Bula, friends!

I arrived home from Fiji two weeks ago, and I have been in a space of processing and reflecting on all that transpired. It was a week of stunning sunsets, building connections, immersing myself in the beautiful people and culture and learning and developing skills that I can carry with me throughout the rest of my life. I am beyond grateful for the people I had the privilege of sharing my very first international trip with. We discovered something special in Fiji and that’s something that we all carry with us into our daily lives.

To be honest, I am still in the space of quietly processing and navigating the emotions, the thoughts and the states of being that continue to bubble up. I am still trying to figure out how to bring what has shifted within me, into my life as it is currently designed.

My journey to “enough” has spanned the entirety of my life. I have never felt like I was enough, I have always felt as if I needed to apologise for things that were inherently me – my anxiety, my emotions, for having thoughts that are different to other peoples, for my voice, for taking up space. Two years ago, at the beginning of my spiritual awakening, feeling very green and overwhelmed by the process, I participated in a course run by my mentor, Peter Williams, on Discovering Your Intuition. For one of the activities we were tasked to use our intuition to select the clothing we would wear each day, for a week. My intuition didn’t choose a t-shirt and shorts, or a nice pair of comfortable shoes. Instead, it chose a ZOX wrist band with the words, “you are enough,” displayed on it. I was shocked when a straight to the point voice in my head told me to, “wear it until you believe it.”

I had worn that wrist band every day since, but it did not make the journey home with me. As the plane began its descent back into Brisbane, back on home soil, I became emotional. I was that person sitting on the plane, tears tracking their way down their cheeks, snot running like a tap, trying not to make a sound or make eye contact with anyone in case it drew their attention.

The tears, the emotions had a name – grief. I had began to grieve the beautiful connections I had built over in Fiji. Landing meant we would all go our separate ways, and disappear into our lives and I wasn’t ready for that to happen. It was then it clicked into place – and it was exactly like a cog turning a mechanism that had been sitting just off balance, ever so slightly and it clicked and settled within me. It was then I realised in Fiji I had finally felt as if I was enough. In Fiji, I was in a space where it was easy for me to be me, with people who accepted everything about me without judgement. I was able to tell Dad jokes, to be awkward, to be anxious, to emote on the outside, to have an opinion, to take up space, to stand in my own space and not feel the need to apologise for being there. I was enough, and that was all the proof that I needed!

Sitting in my hotel room at the airport, I wrote in my journal that night, “I’m coming back from Fiji determined to stop playing small, to stop apologising for me, for feeling and having emotions and opinions, for taking up space. I know who I am and I am tired of suppressing her and holding her back because I’m afraid of what other people will think.”

I took the wrist band off the next morning and threw it in the rubbish bin at the Ibis Hotel. Since this shift, it appeared as if the Universe was placing me in situations to test my new found sense of being “enough.” I remember my first night at home, unpacking my clothes, teary and thinking, “it’s as if it never happened.” But I understand now, that I was trying to run a sprint, when it’s a cross country.

Reprogramming our belief systems take time. I was forging a path forward with the expectation that things would instantly change, but the Universe knows better. For me, the change needed to be slow and steady – it had to be conscious and careful of the way my brain works and the reactivity of my nervous system. The Universe hasn’t been testing me, it’s been providing me with opportunities to stretch and to build my muscles, it’s been providing me with opportunities to experience what it feels like to stand in my power.

The shift into enough was powerful, implementing it and bringing it into my daily life has been challenging, but there’s learning and growth in it. This isn’t a sprint, it’s a cross country and Universe will always work for your highest good. When big changes happen, it’s important to slow down and just be in those changes, work through what bubbles up and trust that while you may not be moving towards it at the pace that you want, you are still moving.