Life Update & Moving to Florida

Written By Val Malnar

It's been a while since I've been on the podcast and that is because, as some of you already know, I am moving to Florida. It's really been occupying a lot of my time and my thoughts, and so I haven't been able to muster the focus and the energy required to come out and give my all. With that said, I did want to give you a little bit of a life update so that you know what's happening with me and you know that I still love you and I still want to serve you. AND, I did learn actually a few things along this journey and I want to share those with you just in case it might help you or someone you know. On today’s blog and podcast, I’ll be sharing…….. 

-         Why we need to let go of trying to control everything

-         How to know when you’re on the right path

-         Trusting that the universe always has your back

-         Giving grace when grace is due

You can read the full transcript below OR listen to the podcast on Apple , Spotify or Anchor.

PODCAST EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

It's been a while since I've been on the podcast and anywhere online really. I haven't been as present on my social media on either  of my accounts. As some of you may know, I am also an interior decorator, so I have my business Orangetree Interiors that I'm running. And then this is sort of a side passion project that I'm working on.

 

And so I haven't been super present in either place and that is because, as some of you know, I am moving to Florida, and that has been taking up a lot of my head space, so there's a lot to sort out moving from Canada to the US. And it's really been occupying a lot of my time and my thoughts, and so I haven't been able to muster the focus and the energy required to come on here and give you my all. So with that said, I did want to give you a little bit of a life update so that you know what's happening with me and you know that I still love you and I still want to serve you. And I did learn actually, a few things along this journey, and so I want to share those with you just in case it might help someone out there. So one of the things that has been plaguing me is guilt. So I've been feeling guilty that I'm not doing the podcast, I'm not showing up on social media as much, I'm not serving you as well as I was doing previously. And I had to sit with that for a little while and ask myself, well, why am I feeling so guilty?

 

Who's putting these expectations on me? And it was me. I'm the person putting these expectations on me. Nobody has asked me to do this. I'm doing this because I'm passionate about helping people. I'm passionate about people feeling good. That's one thing that I actually have been pondering, because there was a point. 2022 was a big year for me. I became very depressed, which is what started me out on this journey and made me realize I wanted to do this podcast, this Lessons on Happiness podcast to help people. But I got so into the learning that it made me feel like, you know what, maybe I want to coach or write a book or teach in some way. I didn't know what it was going to look like, but I really felt pulled to do that. And so this is how the podcast began. And there was a time where I felt like I sort of was losing passion for my interior decorating business. And I think in hindsight, now that I'm through that, I'm looking back and going, no, I think I was just really sort of burnt out. There was a lot of emotions during the pandemic and just dealing with running a business and home schooling the kids and then choosing not to be vaccinated, and the guilt that came along with that and the shame that I was feeling. There was a lot going on mentally. And I think it wasn't that I was losing my passion for my interior design business, I was just losing passion in general. So then when I found this passion, once I was investing in learning about myself and retraining my thinking and all this personal development stuff, when I was starting to feel passionate about that, I was like, oh, well, maybe I'm no longer passionate about interior decorating and design and this is where I need to go.

 

And so I've been sort of wavering back and forth like, what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to do this? Am I supposed to do that?

 

And wondering what my purpose is. And I came to realize just the other day that my purpose is so simple. My purpose is and I think this is why I was so interested in interior decorating and design and why I'm so interested in personal development, too. My purpose, I feel like, is to make people or to help people rather feel good. If you know me, you know that I'm very attached to my environment. So I'm always like, if I go out to a restaurant, to me it's almost more important that the ambience is good than if the food is good. I mean, obviously I want to have a good meal, but I would rather spend a little bit more and have a great environment to eat in than spend less and have a more moderate, we'll say, experience. So, I mean, obviously that makes sense in terms of interior decorating and design, that I would go into that field if that's how I feel. But in general, in life, I'll say, too, and you haven't seen this side of me, really, but people in the past and, you know, I've matured since then, too. So I wouldn't say that this is necessarily me now, but people in the past would often say that I'm the life of the party.

 

I'm so fun to be around. I'm a great storyteller. I love to make people laugh, and that is all about feeling good. And so, yeah, just the other day I was thinking, why am I forcing myself to make this decision? Why am I trying to choose between my two passions, my love for interior decorating design and my love for personal development? I don't need to choose. I can do both. And I think in my head I was thinking, but it's too much to have an interior decorating design business and then also pursue a personal development business. Well, yeah, that is too much. That's a lot for one person to handle. So I think what I'm going to do is just continue with my virtual interior design business because I love it, and I feel like there's going to be a lot of great opportunity for me there. In Florida, being near the beach, my favorite interior design style is coastal, so that's perfect for me. And then also pursue personal development. I mean, we're always developing as people, and I can do that on the side like I have been all along. And if it turns into a business, great, and if it doesn't, so be it.

 

These last few weeks have made me realize that there are so many things going on in the world and in our lives that we don't need to put additional pressure on ourselves. Like, I'm the one who's saying, oh, you have to decide this, and you have to decide that. No, I don't. I just need to listen to myself and follow any intuitive hits that come to me. And so right now, intuitively, I am listening to my body say “serve your interior decorating clients because they have been gracious enough to have faith in you, to provide them with a beautiful home. Focus on the best possible place for my family to live in Florida, and with whatever time is left over, serve the podcast audience.”  So that's what I'm going to do. I'm letting go of trying to control everything and do everything and be everything. I'm one person. I need to acknowledge that and just do the best I can with the time that I have. And so I'm sharing this because I just feel like so many people are like me. They put all these pressures and expectations on themselves. We feel like we have to be productive all of the time.

 

And for myself personally, I actually tied myself worth into my productivity. Like, if I'm not producing something, if I'm not creating something, if I'm not accomplishing something, then that means I'm not worth anything. And I've really had to look at that and say, no, that's not true. I am worth something and I am worth taking the time that I need to do the things that are most important at this moment in my life. And so I'm going to do that. So I hope that helps somebody out there another thing I wanted to let you know about is through this process of purging a home, decluttering a home, getting it, fixing odds and ends, painting, organizing all the things you need to do to make your home the most sellable possible. Sellable, saleable. I don't know. You know what I'm saying? That was a big process and it was exhausting, to be honest. But that's not what I want to talk about. I fell off my routines. So in the morning, I have sort of a morning ritual where I practice gratitude, I do affirmations, I meditate, I have a morning walk. There's all these things that I do to sort of set myself up for the day, but the time crunch to list our house and get it on the market and make it look beautiful and all those things.

 

That time frame was very short, and again, it was very short because my husband and I put that pressure on ourselves. Nobody else said we had to do it that fast, but we wanted to do it that fast because we want to get to Florida as soon as possible to enjoy the nice weather. He has a three year visa, so with every moment that we're not there, it's time coming off of the visa. And so we were like, bang, bang, bang. We got to get there as soon as possible. And so we did sell our house quickly, which was we are very grateful for, and we think we found a beautiful family to take it. As a teacher in our area who seems excited, coincidentally, I have a friend who knows her and so I'm so grateful that it's a lovely family that's going to be moving in here because we have such awesome neighbors, and I'm getting emotional. It's such a beautiful community that we live in. I just want our neighbors to really love the new people, and I want them, the new family, to really love this home and this place. Sorry, that just kind of I wasn't expecting that.

 

Anyways, so I'm very grateful about that. But anyways, yeah so I was falling off my routine or my ritual, my morning ritual. And so one thing I've learned in this time so again, I was sort of beating up on myself. Like, I got to get back to my routine. I was sort of with every day that I was missing, not doing that because I was so focused on cleaning and decluttering and getting things to the goodwill and putting things aside that we want to sell and all that stuff, researching where to live, how to get a bank account, how to get a visa, all of the things. I was sort of, like, punishing myself because I was like, why are you not doing this? You should be doing this. And, you know, it sets you up for a good day, and you've done it again. You're not prioritizing yourself. You're letting yourself fall off the wagon. So I was sort of berating myself, and then I said to myself, no, why am I doing that? If someone else if this happened to somebody else and they were dealing with all of the things, I would give them so much grace.

 

I'd be like, oh, my gosh, you have so much going on right now. It's completely understandable that you have to let a few things fall off the table. It makes perfect sense. And obviously, of course, you want to prioritize yourself, and you want to be doing that morning ritual to set yourself up for success. But the whole idea around the morning ritual is to help you feel good and make you better able to handle the challenges that come at you and so berating myself is doing the exact opposite of what this whole thing was supposed to do. So I decided, you know what? Okay, yeah, I fell off the wagon for a few weeks, but instead of punishing myself and berating myself, I'm just going to hop right back on the wagon and just look at it as, you know what? That was a really busy period in my life. I couldn't make the time to do that, and so I didn't. And now I do have the time, so I'm going to make it a priority again, and that's that. I'm not a bad person. I'm not flaky. Like, these are things that are going around in my mind.

 

So I just want to tell you that because maybe you're like me, and sometimes you have to just let go of certain responsibilities or commitments to yourself, and then you get mad at yourself and you beat up on yourself. And I just want to say don't do that. It's not helping you, it's not helping anyone just when you can get back at it. Another thing I wanted to say is that okay, so I said this already, but, like, a lot of my head space has been occupied. And part of that is that our closing date is May 12. And because our family has chosen not to be vaccinated, we cannot actually enter the USA until May 11 because that is when their travel mandate is ending. And so we were trying to figure out how are we going to do we want first, do we want to buy a house in Florida site unseen? No, we don't. But it was sort of kind of going to have to be that way. We're looking for houses and having this stress of like, oh my gosh, are we really going to buy a house without seeing it?

 

And then we have this idea of, well, maybe we'll just drive because it looks like you can drive over the border but you can't fly with the travel mandate. At least that's how it reads on the website. We thought, you know what, March break is coming up, why don't we try and see if we get turned away. And if we get turned away, so be it. We'll make sure that all of our hotels are refundable and if we can get over, great, we can go take a closer look at the areas, possibly put an offer in while we're down there because we have done extensive research. But then after talking to the bank and the realtor that we've chosen, we've realized that the closing dates, or the closing periods rather in Florida are much, or at least in the area that we're looking at, are much shorter than here in Canada. So in the area that I'm in, closing periods are 60 to 90 days usually and in Florida they're four to six weeks. So when we talk to the bank and to the realtor, they were like, even if you come down on your March break and you do make an offer, that puts you at a nine week closing, which is not appealing for sellers.

 

So we were like, okay, well I guess we'll rent then. But we don't want to rent. We're not people who like to rent. We would rather invest the money in a home and have the home appreciate in value and renting just feels like sort of throwing money away to us. I know renting is great for a lot of people, but for us that's how we feel about it. So then we got on the renting train, but then rentals are quite a bit, they're quite costly in the area that we're looking at because we want to be near the beach and in addition to that, they're being snapped up really quickly too. So then that's stressful. So anyways. there's just a lot of sort of back and forth. What do we do? Do we do this? How long do we rent for it? Do we rent for a full year and give ourselves a year to find a home? But then what if we decide, oh, well, we find something that we really love and then we have to get out of the rental lease, which is not a big deal, we just pay the penalty or do we get something short term?

 

But then the pressure is on to find something right away and so there's just all these things going on in my mind and my husband's mind too, where we're just sort of trying to control the outcome. I've learned this before, but I needed this reminder, and so I'm sharing it with you in case you needed the reminder. We cannot control everything that happens in our life. I was manifesting living on the beach. I wanted to live in a four bedroom beach house on the beach with a pool overlooking the water, in a community with like-minded people who had kids the same age as my kids, and that it was a safe neighborhood where people felt like family. I've been saying that for months and I didn't know that that was going to happen, but it happened. And Florida's got a whole bunch of beaches. I didn't say which beach, I just said a beach. And now I need to let go of trying to control everything and trust that the universe have my back and that it's all going to work out. So maybe it's going to work out through renting. I didn't say in my manifestation whether I wanted to rent or buy.

 

I did not say that. I didn't say how much it was. I haven't been focusing on that. I just focused on what I wanted. And so maybe it's going to be a rental. Maybe we're going to buy something. Who knows? I have to just trust that I will be led to where I'm supposed to go. So I just want to remind you that if you find yourself really trying to control things and things aren't going the way that you want them to go, just maybe take a step back and realize, okay, you know what? This isn't in my hands. The universe, God, whatever word makes you comfortable, it's going to come into fruition in the way it's supposed to. And oftentimes it's even better than what you had envisioned for yourself. And I know that's true because everything has been happening so easily for us. We wanted to put a house up for sale right away, but that meant that we had to get a few minor fixes done. We wanted to paint so that the whole home looked more cohesive. We wanted to get photos done right away so that we could list right away.

 

There were just a whole bunch of things that we wanted to get done very quickly and it turned out we wanted to replace our carpet runner on our stairs because the one that we had was really well, it was hideous. Let's just be honest. But I contacted my friend who's a painter and he just had a cancelation, so he was able to get us in. A couple of days later I was in Cambridge, which I don't normally shop there, but I was in Cambridge driving past the end of the Role and I thought, you know what, I'm in the area, I'm just going to ask them a few questions about getting a runner. And I wouldn't even normally purchase through them because it's too far from my house, but I just thought, I'm just going to go ask them questions. And then I got a great contact for a guy who could do carpet runners very quickly. The guy came the next day. The same with photography. We were able to get photography done within two days of the painting being done and the carpet runner being replaced and I wanted to get the carpets cleaned again.

 

I was able to find someone very quickly. Everything happened super easy. Even though it was a lot of hard work to hustle and get it done, it did happen very easily. So I know I'm on the right path. I don't think the universe is making all of this happen so incredibly easily for us so that it can go, no thanks. Change my mind. I'm not going to let you do this. So just trust that everything is going to work out the way it's supposed to. I'm saying that to you, but I'm saying it to me too. So I just wanted to share that. And then lastly, I just wanted to say that it's so important when we are faced with challenges in our life, to focus on the good. We did find a rental that ticked all our boxes and was a great price and we actually were getting excited about it because we're like, you know what? Yeah, maybe we'll rent for a while. It seems like the housing market is sort of cooling off a little bit in Florida. Maybe we'll wait it out and it will get to a point where we feel like it's very affordable to move there because actually Florida used to be super affordable to live in, but now they're saying it's the most expensive state to live in because so many people have moved there.

 

So I think the latest statistic I read was 1000 people a day are moving to Florida. And so even though if you're coming from a place like British Columbia or Southern Ontario where you're paying a lot of money for where you live and then you went to Florida, it would still be sort of on par for Floridians. It's actually very costly because their income isn't reflected in the it's not reflected, but it's not aligned with the way the housing market has skyrocketed. We thought, well, maybe we'll get this place and we'll wait it out and house prices might come down a little bit, maybe the Canadian dollar will increase in value and then we won't lose as much on the exchange. And we got really excited about it, but it got snapped up almost immediately. We saw the rental listing within, I think it said it had been on apartments.com for an hour. I emailed the person right away and it was late at night when we saw it, or not maybe late at night, but it was at night when we saw it. And then the next morning my husband's like, oh, well, did you hear back?

 

Because we were really excited about it and I was like, no, I haven't. But it was like 930 in the morning, so I wasn't too concerned. And then about an hour later he said, have you heard from them yet? And I said, no, but it's only like 1030. I just sent the message last night, give them some time to reply. And he's like, I know it's a really good deal and it ticks all our boxes and so I just don't want to lose out on it. I said, okay, I'll call them. And sure enough, it had been rented already. And so we got really disappointed and we've been a little bit wallowing in it. And then I was like, no, stop wallowing in it, because it only means this is where the focus on the goods part comes. It just means there's something out there better for us. And I truly believe that this house that we're in now that we're leaving oh my gosh, I'm getting emotional again. I love this house so much. Wellesley wasn't even on our radar. We were looking at small towns, but Wellesley was not one of them. And we felt it wasn't easy enough access to the city, we felt, and ended up it's fine, but it wasn't even on our radar.

 

We were on our way to see another house and we were coming from my parents’ house, which meant we had to drive through Wellesley to go see this open house in a little town called St. Clemens, and there was an open house sign. And we decided, hey. And I've told this story in a different podcast, but I'll try to keep it short. We decided, hey, let's go check out this place since we're already in sort of the mood to be looking at houses. We did, and it was way more than what we wanted to spend. Well, not way more, but it was definitely more than we wanted to spend. But it was way more house than we needed. Like way more house than we needed, but we loved the layout, we loved the community, like what we could tell from it anyways. It seemed like very safe and there was lots of families, the realtor said, and we wanted to start a family. And so anyways, it became our benchmark house. Not on purpose, it's just we could not find a house that we liked as much as this house. And so we ended up buying this house after I think we looked at 23 houses, my poor realtor at the time, but yeah, I'm pretty sure it was 23 houses we looked at and we ended up choosing this one.

 

And so my point is just and we've loved this house. So you I mean, you can hear I'm getting emotional again. You can hear my voice how much I love this house and I love this community. And it really did work out for the best for us. And that was just because we happen to be driving from my parents to another little town and we passed this one. So I know that the best possible scenario is going to work out for us and I'm going to trust that. And while I'm in the chaos, in my mind, I just have to remind myself of all the times where things didn't seem like they were going the way I wanted them to, but ended up in the best possible scenario. So that is a lesson for you too. I hope that me sharing this one lets you know why I haven't been here. I still love you all. I still want to serve you all. But also just reminds you about these little things in our lives that can often take up so much energy and head space and just to kind of breathe and have faith and just know that everything will work out as it is meant to and it is going to be in your best interest.

 

So that's all I have for today. I know that up until recently I was coming to you biweekly, and that is my intention moving forward. However, if it doesn't happen, biweekly, just know that I'm thinking of you. I'm going to be back. Something has come up that I've had to prioritize over coming on here and speaking to you. And that's not a message about you. That is just something that I'm doing to honor myself and my family, to make sure that we end up in the best place possible for us. So with that said, I love you all. I will see you all next time or I will not see you all next time, but I will chat with you next time. In the meantime, I'm wishing you so much love and happiness. Bye for now.

Thanks so much for listening to the Lessons on Happiness podcast. If you'd like to know more about the information I'm sharing or how I've become a happier person, check out the show notes, reach out to me on social or email me at val@valmalnar.com. My goal is to help as many people as possible live happier lives. So if you've enjoyed this episode, please take a screenshot and share it on Social and tag @valmalnar so that we can reach far and wide. I'd also love your feedback, so please leave a review so that I can be sure to create more content that is helpful and resonate with you.

If you’d like to be notified each time an article or podcast comes out, please join my community. I’m dropping mini happiness lessons bi-weekly. I’d love for you to join the community.

I also want to invite you to download the free Start Happy Stay Happy Journal that I created to help you start each day off right and help to increase the likelihood of happiness and success in your life daily.

Until next time, wishing you happy vibes & big strides,

RESOURCES THAT HELPED ME & MIGHT HELP YOU:

STRESS & ANXIETY MANAGEMENT & MINDSET PRACTICE : Marley Rose Harris’ Manifestation Club

JOURNAL: Start Happy, Stay Happy Journal

Other Resources that helped me become happier

Val Malnar
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TRUE Self-Worth : My First Epiphany of 2023