Surround yourself with sunshine for your soul

Every Sunday, Arti Kashyap-Aynsley drops by to discuss all the many things we may be facing, feeling or going through with our daily life transformations. Share your questions and / or requests for topics with Arti anonymously at the.wellness.chief@gmail.com.

I don’t know about you, but as last week started all I could do was count down to my out of office being on and the time I knew I was going to get not only on my own but also with my nearest and dearest.

Nearest and dearest now there is a thought.

How often do we get time with those we love, those that fill our souls with joy and leave us feeling so full of gratitude? I mean we may get time with them regularly, but how often do we get that undivided attention time?

And I guess the other big question as we ponder the one above is – are we clear on who those “nearest and dearest” are?

So often the hours, days and weeks that make up our life turn into one big jumble of meetings and errands. We spend our time scheduling everything and anything in, with out always taking the time to really wonder if whom we are scheduling in should in fact be with whom we spend our time with.

I feel like I definitely got into a spiral in my life where I was constantly spending time with people that I knew were not great for me – I would find myself leaving meetings, outings and moments feeling down, in over my head and in some cases breathing a sigh of relief for finally having space to be myself. Does that sound familiar at all?

After hitting a moment 5-6 years ago that made me suddenly really think about who I was spending my time with, I made a promise to myself to constantly be reflecting how I felt when I left people to really determine the camp that they fell into in my life – the one where I needed to make more of an effort to see them more regularly or the one where I needed to keep them at arms-length and not necessarily the priority when thinking of my schedule on the day to day. This exercise has become so vital to me as I move through the various transformations in my life because I am starting to realise that with each transformation I go through the people I surround myself with always need to evolve.

It sounds a bit harsh, but if you think about the quote that says you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with you kind of have to wonder and think about who those 5 people are and if they are the 5 people you want to be the average of.

Often times we surround ourselves with people simply based on how long we have known them and / or feelings of guilt for letting them down if we don’t. We therefore then prioritise others over our sanity and then spend the rest of our days complaining about how little time we have for ourselves. Remember from the first post that I had – we can not pour from an empty cup so we need to be thinking about how we are spending that precious time that we do have and with whom we are letting infiltrate it.

It isn’t always easy – trust me I know. And I am not suggesting that we all go on a mass cutting off spree, however what I am suggesting is that we in the same way we would reflect on our days, reflect on those that we surround ourselves with and therefore use those reflections to re-prioritise how and who we spend our time with.

This week I founded Jay Shetty – I feel like I am literally so late to jumping on his band wagon – who definitely has my favourite podcast at the moment. Coincidently one of the episodes I listened to – the one where he talks about the three reasons, he became a monk - talked about the rule of 1. Which aligns to this idea of reflecting on the people we surround ourselves with. The rule 1 talks about asking ourselves to think about the people we spend our time with and determine if they are the people, we would gladly spend 1 minute with, 1 hour with, 1 week with, 1 month with or 1 year with. By determining the duration, we would happily spend with these individuals we can start to understand how we go about prioritising them into our lives.

So as the Bank Holiday weekend roles on and you are surrounded by your “nearest and dearest” reflect a bit on the above and ask yourself if you are allowing yourself to be around those that really raise you up and leave your soul smiling as often as you need.

Happy Easter to our Ladies who Launch community – may you be happily living in chocolatey coma this weekend 😊

I know that this isn’t always an easy topic to deal with – trust me when I said I understood, I meant it. I have had to make some really tough decisions based on the above which were not easy for me. So if you are struggling and / or want to continue the conversation please contact me on Instagram at either @the_wellness_chief or @ladieswholaunch_.

Also have a topic you want me to address in the weekly column and / or are looking to explore the idea of coaching or keen to know a bit more about how a coach could support you? I would love to discuss and hear from you, so please drop me a note at the.wellness.chief@gmail.com and remember, all emails are treated as confidential.