In my last email, many moons ago, I told you about the second best thing I’ve ever done for my relationship.
TL;DR: I need stacks of space away from Bloody Good Bloke (and all humans) on a regular basis, lest I go numb and completely shut down all emotional connection.
I also told you that I’d be back 1 week later to tell you about the unconventional living situation I engineered instead of moving in full time with BGB.
That was… er, 10 weeks ago.
And I’m still not going to tell you about it today either! I wrote the post, but it sucked, so it’s parked for now.
Since then I’ve facilitated a zillion corporate workshops and started preparing for a new adventure I’m embarking on next month (more soon).
Bloody Good Bloke and I then leapt from freezing Melbourne onto a plane to Indonesia, where we’ve been for the last couple of weeks having the most beautiful, relaxing, and warmmmmm holiday doing a great deal of nothing.
For all his many skills, Bloody Good Bloke is the world’s worst instagram Husband,
so I have almost no decent photos of me, but plenty of both him and Indonesia looking spectacular! I’ll put more photos on Instagram soon.
I’m still here in Indonesia now. Lombok, to be precise. Did you know there are 17,508 islands in Indonesia?!
It’s our first overseas holiday since I became properly unwell with Long Covid, and it’s been bliss.
Bloody Good Bloke went home a few days ago 😭, and now I’m attempting to work from an air-conditioned co-working space, because to be honest, whilst it’s delightful not to be cold… it’s really bloody warm over here!
To be honest with you, I’ve been having a bit of a medium-level crisis of confidence when it comes to blogging.
Probably for a few years if I’m extra honest.
Because of my least favourite friend, Long Covid, which I’ve had a bloody long time now (3 years), I have a lot less mental capacity and energy than I used to. One of the things that’s gone out the window the most radically has been my inspiration and creativity.
Also, I’ve been writing this blog TEN years, and thousands of you have been with me since the beginning of Project Self time (2014)!
I can’t help but feel that maybe I should just… shut up now?
Neville’s pretty sure that what I have to say isn’t so interesting anymore. I’m massively out of the loop with social media, news, famouses, trends… all of it really.
(If you’re new here, Neville is my mind).
The more I follow my gut, the more authentic my life becomes, and the less I care for keeping up to date with all of the above.
Which means I often feel like I’m 50 years older than I am, squinting confusedly at all the youngies and their strange shoes.
Like why is everyone filming superimposed videos (reels?) of themselves commenting on other people’s videos? And then why are other people filming themselves commenting on the videos of the people commenting on the other people’s videos?
And how in the hell is this weird upwards-combed-eyebrows trend still persisting?
Does literally anyone look good in this situation? I’m firmly in the “no” camp on this one.
And the lips thing? Wtf is going on out there, man?
86-year-old over here, living my best life in a 36 year old shell.
On good days, I don’t listen to Neville when he tells me I’m a washed up old has-been who should stop bothering with the blog because who the hell wants to read the same old shit from me about my personal life.
On less good days, I avoid writing any blogs and then 10 weeks pass in a flurry of procrastination.
On one extra good day, I received the most wonderfully moving, detailed email from one of my long-time readers that included the sentence “I can genuinely say that in small and consistent ways your blogs and courses have helped me so much over the years - I am a better, more calm, happier person because of what you have taught me.”
Take that, Nev.
Sometimes, it is really bloody helpful to have an outside perspective to counterbalance the rather less delightful perspective our minds.
The verdict is still out on whether I’ll keep blogging, but either way, I continue to try not to take Neville’s criticism too seriously.
Far too often I experience the jarring cognitive dissonance of Bloody Good Bloke looking at me in the mirror with his sparkly eyes and saying “you look beautiful” at the exact moment that Neville says “You look like a pig in a dress.”
Sometimes our mind is right. Oftentimes, our mind is more wrong than a roll of toilet paper facing under.
That’s because our brains (yep, yours too), are wired with a negativity bias, which means that the brain is more likely to remember, learn from, and pay attention to negative information.
Biologically this makes sense. Focussing on the negative and always expecting the worst is an excellent survival strategy.
All the optimists were eaten by tigers long ago.
All the jumpy old catastrophisers were the ones who sprinted and dodged their way through evolution to pass on our brains to us.
As Rick Hanson puts it, the brain is like velcro for the negative, and teflon for the positive.
In most situations, I’ve found that there’s an extremely high likelihood that reality is a lot better than Neville thinks it is.
So I have to adjust my scale. If Neville says something is terribly bad, it probably means that things are mildly bad, or possibly neutral.
I try to keep this in mind every time Neville says something rude.
My confidence has grown immeasurably since I’ve learnt to take my thoughts less seriously.
Sure there are bad days where Neville overtakes. But the majority of days I’m able to let his criticism drop to the ground while I continue on with my life undisturbed.
Learning to tame my mind has been one of the biggest blessings of my life.
If you’re keen to get a better handle on your Neville, you may have heard me talking about the Bloody Good Life program before.
Of everything I’ve achieved over the last 10 years in business, the Bloody Good Life program —and the impact it’s had on over 2000 people— is the thing I’m proudest of.
Alumni consistently describe BGL as “life changing” and “perspective altering”.
Due to my upcoming mysterious adventure, this will be the LAST time Bloody Good Life will be available for sale.
Add yourself to the waitlist here.
✌️
Andrea