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Changes Over the Last 2.5 Years
37 Plays1 month ago
This episode is a look back at the last 2.5 years.
I share a few thoughts on how my mindset changed, how my priorities shifted, and how alone time went from something uncomfortable to something I really needed. I also talk about creating space — not to do more, but to let ideas and clarity show up naturally.
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Transcript
Eva's Year in Review
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to Connected with Eva, second episode for 2026. Not that I will be counting further than that, I promise. It's funny how 2025 came and went quite quickly.
00:00:12
Speaker
a lot of amazing things happened and I am quite impressed with myself in way. As the beginning of the year was a little bit of rut for me, being perfectly honest. But from February onwards, things really shifted. And now I actually have the awareness to be honest with myself and see how all that was my own doing.
00:00:32
Speaker
It's been a journey. And today I specifically want to share with you what that journey has been like for the past two and a half years. Why two and a half years specifically? Prior to that, I was living in Lisbon and it was May 2023 that I moved back to London and essentially started everything again from scratch.
Struggles in Lisbon
00:00:52
Speaker
And if you pick anything that sounds familiar and you can relate to, Great. That's why I'm sharing. When I was living in Lisbon, I was quite depressed. It was a time where I wasn't really doing anything with myself.
00:01:05
Speaker
I was writing and i think I've talked about that, but it was something that I put so much pressure on, wanting to make it into a career rather than enjoying the process. and the creativity involved because there is a lot of creativity now writing is a beautiful thing and you can explore your talent explore it professionally too but essentially you should enjoy it first i had this beautiful writing group and we actually still keep in touch everyone is really supportive of each other that's one of the things that i'll keep with me but essentially because i wanted to turn it into something professional for myself it suffered
00:01:42
Speaker
and also why right now I can't write novels anymore. Perhaps in the future I'll try to get back into that, but not for now. and Going back to Lisbon, I remember I'd wake up every morning wanting to do a 9 to 5 writing day.
00:01:59
Speaker
I had so much dependence on writing going somewhere because I had abandoned myself in a way. Writing was all I had going for me. I wasn't modeling, really, i didn't have friends in Lisbon, and funnily enough, I saw myself as quite unsociable, which now I know to be so untrue.
00:02:18
Speaker
I was coping with the ball of heaviness pressing against my chest every day by going out for coffee and trying not to think about how stuck I was. And I actually remember this one a very specific day where I was feeling so down and it was a physical sensation. It was physical pain.
00:02:39
Speaker
I was going up the hill, and Lisbon is quite hilly, to my favorite pancake place, which was just full of really happy expats, which didn't really help the situation at all because, you know, when everyone around you is so happy and you're not,
00:02:53
Speaker
It kind of makes the situation worse in a way. But I'd sit down, eat, tell myself, well, this is my existence now. You know, I better i enjoy my pancakes. And I think partly one of the reasons why I was so unhappy is my resolve that it was okay to live like that.
00:03:11
Speaker
That it was okay to abandon myself, essentially.
Moving Back to London
00:03:15
Speaker
And another thing I want to share in relation to this, when I lived in Lisbon, everyone, i knew, thought I had this incredible life. I lived in the sunshine. i had no commitments, really.
00:03:27
Speaker
i was in a relationship. I was engaged at the time. And things looked so shiny and lovely on the outside. And that's the thing about perception. You might look at someone and almost wish you had their life. But under the surface of the glossy exterior, there are a lot of cracks that aren't visible to your eye. And that's what was happening here.
00:03:49
Speaker
That's a little prompt for me to stop and question everything before you make yourself feel bad. Because someone else's life looks so much better, but you just don't really know it's happening underneath the surface.
00:04:01
Speaker
At one point, things got so bad in terms of how I felt inside that I just cracked. And no pancakes could solve that. And that's the thing about life.
00:04:12
Speaker
If you're in a place where you're not supposed to be and you refuse to remove yourself from that situation, life will forcibly remove you. And it won't be gentle.
00:04:23
Speaker
It will be extremely uncomfortable because you're refusing to take charge and start your own process of change. So this is what happened. And in May 2023, I moved back to London There was a lot of fear involved with that move as I was essentially starting over. But funnily enough, things went quite well.
00:04:43
Speaker
And they started happening quite quickly for me. Though because I hadn't worked for a while and was so done with alone time and empty space, I was taking on everything that came my way.
00:04:54
Speaker
Absolutely everything. Whether I wanted to do something or not, I'd say yes to it. And there are a few things here. The discomfort with any alone time, as I was so scarred, in a way, from all the alone time I'd had, that I didn't want to sit with myself and just be, just exist in quiet.
00:05:15
Speaker
I couldn't do that. There was also the need to prove that I could start over and do it better. And the first six months were actually the best I've had work-wise, even until now. But the cost was quite high.
Embracing Change and Growth
00:05:28
Speaker
I was in a mode of survival, and now I realize that even more than at the time. Coming out of one low into another, just in a different form, isn't a solution.
00:05:39
Speaker
I didn't want to have an evening free, an afternoon free, a morning free, because then I'd have to face myself and be honest and figure things out.
00:05:49
Speaker
I didn't know what the future would hold or what things would look like, but I knew that the life I'd had before was over, and that's scary. So it was a painful process of reconstructing myself and figuring things out.
00:06:04
Speaker
What do I want? How can I feel safe in uncertainty? Can I actually start saying no to things? There was one day where I had three jobs, which was two shoots and a show in the evening.
00:06:17
Speaker
And I was just running around from one thing to the other. and I was a ball of stress. which is not a nice way to be. And in the evening after the show, which finished at about 10 p.m., because why be free even for an hour?
00:06:31
Speaker
i went on a date. You know, result accomplished. No free time. So the switch happened one day, and I started saying no to things because the exhaustion was consuming me.
00:06:43
Speaker
The first time you say no, it's quite scary, right? It's a new word. You're hearing yourself saying it and you're like, but this has so many implications. You're rejecting income. You're rejecting opportunities.
00:06:56
Speaker
The nervous system immediately starts panicking. Is this why we came back to London to start saying no? Really? i don't i don't like this. That's a lot of old wiring talking.
00:07:07
Speaker
Saying no starts rewiring your comfort level, your expectations of what you want to have in your life. But it's a process of completely changing things over. So it can be quite scary at the beginning.
00:07:20
Speaker
But what happened after slowly is clarity started settling in where all the noise was before. It's sort a little bit like a guest that comes over, likes what they see, likes your company, and they keep coming. And it's a guest you you like yourself and want to see more of.
00:07:37
Speaker
And it's a process of you slowly acquainting yourself with each other. Strangers becoming best friends. And that takes time. And that was when ideas started coming my way.
00:07:48
Speaker
Like that guest. Slowly at first, shyly, and more confident as time went on. And then obviously that's a process and it's something that's still happening. But without that shift, it's not possible for that renewal of life to even happen.
00:08:04
Speaker
Without saying no to the old version of you, you can't change into the new version. It really does take a certain level of discomfort to transform your life.
Challenge for 2026
00:08:15
Speaker
So I want to maybe challenge you because it's the beginning of 2026 and it's a good time for this. What old patterns are you scared of breaking? What is it costing you not to change?
00:08:27
Speaker
Can you take a step into the unknown towards the version of you that's ready to extend a hand and meet you halfway? So that's from me today and a reminder to be kind to yourself and stay connected.
00:08:40
Speaker
Until next time.