Hi guys,
It’s a very late start to 2018 on the site but we’re working to fix this. We’re juggling a couple of things at the same time which has put a bit of strain on things (plus writers block ).
Who knew even writer’s block could be inspiring?
Seriously!!
For some time we’ve been plagued by “navigating tight corners”, which could represent a range of things to different people.
For us, we’re in a season where our dreams outweigh the available time we have in any given day.
Has this ever happened to you? Can you relate?
We dreamed endless possibilities for 2018 but at the moment a large amount of things are on Pause because we just couldn’t find the time to pay much attention to all of them. It’s weird how sometimes you pray for things and you get it and then find that it’s pulling you in a direction you didn’t plan for.
What did we do?
Pause and re-evaluate things.
Because we know all the things we want to eventually accomplish, we had to take stock and decide what things could be put on the back burner and what things could be harnessed simultaneously.
…
As you must have noticed by now, we love to travel! There’s something inspiring about meeting new people from different cultures and learning their way of life, food etc. The world is just to big not to be curious about it. However, things didn’t look like much travelling could be accomplished this year due to our burgeoning schedule.
We whipped out our calendar and marked up all the forthcoming national holidays and religious holidays that would guarantee us work free days and then skimmed a map of the countries of interest nearest to us. We didn’t want to spend too much time in planes or airports trying to get to far destinations and waste valuable experience time on the journey. The idea was to pick countries that didn’t take longer than 6hours by air to get to . In the past we’ve been able to work with 3.5 days on holiday and we accomplished a bunch of things. Granted we weren’t as rested as we’d have preferred but that’s because we are wanderlust souls who just love to explore. We don’t travel to chill, at least not yet anyway.
What we hope you can take from this?
- Don’t give up
It was easy to envision all the places we wanted to visit when our schedules were more flexible and plan accordingly. However, when things started looking difficult, It felt easier to just give up, but who would that really help? No one. We found that if you want things bad enough you will always find a way around things to make it work. This might mean less money in terms of pay for people picking certain jobs/experiences, or less downtime for those trying to balance a social life with long work hours.
- Learning to work with what you have at the moment
It’s like a game of chess, your opponent could be ‘pushing you into a corner’ but if you pause and assess your options, you can always find alternative moves to level things out.
We decided that in order to balance our desire to explore with our other commitments, we’d focus on picking one major holiday and save towards it. We also decided to limit our explorations to countries around us to allow us enough time to make the trip and not lose time off work. Luckily, a lot of the other commitments are things that can be managed remotely – so we fully intend to explore this option.
- Ask for what you want/ request for time off
Sometimes, we find it difficult to ask for what we really want – whether it’s a relationship, a raise, a job, or even a gift/favour because we perhaps don’t want to tarnish/change the impression others have of us. This can be likened to surrendering to fear when our reaction should be the opposite. We remember losing out on an amazing opportunity in the past because of this and in the end when we broached the topic with our employers, the time off wouldn’t have been an issue.
At the end of the day, it’s your life and your career – weigh things out and pitch your case.
- Keep your plans flexible
Whilst setting milestones are amazing, allow for some leeway to avoid disappointment. For us, this meant booking refundable tickets and accommodation on trips. We didn’t want situations where if we couldn’t go, the money expended would be lost. With other commitments, this meant scaling back on certain projects.
Career wise, your timeline for achieving certain milestones shouldn’t be set in stone as these things can sometimes be achieved earlier or later than intended. You don’t want to quit your job because you planned to be a manager within 2 years, and 2 years and 1 month in, it hasn’t happened – it could have been scheduled for year 3 or month 3. (then again talk to your supervisor and see where their head is at so you’re not waiting around indefinitely).
We hope this has been helpful in some way
Sorry for staying away soo long
Be inspired.
xoxo
