Things don’t always go to plan.

Playing on the ipad while in flight.

I’m a bit slow on the use of the iPad. The intention was to start a blog post while on a flight from Bristol to Salzburg last Saturday, but I found this little colouring tool. I didn’t have a stylus, obviously, so it’s a bit rustic, and I was in flight! I tried to draw mountains but that didn’t work so well. The colouring distraction meant I could write this blog on the way back, after I had some more interesting content! Funny how things work out.

For those of you who follow me on twitter or Facebook, you will already know that the highlight of my year is my ski holiday, and this year it fell a bit flat. No need to worry, I am all in one piece! I did however experience too much snow for the first time in 16 years of skiing. For those of you non-skiers, yes, there is such a thing.

Mother Nature was having a laugh.

In the past we used to ask as soon as we arrived in resort, if there was good snow. The reply was often that they had a huge dump the week before, and conditions were excellent. We never gave a thought for those people who Mother Nature had actually dumped on. This year it was us!

As I write this, the next plane load of excited skiers are arriving, and they will have a week of sun shine, blue skies and epic ski conditions. We, however had three white out days, a small blizzard and about 1.8 metres of fresh snow that kept us inside.

Day one was spent going gently, then day two was remembering how to ski with patience and control, and then, we had a no ski day. We had seen it coming, so I had pre-booked a Lomi Lomi massage in the Spa for the afternoon. After all, healers need massage too. It was an amazing treatment, given in the traditional way, and worth every penny!

Day four was better skiing and we planned our route for the following day. The great thing about Obertauren, is that you can ski round the valley in a loop.  I was more confident to do the red runs needed to join it up without having to get an interlinking bus. Confident and ready!

Then it happened.

Days five and six were the worse conditions we have ever seen. In the old days MrH would have gone up to see what it was like at the top, but even he said it just wasn’t worth the risk. Thick snow, flat light, and half the lifts closed due to wind. So what to do?

The view from our room after the first overnight snow.

It made us appreciate our other trips! We played cards, and read magazines that I normally don’t have time to even look at. We were also able to get an entertainment channel on the telly from BBC. An interesting mixture of programmes, but better than the old days when all we had was the snow cam with German pop music and BBC World News.

Hot chocolate fixes most things!

The hotel was superb. Everyone else was in the same boat. Disappointed, but just switching their time to play chess, read, and spend time in the spa. The food was superb and the coffee and hot chocolate were perfect!

Nothing could be as bad as ten years ago.

It made me think back to when I broke my arm nearly ten years ago. (See chapter six of my book).

I fell and broke and dislocated my wrist on day two, leaving four days of complete boredom. This was before iPhones and wifi. I exhausted my magazine selection and read the only book I had taken. I hadn’t practiced mindfulness in those days. Nothing could be as bad as that trip. I soon got my perspective back! This time we couldn’t ski because Mother Nature threw her teddies out of her pram. I suppose it had to happen at some point. At least we weren’t broken.

Switching your thoughts isn’t always easy.

I spend a lot of time in my working life suggesting that people look on the ‘up side’ and focus on the positive. No matter how much attention I gave to the good parts of the trip, I was still very sad. Sad and a little angry, and very resentful of those skiing in blue skies as we left the resort. I needed to be in the moment and be mindful. Being mindful is acknowledging how you feel in that actual moment, and then deciding what to do about it.

We knew we couldn’t change it. We knew how lucky we were to be on holiday anyway, but we still had to give ourselves time to BE sad, and sad we were!

We let that go as we waited for the taxi.

Then we booked for next year. Where we will manifest some of this…. our best ski day!……

#lomilomi #Obertauren #angermanagement #holidays #massage #ski #Austria #stress #mindfulness #healing