This week I spent an evening and night in the Abbey Court Hotel in Nenagh. Hopeful of a relaxing evening, after at long day at work, I headed down to the bar, took a corner table and ordered some smoked salmon on sourdough br

ead and a glass of Pinot… with my iBook opened for some proper girly reading I exhaled at the pure thought of the tranquility and then….. 

A knife (not to sharp) came flying at me. It was the English “gentleman” next to me who had accidentally dropped his knife approximately 2 metres! I was reassured by one of the three sirs not to worry, that were they come from what is thrown is normally way worse!!

From there the night took a turn and didn’t end up anywhere near the way it was intended to. 

When the waiter came over and asked if everything was ok I couldn’t help myself but to say that yes except that my neighbouring table was throwing knifes at me!! His face…. I requested spoons, plastic, for their pending dessert. 

That was not the end of it!! Next a bus tour (assumption) came out from a larger room and took to the piano and of course someone had a flute…. how could they not. Very musically talented but one major defect, they did not know the words to one single song so restored to na, na, na’s and la, la, la’s. 

I couldn’t help but laugh and this of course reignited the conversation with the “gentlemen” next to me!! 

Oi, you laughing at me? 

Eh, noooo 

You shouldn’t be i didn’t throw the knife at ya.

Ok…. good to know! 

I had to retire to the tranquility of the lobby to finish that Pinot!!! 

Life is full of surprises and unexpected events!!! They truly bring a smile to my face.  

 

Is it time to stop for a minute??? 

As you know I love living life in the fast lane but there are times when I know that even I’m pushing on to hard…… 

Thursday was one of those days. I went for a sandwich at lunchtime and as I was standing there in the cue tears came to my eyes….. the pot was simply boiling over and I hadn’t even stopped to think that I might be sad, overwhelmed or whatever that was…. 

That was followed by taking the wrong exit off a roundabout leaving me on the scenic route home! I did laugh (not cry) at this one but I certainly believe this means that I need to stop for a minute. 

When thinking about it a conversation I had with a friend sprung to mind and his two very wise sentiments; 

1. You can’t run from yourself for ever…. at some stage Malin will catch up with Malin…. 
2. We work in the area of educating others to wellbeing at work…. It’s time to put into practice our own advices. 

All I can say is that I’m like a bold child so I say yeah, yeah you grown up. What do you know? 

But although, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m generally quite good at recognising the warning signs, that my situations are going south, I might have failed in being 100% honest. I haven’t really admitted to you or to myself that I don’t always listen….. I don’t always stay on the straight and narrow to finding My Me… 

That is something that for me needs to become an essential part of my working progress…. it is too late when you are crying in the sandwich cue.

Mistakes 

In the spirit of the weekend just gone and listening to Keywest’s song All My Mistakes on Friday night I am going g to finish this blog post by talking about mistakes. Lucky for you not about all of them!!! 

Like with many other things in life I believe we should turn to look at things from a positive angle. The same goes for mistakes. 

I’m not referring to the concept of “learn from your mistakes” that’s not what this is about, albeit a valuable tool. This is about using the word mistake as a positive. 

Like the lyrics says;

“Of all my mistakes, your still my favourite one”. 

So have you ever made a mistake that has ended up turning into something really great?? I have, (not shy to admit it) made them lots of times!! 

There are of course some mistakes that are my favourites ones. They have made me who I am, brought people around me I wouldn’t have met without them, taught me more about who I am and when I think of some of them I smile, actually I even laugh out loud from time to time!!! 

Have you a favourite mistake you would share?? I would love to hear all about it!

Now as Sunday afternoon is here, it is time to do some of the work preparations for the week ahead and of course cuddle with my amazing three amigos!! Have a great week!!

 

It is all about the B’s this week and I’ll explain why in just a minute. One of the positive aspects in my life is the truly great friends that I have and as part of my, My Me, journey I decided to bring some of them together to share a prize I had won as part of the #blueway promotion around Lough Derg.

So on Thursday last week 6 of us set off on a girlie weekend that turned out to be one of those absolutely fabulous ones! One we still, a week later, have not stopped talking about. Instead we are planning the next one!!

Here is a short story of what we got up to that lead to this excellent blog title!!

Half of us travelled together on Thursday morning to commence picking up the shopping an route as well as of course getting some much needed refreshments on the way!

Arriving to the cottage we were staying in I had arranged for massage therapy for all of us which thanks to the great weather we were able to have outdoors. What a way to start a girls weekend. Wind blowing through the trees, birds singing and the sun heating the skin.

So on full relax we dug into the wine, pear vodka and giggles around the garden table.

Around midnight we thought it wise to go for a stroll to see if we could find the view of the lake…… in the dark. After a short distance we came across this strange noise….. which we determined must be some kind of bird. Whereas I thought it might be the Banshee…. It was a seriously scary sound but the Banshee comment was met with a solid right hook into the back so that left that conversation to the side and we went about to YouTube the sound to realise it was (we think) owls!! PS we couldn’t see the lake…..

We then went back around the table where the birds where still causing havoc by flying around us. Here the first “friendly argument” of the journey began as some, maybe with more alcohol than others, thought that they were bats. Well if they were bats…. I believe it to have been batman and his sons, the size of them!! Got this one proven the following night.

So in true girly spirit the main topic of conversation around the table was, for some unknown reason, boobs…… Like a true feminist party (well maybe just in the spirit of a girlie night) we discussed shapes, sizes, lifts, reductions, breastfeeding, rights and wrongs and, whether we wanted them to be mentioned or not, all 6 pairs received feedback!! This is so brilliant, especially to the 6 of us that were there, that I couldn’t help but share.

So by now you may, or may not be, wondering how ballsacks came into the conversation? Well firstly I have to say it’s quite impressive that this was the only mention men got over the weekend………. Well there was one more piece, one that educated me greatly, but that I certainly can’t share in any public domain. We simply just wondered would it be possible that a gang of men would be sitting somewhere, around a garden table, discussing their ballsacks like we were discussing our boobs!!

In the morning we were all slightly tired and some of us so because of the birds, doves to be precise, that had not stopped cooing outside our windows. Talk about being one with nature, involuntarily.

On the Friday we started with breakfast in the garden, followed by an amazing 2 hour kayak trip with Becky and Jacob of Lough Derg Water Sports. What an adventure and so much fun.

Great to see friends with a ferocious fear of water take part in this, albeit like Miss Daisies!!!

From here we went for some good food in Terryglass and of course liquid top up before heading for one last swim. That evening back at the house we lit up the barbecue, played pie face and twister, laughed until it hurt, got to use self-timer on my camera and of course finished off the conversation about birds, bats, Banshees, boobs and ballsacks!!

So this blog post is certainly dedicated to this great gang and I send a massive thank you to all of you for making the weekend one to remember for evermore!! “Girl Power”.

 

ELIMINATING MY FEAR

On a more serious note, in my last blog post I spoke about being able to remove items from our life that creates negative emotion for us. I have been thinking about that since I wrote it and continued to filter through my list of positives and negatives. What I noticed was that not only do we have to remove (metaphorically and physically J) the negatives but we might also have to reintroduce or physically push back in the positives.

This can be easier said than done because one single word may be the one thing that holds us back. The word I am referring to is FEAR….. The fear of asking for what we want and being rejected, the fear of failure, the fear of the one thing that stands before what we want….fear, fear and more fear.

I recently listened to a TED talk delivered by Andrew Sharman on how we can really face our fears for the greater love of something else. He talks about his love of sharks yet immense fear of water. It is worth a listen. https://youtu.be/B7-DQFvD5ck

One of my greatest fears, outside of spiders, snakes and heights, is to not have control. To call it for what it is….. I am a control freak. Therefore I don’t do very well with the unknown, and I don’t mean how earth was created or anything like that, but the more general day to day things. This fear leads me to over analyse and to harass my friends and family with my anxieties (and I mean harass – over and over again) and it was, partly if not wholly, this fear of the unknown that caused my “crash” last year.

However, I recently realised that I can control this fear in one very simple measure. By stepping up to asking the question that will give me clarity and eliminate the fear. Because even if the answer may not be the one I hope for, at least I am in the know and in the know I have control. So I think it is worth to take with you this quote “Clarity of the unknown is only a question away”.

Last week when I consulted (harassed) my mother on being brave and letting go of my fear she wisely shared the following message, “Do what your heart tells you to do. We only live once, so let go of your fears”. She is quite impressive that mother of mine.

So as we don’t have nine lives like cats…. Then let’s use the one we do have as best we can! Push, force, demand those positives into yours.