I have been a bit quiet recently. But just on the blogging and newsletter front. You see there are huge, huge changes going on in my life right now, so there have been other priorities in my head. I would really like to share these exciting experiences just because I am learning so so much from them and my developments are just a living proof that with the right knowledge and support we can emerge from something potentially crushing simply shining, empowered and hugely excited about life.

Before I start, I would like give myself a little high-five for being so publicly open about my personal life in this post. A few years ago, I was too shy to even register on a forum let alone leave a comment, or write a blog post or anything like that. I’ve not always been this brave, but boy, is life fun when you start pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone!

Basically my whole life has gone upside down, inside out, side-step, tango, waltz, fox-trot and jitterbug.

Since April I have done the following:

- amicably ended a very lovely 8.5 year relationship

- changed my ‘day job’ (I quit an unfulfilling job in finance and now work part-time in Business Development for an inspiring company that works with personal development and leadership training and I will soon go on to facilitate workshops and coach individuals)

- finished renovating my house in order to put it on the market

- thought long, long, long and hard about where I want to live in this world (I’ll keep you posted on my decision!)

- re-homed my beautiful dog (heart-break city!) as I wont be able to give her the attention and time she needs to thrive after my house is sold

- started doing fun but brave things such as Dj:ing

- expanded my social life in Sweden and UK by about a million % (which takes quite a bit of coordinating actually!)

And at the same time making exciting progress with my company:

- qualified as a Vegetarian and Vegan Nutrition Consultant

- launched my coaching services and seen some amazing results with a fabulous client!

- joined up with 2 lovely girls to plan a fab High Energy workshop in London in November 2011 (read all about it here)

When writing this it just feels like a list of things, but it when you are actually in it and living it, it really is incredibly intense and challenging. And I am sure that if you have ever done any of these things you will appreciate just how much they can impact your life…let alone when all happening at the same time in the space of a few months!

The most amazing thing I have experienced is that by applying all the things I learned over the years, I have not only managed to survive this incredibly turbulent time, but I feel that I am leaping from it full of love and life and zest for new exciting things.

Here is what has been the key to keeping me sane, happy and healthy:

1. Raw Food
I have been really motivated to keep as high-raw as possible simply because I immediately notice the positive effects. Cooked food does not give me the clear mind and the super high energy that I have needed for this period. Having a clear mind means that I am able to analyse my feelings much better and make sensible decisions. It has also prevented me from comfort eating and numbing any pain with things like refined sugar or heavy comfort food like toast! Working through these feelings is far more progressive and healing I find!

2. Avoiding stimulants
Staying clear of coffee, refined sugar and alcohol has also reduced the risk of feeling any extra anxiety and keeps my blood sugar stable. If I feel I need pepping up then I will either go for a run, or have a little nibble on some raw chocolate instead, which does not shock my body like coffee does. If I need the relaxing effects that alcohol can give, I do some yoga or exercise and make sure I take a few deep deep breaths. I have also been very kind to myself and when I do really feel I need time out, I will take it. Sometimes that means saying no to some people and commitments, but in the long run this ’selfish act’ is a great investment and actually makes me a nicer person to be around!

3. Exercise
This has really been a saviour. Exercise relieves stress tremendously and there is nothing like a good work out to release mood-elevating endorphins. I am also finding it really fun to set myself physical goals and challenges which offers a great respite from the emotional ones I have been experiencing!

I have also found that I have stayed away from comfort eating rubbish food or binging on booze (like I have done in previous years when facing a challenging time) because moderate exercise makes me feel a lot better. And since I know how good working-out makes me feel, it means that I don’t want to feel hungover or sluggish from comfort eating and therefore refrain from eating and drinking naughtiness.

4. Positive supportive and inspiring people
I am so in love with the people that I have in my life these days! I find I tend to stay away from people who deal with their unhappiness by trying to bring others down with negative remarks and energy. At a time when you need to be really brave, you need people who support you. Even if you don’t personally know people like this, reading inspiring books and blogs, or connecting with others on the internet or by attending inspiring events is a true gift!

5. Coaching
I draw on the wisdom I get from my coach and from my own knowledge of coaching. This is such a powerful tool for personal growth and bursting through challenging times. Becoming aware of why we think and act in certain ways is hugely empowering, and mastering the skills of breaking things down into small achievable steps is so useful . Oh, I could go on and on about this, but I wont. But it really has made the difference between crumbling into a heap of despair and rising out the ashes like a glorious, sassy phoenix!

So, dear friend, that is what my life has been the past few months. There are lots of exciting and challenging times ahead, but I am learning so much and am actually feeling pretty bloomin’ spectacular.

I really hope this post inspires you to see any challenging period you experience as an opportunity to grow and do brave things. It really is quite amazing!

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Feel free to share this article with others. Please just remember to include the following credit: © 2011 Johanna Best www.miss-best.com

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When we moved to our house a few months ago I needed to acquire a desk. I had a look around for second hand ones but nothing came up that I wanted or wasn’t a ridiculously long drive away, so after a month of looking I decided that I couldn’t wait any longer (as I needed a desk to work on) and so went to IKEA.

As I was putting together my lovely new desk I got to a point where the thingy had to be put in the whatsit, but it really didn’t want to fit. So I just pushed it harder. And then, begrudgingly, it did eventually fit. But then I reliased that it wasn’t actually meant to go there, and I had to remove the thingy that I had managed to jam into the whatsit pretty firmly. Silly, Miss Best! Double silly Miss Best as this happened twice. It was only after the second time that I realised that I had accidentally skipped 2 pages of the instruction leaflet. Figuring this out made it much somewhat easier to get things into place as they should.

But while I sat there on the floor, surrounded by bits and bobs, and tools and packaging, I couldn’t help but compare my little flat-pack project to a bigger project called Life. It reminded me of a time in my life when I thought I wanted something. I had to struggle really hard to get it, and obviously when I did get it, it did not make me content as it wasn’t the life for the real, authentic me. And so I had to deconstruct my life, and start from scratch. That was during my twenties, and now I am 32 and finally feel that I am beginning to live the life I want and need, but I do feel like I have missed 2 pages in the instruction leaflet.

I was brought up with a slightly mainstream attitude to education, work and life, and it took me many years to figure out that mainstream life wasn’t for me. I know that part of life is the journey, but I do almost wish that I had been saved those non-authentic years so that I could have more joyful living behind me. Of course, I can console myself by saying that if we don’t have those painful times to compare with, we don’t appreciate the good times as much.

I am, however, hugely consoled and inspired by young people who can see that their lives lie along a less ordinary path and have the courage to follow it. I recall reading about a teenager who had been home educated and instead of sitting GCSEs (the exams that are sat in the UK around the age of 16) she chose to follow her joy and studied to become a massage therapist. So while her peers were stressing about exams, university, jobs, she already had the skills to earn money doing something she loved. Fabulous! And of course she is free to sit exams, and go to university should she change her mind. But she (and her parents) could see that there is not just one way and that we are all different.

So let’s not pass on our fear of being ‘different’ to the next generations. Let’s encourage them to develop themselves in the areas they really enjoy. Oh, and if any of them end up making instruction leaflets for IKEA, please ask them to design them so that the pages don’t stick together so easily!

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Today is my last day working as a Graphic Production Coordinator for a company here in Stockholm. Since April 2008 I have been working on the non-creative side (working from other people’s designs) of producing templates for web-to-print services (Our customers, for example, offer a service whereby you can quickly and easily put together printed material such as brochures or business cards on-line, without the need for a designer).

Needless to say it wasn’t really what I had applied to do, and despite doing very well in learning the specialized software with very little training or support it has not been a very creative or fulfilling job. But it served a purpose at the time, and I really do believe that I wasn’t meant to immerse myself in this job for too long as it was distracting me from a more magical, fulfilling and authentic life.

Last summer, after spending too many stressful and frustrating hours out of my precious days on this work, I asked if I could reduce by working hours to 60% so that I could have the space and energy to start navigating my life back to the plan I had made several years previously; namely to be able to spend more time working with the things that truly bring me joy, and preferably working from home, or at least locally to avoid expensive, time consuming and joyless commuting.

Fortunately, the company I have been working for has been pretty relaxed, unlike some of the places I have worked where there has been a formal dress code, and where I would get slapped wrists for being literally 2 minutes late for work, despite frequently putting in unpaid overtime! Maybe if this company had been more draconian, I would have quit earlier, but I almost got comfortable in my daily subtle drudgery. It is frighteningly easy to quickly slip into the routine of commute – work – commute – eat, then aim to distract ourselves from the sickening truth that we are forced to press ‘repeat’ the next day, and the next, until Saturday comes when we are left standing stranded in the wasteland of our ‘free time’ unused to being able to direct two whole days of our life as we please. Well, free apart from the chores we need to carry out in order to support the following week’s toil: ironing clothes, making lunch boxes, going shopping to buy comfort food and drink that that will get us through the working days…

Thankfully since going down to part time (I will write a blog post one day to share how I could afford to work less) it wasn’t as bad as all that…but the memories of several years of working full-time in soul-shriveling jobs still stings me today. So now, at the age of 32, I finally feel that I am beginning to see the path that I wish I saw during my university days. University; what a scam! As teenagers we are told: ‘Get an education, and if you knuckle down you will soar to the top of your field, being rewarded for your hard work with support, praise and promotions’. Wrong! Life wasn’t like that for me or most of the people I know in those almost random jobs one gets. It’s as Michael Cera’s character, George Michael, says in the series ‘Arrested Development’ as he panics the night before an exam: “If I fail at Math then I wont get a chance at being happy by working hard for the rest of my life”.

I truly hope that you wont recognize this pattern as you have been financially rewarded for doing the things you love, and that you have maintained your authentic self and path. I hope that when you hear the line from the film ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’: “From now on your name is no longer David Webb, It’s Jason Bourne. Welcome to the programme…” you don’t flinch and twitch and flick nervously through your mind between images of uncomfortable office wear; pointless meetings with dull and moaning co-workers; idiotic bosses; packed commuter trains; and a slowly deflating heart.

For me – who did flinch at that line – this is a really exciting start. But it has taken ten years since entering the ‘working world’ to get to this point. And this point is only the equivalent of deciding to go to the map shop to buy the map! I know which map I want to buy and I roughly know which navigational tools can help me get there, but it’s going to be slightly experimental as to how I move towards a life of joyful work. I do know though that, where ever I end up, this is the right thing for me. I hope you will enjoy what I can share from my journey!

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Today I took a beautiful and inspiring walk in the sunshine. We have only lived on this wonderful peninsula for a few weeks, and so haven’t walked my usual route very many times, so today when I walked it going in the opposite direction I found myself a little unsure of which way to walk. There was no real danger of getting horribly lost, but the path isn’t always clear and I could have found myself in someone’s garden. It’s no big deal but it did inspire some thoughts.

I speak Swedish about 50% of the time, and so usually think in English, but on this occasion the Swedish expression “Jag känner inte igen mig” popped into my head. This literally means “I don’t recognise myself” but really means ”I don’t know where I am”.

It seemed such an apt thing to think about on that walk. The thought that when we change direction – even for a short while – we gain a new perspective on life and on ourselves. Like when we go on holiday and one can view ourselves from outside of the usual auto-pilot routine. Suddenly we can see with different eyes and think “Woah- what am I doing? This isn’t me” or “Wow, look at what I am doing, my life is better than I thought. I am impressed that I live a life that differs positively from my past!”.

Changing the direction of my path that day meant that the ups became downs and the down became ups. New beauty spots where found, and the walk became more challenging and interesting. And I fell in love again with my surroundings.

My life has changed pretty radically in the past few weeks – going from living in a cramped rental apartment with an annoying and fussy landlord and thin walls, all nestled under a flight path, to a large house with a garden and just the woodpeckers to break the silence. Also going from the Swedish winter to the spring means that I can shed a layer of clothes, feel the sun on my face, and work in our new garden. Suddenly I feel that I don’t recognise myself or know where I am. But it’s new and exciting and the path I have been longing for. Even though it can feel like a new pair of shoes that need to be worn in and made to feel like me.

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This is another entry from 2007 during my time in Costa Rica.

For the second time in my life, I am reading Yann Martell’s novel Life of Pi. It’s a fantastic story of a 16 year old Indian boy who finds himself the sole human survivor of a sunken ship and alone on a life boat for 7 months. Well, alone except for a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger. Now this is no fairy tale where they all get on splendidly singing sea shanties to keep up morale and taking shifts watching for land. Not to spoil the story for you, after a few days the remaining castaways are the tiger and the boy, Pi.

I have to say that reading about the boy’s choice between staying on board with the tiger, or throwing himself to the sharks, doesn’t take me to the blissful haven of distraction that I usually seek in a book. Now a book about eating one’s way around Italy, or restoring a house in Italy, or growing olives in Italy (notice a recurring theme here?), that’s a nice place to take my head. Instead, this book instilled a definite sense of anguish within my poor soul, which is already in a period of limbo between two chapters in my life. But do I put the book down? No, of course not.

Since I am a tiny bit of a control freak, I think I felt that if I didn’t hurry and finish the book, the wretched situation would continue to plague Pi and the tiger called Richard Parker, which in turn would torment my little heart. But then I was always the softie, compassionate one. When I was a kid my sister would trot a toy horse over the edge of a table and I would go to great lengths to ensure the safety of this poor plastic toy. Still, compassion isn’t a bad thing now is it? It’s compassion that led me to become a vegan, which has in turn opened my consciousness. And if being compassionate means that at my ripe old age of 30 I am still concerned about the well being of my companion creature, which happens to be a soft purple heffalump called Lumpy, as well as other living beings, then so be it.

Reading the description of Pi’s gratitude of finding supplies aboard the lifeboat (it took him 3 days before getting to a state that if he didn’t brave the tiger to look for supplies then he would die anyway) really made me think about life and how fragile it is. The whole capitalist system got a bashing that evening. In my head that is. And if reading about being lost at sea for 7 months, alone save the company of a tiger, doesn’t make one think about our own personal and spiritual sense of isolation and the fears we must conquer then I guess one must read something that spells it out more clearly!

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