Mango, mangoing, mangone!

Recently I have found myself asking my favourite discussion question often. That is: what are your top three favourite fruits?

If you’ve never been asked this question, it may come as a surprise to you just how a conversation can be sparked (given you have the right people in the room). Not only is it fascinating to hear the trios selected, but the way that someone responds to the question can often tell me about their personality, sometimes more than the actual answer they gave in the first place.

The other reason this is topical (or should I say, tropical ⛱️) is because whenever I share that mango is one of my top three, this is in the back of my mind…

Which in turn, has reminded me of just how many farewells (or see you again soons) have happened in the past month, including some of my closest friends and family as they move to start their adventures overseas. Then there is the letting go of things that didn’t have a place in my home anymore – like the clothes that haven’t fit for the past five years and the situationships where the writing was on the wall from the beginning.

In other words, my reflection for today is that you don’t always just lose from saying farewell. In fact, sometimes you can gain so much more from saying goodbye.

I’m not sure about you, but my mind is perpetually loud and in need of extra space. There are SO many ideas, dreams, and really specific song lyrics bumbling around in this little noggin’. Doing a mental emptying of the recycle bin, and a physical emptying of the recycle bin, has started to make all the difference.

Here are some things that I’ve been saying (or learning to say) goodbye to in the past couple of months:

1. Letting go of being prepared

I find it incredibly uncomfortable to be unprepared for something, whether it’s a meeting or a flat inspection, or anything. I think it’s because I usually have an expectation of what the ‘optimal’ result could be – ah yes, if I do x then I will get result y, and result y is what we want.

That is, letting go of this idea that “the conditions aren’t perfect, so I just won’t do it”. Another way of describing this goes something like “this banana is what I want but it has a bruise on it, so I’m not going to eat it now.” But what really happens is you forget about the banana until it’s too late and you have to throw it out or make the most of it (aka banana cake).

What I have enjoyed about practicing being less prepared, is that I give myself examples of times where things have worked out despite not giving myself more than one or two days to prepare, or to not have time to do the recommended reading. That’s not to say that you should never be prepared, of course, just somewhere in the middle.

2. Letting go of stress

Repeat after me: there will always be more things to do, they do not all have to be done today.

This one is HARD (like a crisp jazz apple from the fridge). Particularly when your default setting is hardwired to think “to reduce my stress now, I will do more things to clear my to do list, yes that’ll help.” Then suddenly I’ll find myself in a situation where I’ve done all the things AND found a bonus five things along the way, thus not actually reducing the amount of stress I’ve got going on.

I’ve been practicing actually having restorative solo time, not just ‘time for Olivia to do life admin’, which involves deliberately switching off the constant thoughts by engaging in nourishing creative activities or getting lost in a book.

3. Letting go of the person who I thought I was and would be

As I ripen in age, I have learned that identity is moving and shifting all the time! In order for me to make room and accept who I am, sometimes I have to say farewell to the labels I previously adhered myself to with superglue.

The most obvious example is my recent and emerging love for sports. As an arty and crafty gal for all my life, it hadn’t crossed my mind that I would ever enjoy attending the rugby or playing a game of squash, because it didn’t match who I thought I was.

The beautiful thing is that sometimes we need to release the version of us that adamantly said that we didn’t want something or did want something, in favour of the one that is aligned with what we want now.

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Now I have a couple of questions for you, which you can reflect on or leave a comment:

• What is something that you’re holding on to that you need to let go of?

• What are your top three fruits?

And with that, I shall see you in a while, Tododile 💙

Noho ora mai (all the best),

Olivia