A guest post from Margaret from Le Loft d’Art showing you how to be positive and follow your dreams!
When the pandemic hit and covid changed the world some people chose to re-evaluate their life, others were forced to. If you are struggling to be positive about how your life is changing and need to look at being more positive this story could really inspire you.
Changes are coming
February 2020 feels like a lifetime ago, and yet it is a little over 18 months.
All non-essential travel is to be ceased with immediate effect. Do not travel between sites unless absolutely necessary. For meetings, use video conferencing. It was a blow to my lifestyle and my plans for the future.
I felt like a caged animal, an errant teenager grounded for some misdemeanour. Still, it should only be for a couple of months, right?
For the four years before lockdown, I regularly travelled to London from Scotland, even more so in the last two years. I loved my life; I spent weekdays regularly in the city, weekends enjoying the countryside back home.
My daughter had moved south, and we were able to catch up every three weeks or so for a hug, a chat, dinner and some drinks.
There was change everywhere; the working environment, expansion of the team that I worked in, a change of direct reports, and my status within the structure. Things started to take their toll.
I was working 12-16 hours per day, and I was losing belief in my capabilities. Work and travel had been a big part of my life for so long that I didn’t know how to deal with being at home every day.
Accentuate your positives
I immersed myself more, as many people have done, in nature. I went for walks, cycled, went kayaking and even took up open water swimming. I also started to look at my art as an escape route at the weekends.
My daughter had encouraged me at the latter end of 2019 to display my art online. I did, and the responses of support and encouragement were overwhelming. I ventured into selling my art, and I had some success. So, I created my own website, and so Le Loft D’Art was born.
In November 2020, I had a near breakdown. A position had come up at work that I had been told was mine. It didn’t happen for several reasons. I was gutted. I felt again overlooked.
I felt invisible to the one person in my organisation that I wanted to impress. Then, to add to the misery – lockdown 2! Borders between Scotland and England meant that my first break in nine months was cancelled. I was supposed to be meeting my daughter for her birthday, and she was so upset it made the pain double.
The Law of Attraction
Then I found the Law of Attraction. I started to realise that what happens to you is entirely within your control. Even when things aren’t going the way you want them to, you can always take a perspective that allows you to work with the challenges you are dealt, and find a positive way to look at them or deal with them.
At the start of 2021, I submersed myself into the way the Law of Attraction works. I enrolled on two life-coaching courses consecutively. I worked hard at changing my mindset in so many areas of my life. I still do – every day!
The Law of Attraction teaches you to ask for what you want and stop concentrating on what you don’t want. A simple example is saying, “I want to be on time” rather than “I don’t want to be late.” It teaches you to understand the stories you tell yourself to excuse yourself from taking action to get what you want.
So one of mine was that I used to say to people I wasn’t built to exercise; I can’t breathe properly, have a plate and pin in my wrist, my legs aren’t strong enough. And so, I allowed myself not to exercise.
Nowadays, I do many activities I’d previously written myself off as being incapable of doing. I learned to look deep to see what my inner desires and drivers were. I saw the books that I have been talking about writing for years! I noticed that my art was now who I am, not what I did.
Don’t look back with regrets
At the start of 2021, my team was devastated by two deaths in the company. One was a senior manager, and the other was a member of our own team.
After the second, I reassessed my life. People spoke about the person at a virtual memorial service for colleagues, and I vowed from that day that I wanted to be remembered for all the things that I have done and not all the things that I wanted to do. So, I resigned.
I served my employer three months’ notice. I was pursuing my dreams to become an artist and an author.
Reassessing my life, I knew that travel with the company like it had been before was staying the past. I realised it was the part of the job I found most attractive and that without it, the job was just staring at a screen all day, every day.
I am now two weeks into my new life. I am working on illustrations for my upcoming picture rhyming book called “My Little Birdie told me…all about colours. It’s the first in a planned series of books that will grow with the audience and is expected out before the end of the year.
I have also signed up with someone to help me with my novel “No place like home.” I hope to have that out by the start of 2022. And my confidence in what I produce in my art grows day by day.
Some future plans for me include completing a proofreading and editing course that I started some time ago. Once qualified, I plan to offer these services on a consultancy basis. I also plan to travel and look to open and retreat for artists and authors to inspire each other and allow them space and time to be creative.
Check out Margaret’s website Le Loft d’Art and why not buy something as 20% of art sales are donated to MacMillan Cancer support so you will be doing some good too!
Another article you might like is a guest post from an illustrator Pricilla, check that out here.
