Pre-Travel Anxiety and Letting it Go.

Va bene! (OK)

After almost a year after setting up this blogspot and doing nothing with it I have kicked the squatters out and will now refurbish my blog. Possibly writing blogs about changes that have occurred within this time frame would be a good starting point to reboot it.

A year ago - Pre-Travel Anxiety

A year ago I was recovering from an operation to remove my appendix after it decided to "pack it in". During this time I visited a Naturopath in Hawkes' Bay who "determined" (with a machine, a metallic pen looking object and some of my saliva on a piece of paper) that the reason my appendix burst was because of my inability let my life flow naturally as I couldn't trust the world or my own ability to look after myself.

For those who dislike the "namby-pamby" turn of phrase, we can simply put it down to stress. As we all know stress (among other things) contributes to poor digestion, weight gain around organs, weakening of the immune system, ulcers and blood clots etc., all of which contribute to appendicitis. So after several days of using a technique to re-programme my subconscious with positive affirmations, one of the peculiar things I noticed was that the burping I had been doing a lot more off since 2nd year of university had stopped and went back to the normal only after fizzy drinks thing. So needless to say if the technique works why stop with a good thing? I am still using the subconscious reprogramming technique occasionally.

Before travelling I had been in a state of mind of considering every conceivable thing that could go wrong and coming up with solutions to problems that did not exist yet. Now this is not necessarily a bad thing, but I could have done all that planning ahead with less stress attached (and in retrospect spend a little less money - though I now have lifetime first line of defense against rabies so there is that!)

My stress was all a mind set and eventually I got to the point where I become conscious of my thoughts and so I consciously decided to just start to let go of worrying about the future and trying to live more in the moment and accept things as they come. This is not easy as anyone who has tried this will attest to. It requires attempting to be constantly vigilant of your thoughts and monitoring how your body responds to it. But when you notice what's going on you can control it.

I read a book by a man called Eckhart Tolle called The Power of Now. It came endorsed by a host of celebrity devotees such as Oprah Winfrey, Jim Carrey, Annie Lennox as well as personal friends and while I wouldn't say that the book completely revolutionized my life I would definitely say that it gave me a LOT to think about regarding my life; how I can to be more aware of it and thereby live in a more conscious proactive way, not in a reactive way. To become the Captain of my own ship and knowing every detail about the goings on on board so to speak. I still consider the ideas that came from that book and for that I am grateful for the book's existence and the opportunity to read it.

(For those who are interested her is a link Power of Now quotes

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/4493.Eckhart_Tolle )

So however you perceived my attitude towards leaving, I was in actual fact a nervous wreck and perhaps (if you believe it) my appendix was screaming at me to get the message to CHILL OUT! Appendix won - for two weeks I was forced to do this and reflect at home as I recovered.

If you are about to undergo a life changing event and are anxious about it, I hope what I have learnt will assist you in some way :)