Sparkle from the Inside Out!

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. - Helen Keller. 

Why did I decide to give up my cozy executive job and move my family to a country where we didn’t know anyone?

In part – I have always been a “seeker”. Once I’ve got “there”, it’s not long before I start wondering what lies around the next corner.

I was in a senior marketing management role that I described as “what I worked so hard for” in my career. I had a great team, a brand that had meaning, and a paycheque that helped me send my ADD/dyslexic son to a private remedial school. 

Yet after 2.5 years, the restlessness had returned. 

I was unsure if I wanted to study an MBA, get out of corporate, or move countries. As my CEO said – these were very different choices and all led to different paths! 

I joke that it was an early midlife crisis.

It was 2010 and I was about to turn 38. 

I started with the logical option. I went for an initial MBA evaluation and got the green tick. Yet when I was honest with myself – the study itch was because I wanted to stretch my mind rather than take the next logical step in my career. 

The appeal of a different country was growing.

A new country would bring a massive learning curve to catch up the basic areas of my role that I took for granted. My son’s future education was a strong consideration as options were limited for remedial high school and in general, we didn’t feel confident for South Africa’s future.

We had 5 countries in mind (funny how you can narrow the 196 options down by language and visa requirements!).

The defining question was when I asked my hubby “What do we want out of the next 10 years of our lives?” We both agreed that family and lifestyle were important. 

I’m grateful we were clear about this from the start – it proved to be a sanity point many times in the upcoming months.

With our emphasis on family and lifestyle, we decided on New Zealand. I flew to Auckland for a week to “suss it out”. At this point, all I knew was that NZ was below Australia, had a rugby team that we played against, and had 3 main cities. 

I quickly learnt our skillset would be one of our main obstacles. My hubby is an advertising man and I’m in marketing communications. Not the sort of skills you see listed on country’s “skill shortage” list!

It meant that one of us would need to return to “be on the ground” to find work and prove we were serious to potential employers. We decided my skillset would give us a better chance to land a job and as my wise hubby said “you need the adventure more than I do”. 

My company didn’t have a policy to allow an extended period of unpaid leave. I took a deep breath and resigned. It was a heart-stopping day as I felt like a crazy loon – I was choosing to walk away from everything I knew into an unknown future.

I booked a ticket to return to New Zealand for two and a half months to look for work. I hardly slept the night before I flew out. I had never been away from my son for such a long period of time and it took an enormous amount not to break into sobs as I said goodbye to him at the airport that day. 

Press fast forward and today, we have been here about 20 months.

I finally got a job which allowed us to apply for residence visas. It has been the most amazing, challenging, soul-stretching personal journey and I hope that by sharing some of the lows and highs, I can in some way inspire and encourage you to keep going and never give up on your dreams!

Some of the challenging, difficult parts.

• We had limited finances. I felt enormous pressure to find a job and secure the visa for us to move over. One night I cried so hard with feelings of loneliness, overwhelm and uncertainty that I burst the blood vessels in my eyes. Not a pretty picture the next day! 

• Missing my son’s 13^th birthday. These are times when the “what is life about” questions are highlighted in extreme. Is it more important to be at your child’s milestone birthday or doing what needs to be done to secure a new future for the family?

• I didn’t realise how hard it would be to have my everyday fabric stripped off my soul. I still miss the vibrant energy that leaps off the ground, the colours, diverse landscapes and cumulonimbus clouds that tower multiple stories into the sky.

• Growing up, I knew little of my country’s apartheid history. It was difficult at times when meeting new people as I was judged on my country’s past, not seen for who I was as a person. 

• Offshore experience doesn’t always translate to the local working environment. My hubby has struggled to find work and is still in the process of reviewing and reinventing himself. 

• My employer had two rounds of retrenchments. Fortunately, I survived them. The experience made us feel vulnerable and alone as we have no backup here, as we did in South Africa.

• “What have I gained?” can be a big tough question at different stages of the journey. Having given up so much – lifelong friendships, beloved pets, a comfortable lifestyle, it takes time for the new environment to catch up to some of that you’ve left behind. 

In spite of all the challenges, I feel blessed with the many gifts. 

• One of the biggest is the space to breathe on every level. Whilst our survivor instincts are still operating, this is a gentle country with a soft energy. We even forget to lock our front door some nights!

• The quirks that make New Zealand unique. How clean the sea water is. The amazing size and range of shells that roll up onto the local beaches. Pineapple Lumps – a wicked sweet! The average of 3 odd rainbows a week.. glorious colourful arcs that hold the sky. 

• The lack of judgement and materialism. It doesn’t matter here about your job title, where you live or the brand of your car. You are accepted for who you are and you don’t have to “prove” anything through materialistic clichés. It’s wonderfully liberating. 

• Freedom to explore!! My son can walk a few blocks down the road to his friends. My hubby is reinventing himself. I’ve started a blog and working towards a life dream of becoming a coach. 

• Whilst you don’t need to move countries to do all this, being in a different space, challenging all that you know, meeting different people with their stories expands and opens your mind.

In closing, was it worth it?

By conventional measures – ie financial security, owning a home, career path etc – we have gone backwards.

But then, we don’t want to live by conventional standards.

This period has shifted and changed us. Individually, and as a family.

Personally, I have grown enormously in confidence by attempting and pulling this off. The result is I say more often “if I could do this, then what else is possible?”

It’s been a great ride.. and it continues.

Have you made a big change, be it moving to another country, quitting your job, or starting afresh in any way?What kept you going/what did you learn? Please leave a comment below and share, thank you!

Zivana Anderson mentors women who wonder what lies beyond the day-to-day hamster wheel of life at http://www.mindsetdestination.com. She guides them to clarity on how to invest time and energy meaningfully. 

Get a free copy of The Essentials Toolkit where she’s summarised the best of her learnings over the years to get clear about what’s meaningful to you. Connect on Twitter & Facebook.

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** Want MORE BLISS and less stress in your life? Inner Sparkle: The 21 Day eCourse is made for you. Click here to get inspired. Happy. Sparkly. **

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Clouds may come, but clouds must go, and they all have a silver lining. For behind each cloud you know, the sun, or moon, is shining. – Unknown.

Pic credit: Flickr.com/kylir

(This is a post by regular reader Janietta. Want to share your story? Click here for deets!).

We are all familiar with the saying ‘every cloud has a silver lining’ but sometimes, the threads of silver that weave their way through the dark times of our lives are not so easy to spot. 

Twelve years ago, there was such a storm brewing in my life that I was unable to notice anything but the black clouds and rumbles of thunder that were threatening to obliterate it.

Picture this..

I was a single mum, juggling the demands of a teaching career while supporting my Mum through a difficult journey with cancer, whilst in the middle of a tumultuous relationship with my partner.

I was also grossly unfit, drastically overweight, very unhappy, constantly tired, and prone to periodic episodes of binge eating that added to my rapidly deteriorating sense of self worth. 

On all levels, darkness was closing in on me.

I developed an auto immune disease which meant I had to leave work, I lost the financial security a career gave me, my dear Mum died, and in a vulnerable and insecure state, I tried to find some security and respite from the pain by hastily marrying the man I had been trying to leave for the last five years.

Two years later, I found myself facing a second divorce, with my home about to be sold, jobless, and facing a very uncertain future.

Depression, pain, fear, insecurity, despair, loneliness, anxiety, and shame were my constant companions. 

That, is until the day I decided to befriend my darkness and look at it with gentler eyes.  

I began to peer more closely into it wondering if there might be something else hiding there waiting to be discovered… and as my eyes slowly adjusted I began to see the emerging light of…. STARS! 

Star 1: Desire. 

When you stop looking with the eyes of disapproval and look more kindly at your life, you may see the spark of your desires shining out through the darkness. Desire points to what it is you truly long for. 

When I was able to stop pushing my darkness away and actually feel it instead, it brought me the gift of insight. 

I began to see that what I truly wanted from life was to experience myself differently. The darkness showed me that how I was currently living my life was not congruent with who I felt myself to be deep inside. 

Once I understood this, I was free to begin to do something about it. 

Star 2: Rest. 

Not working gave me the gift of space and time to rest. At first, feeling the need to keep on going, to work things out and solve the practical problems that life was throwing at me, I resisted the call to rest.

However, gradually I was able to slow down, breathe deeply and allow my body the rest it so sorely needed. 

Without the pressures of work I was free to use my time more creatively! I went for long, healing walks, listened to music, read inspirational books, spent time talking to friends, began learning the art of relaxation, and slept when I needed to. 

Slowly my body began to repair itself.

Star 3: Solitude. 

At first, being on your own after you have been used to being in a relationship can be a dark and lonely time. And yet, solitude can be hugely  rewarding once you see it as your friend (not your enemy).

Solitude gave me space and time for self reflection.

It allowed me to get to know myself better and taught me that I was stronger than I thought I was. It provided me with the fertile ground for self trust to grow and it helped me to know that I was okay just as I was. 

The stillness and quiet that naturally accompanies solitude provided me with a natural environment in which to rekindle my interest in meditation, which in turn led me to rediscover the true essence of who I was  – a loving, wise and creative being. 

Star 4: Expansion.

While experiencing large scale loss in my life felt as though life was shutting down around me, on closer inspection I found the opposite to be true. Instead of being closed down I found I was actually being opened to life in a new way. 

Once I put down the negative baggage I was carrying in the way of thoughts about how my life should have been, the old saying, ‘as one door closes another opens’ became true for me. 

Openness enables life to flow freely and suddenly I saw new opportunities all around me. Opportunities that I was now free to explore! 

Star 5: Gratitude. 

When you stop focusing on what you have lost, you notice instead what it is that you have gained. 

For me, this was: 

• Increased self awareness
• Freedom from restrictive thought processes
• The joys of new friends, new interests and new experiences
• The blessings of new insights
• The wisdom to begin creating my life as opposed to merely reacting to it
• Finding my voice and beginning to use it

Furthermore, the gift of the stars is not restricted to the dark times. The light we receive from them is something that we can carry with us always, through good and bad times.

Now isn’t that cause for celebration?

SO what is my life like now?  Where there was once loss there is now abundance! I am by no means fully sorted, fully healed or fully enlightened and I am certainly no Guru.

However, my health is much improved, I no longer binge eat, I weigh a lot less, I exercise more consistently and my self esteem is vastly improved. 

I am married to a wonderful man and together we continue daily to learn the art of loving well. I have a beautiful new home, lots of good friends, and I no longer work in a job that doesn’t fulfil me. 

Now my ‘work’ involves following my passion to write and creating the kind of life I want to live – a life characterised by passion, creativity, expression and love.

What in your life is sparkling and twinkling and shining out for your attention? Please share below, thanks!

Jannietta is a poet who loves the power of words to heal and transform lives. After facing a series of major losses in her life she now embraces with joy the process of re-discovering her true self and celebrating the wonder of being alive. 

She is the author of ’Barefoot on Green Grass’, a collection of poetry that explores love, loss and relationship and Choose Life, a small booklet that celebrates everyday spirituality.
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** Want MORE BLISS and less stress in your life? Inner Sparkle: The 21 Day eCourse is made for you. Click here to get inspired. Happy. Sparkly. **

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Everybody has a calling. Your real job in life is to figure out what that is and get about the business of doing it. – Oprah Winfrey.

Pic credit: www.flickr.com/photos/visualpanic

(This is a reader post by Deevra Norling. Got a story to share? Check out the details here & email me).

I took a bold step this year.

I quit my dead-end job to follow my dreams.

I’m not going to lie to you, this was not easy, nor was it a decision I made overnight. You see, I’ve always known what my passions are; I just didn’t have the courage to pursue them.

Writing, working with animals, travelling… it all seemed like a pie in the sky dream. 

When I made the decision after careful consideration, I was realistic about my goals. I am well aware that I won’t be making much money out of this initially.

But here’s the thing – other people make money in these fields, why can’t I?

True, it won’t be easy, but after 18 years of suffering in jobs I hated, I finally reached breaking point. I’m 40 and I’ve wasted half my life doing things I didn’t want to do.

Yeah, you could say I’ve hit my mid-life crisis !

This is the biggest and scariest decision of my life, but what scared me even more was the thought of waking up at 60 having wasted my whole working life being miserable.

I just KNEW I could not wake up on my 40^th birthday still sitting at the same desk, in the same company, doing the same job, being unhappy.

It was now or never. I’ve spent too many years being unhappy. No more.

The road ahead may not be easy, but it has to be easier than what I left behind.

Nothing is harder than living in misery. 

The minute I handed in my resignation, I felt a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I slept for 12 hours straight that night and it was the most amazing sleep of my life – the sleep of a free woman. The next morning as I looked out my apartment window everything looked sharper and the colors seemed brighter.

The world just looked different.

I was finally free.

You see, I am a free-spirit. I am not cut out for the cubicle corporate life. Getting up every morning at the same time, driving the same route, sitting at the same desk, the 9-5, the boss, asking for time off, calling in sick, performance appraisals, the office politics – I hated it.

All of it. It made me feel trapped. I cannot begin to express how soul-destroying the last 18 years have been. It killed my spirit and sucked the life right out of me.

So why did it take me 18 years to do this? 

1) Social conditioning.

We are told from a young age that we will grow up, hopefully study something and then get a job and spend the rest of our lives working for someone else. This is the way they say life works. Our parents did it, their parents did it and generations before them did it.

Therefore, we believe that this is the right way to live. Not that there’s anything wrong with that if it works for you. For years however, I had been asking the question, is this it? Isn’t there another way to live that would make me happier?

I felt so strongly that I was not living my true purpose. And it was making me miserable.

2) I had bills to pay!

When there’s a family to support, you can’t just give up a job like that. It’s so hard! Even as a single person I felt I couldn’t pursue working with animals or writing because it paid so little and I would not have been able to make ends meet.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying quit tomorrow. You need a plan and you need some savings to tide you over while you try and get things moving. You may not be able to quit tomorrow, but you can start saving and planning towards it from today.

You can even start slowly building up your business while still in your job and once you start making a decent enough income, go ahead and slap that resignation letter down on your boss’s desk with relish. There are various ways to skin a cat.

Find the way that’s most comfortable for you. But please.. don’t skin the cat

3) The biggest reason of all – FEAR.

Giving up a secure, stable job is scary!

Everything has its pros and cons. A 9-5 job means a guaranteed salary every month, medical insurance, retirement savings, an annual salary increase and a possible annual bonus. It’s comfortable and breaking out of your comfort zone is not easy. Some people also do not like change. The unknown is daunting. Fear keeps us paralyzed.

In my own circles, myself and at least four other friends, have made a drastic change this year.

All of us are finding the new path we’re on winding and bumpy at the moment. It’s not easy, but we’ve all decided to forge ahead. Like ships out on a foggy sea, we cannot see the horizon right now. We don’t know if we are on course and we can’t determine if we’re about to hit any icebergs.

We’re just maneuvering slowly through the water trying to stay afloat.

How then, does one navigate these waters? How do you stay inspired and keep going when the seas are choppy?

1) Celebrate the small milestones!

For me, it was landing a writing job with a new online news website that really made me believe this was happening.

While it may not provide much of an income right now, it will give me a chance to build a portfolio. Super exciting! What was even more exciting and completely unexpected, was that I received a small cash compensation for my first 3 articles.

This is a big deal – my first paycheck as a writer! Can you say over.the.moon?!

Savour the small or big accomplishments along the way and use the momentum they create to continue to push you forward.

2) Keep your eye on the goal – visualize.

This can be a challenge. When things don’t seem to be going anywhere, you may lose faith and quit. 

Most books and writers who write about positive thinking and goal-setting speak about the importance of visualization. You will be surprised at how critical this technique is to success in whatever you set out to do.

From running a marathon, to traveling to foreign countries, to buying your dream house, whatever it is – see yourself cross that winning line, sitting in a gondola in Venice, getting the keys to that house.

Literally, see the picture in your mind (or write it down if you’re not that into seeing things) and keep it there until it becomes reality.

3) Look how far you’ve come!

Turn around and look at where you’ve come from – do you want to give up and go back? Probably not. You may be making headway very slowly, but at least you’ve made headway!

The only way is to keep moving forward. 

4) Support from friends and family.

Surround yourself with people who want to see you succeed, even if it means meeting new people. Join groups in your field, volunteer in the field you want to move in to, for inspiration read blogs of people who did the same thing you are doing.

If you find yourself amongst naysayers/negative people who tell you that you’re nuts, avoid them. If necessary, cut them out of your life. You don’t need to be around people who bring you down.

 5) Remember that this too shall pass.

As tough as it may be in the moment, life is constantly changing. At some point the storm passes, the sky clears and the sun comes out. Things will get better eventually.

Living your dreams isn’t always easy. You may fail several times, but when it all does come together and it works, it will be amazing and you won’t regret it. I keep reminding myself of this every day. 

Theodore Roosevelt said, “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”

Thomas Edison failed his way to successfully inventing the light bulb too! “I did not fail 10,000 times, I found 10,000 ways that did not work.”

Failures may come along the way, but it shouldn’t stop us from trying. Success may just be around the corner. 

Over to you. What’s the boldest step you ever took? Or is there something bold you’re planning to do soon? Please share, thank you! 

Deevra Norling lives in Cape Town, South Africa. She quit her job as a Brand Manager in April 2012 and took some time out to go traveling around the USA for six months.

Deevra is on a journey to find a way to follow her dreams and find freedom, peace and happiness. She writes for an online news website called Scoop Post. Connect with her on twitter.
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** Want MORE BLISS and less stress in your life? Inner Sparkle: The 21 Day eCourse is made for you. Click here to get inspired. Happy. Sparkly. **

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