What do you do with your rubbish?

Making time for me is my way of caring for myself – Putting my thoughts onto paper, it feels like I have captured them, I own them, they are mine and I like to look of what I have written, they are my words nobody else’s. Like chasing discarded newspapers or debris being carried by gusts of wind, sometimes the winds can feel like tornados, but being able to grab one or two helps reduce the mess left behind later all our discarded thoughts, feelings and emotions left scattered, littered, sometimes for someone else to clean up after, or we may go back to clean up ourselves OR we can choose to walk away and ignore the mess or devastation left behind? 

Offloading my thoughts is like me going back and cleaning up my own litter, I know if I walk away and leave them they will grow like landfills, mountains of decaying debris resulting in a foul smell that soaks into your clothes into your skin and the only way to relieve yourself from the foul smell is to shower or cleanse yourself. 

For me with writing it’s like taking some of my rubbish, try to make sense of it and then dispose of it in the appropriate recycling bin so that the thoughts and ideas can be used again and serve some purpose to someone else or lessons for ourselves and others.

I have been sorting through me rubbish this morning – here are some of my thoughts and reflections from my week at work...

I often want things too fast, there is an urgency about wanting to know what I will be doing 2, 3 10 years in my life, I want some reassurances that things will turn out ok, that I will be ok, I want to be sure that I am living the best of me, that I am reaching my full potential, I want to know that I will still be helping others find their own path. 

Isn’t that what all of us want? We want reassurance, we crave guarantees in a life where nothing can be really guaranteed! We want others to change, we want to fix their defaults, often at the cost of not really fixing or focusing on our own defaults! 

We look to others to, reassure us that everything is going to be ok or fix and make things ok, are we asking too much? Do we expect too much? I think so, I think we (as a society) expect too much and rely on others to reassure and restore and make things just right. We want others to fix something we don’t like or don’t agree with, we want answers as to why someone is sleeping on the streets, or why someone was beaten by a  possessive partner, we want to fix all the wrong in the world !

When the reality is, that we cannot fix all the wrongs in the world, that there are NO guarantees, there will ever be enough questions to all the answers, always more questions than there are answers. We will never 100% ever be happy or content with our lot all of the time. We will never in our lifetime be in a position where we no longer see people sleeping rough on the streets or preventing someone one being beaten or controlled by a possessive partner. It aint ever going to happen! With a planet populated by over 7+Billion we cannot effect change for everyone, but we can try to effect change closer to home, we can try to make a difference. It is a well known fact that people struggling with certain situations or issues are more likely to listen , receive and accept advice from people who have themselves have some lived experienced . This isn’t to say that just because you have lived experience that you are the expert and that those who haven’t had lived experaince are unqualified to help. but It goes back to us instinctively wanting reassurance, some sort of guarantee from someone who’s had the same lived experience and got through it, we need evidence that change can happen.  We cannot do for others, but we can show them and its ultimately down to them if they are willing or ready to make choices or any change.

But we can be role models, but we have to be honest role models, we have to acknowledge and remind the ones we are supporting or guiding that sometimes life will still get tough, will still feel tough, that the challenges just don’t stop coming, they are part of life! FACT 

We have to remind the ones that we are supporting that there are no guarantee’s and that if we offer guarantees we are potentially setting them up to fail. That is why being self aware of our own limits, knowing our own boundaries and knowing what’s in our own refuge or rubbish bin is crucial not just for us, but for the person we are supporting or helping. Its called guiding by example 

So my question to you is

“What do you do with your rubbish? and when did you last sort it out?”

Love Fordy x