“Dare to be yourself. Dream, imagine, explore. Take initiative. Don’t be afraid to face your fears. Always seek the Truth. Value you identity. Be strong yet soft. Your future is in your hands. Be beautiful – Be bold. Be YOU!"
Recently I have come to that point in my life where I have realised how much it means for a woman to have her girl friends by her side.
When in a relationship it is so easy to focus all your time and energy on your partner. It sounds draining though. What about time apart to spend time with your own friends family? Like a guy who needs to have time to spend with his guy mates watching rugby and drinking etc… A woman also needs to have time to herself where she can go out and spend time with her girl friends.
Woman love talking – that’s a proven fact! Men are the opposite though. When a woman gets home from work all she wants to do is talk about her day with her partner but a guy when he gets home from work he wants to sit down on the couch and relax for the next half an hour or so. This is just one of the many differences of both men and woman. A woman she needs to have her girlfriends in her life in a different way that men have their guy mates. For me I need to have the support and friendships of my girls to fill that little space in my heart. The kind of friendships where you know you can sit down with your girls, be yourself, not be judged or hit on if you were talking with guys and talk about absolutely anything and everything knowing that they will listen back in return. I love my girls and the friendships that we have together. They are a big part of my life and I am so very thankful that I have some good true girl friends who I can turn too no matter what time of day it is!
When you get to that stage m in you life where you can quite happily say that you are happy with your own company and spending time to yourself, then that’s when you will be able to start to think about sharing part of your life with someone else.
When you love yourself first you can then start to love someone else. When you enjoy time alone to yourself then taking a break every now and then wont be too painful.
If we aren’t able to cope being by ourselves then we will start depending on our partner for support and comfort all the time, and that can be very draining. What happens when a break up happens? Who are you going to turn to then and better still how are you going to manage being by yourself again? I will give you a little example from my life. – I work on a ship where we all work as a team but we also have a lot of our independent down time to ourselves. Now most people would think that this would get boring day after day, but to be totally honest I love it! You get time to yourself where you can do what ever you want without having anyone else influence your decisions. Its great! I sleep, go to the gym, watch a movie, listen to music, relax on my bed reading a book, do some creative art work and write ups for my blog page and have a lot of time to think about my life as it has been and will be. I get time to focus all my attention of “ME” for a change. Thinking about what I have achieved in life and also what is still yet to be achieved ahead of me. Its not to say that I don’t like spending time with my partner, family or friends. No it’s the complete opposite! I love my social and love life to pieces, but I have realised for to keep myself true to who I am I have to have time to myself every so often. So why not take the chance now, do you want to figure out who you are as a person and know if you love your own company? The only you are going to know is by trying it out for yourself someday.
I’d like to take a moment to come back and touch on one of my previous write-up’s. “Physical V’s Mental Strength” I’m not what you call one of the biggest woman in the world in fact most people would say the opposite.
Physical strength can be built on by excising and working out. You can see a change in your body shape, muscle strength and over all general fitness stamina. But mental strength? How can you gauge how strong you are mentally or what areas need working on? Yes sure you can go and see a psychologist and they will tell you where your weak areas are in your life, but wouldn’t you like to be able to know and judge this on your own? Fancy that – being able to know where your mental weaknesses are and then having the ability to work on strengthening them. Here are 4 steps to making this possible:
1- Keep a Journal of the highs and lows of your day, what happened, how you reacted, how it affected you and how you felt because of it. Feelings, emotions and thoughts - do this for 3 weeks.
2- Sort through your points arranging them into two lists of which had either a positive and negative affect on your life.
3- You can put the positive list aside for the moment and focus on the negative list. Re-order the negative list to which point had the biggest affect on your life. i.e.- worrying, feeling lonely and lost, being heartbroken etc…
4- Take each negative point one by one and write down some points about how you can avoid feeling the way you did if that same thing happened next time. Is there anything on your positive list which you could link up to one of these points?
It sounds like a lot of hard work but trust me in the end you will be thankful you did it. I now have techniques which help to me identify my mental weaknesses and how I am to approach them when they occur in the near future. Life is full of some many highs and lows. It is up to us if we want to stay on the low or reach up for the high ride!
An inspiring Captain back in the year 2002 once told me:
“You must work as though there is always someone watching everything that you do! You never know who maybe learning from the little things done in your life…”
Wow! I worked on a medical ship in Fiji in 2007 where there were a lot of children on board. On this particular voyage there was a 7 year old Australian girl called Zakaiya. She was such a gorgeous young girl, so full of life and happiness (we didn’t know at the time that she came from an abusive background and was now being raised by a solo parent) Zakaiya took a liking to me. Everywhere I went she would follow, everything I did she would copy, she ate what I ate, wore her hair the same as mine, sat down when I sat down and basically mimicked everything I did. At first I though that this would get a bit annoying until I realised what this Captain once told me. She was learning from me. I would be working on the bridge doing chart corrections and she would ask to come and sit next to me and promised not to talk or distract me, she was so caring and considerate at only 7 years old. Then there was one particular afternoon which I still remember so clearly to the day. I walked into my cabin and found Zakaiya sitting on my bunk and looking at my photos while frowning. I asked her what was wrong? She then said: “Why do you try and change who you were created to be?” I looked surprised. “I mean if you were created with brown curly hair why would you want to try and change yourself, I don’t understand!” I didn’t know what to say in response. Zakaiya then jumped off my bed, placed a hand made card of my pillow and walked out of my cabin.
I was stumped! This young girl had been coping me and learning from me since the day she had met me and now she was confused as to why someone else would want to try to be someone they are not. From that day on Zakaiya and I did things together. She wore her hair the way that she felt comfortable with and we did things that she wanted to do for a change.
We could spend our entire work week complaining about the problems with our job but that wouldn’t get us anywhere! For instance I could moan and complain each day when I am at work on the ship about how much I miss my partner and life back home on the farm. But how would I perform to the best of my ability at work? I just wouldn’t. Instead of feeling homesick or worrying about missing my loved ones I try to focus on the joys of my job and how much I love doing what I do for a living. I mean who works in an environment where their scenery changes every day. Sighting dolphins and whales on a regular basis, experiencing the feeling of night sailing under the moon and star lit sky and as well at the sights, living in a place where you have your own chefs, stewards and cabin attendants. What more could you want?
You’d be surprised how often the feelings of loneliness and missing loved ones comes up on a daily basis. At times they try to outweigh the highs of the job.
The secrets to avoiding homesickness and enjoying work life, especially on a ship, is to think of all the good positive things you like about your job. Focusing on your work can be good at keeping your mind occupied while working as well as communicating with loved ones back home on a regular basis - good balanced life.
Everyone is different! This is only one of the ways in which I cope with balancing my love life and my job.
Recently I was asked this question by someone very special in my life. At first I didn’t know how to answer it. I mean I had to explain to this person why I thought I was placed on this earth and why I am continuing to live each day out. Now I must say don’t even try to think about this question if you are feeling down at the moment because it will only make you feel worse! Some people would look at me and say “You were placed on this earth to be an awesome Woman Captain” and I am thankful that some people think that, but that’s only a job, its not who I am as a person or why I am here. I truly believe that I am placed on this earth with one purpose and one purpose only. And that is for “Love”. I am here to love others and to be loved myself. It has always been on my heart that I will only ever fall in love with one guy and love one guy only. That is a big value of mine which I will stick with for the rest of my life. I am here to share love, teach love, give love and spread my love with my friends and family! There are so many different types of Love. Family love, friendship love, relationship partner love, parental love and so much more.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails!”
Well I now have time to sum up everything about 2009 for my life in less than 200 words. It has been an amazing year filled with so many first experiences for me. Starting from January: “Worked on a ship in Australia, Passed my AMSA Oral exam, Moved house into a flat in Wellington, Learnt how to surf in summer, Ran a half marathon, Got a Job and a pay rise, Travelled New Zealand, Met lots of new friends, Had a make over, Fell in love and now in a relationship, Started a family (28 baby chickens and 1 duckling) Had my fair share of hospital visits, Attended a couple of weddings, Learnt how to relax and now I have a balanced life!”
And that’s only a few of the things which have happened in my life this year. What’s coming up in the next two months are pretty exciting as well. My birthday, a Cruise on a Cruise ship over Christmas with my partner, New Years spent in Australia and then a Holiday with my partner in Fiji at the end of January next year!
So many plans and so many fun times ahead to look forward to.
“When you reach that point in your life where your dreams become your life and your life becomes your dream… You know you are the happiest person in the world!”
.JPG)
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