My blog today is inspired by the great words of Stella Adler “in your choices lies your talent”. I have often been reminded of this quote by my lovely acting coaches from LA, however, this mantra is as relevant in life as it is in acting.

The reason for choosing this, is because I have been struggling to do my blog in the last week, the reason being, I am on holiday so everything is different, I don’t have my normal routine, I have to make different choices. Do I lie in the sun – or write my blog? Do I have a cocktail in the sunset – or write my blog. As you have probably guessed the sun and a cocktail  (or two) have won.

So what’s the big deal, well, I enjoy writing my blog and some of my readers specifically asked if I would still be doing it on holiday, “Yes, of course” I said in haste, without taking into account that it might not be as straight forward as I expected. The thing is, I feel that I have been letting myself and them down but why?  It’s my blog and I started it to help me keep my mental state under control whilst recovering from surgery and it has indeed been a huge help, so why do I feel this way?

The answer to this is monumental, so you will be relieved to here I am going to attempt the concise version. I love to help people both in a physical and mental sense and often choose to do that over doing things for me. This in itself is a good quality, I believe, unless of course you do it too much and then you can find yourself frustrated that you don’t have time for you, I may occasionally fall into this category! My blog seems to have found a happy medium, not only do I get to do something for me that is creative, stops me going to the dark side and I can do it sitting down but also, so I’ve been told, people are both enjoying and finding them helpful. Therefore, although choosing to lie in the sun and have a cocktail seemed like the perfect choice at the time, it has resulted in me feeling stressed, the last thing you want on holiday.

So today, I chose to plan my day differently, I have still been in the sun and my cocktail will still be waiting for me as the sun goes down, yet I have managed to fit in a blog as well, is it a miracle, have I finally invented the 36 hour day? No of course not, although it would be bloody handy, Instead, I chose not to do my physio exercises, I know they are really important and in fact vital for my recovery but it is because I know that, that I do them religiously! What I didn’t know was it is as important to do my blog, I have been so fixed on improving my physical condition that I was not recognising  my mental one was suffering. Now obviously, I can’t keep choosing my blog over my exercises that would be plain stupid but now I have realised what was happening, I will set about making different choices every day so I get a balance of what I need to keep me both physically and mentally well.

I know we often feel as if we don’t have a choice but we always do, even in the most horrific circumstances you have more than one option, although it is likely they are all unfavourable, you still have more than one. Do you ever find yourself saying you had no choice? If so, is that really what you meant? We have the ability to create a life for ourselves that is happy and calm, when I say that I mean internally, not happy that you have a new car or calm because you smoked a spliff. If you spend some time to think about the choices you are making and realise they are not helping you towards happy and calm, maybe you could have a think about changing them, they’re your choices after all. I know they affect others and all choices have consequences so it could take some time and possibly guts to make them but I didn’t say it was easy to make a choice, just that you had the ability to do so.

Good luck and when I have my cocktail this evening I shall raise a toast to ‘happy and calm’.