Getting Stuck in México

Hola chicos!

It's been another week and whaddya know, I'm still on a beach in México. I didn't plan on being here still - I actually tested positive for COVID and missed my flight, forcing me to stay for an extra 3 days and hoping I tested negative today to fly out tomorrow instead. Thankfully I did test negative, so I'm on my way back home mañana!

Side note: This lady just sold me some bread with cheese and pulled pork inside and damn its actually really good.

Anyways, the whole experience gave me quite a few opportunities to practice staying calm and not screaming at the universe for fucking me over repeatedly. I won't go into the details but it seemed like everything that could go wrong did go wrong, and I had one of the shittiest 24 hours I've had in a while.

The main reason I was so stressed about it was I had this underlying belief that, "I NEED to get back to the states because I have work to do that I can only do there." I didn't bring my laptop to México and I had a lot of things I wanted to learn and do that I felt could only be done with a laptop.

However, I actually ended up doing a lot of the things over the past few days from just my phone. It turns out that this underlying assumption that I NEEDED to get back home to accomplish anything meaningful wasn't completely true, it was just this belief I'd picked up at some point that actually resulted in a lot of unnecessary stress, anxiety, and anger.

Reflecting on this makes me wonder in what other places of my life I'm making assumptions that aren't completely true. Where else am I falsely assuming that, "If X happens, then Y will ABSOLUTELY happen"?

I'm reminded of my long-held belief that if I did not build a successful digital nomad-seque business by the time I graduated school, and therefore had to get a 9-5, I would be unavoidably miserable. I didn't actually realize this was the assumption I was making until I reflected on it, but once I did I realized how ridiculous of an assumption it was.

I think this is a worthy exercise, because it seems like it's oftentimes the underlying assumptions that we never fully examine or are even aware of that we hold that often result in the most stress. We fail to realize that we can adapt and learn to thrive in unexpected situations, and that we are not all-knowing beings that know exactly what we need to occur in the future to be happy.

I suppose this is all just a way of saying, both to myself and you: Chill out. Whether things go how you expect them to or not, everything will be alright in the end. After all, if I hadn't missed my flight, I wouldn't be enjoying this sunset right now.

Until next time,

Ryan