Every one of us has a plan or an idea of how our life is going to be. We set goals and expect to achieve them in a certain way. BUT life doesn’t always go to plan, does it?
For me, I never expected to live the life I’m living now. I often say to people, if someone had told me this was where I was going to be, I wouldn’t have believed them.
This is what I focus on in this episode.
When we go through changes in our lives like the loss of a partner, a sibling, a friend, a job, a situation – anything where we’re faced with a situation we never saw coming and can’t imagine ever coming out of it ok.
These are the steps I’ve taken to learn what to do when life doesn’t go to plan and how to create my new version of ok.
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Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi guys, and welcome to this episode of searching for better. I’m really excited, but also slightly frightened. I’m not going to lie to be recording this episode via video as well. So if you want to put a face to the podcast, feel free to check out YouTube. I’ll put the link in the episode description. I just want to make sure that I’m fully putting myself out there and making myself uncomfortable, which is definitely the case right now. So I’ve decided to also record these episodes and upload them to YouTube too. So again, if you want to see my face and see what I’m about, then feel free to check out YouTube as well. So let’s get straight to what this episode is about. Now. The reason that this episode came about was because I had a really great conversation with one of my best friends on Friday, and we were talking about our lives and the scenes that hadn’t hadn’t turned out as planned.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
So I thought what a great podcast episode, because so many of us are dealing with, you know, especially with COVID, but just in general with life dealing with the idea that things haven’t turned out the way we expected planned or anticipated them to be. So I really wanted to get into the nuts and bolts today of how I’ve managed to deal with my life, not turning out the way that I thought it would and how we can deal with that change and move forward with it. So if this is something that you find that you’re struggling with, then definitely listen to this episode. And as I say, take what resonates, leave what doesn’t. But I really hope that you get a lot out of this episode because it’s just life really in general, where things just don’t happen the way we want to. So I think it’s a great topic to dig deep in and see the ways that we can manage that
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Hi there and welcome to searching for better I’m Julia, and I’m the blogger behind searching for better.net, which is now the podcast searching for better is all about exploring ideas on how to find our path in life and to live it wholeheartedly. So welcome to our share and I really,
Speaker 3 (01:52):
You enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
So let’s get started. As I said, this came about with a conversation with my best friend on Friday, it was really interesting. We were having a discussion and she was talking about how she never expected our friendship to happen at her age. So she said that she never really anticipated that she would create a new friend at 30 which was a positive note for her. But as we started discussing that sort of topic, I started speaking to her as well, about how much my life had shifted and changed and how I’m really not where I thought I would be at this age. And if anyone had told me that I would be where I am right now, I wouldn’t believe them. And obviously the main story with that is obviously losing my brother, which was very challenging. And it’s been a huge adjustment learning to adjust to the life that I’m living versus a life that I thought I was going to have with him, with some other people in my life that I also had to let go of during that phase of change after it, my brother passed away.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
And if you want to hear more about that episode and what happened, that is on one of the early episodes about how to let go of people and when to, so I lost some big relationships in my life and I lost my brother and yeah, so I’m at this point in my life and I think it’s an age thing as well, where I’m 30 and I’m starting to realize that things have definitely not turned out as I anticipated or planned. And the first thing that I want to go through is the grief of that. And I think that’s the biggest thing with accepting where we are versus where we thought we would be is sometimes the grief and the acknowledgement that yeah, the sadness that comes with not being where we thought. And in particular with me, that’s definitely something that I felt in moving forward and trying to create a life where my brother isn’t here.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
And that’s something that I found challenging of course, but also it’s been a struggle, I think, in terms of learning to move forward and be okay with that. So I think the most important point when it comes to learning how to adjust to life, when it doesn’t go to plan, or we’re not where we thought we’d be, is to first allow ourselves to fully grieve the place that we thought we would be, because it is sad. It can be really sad that we didn’t, that we’re not in a place where we thought we’d be or in a life that we thought we would be, and we can grieve what isn’t happening or what’s not going to happen for us. And I know that there’s a lot of my friends who, you know, whether it might be a lot of like fertility issues and talk about children.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
And I know you’ve heard Alina’s journey with breast cancer. That’s someone that I think of as well, because obviously she had anticipated to have kids earlier and with the breast cancer and the medication she’s on, she’s had to delay that. And so that’s something that I often think about as well, because for her, I’m sure there was a grieving process of understanding that her life was going to be on a different timeline than what she expected. And I think that’s definitely the case with us. When we have such big concerns in our life that really push us into a different space than we thought we would be. So my first thing is to really grieve what you thought was going to be and be okay with being in that space for a while. I know for me, it’s you know, some days are really okay.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
And other days I really tend to get a lot of thoughts about what I thought my life was going to be. I imagine growing up with my brother, I imagine being an auntie to his kids and I fully have to sit with it and realize that these are not experiences that I’m going to get. And being okay with feeling sad about that and not feeling shame or disappointment in me feeling this way, because I think it’s a completely normal space to be in when we really thought our lives were going to be different. So that’s the first thing that I would say to make sure that you give yourself the time and the self-compassion to really grieve what you thought was going to be. Now, the second point that I want to make and I’d have it written here is
Speaker 4 (05:56):
When our situations
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Are different to what we expect. It doesn’t mean that it won’t be okay. It just means that we have to allow for a new version of that. And that’s something that I said to my partner and my friend during this conversation on Friday where I said, you know, I’ve had to learn that with my brother not being here and with my life being so different than what I thought it would be. It doesn’t mean that my life isn’t going to be okay. It’s just a different version of that. And that’s been such a big learning curve for me because I’ve had to fully accept the fact that I can still find joy and I can still find things that I love and I can still find experiences. I thought I was going to have just in a different way. So for example something that I’ve learned as well is, you know, a lot of my friends decided to have kids and I really like it.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
And I really enjoy the fact that they call me auntie. And I know it’s not the the, the thought like the way that I thought I would become that sort of place in someone’s life, especially in a child’s life. Obviously I always intended that it would be my brother and my brother’s kids, but I think it was learning that I had to be okay with the fact that the end result or the outcome is going, it was going to be different. And I was going to, you know, I was going to be okay. It was just going to be okay in a different way than what I thought. So I think that’s the second point that I would really want to say. I, I think that we face challenges in our lives not being where we are. Sometimes we get this idea that we won’t survive or we won’t be okay.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
And I think that personally for me, I have learned that I will be okay, but it’ll definitely be a different version of okay. Than what I expected and point number three, which is such a big point, I think, and something that I’ve learned too, is sometimes we get what we’re ultimately looking for or the feeling that we’re looking for, but not in the way that we thought we would. And that’s okay as well. So for example, when I was with my partner of six years, I thought we were going to say together, I thought that my best friend of 20 years would always be part of my life because I thought to me that would represent happiness and contentment. And I also realized now that I’m in a space with so many new things and people and experiences around me, but I definitely feel a sense of happiness and contentment that I was always looking for, but it is definitely different to what I had thought it would look like and what I had planned for it to look like.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
So that’s something as well. And I think that for some reason, it’s something I really think about is I’ve seen a lot of women with fertility struggles recently. I think, again, it’s an age thing for me. And just witnessing a lot of women in my space who have really struggled to get the outcome that they’re looking for. And they’ve had to go about it different ways. And they’ve still gotten to where they’ve wanted to yes, with I’m sure more pain and more discomfort than what they had anticipated, but they’d got to the place that they wanted. And not in the way that they thought they would obviously. And I think that’s another key point that I’ve learned when it comes to learning, how to that things don’t go to plan. And I think the idea is that we feel as though if we plan something with controlling it and it’s guaranteed to make us happy.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
So when something happens, that’s not in our plan, we think that it won’t, and that’s something that I’ve learned as well, just because something isn’t in my plan or is not the way I anticipated it to be, does not mean that it won’t bring me the happiness and the feelings that I’m looking for in my life. It doesn’t mean that I won’t find meaning for connections or meaningful experiences just because it’s happened differently to what I expected. And so that’s my thing as well, definitely be open to things being differently and trusting. And I think that’s a key word here, trusting that you will still find contentment and meaning and joy, even though it’s not what, the way you thought it would look like. Because I think the fear that I used to have as well was that if it didn’t turn out the exact way I wanted, I wasn’t going to have those feelings.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
I wasn’t going to experience that joy and have a good life. And I’ve really learnt now that despite going through some of the biggest challenges that I really never anticipated, especially the loss of my brother, I’ve really understood. Now that the way my life turned out is definitely not what I expected, but I would definitely say that I have a lot of joy and contentment in this different way, in this different version of my life. So I think it’s really important that we stay open-minded as to how we’re going to achieve those feelings that we’re looking for and being open-minded to the fact that it might be different to the way it looked and that’s okay. And to trust that as well. So this episode is really straight to the point, but it just came up and it was really something I wanted to discuss with you because yeah, it just, it’s such a big thing.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
We, especially at this age, I feel like 30 onwards, our lives are so different to what we anticipated. We’re all such in such different spots. And I just wanted to really emphasize the fact that we’re allowed to grieve when things haven’t turned out the way they are. We have to remember that we’re going to be okay and we need to just find and discover that new version of okay, for us and also be open-minded as to how we get to that. And if it looks differently to what we thought, that doesn’t mean that we won’t have those feelings of joy, meaningfulness and everything else that we’re looking for. So I hope that this episode resonated with you as always. I hope that you enjoyed seeing this video of me, and I hope that it created more connection and resonated with you as well, because that’s what I’m trying to do in creating these videos too.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
So thank you so much for being here. Don’t forget. You can join the email community. I’ll add a link down below, and also I have a wait list for the membership community that I’m creating. If you like this content, if you are ready to work on yourself and start creating a life that you really want for yourself and to truly become who you want to be, that’s what this community is all about. So join the wait list. I’m really excited. I think it’ll be a great project to get started and I’m really excited for what this community can be. So thank you again for being here and I’ll catch you in the next episode.
