Aloha 27! It’s my birthday tomorrow. I’m sitting in the back garden of Blissland (aka the mini-mansion we just moved into with 2 of our best friends/soul sisters) wondering how to begin my 27th birthday blog post. So let’s begin with pulling a card, duh 😉
I got tarot cards for my birthday from Mum and Dad and the first card I pulled for myself was ‘The Emperor’. A card about logic and details and plans. Totally ME in a nutshell (well done Tarot cards, well done!). As I read further… “Know that if you can master yourself then you should have little problem mastering the world and everything in it.” – Biddy Tarot
There it was. Written in text. Smack bang in front of me. If you can master yourself, you can master everything else. I feel like these 5 new lessons for my 27th birthday have helped me to (start) master myself.
The past year and a bit has been the most transformative of my life so far. Pretty sure I can thank yoga for that.
Do you ever think back to a moment or memory and wonder who the hell was that? I do this all the time. Sometimes to the me one year, one month, one day, or even one hour ago. Can we really ever master ourselves? Or do we keep evolving and find more things to master? Good question.
But that’s lesson #1: never be afraid to change. I feel like we can all pigeonhole ourselves into the people we become until we’re ‘stuck’ there feeling like we know no better or afraid that ‘no, this is who I am, this is what I’m known for… I’ll just keep doing this even though I don’t really love it’. That’s not true. We can change. We can change our minds. We can change our career. We can change what ever we want to change: we just have to change. Simple really. But this year I saw this pop up for me when doing my yoga teacher training. I told myself no, I do food, I talk about mindset. That’s what Merrymakers do. Not yoga! Well, stuff that, I do yoga now.
“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” – Shaw
In my 27 years the most me I’ve felt was at age 6-12 (I don’t remember anything before 6) and now, 26 and 364 days old.
I think it’s about connection. Or reconnection. I was always there, I just decided to cover me up with stress, anger, body image issues and fear… so much fear, fear that I didn’t really know was fear. Fear that still exists (I am NOT fearless but I think I do have less fear than yesterday Carla).
Lesson #2: everything you’re looking for, you already have.
This year, I realised that the only person or thing that’s ever going to give me everything I need, is myself. It all starts with me. I have all the love I’ll ever need. I have all the kindness. I have all the time. You have it all too! Yoga helped me on this journey of reconnecting to my source. My light. My true nature. By simply sitting, breathing and feeling. I already have everything I need. Everything else is the tasty as sprinkles on top (or a distraction ;)). I am darn #blessed.
Let’s get straight into lesson #3 because it flows on so nicely… you don’t ALWAYS have to be stressed/busy/planning/going/striving/pushing. IT. IS. EXHAUSTING. I’ve spent a lot of my years pushing myself very hard. Striving for ‘perfection’. Always wanting more, more, more. Stop. Look at the sky. Walk on the beach. Go for the coffee. Read the book. Hug your friends. Talk to your parents. Laugh so big it hurts. TURN OFF YOUR PHONE. DO NOT CHECK INSTAGRAM.
CREATE SPACE. SPACE. This year when I caught up with my amazing friends Megan Dalla Camina and Bronnie Ware on separate occasions, the common theme was space. These super successful women spoke about creating time where nothing was planned, nothing was scheduled. They left the space for the new to flow in. Or for the nothing to happen. Yes, for the nothing to happen.
I’ve been doing this, especially lately: cancelling overseas trips, projects, deleting emails, decluttering and although these were scary decisions, I feel lighter, life is flowing. It feels freaking good. I’ve even been blocking out full days in my calendar as SPACE. Try it. It’s a gamechanger.
I’m not saying I do not work darn hard on Merrymakers. I DO. And so does Emmy. But it got to the point where the business was overtaking EVERYTHING. So I welcomed in space, and life got better. Sometimes just being is what we all need. Not doing. Not striving. Not planning. Just being.
Lesson #4 is my favourite because it has taken me so long to understand. De – tach – ment. Detatchment. The frist day I started delving into this detachment thing I remember speaking with Em for hours about it. I couldn’t understand. Why would I want to detach yourself from loved ones? Goals? Holidays? EVERYTHING? And as I started to bring the act of detachment into my life, things started to get clearer.
I started to detach myself from business goals. Because if I didn’t reach the goal, then I would cause suffering in disappointment. I started to detach myself from plans. Because if the plans would change, then I would cause suffering in stress. This detachment thing I’ve been doing has helped me realise the bigger picture of what I do here with Merrymakers as well. As I detach from what I think it should be… it becomes what it was always meant to be.
My favourite lines from my favourite book this year The Bhagavad Gita:
“You have a right to your actions,
but never your actions’ fruits.
Act for the action’s sake.
And do not be attached to inaction…
The wise lets go of all
results, whether good or bad.
and is focused on the action alone.”
So if we act, with no attachment to the fruits of our actions, we will be free from ourselves. I wrote this earlier this year and it still rings true:
Detachment: whether you reach the goal or not, it doesn’t bother you. This doesn’t mean you get a free pass to be lazy. You still give it all you got. It means that if the plan doesn’t turn out the way you thought it would, that all is well… and just know that the way it turned out is the way it was supposed to.
Practise detachment. Nothing can stop you. Nothing can bring you down. You’re like water, you flow, sometimes fast, sometimes slow and you elegantly bend around the rocks (obstacles).
New lesson #5 to celebrate my 27th birthday is not a new lesson. It’s a lesson I always knew. But it’s a lesson that I’ve been focusing on and have seen come into my reality.
Kindness is everything. Kindness is all that matters. Always, always, ALWAYS choose kindness.
Always.
If you’d asked me at age 17 where I’d be in 10 years time, I would have said, Canberra, married, house, 2 kids, dog, EL2 (lol). Wrong. So wrong 17 year old Carla! That’s not where I am. I’m in Blissland, waking up happy, doing stuff I love and connecting with epic humans on levels I never knew imagined and I am mastering myself every dayum day.
So yay, happy birthday to me. I’m so excited to see what’s next. To learn more. To do more yoga. To create more. To be me every single day, unapologetically. It all comes back to where it all began really. Joseph Campbell and that one little message to be who you are and #followyourbliss
I think that’s it. For now anyway.
Always merrymaking,
Carla