We all have moments where we are reminded that life is short.
Sometimes these can be big moments, and others it can be a simple little thing.
I love when it’s simple little thing. It means your world hasn’t been rocked by a tragedy; instead you’ve been hit by a light bulb moment, like a cattle prod in the backside spurring you into action.
I’ve had quite a few of these cattle prods over the last 18 months!!
I was thinking again recently about of them as it had such an impact on my outlook towards trying to conceive (TTC).
I was actually doing my business planning when it happened.
I have a tendency to be very focused on the immediate, making longer term planning something that is not my strong suit.
Wanting to take a different approach I did an exercise where I stepped WAY out into my future to look back.
I got really free with it – gave myself permission to let go of rationale and ‘little voices’ and wrote my life and how it had unfolded exactly as I wanted it to be.
I focused on what bought me joy, what I had overcome, how I had grown, my passions, my contributions, my achievements. I wrote about what I would like to be remembered for.
It really struck me –
Life is not waiting for me.
If I want to be this person, with this life, when I am 100 years old I need to start taking action NOW.
Although it was started from business planning this was a huge wake up call for me across all of my life – especially our fertility challenges!
An easy mistake (and one that I certainly made) when facing infertility is to become so singular that it totally derails the rest of your life.
I learnt the hard way that putting everything else on pause around you doesn’t work….nothing waits for you while you are lost in the infertility fog.
Life is not on pause waiting for me to get pregnant.
I loved the way this exercise took me out of this cocoon I’d created where everything was about TTC.
When I looked at my life over the next 65 years there was so much colour to it, and so many achievements.
Yes, motherhood was one of them. But my relationship, my family, my friendships, my career and my hobbies were all there too.
The kicker of this was that I realised that the only thing holding me back from living this life now was me.
Infertility wasn’t actually to blame for a lot of what was lacking in my present day life – instead it was the choices I had made in how to approach it.
Don’t get me wrong I know I was doing the best I could with what I knew at the time…but armed with this new learning I’ve rediscovered:
It’s all about Balance!!
Things in life go wrong; plans go awry – that is a guarantee. But if our lives are rounded when the ground shakes in one area we might wobble but we are less likely to fall!
Here’s 7 ways I’ve found to achieving Balance while TTC:
- If you have to stop doing something you love to support TTC don’t just stop and leave a void – find something to replace it with!
- Don’t be so rigid that you can’t ever have fun.
- Friendships are important – don’t let TTC make you withdraw from friendships and your social life completely
- Keep the romance alive in your relationship!
- Take Ownership. Who do you want to be? How do you want your life to be? What can you do about it? (Trust me there will be something you can do!!)
- Take time to smell the roses!! Meditate, read, pamper yourself (you deserve to be looked after!)
- Have something else to strive for – things to look forward to so you feel excited a sense of anticipation and like you are achieving something
How have you bought balance back into your life while facing infertility?