Life fucks with the best of us. It’s beautiful.

Readable version:

Life fucks with the best of us – and I love it.

I’m going through this beautiful phase in which people reach out and want to reconnect with me:

• Childhood friends reach out.
• People I graduated with from high school reach out to me.
• People I went to Uni with reach out to me.
• People I met on travels.
• People I met during my Master.
• People I used to work with….

And at the same time I’m also going through this very funny phase of really strange dreams. Night after night, after night.

It’s been a month now since I moved internationally from Switzerland to Sweden I’m spending considerable time on a few things that many would probably consider as details. Like my office for example – I’m questioning every freaking detail and it’s taking me aaages. But I’m having the serious intention to make this my last country and set down roots and I just became a cultural adaption coach which is a huge piece of my shift in business…. So as I’m working on intentionality on the core of my business and my messaging, I’m giving my hands and head other things to do: like setting up my workspace.

It’s all a process right?

So as my core messages, as a framework, slowly come to together One of the very key questions is: What is the most imported thing I should be concentrating on?

And it’s a tricky question because I can go down a rabbit hole. My logical, methodical brain says one thing – my intuition another. So instead of overthinking it all, why not sleep on it? Like literally – sleep on it to find an answer.

I’ve mentioned it here and there, but never went deep into it: in times of high creative intensity I use dreaming, especially lucid dreaming, to find solutions to creative dilemmas.

And lately, every Friday, I’ve been joining a Clubhouse room hosted by Nicoline Douwes Isema who is a dream expert, member of the International Association for the Study of Dreams and author of a Dutch book on the topic.

Nicoline thing is ‘dreamstorming’ – so helping people sleep on the problems they’re trying to solve. And that’s new to me: Using sleep time to be more creative I know, but using it to focus on practical, logical and methodical topics – hello!

That is actually something so cool and interesting that I had to reach out to Nicoline – litterally whilst writing this up – to ask her if she’d be on my podcast. And she said yes – so stay tuned for that.

But back to the story:

I have crazy dreams ever since we moved to Sweden. Almost every day during my waking time I ask myself:

• I seek to make this new life and shifted work focus significant, so what is actually meaningful to me?
• Where is enough, as in basic, enough for me and where do I need to dial up the intensity, the frame, the quality in order to feel so enough that I am actually so affluent, so rich, so flavorful to spare, to share and to give away?

I know WHAT I’m good at and HOW to give to the people that are or enter my life – but WHERE should I start?

And it haunts me in my dreams: 

• Every night my brain seems to focus on another facet of my life or business
• Every night it starts with where is the pleasure? Where the ease? And how can I dial it up to become significant, important and meaningful?
• Every night I go down the same rabbit hole dialing up the intensity.
• And every morning I wake up thinking: Holy Shit. That went dark and twisted. There was quite a bit of pain involved. Interesting. It was painful, but not scary. OR the other way round: That was something that usually really scares me, but it was not at all painful.

Now there is something in my real life that I’m scared to touch. A whole lot of fears and funky limiting beliefs come up, that I know are bullshit, but at the same time feel so freaking true…

Am I scared of something that won’t be actually that painful? Argh… I don’t know….

Now remember how I started with the people that are reaching out to me from seemingly EVERY corner of my past?

To be completely honest: Some of those people I never really liked. And I’m pretty sure they never really liked me neither – so you can imagine my surprise, right?! 

Others I adored and its just this pure delight to receive that message: “Hey. You keep popping up in mind and so I thought let’s give this try: Can I call you?”

But when I then get to talk with all of them it’s this funky atmosphere of

“This is somewhat awkward,  we haven’t talked in ages but hey – wtf?! Can I be totally honest? My life is pretty OK in general, but there is/was that one area where I really took a low blow. It bloody hurt and I’m still liking my wounds. How are you?”

Literally this, or a version of that.

So the people I did not like that much before are now a lot more relatable to me – and if I was on the fence about us reconnecting, then now I’m really glad we did.

And the people I already adored before  – oh män, I’m so happy we got to do this! Do you have any freaking clue how beautiful a human you actually are?

But here’s the thing, I’m also turning 40 in a few weeks and the majority of those friends are the same age – give or take a few years.

And I can not NOT smile when I hear how everyone finds some creative way of naming their “valley of sorrow” that led to making some major shifts in thinking and for a few also in acting.

Some are humbled. Others are more confident. Some are so much wiser. And others are a lot more free and open.

I have to smile and I retain myself from saying: “Let’s face it friend, you’re having a mid-life crisis and it’s beautiful. You seriously question your life in some regards and That’s flippin brilliant, because only idiots never doubt themselves.” 

What I see is that life fucked with all of us in some way or another.

And I’m not saying I enjoyed my version of painful (and neither should you), but holy crap!!! My version of painful made me really appreciate … a lot of things I used to be ignorant to. That includes myself.

I appreciate myself.

And now you old friend.

SO it seems like we all wear our set of bruises and even if some are still sore to the touch – from afar they look like a pretty colorful rainbow…. Some are red and swollen because you just got hit. Others are black and blue or deep purple as your body is trying to digest and recover, and others are green and yellow because they’re already fading away.

…muahaha, gosh. I was never good at poetry, but you get the gist, right?!

So I’m left here sitting wondering: Am I scared to touch my sore point that I’m avoiding, because I imagine it to be painful?

Because it seems like we always put those two together: Pain in scary and what scares us is painful – when they really aren’t always connected.

All my friends stories, and my own show me that with every bitter there is also almost always something sweet.

And yeah, I’m taking this with me into the next couple of weeks and I’ll keep you updated. What’s been happening.

And in the meantime friend,

if you’ve found value in this, please like, please. Shared with the one person that you think needs to hear this, or leave me a comment or hit reply.

If you got this by email hit reply. I love when people can reach out to me. So until next time I stay with your humble design, a friend opened well, Hej då c’est Nicole.