I have to tell you about Shanghai.
I just got back 3 days ago and I'm still thinking about it, still processing it, still a little bit in awe of it if I'm honest. It was one of those experiences that gets under your skin in the best possible way and makes you look at things differently long after you've come home.
Before I left, the reactions from people around me were something else entirely.
Are you sure it's safe? Is it clean over there? Do you really want to go ‘there’? You need to be so careful. And that face, you know the one, the slightly horrified look that said everything without saying anything at all. People who had never been there, never spoken to anyone who had been there, absolutely certain they knew exactly what I was walking into. And certain I was mad for even thinking about it.
I smiled, nodded, and went anyway. It was a trip I qualified for with my company, and I was going no matter what. I knew this trip would change everything for me, but I wasn’t prepared for how much.
What I found when I got there stopped me in my tracks more than once.
Shanghai is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever set foot in. The energy of the place and people is unlike anything I've experienced before. The architecture is breath-taking, the city is clean, the people were so warm and kind, going out of their way to help me even when we didn't share a language. I felt safe. I felt genuinely welcome. I felt looked after by complete strangers in a city I'd never visited in my life. I would 100% go back.
Not one single part of my experience matched the story and assumptions I'd been handed before I left.
It wasn’t just being in China and walking around this stunning city. I spent 10 days with people from countries all over the world - Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, as well as Bulgaria, Hungary, Norway, Sweden. And although the language was a barrier - we connected on a different level. Energy. Every single person was there sharing our global mission to help. It was truly life changing.
And I kept coming back to the same thought. How many times do we do this? Not just about places, but about ourselves and our own lives.
How many things have we decided aren't for us before we've ever tried?
How many opportunities have we walked straight past because someone else's fear, or our own, told us there was nothing worth opening behind that door?
I did it for years. Little old me, a girl from NI. I had a very clear idea of what was and wasn't possible for someone like me, and most of it wasn't much. I had absorbed other people's limitations and started living them as my own truth. It took some hard lessons and a whole lot of unlearning to realise that the story I was living wasn't actually the truth at all. It was just the story I'd been given and never thought to question.
That's the thing about assumptions. They feel like facts. They feel solid and real and obvious, especially when everyone around you seems to share them. But most of the time they're just inherited beliefs that nobody ever stopped to examine.
Shanghai didn't change me. But it reminded me of something I never want to forget. The world is so much bigger, warmer, and more full of possibility than our assumptions allow it to be.
And so are we. Every single one of us.
This week, try this
Catch yourself mid-assumption. It might be about a place, a person, or something you want for your own life but keep quietly talking yourself out of. When you notice it, just pause and ask yourself honestly, is this actually true? Or is this just a story I inherited and never examined?
You don't have to fix anything or make any big decisions. Just notice. Because that moment of noticing is where everything begins to shift.
I'd love to know what comes up for you. Drop it in the comments below 💫
Maura x