31/10/2024
Hello! I haven’t posted from here in quite a while but now seems like a good time to do so. Some people may know that I’m in Thailand at the moment with my family, on a sort of ‘Sabbatical’ for a few months.
My partner is here for his professional development, doing some training to support the next steps in his business. I am continuing to work online with clients and in my other role as an assessor for a Level 4 counselling course, but I have also been hoping to find ways to work on my own personal development while I’m here. I thought I would share some of what this has looked like in my first month here.
A big challenge for me has been learning to ride a scooter to get around the town, which is a necessity really to get anywhere further than the local market. I have never ridden anything like that before and I am a very nervy cyclist unless I’m riding in a straight line on a quiet, wide path, so this was terrifying to me and I initially thought I just wouldn’t even try, I’d just get used to walking. (It’s 30+ degrees here every day!) I am not usually avoidant about new challenges but I was very scared about this one! However, with the help and support of my family and some new friends, I faced my fears and gradually began to get the hang of it.
I worked towards to small milestones- the longest journey so far, my first ride in the dark (to quiz night, a big motivating factor!), the first time I took my son as a passenger! I remember my first solo journey, I was heading to a yoga class I really wanted to attend and as I prepared to leave, I spotted a little kingfisher flying over our garden. I hadn’t seen one there before and I haven’t seen one since. I love kingfishers, and I have one tattooed on my shoulder as part of my yoga sleeve, and I decided this kingfisher had flown over at that moment to tell me I could absolutely get myself to yoga on the scooter. It worked and I got there on time and in one piece- although I did forget to take the keys out of the ignition before I went to the class! Luckily Pai is the kind of place you can do that, and they were still there waiting for me when I had finished the class! I still notice my progress on the scooter- going a little faster this time, turning the corners a little more precisely, pulling into a gap I wouldn’t have dared to do last week. So that has been one of my biggest challenges in the last month, and it still scares me sometimes but I’m giving myself a lot of grace and continuing to make progress! I will share another of my personal challenges in another post- what about you? What are you challenging yourself to do and how is it going? How do you treat yourself when you are learning new things?
