Moving back in with your parents. Trying to create a new life for yourself. Being in a country you never wanted to go back to yet somehow at this point this is where you feel you should be.
The last months have been a roller-coaster of emotions. From the initial joy of not having seen my family and friends in years to the dooming question of ‘what next?’
What do you do, when everything around you is a blur. When nothing feels ‘stable’, when you’re ‘back home’, yet it still feels like a transitory stage and your backpack is ready to be packed again.
What do you do when you know that, though a new day will start and you’ll walk through it, the path you’re taking might be an aimless wander, heading into yet another maze, an obstacle race, a dead end.
What do you do when that voice that had been guiding you over the past months, the one that told you that you’re on the right path, that you have a walk to walk suddenly quiets down.
It’s interesting, how some things come back when you least expect them.
As some of you might know, I’m a big fan of meditation. However, over the last months of my travels, I had been finding it increasingly difficult to meditate (crowded Amazon cruise ship with people staring at you from all sides didn’t help – I’m not that ‘zen’ yet).
Somehow though during that difficult phase at home, meditation ‘found me again’.
I was contacted by a friend to take part in an online 21-day abundance meditation challenge. I had actually done this exact challenge a few months before. However the message came at the right moment in time. I was craving ‘routine’, the one thing that always makes me feel some stability and some peace within my racing mind, so I decided to give the challenge a second go.
Even if it was just for the 20 minutes a day and I sat there restlessly or frustrated – I always felt a little better afterwards, some days more, some days less 😉
The struggle of meditation felt a much better struggle to fight than my own ones at times, even though the two were obviously related.
The daily reflection exercises, someday, made me want to throw my journal against the wall, then later presented themselves as real opportunities for self-reflection and a perspective from another angle.
Thanks to this challenge, I started getting back into meditation and searching for moments of stillness. It helped me create compassion for myself in moments I didn’t want to accept my struggles.
I eventually started leading my own online 21-day meditation group and it motivated me to get up in the morning, because I’d post a daily meditation and message to my group first thing when I woke up.
I wanted to write this for you if you’re going through a similar process or you feel like standing at a crossroad.
It won’t solve your problems magically or make them go away. It’s not a guide to being carefree and happy instantly.
But it can bring you closer to yourself and the feeling of being grounded, that will then help you finding a little bit of stability again.
Also, honestly, I tried meditation at 4 stages in life over the course of 6 years before I found it to be of help to myself.
So if this is not the moment for you, maybe there is another small daily routine act that gives you guidance and motivation to tackle yet another day. Meditation comes in many different ways.
If, however, there is a small spark of hope that you might benefit from it, I hope you will listen to that inner voice!