Go to the edge of your comfort zone, cross the border, then keep going

Go to the edge of your comfort zone, cross the border, then keep going

Are you doing a university degree that you don’t really like or staying in a job that you don’t really care about? Maybe you want to travel but you’re too afraid to go alone.

Well, this week I heard from a former work colleague who was a lot like you are now. But guess what?! He’s just decided to blow his comfort zone out of the water.

Like a lot of 20-somethings, he has a huge amount of potential but he was stuck in his comfort zone and kept waiting for someone else to join him so he could begin his adventures. Until now.

A few days ago, he sent me a PM which said:


“…You implored me to stop trying to wait for other people and just get out there regardless if they come with you or not. Well, I decided to up and go on a holiday by myself to Bali, because no one else could get time off and I wanted to go…”

Receiving this kind of message makes my day, month and year because he has chosen to bust through his comfort zone and do what he really wants without waiting for someone else. And his life and perspectives will expand exponentially because he has chosen to move past his comfort zone into the unknown.

I meet so many people who are waiting for approval or someone to join them before they make the change they want in their life. But the honest truth is, that may never happen. And that will be a wasted life because one day you will be 95 years old, sitting in a rocking chair with false teeth and barely any hair, and you will be thinking, F@CK why didn’t I go for what I wanted instead of what was comfortable? Now it’s too late.

Stop waiting.

Photo by Road Trip with Raj on Unsplash

If You Hide Your Light, No One Can See It

If You Hide Your Light, No One Can See It

A few days ago, a fabulous 20-something friend sent me a PM with exciting news – an international organisation had seen her commentary online about an issue she is passionate about and were interested in partnering with her. They even wanted her to write a blog for them.

My amazing friend was OVER THE MOON.

This inspirational woman is not just a great friend. She has also been a client over the past few years and we have talked many times about putting herself out there. I’ve always known she is here to create some wonderful changes in the world but she has often hesitated to share her voice and opinions.

Until now.

LOTS OF 20-SOMETHINGS HIDE THEIR LIGHT because…

  • You think other people can say it better
  • You’re worried about offending people (i.e. you want everyone to like you)
  • Your parents/friends/family/strangers on the street won’t agree with you, “get it” or will think you’re crazy
  • You think you’re not good enough
  • You think no one really cares what you think
  • Et cetera, et cetera.

Does this sound like you? If so, trust me, you are not alone AT ALL. But I have to tell you something…it’s all BS!! All those stories you’ve been telling yourself about why you can’t do what you want, say what you want, be who you want and go where you want to go are NOT TRUE.

You are capable of creating a world that is more kind, more sustainable, more creative, more loving, more expansive, more everything that you believe is important BUT you will have to show your light first. You will have to put yourself out there, back yourself, take risks, be by yourself for a while, take the road less travelled, be the one dissenting voice in the crowd, be okay with people thinking you’re crazy, be okay with offending people.

If you want a different life, you must change you first. You must take your passions and channel them into things that you love, and then share them with the world so others can hear your voice. Just like my friend, you will have to feel a little bit nervous, terrified and excited all at the same time. And then you will need to begin.

Because if you hide your light, no one can see it. And the world needs to see it. Trust me.

Italian Gulls are the Size of Small Dogs

Italian Gulls are the Size of Small Dogs

The seagulls in Italy are the size of small dogs and as vocal as any misanthrope Dachshund who believes it must assert its masculine authority over an Alsation. I’m always taken aback when one flies past or perches on an ancient statue nearby and proceeds to loudly proclaim its superiority and place in the world. You may believe that I am a mere gull, it calls, but I am equal to any of you and king of the skies. At least that’s what I think they’re saying as I shake my head and move on elsewhere.

I’m currently sitting in my apartment in Amalfi overlooking the harbour and one of those gulls just swooped past, hence my reflections. But the memories of them on statues come from my time in Rome.  

The gulls are numerous along the Tiber and one in particular didn’t hesitate to compete with the notes of the long-haired guitarist playing outside Castel Sant’Angelo (Mausoleum of Hadrian) two days ago. I stopped to listen to his version of Hallehujah and, as usual, my eyes filled with tears as the notes cascaded mournfully through the air. It reminded me of the first time I heard the song when the radio announcer had played it in honour of Jeff Buckley who had waded into the inky Mississippi River just day before and never made it out alive.

But the gull clearly had little respect for melancholy musings and continued its own demanding calls.

The Italian gulls live large and unapologetically, just as their human counterparts. It’s one of the reasons I love to travel here. From their passionate gesticulations when arguing about anything from football to food, to the languid confidence of almost every Italian man as he appreciates passing women like a smorgasboard and the effortless chic of Italian women (and oh yes, Italian men in their Italian suits), they know how to live wholeheartedly.

I know I am making some very broad generalisations here but I believe culturally, these assertions frequently hold true. And I love this country for all of it.

Why do we, in other countries, believe we must keep our passions under control instead of fully expressing them in all their inconvenient glory? Give me passion over repression every day of the week (and twice on Sundays). Far better to express our emotions and release them in the moment than push them down, way down, where they simmer for years making us physically ill and diluting our joy.

You know what I mean, right?

When I meet people for the first time these days, my first question is rarely the prosaic, what do you do for a living? Instead it is more likely to be, what are you passionate about? What’s your thing, the thing you love? It is there that I uncover the real gold within that unique human being. Because anyone can do a job but passion, well, that is something that is entirely yours and owned by you. You may find others who share it but how you feel and pursue it is entirely a matter for you and you alone.

I love Italy for its unapologetic passion for life, love, art and faith.

The other thing to remember is not everyone is going to share your passion and that is totally perfect because we all have our own path and things only we can do in this lifetime.

That’s why, despite his kind offer and personable manner at the café this morning, I turned down Luigi’s offer to share my bed. His passion didn’t align with mine and sadly, for him, men in their 60s don’t really do it for me.

But his conversation was lovely.  

Lucretia is currently on her latest Italian Odyssey, soaking in the passion, culture and love that lives in the country where her Soul feels most alive. You can also follow her adventures on Instagram and Facebook.

What if we’re asking the wrong question?

What if we’re asking the wrong question?

I took my book and made my way into the backyard this afternoon. The sun in Brisvegas is unseasonably warm and being a girl who loves the heat, I was keen to make the most of it.

My backyard includes a pool, thick green grass and a view of the river. But it hasn’t always been this way.

A few weeks ago, I left my home of 13 years to move here. It was a big choice to sell my house and I’m still feeling the reverberations of that choice, even now. My life is different now. The way I live is different now. And the space I inhabit within the world has changed.

It always intrigues me how when we change one thing in our lives, things change around us too. When we shift so does our energy and those ripples inexorably spread out into the world affecting our relationship with others and indeed, our relationship with ourselves.

Change one thing and many things change. Change a lot of things and you can imagine the impact is little more significant.

For me, my recent big change has led me to see much of my life through a different lens. I feel freer because in many ways I am starting anew. How I interact with strangers has shifted too. I am more open and I find myself feeling even more curious about the human condition. I observe more, feel more. Certainly my psychic channel feels much stronger, more attuned and more powerful than it has been.

My house was a home and a refuge. But eventually it became a place where I felt stuck and hidden from the world. Perhaps it was also a symbol of a life I thought I would once have that never eventuated.

So now I’m here.

As I sat beside the pool, relaxing in the sun, I found myself asking that question we frequently ask when seeking clarity about our next steps and where we want to go:

“If you could do anything, what would you do?”

As I rolled the question around in my head, I realised something that had never really cut-through my psyche before. I had asked the wrong question. The real question is:

“You can do anything so what are you going to do first and when are you going to do it?”

The second question is the true question and I laughed at myself when I realised it.

So many of the reasons we give ourselves for not doing what we truly want are mere excuses. They may be very reasonable and logical excuses but they are excuses just the same.

And when we start the discussion from a place of restriction with a focus on perceived obstacles, we cut ourselves off at the knees even before we start the race.

I was sitting there in that beautiful setting because I made some difficult but necessary decisions to change my life. To be honest, the Universe in many ways brought me to metaphorical knees before I would make those decisions, but I still made them. And I don’t regret them for one minute. Because once you let go of what you ‘think’ your life should look like as you move towards your goals, you allow whole new perspectives to show up that will take you to places you never expected to go (and sometimes resist visiting) and soon after you will realise you are exactly where you need to be.

I never thought I would end up living somewhere like this, but it’s perfect. So as I settle in, I now know what question I should really be asking.

Are you ready to ask it too?

Why Memoirists Can’t Hide

Why Memoirists Can’t Hide

I sat in a café today fighting back tears yet staring determinedly at my computer screen. Part of me wanted to run away while the other part thought, no, I have to do this.

I’d begun pulling my poetry collection together and as I began revisiting each piece, one by one, all the emotions they held rose up again within me.

A year a two ago, I found myself working on the same floor as a specialist I had first met in my 20s. As a man with a curious and active mind, who remembered me from way back then, he was keen to read my book as soon as I mentioned it. I still remember the look on his face afterwards. He looked at me intently and said, “It must have been very difficult to write a lot that.”

I nodded and said, “Yes. Yes it was.”

When you’re a memoirist and you write from real life, your life, it’s extraordinarily difficult to hide from yourself and the experiences of your past. You must look at yourself, study where you have been, unpick the threads of your life, then somehow sew them back together.

It’s not an easy journey to undertake. It’s often emotionally challenging. When you write about yourself, you cannot hide from yourself. This is why I frequently use journaling activities with my mentoring clients – what better way to uncover your true desires than to pick up a pen and begin recording your brutal self-honesty in writing.

Just like my first book, my poetry collection is autobiographical and traverses my relationship landscape with all its pain, heartbreaks and disappointments. There is a little humour in there too and this time, I also begin exploring the complicating influence of being psychic.  

I’ve found that being highly intuitive can work for and against me in romantic relationships. Yes, it may provide an extra level of insight about the person you are interested in but on the other hand, when your emotions are involved, your ability to easily to discern between your intuition and what your heart would like to happen can fly out the window. Factors like soul contracts and past life connections (or past life hangovers as I call them) can also mess with your head, a lot.

I am not one of those women who can put her emotions in a box. In truth, writing my first book was very much like my own personal version of therapy. It was only through writing about my experiences, editing it then revisiting it again, that I was able to finally clear a lot of debris from my psyche. With the birthing of that book I was able to step back and see where I had learned the lessons I needed to learn, and then let the rest go.

I find that my poetry is far more raw than my prose. It always knows what it wants to be when it arrives. It has a clear intention and energy of its own. Once written I can only change a word here or tweak a phrase there. Further self-indulgent editing inevitably destroys the life of the piece leaving it a bedraggled and shallow version of its former self. So I leave most of the words as they arrive.

The memories in my poetry are vivid. They are unavoidable and, judging by my emotional response today, I still have a lot to process about their contents. Two hours was about all I could manage today before I needed a break. But I am going to persevere. There are other books waiting to be finished and released.

Interestingly the themes of relationships, love, and energetic connections are increasingly showing themselves in my work. I guess my Muse is determined that I learn the lessons that are being delivered to me and I continue to be her reluctant yet committed pupil.