Wisdom

Prompt of the day: wisdom - What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?

Let me pause and reflect... This year I have been doing a lot of things, according to my own standards. The key word here is "doing". Because it all boils down to one thing: this year, I have decided that it was time to stop thinking and start doing.

Which is why you have seen on the blog a wide variety of activities such as:
- taking a course - evening classes -  in business management. I guess deep down I've always known I was not made to sit at a desk all day every day, working for someone else, and I've been preparing... My fear has been keeping me chained to this desk, but its voice has been slowly fading...
- travelling to Japan and Canada after years of dreaming about it;
- signing up for yoga teacher trainings and not chicken out;
- actually agreeing to teaching a one-on-one and not chicken out;
- writing - a lot;
- attending the European Summit for Global Transformation in Amsterdam and launching a second blog right away;
- new: applying for a freelance translator job with a translating agency - ok that was yesterday, so maybe it will work out, maybe it won't, but at least I've tried.

Now let's see how all this will play out in 2011!

For those of you stumbling upon this, playing catch up, and not knowing what I'm talking about, check this out, you might even want to join :) :

http://www.reverb10.com

HTML linking has been playing weird lately on this little blog, can't seem to be able to link directly, but that's better than nowt :)

Hey ho, let's go!

Back from my weekend in London, well to be honest I was back in Brussels yesterday morning but work got in the way of blogging, life happens I guess (oh and I'm lazy sometimes).

My yoga mat and me, all set and ready to go (and obviously food, never forget the food...)

Well, where to start? It was a great, fantastic, exhilarating, uplifting, challenging and inspiring intensive.
We started both days with a great practice, which left me a happy sweaty mess, followed by theory, philosophy, sequencing, use of music, and overall so much to absorb and so little at the same time...

For two days, we managed to build a small community of like-minded individuals, so different and at the same time sharing the same passion and vision, creating such a great atmosphere. I have to say I was - and still am - amazed at my fellow yogis and yoginis' kindness and heart: one of them offered me to stay at her place every time I come over for the TTC, how amazing is that?

I left wanting more, and ready to absorb all the knowledge I can, ready to start the TTC in September, ready to full embrace it, and ready to work my a** off. What a fantastic journey this will be!

I'm so excited and I just can't hide it

Tomorrow night I'll be heading to London (yay!) for a Yoga Teacher Training Immersion, that's the pre-kick-off to the programme I'll be starting in September, the "weekend zero" as I call it.

Now for a little game: am I:
- Beyond excited
- Increasingly nervous
- Violently happy
- All of the above and much more that words can't even begin to describe? (such a disgrace, I'm writing on a blog and I "can't find the words"? oh the nerve)
?

Yup, that's the introduction to the new chapter, I.CAN'T.WAIT!
(and you all know already how much I love London, so don't even get me started on this. Just two words though: WHOLE.FOODS)

"See" you next week!

An end and a start

July already... I celebrated half 2010 with this:

Times 2. Love champagne! 

also because I got this:

Yup, that would be my diploma, I'm smarter and I can be a boss now. Oh and no, the strawberry and cherry stickers didn't come with it, I'm just trying to hide my name in the most graceful and colourful way possible. Lame, I know, but this is me then.

"Grande distinction" means I can be the boss of the world, no less.

This marks the end of my evening course, in the best possible way. New knowledge, new friends, new confidence, new job in the end, it all works out nicely.

It is also the moment to start a new chapter, one I'm beyond excited to open: yoga teacher training. I won't lie, I am also a little bit nervous. Just a little bit. I am expecting a lot and at the same time I don't know what to expect. All that I know is that I'm about to embark on what will certainly be a life-changing journey! I will have a first glimpse with an immersion weekend next week, and then starting September I'll be going to yoga school once a month (which means spending a whole weekend in London once a month, my bank account has been rushed to the hospital for depression but with some support it will make it through the training, and I will be a happy London camper, yes yes yes. I mean, London baby!).

To add up to the fun, to help transitioning between business management evening course and yoga teacher training, Lovely Boyfriend and I will be taking a break in the form of a trip to Japan next month, fulfilling a life-long dream. Could it get any better?

What a year it's been so far, and what it will be!

14 days of night

Oh dear I've been a bad blogger, a bad bad blogger. Ok, "soon" is not a proper deadline, but in blogland it doesn't mean 2 weeks either, baaad blogger!

Nothing wrong happened, do not worry my friends, I just hibernated in my cave during exam weeks and concentrated almost exclusively on trying to pass with flying colours (and trying not to forget about my day job). I don't have the results yet, this is for next week, but it should be ok.

I have learned a lot in 4 months of being a student again. Of course, I am talking about the mere classes, but not only. This course has been an opportunity to practice yoga off the mat, in a twisted and unconscious way.

You see, one of my problems on the mat is letting go. You always here "let go", which is fine by me but how the hell do I do that? Off the mat it's all a matter of accepting the way things are and not try to force anything into what you think they should be. Working with other people on a presentation has been a big eye opener here: the perfectionist in me had to let go to let other people do their part, not only to give myself some rest but also to let them express themselves. I cringed sometimes at what they had done, or what they hadn't done for that matter. But in the end, even if the result was not exactly the way I wanted it to be, it was the result of a real team work.

I also met people from all kinds of backgrounds, psychology, sea engineering, furniture design, marketing, legal (and this one guy was a count, the heir of one of the oldest noble families in Europe, what are the odds?), you name it. Each one of them taught me something, each one of them had knowledge I didn't have, each one has been a true companion.

As I wrote in my last post, I also finally accepted that I am a ball of stress. I knew it, but I had tried to fight the symptoms, and getting stressed because I was stressed, definitely not a solution! So while I recognized these symptoms (argh abdominal pains), I knew what they were, and didn't pretend they were not here. They were here, I breathed, told them I acknowledged them, and they finally went low profile. Good.

Oh, and very important also : I had fun :-)

What my life has been looking like lately

(source)

On to new projects: in 3 weeks, I will go to London for the weekend zero of yoga teacher training course, yay!

Lesson learned

Did you know I'm a crazy list maker? Oh yeah you knew ;-) So easy when you can't be bothered to write a full blown post  run out of time because of a crazy schedule ("once more unto the breach my friend", and it will soon be over)

A couple of random things:
- I'm quoting Shakespeare because I want to and I love "Henry V".
- I am good at accounting. Yeah, I know. So exciting.
- I am a ball of stress when I have exams / have to travel (not because of getting on a plane or a train, but because my worst fear in traveling is missing said plane or train - yes I am extreme like that), and there's nothing I can do about it (you don't want to know the symptoms, let's just say I have to turn a special room in my apartment into my secondary residence on those days).
- But there's one thing yoga has taught me: acceptance. They (who?) say yoga is good for stress management. At least I have learned to manage by accepting and letting things be. Stress (and subsequent abdominal pains) does not define me, but it's part of me. Fighting it will make it worse, so I'll just breathe and acknowledge it's here. In a way it makes me feel better.
- This, and not having dairy.
- I love working from home. I have to negotiate this more often :-D
- I love dried mango, but you knew this already.
- I have to go to bed, or I won't be able to wake up tomorrow.
- I will write a real post soon, I promise.