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.