Joe. Blogs #6 – Sunday 25 December 2022
[Merry Christmas brothers!
We left our home at Monaghan Farm, Lanseria after spending 6 amazing years there, on Monday 19th December to road trip our way to the Western Cape where our new home in Somerset West.
I decided to make a holiday out of the trip, using it as an excuse to explore new parts of our country. I booked accommodation in Colesburg for the first night, then Prince Albert for the second and Greyton for the third and last night. From Greyton it was a short trip into Somerset West.
The road trip was an amazing adventure as we all experienced the Free State, Northern Cape and finally the Western Cape. It was an incredible bonding time for me, Maria and the kids.
It was a lot of driving, but the kids were great….as well as Elsa the cat and Phoebe the dog! I drove down in my Landy 90 and Maria the Audi TT. The kids alternated between the two cars and the fur kids stayed with Maria.
I wanted to use the road trip as a positive part of our experience rather than just racing to get there! It was both a physical and mental trip for me as we drove down, physically leaving the place of my birth and life up to then behind. As I was driving, I mentally focused on letting my past go but at the same time cherishing all the memories spent there. It was a happy, sad experience but ultimately very exciting.
Driving for me is a lot like walking, allowing my mind to wander wherever it wants to go. Listening to old music is also an opportunity to travel back to the many special moments of my childhood. All the other music that I shared with my kids in the car would then become our new memories for our trip to our new life in the Western Cape.
“Walking on sunshine” was always a favourite happy song for me. My daughter and I shared many special moments singing and bopping our heads to this song in the car!
Even though I was feeling very scared about all the changes that were heading my way, I always felt that it was the right thing to do.
One thing that has always been a gift of mine is my gut feeling.
Our gut feelings are very important, but these can and need to be focused on. As men, our gut feelings are a combination of what our heart feels and what our heads ultimately decide to do. I come back to why our feelings and emotions are so important to us. Our brains cannot decide for us, but it will react to what it is given – if we feed our brains positive thoughts and feelings it will focus on this, and obviously the opposite is also what it will respond to. We need to carefully manage the relationship between our heads and our hearts as our gut feel is directly related to this. The brain is not always right, there is a beautiful synergy that needs to happen with the heart.
We obviously also can’t just follow our hearts as nice as this would be. The head will always have a say but it’s the combination of the two that creates our ‘gut feel’. For me, I have always had a very strong ‘gut feel’ due to my highly sensitive personality, but I also need to make sure it’s a combination of both. As it is a gut feel it will always be mostly controlled by the heart BUT the brain must always be given a chance to be involved with the final decision.
The road trip also allowed me time to physically and emotionally adjust to the change. We must always give ourselves time to assess and adjust to the changes happening around us.
Next week I will share more insights from our family road trip to the Western Cape.
Wishing you and your families an amazing ‘not average’ Christmas!!
Remember…. don’t be AVERAGE!!
Later
Joe. Blogs
