Daph and Ern’s Adventures Finding Yourself on the Road

Zoe Farrell

Description

Travel blog with a twist. Add a dash of quantum physics and spirituality, and “Voila!” An experiment in how individual happiness can have collective consequences.
Travelling Australia in a vintage Volkswagen Kombi van with a cranky old couple changes your life (and could change the world) for the better. This is a hybrid book of standalone funny stories of life on the road in a campervan, interlaced with a journey of self-reflection and discovery. The journey leads to eight simple steps of self-change that can have dramatic positive effects on your life: and the world! It concludes with an experiment to prove that individual happiness can have collective consequences. This book aims to entice the unsuspecting spiritual rookie, under the guise of a light-hearted read, shrewdly planting the seed for personal growth along the way. Read, laugh, learn, and grow. Let’s change the world for the better, one person at a time.

Sujets

• Santé et bien-être
• Bien-être émotionnel
• Bien-être émotionnel
• Bien-être
• Bien-être
• Bien-être
• Bien-être
• Happiness
• Self-help
• Law of Attraction
• Personal Growth

Informations

• Publié par: Balboa Press AU
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781982296179
• Langue: English

Extrait

Daph and Ern’s Adventures Finding Yours elf on the Road
 
A BEGINNER’S JOURNEY OF SELF-DISCOVERY … AND OTHER FUNNY STORIES.
 
 
 
ZOE FARRELL
 
 
 

 
Copyright © 2022 Zoe Farrell.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
Balboa Press
A Division of Hay House
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.balboapress.com.au
AU TFN: 1 800 844 925 (Toll Free inside Australia)
AU Local: [phone] ([phone] from outside Australia)
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-9822-9616-2 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-9822-9617-9 (e)
 
Balboa Press rev. date:  11/29/2022
 
 
 
 
For Azz, without whom I would never have started this journey.
 
And Ern, who has made my heart so big I can heal the world.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter 1Courage
Chapter 2Challenge
Chapter 3Discovery
Chapter 4Gratitude
Chapter 5Growth
Chapter 6Awakening
Chapter 7Realisation
Chapter 8Enlightenment
Epilogue
Experiment
With Heartfelt THANKS...
Influences and Recommended Reading / Viewing
INTRODUCTION
“Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost.”
- Erol Ozan.
Have you ever thought “I need to get away”? Have you had those days, those moments, when everything seems mundane and pointless?
I have.
Do you immerse yourself in social media and reality TV to escape the drudgery, but in the process, get caught up in the envy of not having the life everyone else seems to be living? Do you hate your job, a job you once loved? Is your life boring, but you avoid going out and doing something interesting because you can’t be bothered? The housework is never ending; the kids don’t pull their weight…
That was me.
I was at the pinnacle of my prime (according to the rules of society). I was happily married to the man of my dreams, I lived in a lovely house, and I had a great career. My children were all grown up and doing well for themselves. Everything was peachy. Why then did I have an overwhelming feeling that something was missing?
Is this all there is? What more is there to achieve? Do I now spend the next half of my life just plodding along with the rat race until I die? What’s the point?
What is the point?
My husband and I would wake up in the mornings and immediately delve into deep and meaningful conversations about what’s wrong with the world today, how “the good old days” were much simpler, how the youth of today are lost, etc. You know the kind of conversation. We’ve all had them. Just whinging about the general state of affairs, and how we could do a better job if we ran the world. It comes from a place of well-meaning. But moaning about what’s wrong with the world doesn’t fix it, even if it does include a great solution, such as putting me in charge. I’d make a freaking awesome Prime Minister, President, or Badass Queen. Dancing would be compulsory. Besides the point. I now know that complaining about something just charges the battery of negativity, which is not the best way to start your day. Getting out of bed on the wrong side never ends well. You’re bound to step on a foot-crippling piece of Lego.
One morning, following our synopsis of “Wrong Town” we discussed how we’d love to run away. How cool would it be to have a campervan and go off-grid to get away from it all? I don’t recall how we got onto the subject. The Universe probably downloaded the idea to disrupt the stream of negativity…
“Hey, you two! Stop whinging. Word up, there’s some awesome shit in this world, too. How about Volkswagen Kombis for a start? Cute as bloody buttons. Get yourself one!”
Just for fun, we thought we’d look online to check out the going rate for a campervan. There happened to be a cute 1976 Volkswagen Kombi for sale not far from where we lived. It looked perfect for us. We love all things retro. And who doesn’t love a Kombi? Before you knew it, we were going to take a look, falling in love with it, and buying it before the week was through. It was a little burst of excitement in an otherwise routine life, a flash of hope, a lift of spirits. Retail therapy on a grander scale.
Who knew it was going to lead to a journey of self-discovery and a whole new understanding of life?
***
Let me briefly introduce myself… Hi! I’m Zoe. I’m a middle-aged midwife, mother, grandmother, and many more labels. I’m married to Azz, my toy-boy kinesiologist (only by six years, which doesn’t seem much in your fifties, but which would’ve been frowned upon in my teens). Azz is my second husband, and I am his second wife. We both have colourful backstories filled with turmoil, heartache, and enough setbacks to send anyone into a pit of mental despair. But that’s not who we really are. Nor are we Daph and Ern (we’ll get to that a bit later).
I always believed that we are who we are because of what we’ve been through. I’d be a totally different person today if I had a less eventful backstory. I have created the person I am today based on my life experiences up to now. I could have perceived any one of those tumultuous setbacks with anger and fear, or laughter and hope. My perception could have been influenced by the negative perceptions of others in my life. But I’ve never been a “woe is me” kind of person.
I could have chosen to believe I was a good-for-nothing high school drop-out and teenage mother with no prospects, as others perceived the situation back in my youth. Or I could learn from my mistakes, go through a shit tonne of learning curves, and come out the other side a fabulous human being to prove them all wrong. I chose the latter.
Fast track forward... and I was in a similar situation. Those negative perceptions were closing in on me. I could get stuck in the hamster wheel of life with everyone else, believing that this was all there was, or I could get off my backside and spice things up a bit.
Yup. Let’s do it.
When we first bought the Kombi, it was with short camping trips in mind, just for a quick break away from the hamster wheel now and again. However, we did entertain the thought of taking off for longer stints when life got on top of us and we just wanted to run away forever. I was itching for a change. There had to be more to life than this. Work was getting us down. Life was boring. We needed to liven this story up.
We brainstormed wild and wonderful ideas about what else we could do to earn a crust. We dreamed of opening an organic café-come-boarding house. We would call it The Brown Cardigan and Comfy Slippers, a visual nod to Ern, the cranky old sixty-something we will meet shortly. It would have rooms that Azz could work out of offering kinesiology sessions to the like-minded clientele that came in for a soy latte and a slice of vegan, gluten-free carrot cake. Do you dream like this? Do you let yourself be taken away by your imagination? Why does it have to stay a dream? What’s needed to make your dreams a reality? Well… you start with a little enthusiastic action towards it. The seed was planted for doing “the lap” of Australia to look for the perfect place to open such a venture.
This was really going to mix things up. There’s no mundane in quitting your job to travel the countryside in a beat-up vintage vehicle. It was scary and exciting all at the same time. Originally, I thought of it as a temporary escape that would liven things up a bit, a sort of mid-life crisis, before we settled back down again. I thought a change in career and lifestyle would be the answer I was looking for, to give more meaning to my life. In hindsight, I would have ended up in exactly the same mind space, same shit, different life… if it wasn’t for my awakening. And it was all thanks to Daph and Ern.
So, who are Daph and Ern? They’re our alter egos. A cranky old couple that we would morph into to experience the world through the eyes of judgement and frustration, with a humorous twist. I started a blog on social media called Daph and Ern’s Adventures . It was originally designed to entertain friends and family with our tales of hardship on the road, hoping to add a little laughter to their boredom whilst scrolling through. Daph and Ern cooped up in a campervan were sure to be hilarious. But it also ended up being a massive period of growth. We learned so much and wanted to share our experiences to encourage others to do the same. We created a small following and hopefully inspired a few