It nearly ended in disaster!
It’s been months in the planning, a dream trip to Mozambique to dive with dolphins to celebrate our daughters turning 16 and 13 this year.
Hours spent discussing which bikini to take, what would be the best hammock and crucially, will there be enough space in the car for my champagne?
On Monday, 5 days before departure, I finally took a look at the documentation we need to have ready for the trip.
Original car registration papers. Wait, what?! I bought my car 4 years ago, who knows where those papers are?! I am not known for my Admin skills!
Mad search ensues, the papers are NOWHERE!!
I call Quentin, in tears. We have to get to the licence department and get a copy of the registration papers. NOW! He tries to calm me down, validly pointing out it takes 7 workings days to get copies.
My head is spinning, how did this happen!? Why wasn’t I more prepared!?
I take a break from my meltdown to go fetch our daughters from school. They promise to help me find the documents. By now, the wonderful lady we are going diving with suggests using the licence renewal papers.
I check my car licence. It expired in 2022. I KID YOU NOT!!
More tears.
I race down to the local post office and pay a small fortune to get my licence disk renewed. While I am away, our eldest daughter messages me to say she found the papers – in the SAME filing cabinet I was frantically looking through.
Panic averted, the trip is back on track!
Key lessons learned:
Hysterical, frantic energy always just attracts more hysterical energy. Once things started going wrong for me, plenty of other ‘wrongs’ rushed in to join the party – which is why I couldn’t see the papers and my calm daughter could. When you feel overwhelmed and hysterical, stop. Go outside, deep breaths. Taking the time to calm down will be invaluable, you will easily be able to focus and come up with creative solutions from that point of attraction.
Focus on the RIGHT things. All the hours I had spent ‘planning’ and discussing the trip were not getting us any closer to actually being ready to go away. What are you spending your time focusing on?
