I came to Bali with expectations, that was my first mistake. I was to arrive to a strict retreat regime to comply to. I had a mindset to be alone and recharge. I was going to find my Zen, my breath and balance all while being in a luxe villa, nourishing myself with organic food, surfing daily, double that for yoga and just chilling the f*ck out.

Well that didn’t happen, at all. Fate pretty much sucker punched that schedule in the face and instead revealed 10 days of many lessons which now, sitting in the airport waiting for my flight home to Sydney, I can smile about.

To ‘surrender’ was a big one, to divert off the plan, to release expectations (a biggie for me), and to be fearless.

You see I arrived for a yoga/surf retreat all on my lonesome, something which was meant to be beyond amazing, a holiday I was daydreaming about for oh so long, and, for a number of reasons… it wasn’t any of those things.

I was bummed, a little pissed that I didn’t arrive into instant nirvana and in a number of hours had to make the call – do I stay in a situation as planned (despite being very unhappy with), or do I make the spontaneous choice to say farewell and find a new path? Well I chose the latter, booked new accommodation (with some assuring words from my awesome fiancé back home), and with 7 strangers (who I now can call each a friend) left the environment which was fast turning toxic and left, aka hijacked the retreat, and made our own.

Yes it was a tad stressful making the call to leave, to go into the unknown in a foreign country with no concrete plans, not knowing if we would even get a refund (even though we were sold on something completely different but I won’t get into that now!!) But we did it, and you know what? We made a pretty dam fine retreat.

We found a STUNNING villa in Ubud. We practiced yoga, did a 5 hour bicycle tour though the rice paddies, hiked up a volcano at 2.30am for 4 or so hours, swam in healing waters, and indulged in a number of spa treatments. After 3 days we all headed to the coast (again booking a villa within 2 hours of leaving) for some surfing, more yoga and more seriously divine food.

It all just felt amazing. Spontaneous. Empowering. Stress free.

I was fearless in the ocean surfing where in Australia fear (previously) had a firm grasp around my throat.

We booked accommodation on the fly, calm with knowledge it would happen. Before? I’d be paralysed by worry and my day could potentially be ruined.

I learnt to roll with the punches, manage expectations and divert my plan as needed.

I discovered that fear can easily be released when stress isn’t involved.

This is something I am going to continue to work on and draw into my life.

How do you release fear or expectations?

Ill also share with you some of my fave healthy eating spots in Bali soon.

Lee x

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