Sonya's Patates Braavos: Edition #30 💌🥔

TLDR: Florida + how I reduced my anxiety

welcome 👋 

Hello, brave patates! 🥔 30th Sunday together, what a trip. How fast time flies. As we enter the fall, I invite you to reflect on these last 30 weeks - what’s changed? What are you looking forward to? What’s something you can let go of?

Florida Part 2

Just this Friday, we returned from our 8-day vacation. It was much needed. After completely forgetting about my email and barely thinking about work or studying, I now understand why this time is so important.

Florida was awesome - wildlife at every corner, hot weather, warm water in the Gulf of Mexico. Dolphins swimming with you. Pelicans flying overhead. Herons at every corner. Wide roads, no traffic, barely any people. It’s so relaxing and a big contrast after spending time in downtown Toronto. Now I understand the snowbirds lol. Especially in these current frigid temps! The atmospheric daily thunderstorm down there was also nice. Plus, the area is less susceptible to hurricanes - did you know the last hurricane in Tampa was more than 100 years ago?

back to school?

I was going to wait until tomorrow but my curiosity won. Today, I opened my email without much anxiety and nothing bad happened at all.

During this entire travel, I barely had any anxiety, actually. Even in the airport. Even though we didn’t arrive 4 hours early. This is something new, as anxiety used to be a frequent companion. For this welcome change, I credit my exponential coaching course; are you surprised?

nature or nurture?

When I did the OCEAN personality test at the start—one of the tests we use to identify a starting point—my neuroticism was very high. It’s one of the factors in this psychotyping modality. Neuroticism led me to have excessive worrying and stress, often over circumstances outside of my control. Coupled with my metaprogram perfectionism, it was a recipe for constant tummy aches and intrusive thoughts. I like this test because our past experiences affect us, but our temperaments and personality matter, too. It’s all connected and as a coach, I need to see every piece so I can understand you better. Someone with high neuroticism but lower/higher other factors and different metaprograms than me could react completely differently in the same situation. Or it could barely bother them.

an alternative future is possible

When I did the test again recently, after seeing my own coach every 2 weeks, my neuroticism decreased significantly. It’s amazing how much intentional work can accomplish when you are open to change. During this time, I learned not to suppress/repress/avoid/hide from negative feelings but to identify the underlying need and give myself the understanding I seek. Broadly speaking (and not explaining every bit of the 100 hours I’ve spent on this so far)—understanding what’s going on in my mind through a new perspective and going deeper, to understand what I’m so scared of, already helped a lot. To voice “embarrassing” fears with a coach who accepts without judgment helped, too.

I’m glad I took this step to understand the human psyche better, to learn how I can be a better sibling/partner/child/friend, and to work on my own issues. The course gave me a structure and a purpose where now every bit of time is sacred and I feel my life became more meaningful. This pursuit of knowledge is actually correlated with my high factor of Openness in OCEAN.

If you got this far, thanks for reading ❤️ cooked something yummy? lmk. went to a cool event or read a fun book? lmk. see you on the flip side 🥔