised these changes needed to happen to help me live the life I truly want to, and that in turn, benefits the people and causes I care about the most. So it wasn’t the job, the company, the expectations. It wasn’t even the effects of C-19. It was just the realisation that none of that was me.

You might be thinking, ‘yeah, whatever love – it’s easy for you to say, we don’t all have the luxury of such choice’.

– and I hear you, but I didn’t just go, ‘I’m not happy, f*ck it – I’m off’. I calculated a fall-back plan and became strategic about my steps. I hustled. I involved my family in my decision making process – placing them at the heart of it all. I got their support, I built savings and I grew some tits and made it happen.

Easy? Hell no.

Scary? Hell yes.

Crazy? Maybe.

Right? 100%.

My approach Re:life is about unbecoming everything you’re not, identifying what you need then having the tits to go out and get it.

I call this brave living.

Want to make a change? Want to live bravely? Explore my mentoring packages and discover your bravery toolkit.

I also recommend checking our adventurer, author and motivation speaker, Alistair Humphreys. He was recommended to me by a friend and his book, The Doorstep Mile is both comforting and inspiring – helping you to weave adventure into our life, realistically.