How I Cope With Stress And Practice Calmness
You’re following Oliver and I and you’re watching our stories… you may have picked up that we travel a lot. You’re right. But if it seems like our life is one huge long ass vacation, I’d like to tell you that 99% of our travel is for work. We actually love being home. Oliver in particular has a job that requires even more travelling away than mine does (mostly in Europe and the Middle East). I’m lucky that my job is flexible enough where I can join him on his work trips quite often.
As a writer , I get loads of requests from tourism boards, brands, and hotels around the world to come and experience what they have to offer. So yes it is a beautiful thing to be able to travel and do it for work but my sole purpose on trips like this is to take in every moment of time that we spend there , and to formulate my experience into what I can type in words to describe and portray a location with honesty and truth to YOU the reader/follower. So whether this is with videos , stories, highlights, images or articles. It is a job and that is my focus the entire time .
After a hectic December in Dubai for a race with Oli, then a commute to Saudi Arabia for a tourism journalism trip and then a 12 hour flight to Vegas just for a two day stay only to come back to the UK (what in the world were we thinking? ) , our bodies started to slowly shut down and it became harder to go up the stairs to our bedroom without making old people noises…. I finally realised that I’m not superhuman (damn it).
I wanted to share this article because I think you have to remind yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing. Everyone is working for a bigger better dream with inflated standards that we most likely have sketched by ourselves with our utter super active imaginations. We derived thoughts, assumptions, expectations, built scenarios that most likely don’t really exist only to pressure ourselves into believing that we’re in a massive world race . And in this race if we don’t move fast we’re not moving at all. I know you’ve heard so many clichés that say you need to stop and smell the roses . But sometimes I’m sorry to tell you there will be no fucking roses. Wait, What do you mean ? The cliche clearly states that I should only stopping my tracks when there are violet roses surrounding me which means there must be a 3d rainbow somewhere I gotta look out for that too . But I’ve been glued to a computer screen for what seems like the entirety of my adulthood, and where I live finding a field of roses would require me to , well, move. This isn’t realistic. What am I supposed to do?
You can’t wait till this imaginary perfect scene comes for you to finally stop and breathe . There may not be roses, or daisies or lilies and the odds of finding what your brain thinks is a perfect situation for you to stop and “smell the roses” may take you years and you’ll need a hip replacement before it feels like “the right time ” .
Meditation doesn’t need a perfect place or situation. You have to push yourself to stop , slow down, focus, breathe, re-evaluate, remind and awaken yourself every chance you get. I try to take at least 2 hours of my day to sit, meditate, breathe deeply, feel the ground beneath me and remember why I do what I do , why I live this life and what I expect from it. Then I take some time to humble my expectations and view my current reality. Every time I do this I begin to realise how lucky I am to have been granted a mind, a soul, a healthy body and the ability to make change within myself and around me.
I think of who around me has spent their energy to support , love and empower me. And I thank them . Just there with my eyes closed . They don’t know that I’m counting them as my blessings but I DO it. Which makes the quality of life that I will live from here on , moments of pure gold. Those two hours every day that you can be spending appreciating every little thing in your life will better your mornings , your creativity, your thought process and your decision making (somehow also and very oddly I have found a lesser need to overdose on caffeine , I can’t explain this one really…)
So don’t wait for the roses. Stop , listen , appreciate , awaken . With this you create the inevitable of being surrounded by positivity and beauty .
Dedicated to the memories of my Father …
Images by : @Lixmheeley
Location : Hotel Gotham
