It’s the first day of February! Hooray! Our contributor Victoria Lawlor is here today with a beautiful post on how sometimes an illness can be a positive catalyst for change. Have you got time to grab a cuppa and enjoy?
It’s never the wrong time to do the right thing. If only I had been told this early on in my life. I remember back to a more carefree time. When time appeared to stand still and the clock mocked me with each ticking second. When the days stretched endlessly ahead with no plans to anchor them still, each day just blending into another and before I knew it my twenties had passed and my thirties whizzed by in a fog of motherhood.
Often the right thing is really difficult to find, especially when you are not looking for it. If you are too busy chasing the next night out, pay rise or holiday it isn’t easy to stop and reflect what the right thing to do is. Often we are caught up in a vicious cycle of consumerism. We rarely stop to think about our own needs and desires.
Sometimes an illness can be a positive catalyst for change. At the moment, you or your loved ones may not have much energy, but trust me, as you become stronger, finding the right thing will become easier. You will learn to listen to your instinct more and as you take each day as it comes.
You will choose what you think is the right thing, not what others tell you is. You will choose what changes you want to make to your life. A new way of eating, a more focused outlook on positivity, scheduled meet ups with friends for coffee. Routine led days or carefree ones. Watching films or reading books. You make tiny important decisions every day that help shape the life that you live.
If it doesn’t feel right to you, then listen to your heart. There is never a wrong time to do the right thing. You don’t have to follow everyone else. What everyone else does is their choice. Yours can differ.
Maybe you have decided to take up meditation, helping you to gain more clarity. Maybe you have decided to go to bed earlier, not watch TV too late in the night. Maybe you have chosen to go plastic free. Maybe you have decided to get more fresh air after not leaving the house for days. Feel humility but don’t feel failure. Those were choices you made at the time, things can change.
Being human means listening to yourself. Finding the right thing to do amongst the chaos of daily life is not easy. But if we sit still and ask ourselves the question the answer is often hiding in plain sight. It is an important lesson to teach our family and friends that nothing is forever and things can and will differ over time.
Don’t be afraid to admit you have changed your mind, don’t be afraid to acknowledge something isn’t working. Don’t be too caught up in your day to day to stop and ask for help. It is never the wrong time to do the right thing. And you, and only you alone will know what the right thing truly is.