Saturday 20 September 2014

To The Younger Me

Dear Me of 1995

You used to be ambitious, what happened? Actually forget that. That ambition that you carried around for 12 years, when you wanted a garden as big as a football pitch and a career as an Accountant, well it's left you, and it doesn't ever come back.

Right now you are thinking your ambition will come back when you find the right career path. You are partially right. It comes back, but it's drive rather than ambition. Drive to please. Drive to succeed. Drive to achieve perfection in all tasks.

Your desire for material things has left you. It doesn't return. It's the yogi in you. It's called non attachment.

You are more spiritual than you'll ever know.

Your fleeting connection with Buddhism is something you should pursue.

You'll go to Japan in 2004 and by then you'll have qualified as a yoga instructor. Your heart and crown chakras are so open, the spiritual energy has a conduit to flow right through you. You visit temples, and a Buddhist Museum. It all touches you VERY deeply. 

You'll go back to work at a retail Head Office and the day-to-day stresses will partly make you forget that divine connection. Although, having said that, for your first two weeks back in London, your city of birth feels dirty, very very dirty. People seem bad mannered, and over-sized.

Luckily despite working long hours Monday to Friday, you'll teach yoga every Friday night, and the satsang that is your students will keep your divine connection alive. Being a forklift to others so you can elevate them to reach the divine, is your real life's work. Retail's only detail.

What would really help you is if you could make yoga a bigger part of your life. Occasionally you do; you go to the Yoga Festival every Summer for 8 days in France, and you radiate light while there. It also provides you with an annual detox that keeps your health/weight in check. Alas this all falls by the way side when you fall in love with your newborn, and put the baby first.

You stay in retail, in Head Offices, but you eventually go into HR. Your approach to HR is yogic and intuitive. Everyone is treated as a soul, with a life's purpose. The whole approach is intuitive and it guides you well. This is where you practice and hone your skill of intuition, and working with your guides and angels, for the benefit of yourself and others. Some people can see the bigger picture, and realise the soul to soul connection. Others can't. It doesn't matter.

You give work everything. Blood sweat and tears. Even working from home throughout your maternity leave, baby on one knee, laptop on the other. Two years later work goes into liquidation and you turn the lights out for the administrators as you pack up and lock the door. You don't get over this. The workaholic who worked 60 hours a week for 24 years often getting the first train in and the last train out, is all of a sudden a SAHM. Still not a homemaker, but a SAHM!

Yeah about that. If you're a SAHM, it means you have a baby right? Yeah despite your age, you do! You have the most beautiful of pregnancies, where you connect with your child all the way through, even teaching yoga until your 38 weeks pregnant. The problem is, until now, for 6 years work had been your baby. You did such incredibly long hours, you've forgotten how to be at home. Home was just a Bed and Breakfast.

Your baby will require you to be a home maker.

So will your husband.

This will be new to you. You will struggle. You will stumble. You will fall. But I promise you dear one, that you will get through it.

When your newborn is 2 weeks old, your Mum will come to stay for 9 weeks. You need to use this time wisely, and do some yoga while she's there to help. You need to use this time to have some couple time. You need to respect that your Mum is there to help, and not let her be a mirror to your issues.

All in all, your path has twists and turns, but you stay you throughout. You never really lose yourself.

What I can tell you though is, you're going to put on a lot of weight. He will propose anyway. You will get engaged. You will set a date anyway. You only lose it, after you pick the Abbey and the date.

He loved you enough to see that the weight was just baggage - you need to remember this love, it's real.

But the weight you lose, you need to keep it off.

Putting it all back on, and more will give you health problems.

The things you will intuitively learn by yourself in 2001, despite the GP not believing you, are things you will have to learn again 13 years later. SUGAR gives you IBS, PCOS, weight, candida, gout (or plantar fasciitis), and irritability. Fat, despite what the food industry says, is not the enemy.

So, if you could remember one thing, dear one, stay away from sugar.

In the future, this will be common knowledge. You were ahead of the game in making that discovery, but you wasted your knowledge. You got lazy. You worked hard on work, and not on YOURSELF. It's because you've never been selfish. You always put others first. You really must learn to stop this.

Being a bit selfish, is not selfish. Being a martyr is a pain, as it's not a nice person for others to be with. Putting them first is never something they appreciate.

The happiest person to be around is someone who is happy themself.

So dear one, I hope that is enough advice for now. I have tried not to give you too many spoilers. I won't tell you if you have a girl or a boy, but I will tell you, not to fret about having the baby so late in life. In 2008 a Brahmin will do an astrological reading for you. Despite your age, he'll know that you don't already have kids, so things have unfolded as they are meant to.

Bye for now,
I love you,
Me xxx

I am a Legal and General customer so I am writing this post as part of the What Would You Say To Your Younger Self campaign.


17 comments:

  1. Great post - if only we knew then what we know now!

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  2. Lovely. Super. You're so special! X

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  3. Lovely post - and an interesting subject! Not sure what I would say - I don't really feel much older tbh!

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  4. Great post, really interesting to read. Not sure what I'd say other than stay away from cakes! :) x

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  5. 20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing. My biggest wish would be to go back and do it all again with the wisdom of a 40yo.

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  6. Fab post, hindsight is a wonderful thing x

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  7. What a beautiful letter. It is always strange how things turn out.

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  8. What a great post, there are so many things I would say to my younger self with the benefit of what I know now!

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  9. A lovely letter to your younger self. If it was ever possible I'm not sure I'd like to write one of these letters to a younger me. On one hand it'd be useful to know what pitfalls to avoid, but on the other, it's fun making your own path in life and finding out what surprises are around the corner.

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  10. I love your graduation photo LIska and what about now? What would you say ot yourself? Mich x

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  11. Lovely letter. I wonder what I would say to myself? Perhaps to worry less about boys!

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  12. I love this, it's made me wonder what I'd want to tell my younger self!

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  13. I would give myself a right talking to if I did this lol

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  14. Fantastic post! This is such a good idea. I am thinking now about what I would say to my younger self. I agree with what you say about putting yourself first sometimes. I am 32 and only just realising this!

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  15. I thought long and hard and I wouldnt give my younger self any advise, everything |I have been through has made me the me I am today!

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  16. there are SO many things I would have said to my younger self but actually like Jen said everything that happened made the person I am now so I probably wouldn't change it..well maybe one or two things ;) x

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