Day 0: Finding calm in chaos

My car is packed but my heart isn't

Faith is the courage to live with uncertainty

Before I leave for trips, I never want to go. I spend months packing and planning and preparing, but I never find joy in those experiences. I dread my trip and constantly mull over the possibility that I’m making the wrong decision.

Reframing has been a practice I’ve been—practicing— and it’s played a part in minimizing my anxiety and stopping my brain from overthinking.

Reframing the concept of making the wrong decision has helped me as I prep for this new chapter of my life. It’s easy to tell yourself that you’re doing the right thing, but believing that is the hard part.

I’ve worked on framing the concept of a wrong decision in a way that tells me there are no wrong decisions. There are hard decisions and selfish ones and improbable ones, but never wrong.

Moving across the country is hard and improbable, but not wrong or impossible.

Following this thread of thought, instead of spiraling down the wrong decision stran,d has helped eliminate a lot of the what-ifs that have been plaguing me.

When we think of wrong decisions, a lot of the time, the word is an umbrella for other words like:

• unsafe

• scary

• risky

• selfish

• rash

Breaking wrong decisions down lets me further understand what type of decision I’m making. There will always be a scale of productive decisions to unproductive decisions. Eliminating the good and bad from this scale makes it easier to fully analyze my choices and make the decision that benefits me in the moment instead of basing it on “good” or “bad.”

My scale:

unproductive————risky———scary————————boring—safe——-productive

I spent the last four days of being home at the beach with my whole extended family. Those four days and the copious amounts of questions from family members made it hard to stay with my new thought processes.

External voices and opinions will always be my downfall, and my brain loves to fixate on one person’s obscure comment instead of my own well-thought-out beliefs.

When you’re feeling such complex and deep emotions, I find it’s important to sit in them. Your body is feeling that way for a reason, so instead of ignoring them, embrace them.

The reframing is helpful when redirecting your thoughts.

Here I am on day zero with my car parked and my destinations ahead of me, and I can’t escape the way I’m feeling. Though difficult and unsettling, I’ve been trying to sit with these feelings, whether positive or negative.

Because the reality is, I’m about to do something hard and scary, and our brains and bodies hate those kinds of things. Our brains like safety and reassurance, two things that don’t always come with driving across the country.

Sitting in my mess of emotions is allowing me to rationalise the hard and scary and acknowledge that those are the types of decisions I want to be making right now.

So here’s to sitting in a slop of emotion and constantly redirecting our brains from going down dark paths.

I’m excited to see where my path takes me, and I’m glad you can all come along with me. Talk to you soon! xoxo