In the last few weeks I have found myself a part of a most amazing community of like minded, heart centred, beautiful women in the Beautiful You Coaching Academy. I have been absolutely blown away by the support and encouragement offered not only from the amazing trainers Julie, Jade and Jo but also every other trainee that is taking part in this course.
I have attempted online courses before but honestly have never come across a more loving and accepting environment as I find with these women. I find myself looking forward to my “chat with the girls” on a Tuesday night when I log onto Skype for our live group calls, and love the learning that is delivered by our lead trainer Julie Parker but also from the questions put forward by all the other trainees. I get butterflies when I put my hand up to ask my own question and just so excited when I am called upon and get to chat with Julie and never feel like the question I want to ask is silly or irrelevant. Every question is met with enthusiasm and encouragement and answered with such a wonderful knowledge from years of Julie’s experience with many examples included.
I am so so glad that I decided to take on this course and have been put in touch with this beautiful community. I have found over the years that as you get older making new friends and meeting new people becomes quite difficult. As an adult I feel the opportunity to do this becomes less and less. There is work colleagues and occasionally they will become friends that you socialise with outside of work. There is your partners’ friends and family that you will make connections with and often spend a lot of time with. But other than that there really are not a lot of opportunities to meet new people.
So in meeting the above group of women I have been lucky enough to make contact with one who lives less than 15 minutes away from me. Who would have thought in a group of 67 women spread all over the world there would be two from country victoria so close together? I made the first move, and sent a message via Facebook to see if she would be interested in catching up for a coffee to discuss our experiences so far with BYCA and she replied with enthusiasm. Honestly our first catch up felt like a blind date, I was so nervous. As I said at the start, making new friends, as you get older just happens less and less, so this to me felt quite daunting. But honestly my new friend was just lovely and we spent at least an hour getting to know each other and talking about this amazing course.
Now add to this not only one new friend but a second in my coaching buddy that I have been linked with through BYCA. She is in a different state and we have so far had 2 phone conversations but it already feels like we have known each other for years. Its absurd how much we have in common, and things beyond what the coaching academy knew through our questionaries, to have paired us up. But it’s really lovely to have been put in contact with another wonderful person that I look forward to getting to know even better in the future.
Now I’d like to add something else in to this mix and just say that over the past few years I’ve sadly lost some wonderful friends. Not through death or them moving away, but simply what I now believe is that our friendships reached their expiry dates. I have come to the conclusion that not all friendships are supposed to last forever. Mind you this came after spending what I now believe was an excessive amount of my time and effort trying to make them work, overlooking the nasty or vindictive comments that came my way, going out of my way to make time or catch up, when really this effort was not being returned. Now I know there are two sides to every story and I’ve only shared my part, but in all honestly I feel that I played my part of friend well. Sure there are a few things that I wish I had done differently, but for the most part I think the biggest thing that I noticed as these friendships dissolved was that, when everything that I had ever dreamed of was finally coming my way, and I mean falling in love and getting married, these friends were pulling away. Or they were making many negative comments about my partner, my life, and me. And the worst part was I didn’t even really notice. I mean there were times where I remember defending myself or shrugging things off but when I sat back as these expiry dates got closer I saw all the negative comments the subtle digs, the genuine lack of interest in what was going on in my life, and there were big things going on. It still took something significant to get me to finally call time on these friendships. I honestly think I would have just kept going along in this miserable friendship for god knows how long, had something really not tipped it over the edge. And don’t get me wrong, I am incredibly sad to have lost these friends but in the grand scheme of things it comes back to surrounding yourselves with the positive and wonderful people that are there to support you and lift you up and join in with all the fun times in your life. So that’s what I am doing from here on in.
On Saturday I spent a lovely afternoon having a couple of cheeky wines with an old friend and a new friend and we chatted and laughed and just generally had a lovely time. These are the people I want in my life. Easy and relaxed and carefree wonderful women who would support me and encourage me and genuinely just be happy for me and whatever successes come along in my life, Just as I will be for them.
Thankyou to all the lovely amazing women and friends in my life, both the new and the old. You know who you all are and I cannot imagine my life without you in it. I look forward to many more wonderful moments with you all.
Emxxx