10 Shocking Discoveries Of Moving Out

Whenever you decide to do it, moving out of home is a shock to the system.

Discovering that the complaints your parents have made your entire life about household chores are in fact completely viable is a pretty horrifying experience.

I seem to be finding more ways every day as to why being a grown-up might be a liiittle more tricky than anticipated; but here are ten of the main shockers when it comes to moving out of home into a world of your own:

10 Shocking Discoveries Of Moving Out

1. Life becomes an endless repeat of wiping down the kitchen sides. Like, ALL THE TIME. Even when you make a cup of tea and the teabag does a little drip from cup to bin and you think you might just leave it cos’ it’s only a little one? Nope. Now you have to wipe it because if you don’t, it’ll just stay there. Probs until the end of time.
2. You spend a heartbreaking amount of money on food only to discover three days later that it’s all magically disappeared. (Please don’t make me go food shopping againnnn.)
3. The bathroom gets filthy real quick. And if you don’t clean it, it just gets worse. No magic bathroom cleaning fairies in this house.
4. You run out of clean pants very fast. And they don’t just turn up clean on your bed anymore. In fact, when you need them, they’re still in the last place you saw them – in the laundry basket being all not clean.
5. The dishwasher is so needy. It always needs something putting in or taking out. (That’s what she said.)
6. Note to self: the pots do not jump from dishwasher to cupboards by themselves. Who knew?
7. You have to remember to change your bed sheets all on your own. No reminders, no prompts, no ‘I cleaned your sheets for you’ surprises. It’s just you and your own brain. Forever.
8. You develop a serious obsession with turning off every light that hasn’t been used for the last 3.3 seconds.
9. If you get hungry, you and you alone are going to have to do something about that. And you haven’t wanted to face a food shop this week and you’re pretty sure you’ve cooked every meal ever invented in the entire world and When. Will. This. End?
10. Some hoovers operate with hoover bags. And you have to spend actual money on said hoover bags. (You mean to tell me that some part of my life has been spent on earning money to purchase bags which are merely used to hold dust before being thrown into the bin? Kill me. Kill me now.)

I can almost hear my Mum squealing with delight as she reads about my realisations.

Yes Mother, it appears you were right all along: I did treat that place like a hotel. Now how do I make a reservation?

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What have been the most shocking discoveries of moving out for you? How do you fit all this stuff in? What’s the typical recovery period from the shock? (You do recover right? Please tell me you recover?!)

Changing your thinking can change your life.

Change your thinking

 

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about thinking. (Dangerous territory, I know.) But I’m becoming conscious everyday of the fact that I am in control of my own thinking, and when I decide to change my thinking, I can alter the outcome or result of my actions or my mood.

We all create our own thoughts and it’s genuinely becoming clearer to me that what we’ve been told all along is true – negative thoughts bring on negative situations, while positive thoughts bring about good ones.

It might sound a little airy-fairy (oh christ she’s on one again) but seriously, bare with me.

I recently read the below example in a book titled ‘Say Yes to Life’ (yes, I wish I’d written it!) which totally had me relating to it and realising just what a significant difference our thoughts can make to how we behave, and ultimately to how we live our lives:

You go into the staff canteen at lunch time and sit down at a table where other staff members are talking animatedly about the previous night’s soccer game.

You sit there for a few minutes; nobody talks to you.

You begin to think, They’re ignoring me. They must find me very boring. They probably didn’t want me to sit down here in the first place.

These thoughts lead to a rush of feelings, including sadness, disappointment and anger, embarrassment and humiliation.

You react by keeping your head down, hoping no-one will notice. You gulp your lunch down quickly and leave the table as soon as possible. As you leave the canteen, you vow never to go there again and always eat your lunch at your desk thereafter.

So we feel what we feel because of the way we think, and this influences how we behave!

Now here’s the same scenario but with different thoughts.

You go into the staff canteen at lunchtime and sit down at a table where other staff members are talking animatedly about the previous night’s soccer game.

You sit there for a few minutes; nobody talks to you.

This time, your thoughts are, Gosh, these guys are so passionate about that game that they didn’t even notice I sat down. It must have been quite a match, I wish I’d have seen it.

You feel interested and curious. You remain at the table eating your lunch and enjoy listening to the passionate exchanges. After a while, you begin to join in by asking a question about the score. You chat away with the group until it is time to return to work.

Same scenario, two totally different outcomes because of the different thoughts. 

I recognised this situation on a number of occasions and I’m sure many of us have experienced something similar before.

I decided to put this new thinking into practise. So at a recent event, amongst 200 people of whom I knew two (and they were running around far too much for me to follow them without them noticing) I had to speak to new people.

Now don’t get me wrong, I LOVE talking to new people. But sometimes, I might have a crazy little thought that maybe they won’t enjoy talking to me. (I know, right, of course they would! Thanks guys.) But there’s the first problem, I’ve created this habitual thought that they might not.

So a couple of times – rather than going through that horrendous feeling when you’re standing on your own in a room full of people and the only thing to look at is your phone (but you are in a different country so no-one back home is awake and free to speak to so you’re really just staring at a blank screen in the hope that no-one thinks you’re a total loser and figures you must have friends because you’re texting them on your phone) – yeah, rather than going through that, I was desperate to just hide in the toilets until it was time to go into the theatre where there was no pressure to talk to anyone.

BUT instead of hiding in the toilets (for any longer than five minutes anyway) I stood on my own, and instead of looking at my phone, I looked around, and I saw lots of other people standing on their own and looking at their phones as well and I wondered if they were dying slightly inside too. So I thought I’d just find out and I went over for a chat with the first sorry victim I could find.

I think it was a look of relief on the lady’s face when I went over and I wondered whether she too had in fact been dying a little inside at standing alone. But whether she had been or not, now she was trapped muahaha there we were, standing and chatting and no longer alone.

Because there’s always someone just like you to team up with.

And when I’d done it once, well the rest of the day was a breeze. I think they call it networking, darrrling. In fact, I came away from the event with lots of new contacts, new information, interesting things I’d learned AND no-one dashed off to the loo mid-sentence or fell asleep while I was chatting. So that’s good.

And I guess the next time I’m thrown amongst 200 strangers I’ll be eager to talk their ears off too. Y’kno, cos’ I can.

Although the ladies toilets is one of the top places for discovering things about people that they’d probably never share in any other environment, if I had have hidden in there for the day, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have learned quite as much.

 

Have you experienced something similar? Have you recognised that just changing your thinking can change your life? Let me know!

 

x

 

If you’re anything like me, thinking about thinking can sometimes get all too much! But talking about it helps. Get in touch at  littleredfrench@gmail.com and let’s talk thinking!

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A lady never tells but a man should NEVER ask.

THE WORST HAS HAPPENED.

OK, so it’s not the ACTUAL worst in terms of serious life stuff. But it wouldn’t sound quite so catchy if I’d started with ‘the two hundredth worst thing has happened!’

But in girl terms, it truly is the worst, with second place going to when you’re feeling smug in the pub as you catch a table of men staring at you only to have one of them tell you that you have your skirt tucked into your knickers, third place going to falling flat on your face in a busy shopping centre while on your own and fourth place being snapped up by when you sneeze and a little trump pops out and someone notices. (Not that that ever happens, obviously.)

And the winner is…

A man asked me if I was pregnant.

And I am not.

Yep, he broke the number one most important rule of interaction between men and women – never ask a woman if she’s pregnant just in case she’s not.

Which I am not.

I glared at him in horror then checked down at my stomach. I was aware that I’d put on a little travelling weight over the months, but I didn’t realise it was enough for someone to assume I had a small human growing inside of me.

“No I’m not!” I replied hastily, not knowing whether to laugh or to cry. (Naturally I opted for the latter.)

“I’m so sorry,” his eyes grew wide as he realised he’d offended me.

And weirder still, he continued:

“I didn’t mean to offend you, it’s just, I’ve been watching you (SORRY, WHAT NOW?!) and I noticed that you always have your hand on your stomach.”

So now I was a fatty with a stalker.

Once the man had finished apologising profusely, and I’d given him a heads up never to ask a woman that ever again, I decided to put it down to being a big offensive misunderstanding. I mean, it was that or crying myself into an oblivion of starvation, and I was really looking forward to whole load of ice cream.

But it did get me asking a lotta questions. And a lotta questions about the questions it got me asking.

Like, what business was it of his to ask? What difference would it have made to him even if my answer had been yes? Why had a stranger recognised the way I hold myself? What if I’m one of those people that thinks they’re really thin when in reality they’re absolutely not?

He’d asked me one single question to which had left me questioning my weight, my posture, my image, his social skills, why his mother hadn’t advised him of things never to say, of how my reaction reflected my personal body insecurities, of any time it’s ever OK to tell someone you’ve been watching them, on whether he was weird, or perhaps I was weird, or maybe we were just from two completely different worlds.

Just three little words caused all of these thoughts and feelings to shoot through me. These words were so innocently uttered but so powerful and affecting and irretrievable.

This man was never to know what thoughts his innocent question would provoke in my mind, and if he did he’d probably be shocked and apologise, again.

In a life where “I love you” can mean so much, that “I’m sorry” can bring such relief, that “I’ll miss you” can be so warming and that “I hate you” can hurt like hell, our words should always be spoken carefully, and made certain that they are fully meant before they leave our dangerous lips.

But, if there’s one thing that should never pass, whether you’ve thought about it carefully or not, and that’s to ask a woman if she’s pregnant, just in case she isn’t.

Which, to confirm, I am not.