The secret all this time was Ghee

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There is commonality in every individual action we take. But if we go with the common approach, it’s unlikely to fit us as an individual.

Whenever we take an action, it connects us with the whole. Humans eat, sleep, work. In this, we share a common thing that binds us as a society.

But if we are guided only by what is commonly done, it’s unlikely to really suit us. Just because ‘the norm’ is to get an office job, does not mean that this is right for us. And just because the average amount of sleep required is around 8 hours, this does not mean 8 hours sleep is actually right for us either.

Good eating habits has been a challenge for practically my whole life. A lot of it is mixed in a sense of confusion. There was a natural conflict of style between what I would eat at home, which followed Bangladeshi curries, compared to what I would have outside, which was a generally UK, Western-style cuisine.

As I moved to the bigger cities, the influence of multicultural and cosmopolitan cultures blended foods even more. When I lived in Brixton, I was surrounded by Afro-Caribbean cuisine. But along with that were restaurants that served Italian, Thai, Korean and all the rest. Outside of the fancier sounding things, my stress-based diet meant I fell towards takeaways from the fried chicken shops and the kebabs.

Now living in Belgium, the external influences are more continental European. Belgian dishes which tend to be heavier, but also quite a lot of Mediterranean influences too. Brussels is another city with an international mix of cuisine – even if not quite at the scale of London.

Over the last few years, I’ve been trying to clean up my act. Takeaways and rushed eating is no healthy way to live long term. But finding what to replace it with has been far more difficult.

I’ve had moments of eating very clean – stuff like salads, or trying to cut out carbs as the ‘bad food’, only to find myself at an incredible hunger afterwards. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t last.

For a long while, it turned into the calorie counting style. Reducing fat here and there would make the numbers go down, which would then make me healthier. Yet eating less satisfying foods is also not particularly sustainable either. Living more miserably isn’t the recipe for success. If you’re not happy, you’ll eventually break. Everyone does.

I knew there must be an alternative approach, and I also wanted something that was closer to my genetic roots. I became wary of western dieting suggestions that didn’t really fit me or what I had learnt growing up. I was skeptical of western claims that non-western foods were naturally more unhealthy. Even today you can find ethnocentric reports that rice is bad for your health – despite by the fact that this is what people ate in a balanced way for thousands of years.

I even heard a teacher saying to be careful using ginger, as it can be bad for people with cardiovascular problems. Ginger is incredibly beneficial, and can do a lot of good for people with heart issues. Only in specific cases would it be best to avoid it. And again, this is a product that has been used in Asian cuisines for thousands of years.

Whilst I would love to say that my search was simply a case of going back to my roots and what I ate when I was young, the reality is that the modern version of the Bangladeshi cuisine I ate were not especially healthy either.

Our portion sizes are big, and these days our dishes can be too rich or too sugary. An unfortunate reality is that many migrant communities coming from impoverished backgrounds have had a rebound effect has led to an epidemic of obesity. Growing affluence has meant an increase in the fattier foods. Whilst meat in the past was for special occasions, now it is a common occurrence. Meanwhile, we are all affected by the increasingly processed food that we eat, which reduces quality and satisfaction. This means we either add more rich ingredients, or eat more to feel satisfied.

My search has eventually led me towards ayurveda. This is commonly known in modern day India, and dates back to 5000 years ago. Ayurveda literally means ‘science of life’. Although in the west we do have some influences of things like yoga, ayurveda is less known.

For me, it was extremely refreshing to hear about the importance of more earthy, healthy meals. Healthiness is not just about cutting down calories, but instead about properly feeding the body.

For the first time in my life, a few days ago I bought some ghee. Ghee is clarified butter, what is used instead of oil for cooking in Asian cuisines. Despite this being the basis of what my mother has used to cook ever since I was a child, I’ve never used it when I’ve cooked something. Instead, I’ve used olive oil – what I’ve been told is far healthier, and notably less calorific. It’s both relieving and somewhat scary to see how much social conditioning of growing up in the West taught me about it all.

Cooking using ghee, then heating up the spices was such a soulful experience. For the first time in a long while, I felt a joy of cooking. Part of this was a sense of reclaiming my own culture. Part of this was just the general joy of creation. Cooking spices awakens the fragrances which give a real sensory connection. It awakens life in the body, and even though we are not eating, prepares our body for food. In the quest for easy, lower calorie and efficient, these sensory pleasures were lost. I’ve been reading that having warm water with a bit of ghee can actually be beneficial for me, particularly in my current period of burnout. From a western perspective, this would simply seem like eating ‘wasted’ calories.

I’ve also learnt of how ghee (and indeed heated oils) are a key ingredient for digestion. We do not douse our pan in oil simply to keep the food from sticking to the pan. No, it also is to lubricate the food, and support our digestive tracts.

No matter how healthy a food we make, if we do not digest it properly, our bodies will dysfunction. Ayurveda describes this as creating ‘ama’ – toxins within the body. So eating something that is healthy on paper is not the same as properly feeding our body based upon what it is asking for.

I could go on longer about what I’ve learnt, but this is probably enough for today. I’m still learning, so am certainly not an expert. But following the basic principles helps give a lot of structure, as well as helps explain so much about my bodily reactions. It’s a worthwhile pursuit if you want to improve your health.

If you do want to learn more, I can suggest some basic places for info/where to start. Just drop me a message.

A Sunday morning of tidying up the office

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Empty Sunday mornings are pretty good days to do some tidying.

I’ve accumulated so many bits of paper in the last few years that it has started to overflow. My office space has become generally noisy, to the point where the clutter has become a mainstay on desk spaces.

A tidy-up has been very much overdue. And whilst I would like to pretend that I have such saintly energy that I just simply decided to tidy, the truth was that I pushed myself into it. Last night, I spent about an hour looking for my old passport. Turns out, I needed to find an old visa number stamped on it.

It took me about an hour of searching. And of course, it was at the back of the bottom drawer, more or less where I expected it to be. But it took me three goes of searching to find it, since it was buried between so many random bits of paper.

I left half the papers on the floor. I had made it so messy that I forced my own hand in needing to tidy it up this morning.

Whenever we go through our period of clear-out, we usually get hits of nostalgia. I was going through a lot of random printed documents, old letters, work info and other bits and pieces from the past.

The last time I did a similar exercise a few years ago, I remember being filled with a lot of emotional energy when I came across different things. I remember finding an old business card of my time in the UK Government. It had an emotional impact, as I suddenly remembered all those fun and bizarre stories of my time working there.

This time, I felt little. In fact, I was fairly systematic and was done within 45 minutes. I got rid of about 90% of the papers, saving only a very set amount which I would either need or had some sort of reason to be kept.

I think this reflects my shifting perspective on life. A few years ago, I would look to cherish the past. It would help me build my sense of origin story, showing where I had come from. Whilst this wasn’t a bad thing, I probably was also guilty of overly reaching for meaning and symbolism in the things I had done. It also meant that certain memories had a lot more power over me. I recall that when I did a Vipassanna silent meditation earlier this year, they described how living in nostalgia could become sweet, to the point where it was a negative addiction.

Now, I seemingly give far less energy to the past. What is done is done. These things may have been nice (or indeed not nice), but they don’t really have a whole lot of relation with my life right now. I don’t need to bask in past glories when there is a life to be lived right now.

Perhaps I’ve also changed so much that these past events don’t even feel like my own. I look at older pictures of myself and it feels like I am looking at a different person, living a different life. That might sound melancholic, but it’s not meant to be. I think it’s instead my way of centering myself in the present.

In the personal development world, it’s oft talked about how we seem to spend most of the time either dwelling in the past or hoping for a better future. We rarely seem to really live in the moment. Perhaps I’m more in the moment now than I was in the past.

Nonetheless, there is some symbolism to my behaviour – even if it may just be coincidental. I previously wrote about how I had fallen down the rabbit hole of Vedic Astrology. Parts of it – including that 2024 was going to be a year prone to burnout – were surprisingly accurate.

I’ve been in this tougher sub-period for 3 years. But as of 1 November, I’m now shifting to a period where things will start to get easier. It won’t happen overnight, but I’m hoping that things will get easier.

I suppose that getting rid of old papers is probably as good a way as any to mark the end of the last period, and moving into the new.

And if nothing else, my space certainly looks tidier and more inviting.

Ayurveda: the alternative to modern health and wellbeing approaches

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I’m sure you’ve heard about all sorts of theories around health hacks before. Whether it’s an Atkins diet, celery juicing, high protein or some other funky diet.

Whilst I’m not against such diets, they only seem to work for a certain group of people. For me, I’ve tried many different approaches, but none of them really seem to stick.

My next approach was to go with a far more scientific approach. But here, I found a style of living that felt overly restrictive, and not really conducive to everyday living.

On reflection, It feels like these approaches are focused upon unrealistic over-optimisation. Whilst this may be great for top performance, I’m not looking to become a professional athlete. I also don’t fit in the general western standards of what a body ‘should’ look like. On the BMI scale, I’m over 35, categorising as morbidly obese. A year later filled with strength training and some cardio, I’m now slightly heavier than I was before. Now, everyone is quick to tell me that BMI is a flawed approach. But that doesn’t stop it from being the first measurement used, and pretty much the basis of such a scientific approach.

Western approaches to health and body have also felt off with my genetic and cultural heritage. Certainly in Belgium, a professional is very unlikely to have ever seen a body like mine before. I’ve also learnt to be wary of going to these professionals due to how ethnocentric they tend to be. I’ve got to the stage where I fear talking about my upbringing where we would eat rice and curry every day. I expect to meet an awkward blend of them not understanding and a bunch of judgement for having a diet of the ‘savages’. Ironically, before modern diets, indigenous communities have eaten more healthily and better than in the West.

This line of thinking led me to looking for a historical perspective, something closer to my ancestral origin. It’s here that I came across ayurveda, but I never really knew what it meant. It’s actually something I’ve been curious about for a while, but I hadn’t quite found a good way to access it.

In a previous job a few years ago, there was someone in the office from another company who was an ayurvedic practitioner. I bumped into her in the office one day and asked her about it. She glared at me, and told me that if I wanted to know more about ayurveda I should google it. I guess I wasn’t her target market, which later evidently turned out to be for other hippy-type white women… Alas, as is the fate of many eastern approaches including yoga which have faced cultural appropriation.

It has actually been ChatGPT that has been able to point out resources to me. It pointed me to the book, Prakriti: Your Ayurvedic Constitution by Robert Svoboda, as well as helping me with the understanding. It’s funny to think that modern technology is what is helping me to connect with thousands year old approaches.

I am by no means an expert, but some of the main points is that we are formed of three doshas (life energies) – Vatta, Kapha and Pitta. I’m simplifying, but broadly, Vatta represents wind, Kapha represents earth and Pitta represents fire.

We all have these three energies, but the important part is understanding your own dominant dosha, so that you can keep your energies in balance. It’s actually fairly straightforward to figure this out, and there is even a free test you can do here.Unlike western questionnaires which are quite narrow, this asks not only about your diet, but also your features – your hair, body pulse, eyes and other physical characteristics.

My constitution is Kapha, or earth. Which, if you look at me, is actually quite obvious. I have a large complexion, and naturally broader shoulders. It was actually really relieving to see that my natural inclination is to be more withdrawn and to gain weight quite easily. Finally I have found something that actually explains things beyond blaming me for a lack of self-discipline.

The benefits of being a Kapha-type is that I generally have healthy bone structure and features. My body’s natural tendency is to retain more nutrients to keep me healthy. I actually have pretty good skin, and I am rather tall for a South Asian. Pyschologically, it has done me a lot of good to realise that I’m not broken, just a different category. Of course, it is vital to keep movement and exercise, as kapha in excess can become inactive and lethargic.

More fundamentally, it gives a very different way of looking at what foods I eat, without needing to delve into the complexities of micronutrients.

With a burnout, my kapha energy has been really low. I’ve also been living a lifestyle pushing lots of activities, so my vatta (wind) energy has been too high. So the important thing for me now is to actually eat more warm, grounded meals. Dry foods tend to encourage vatta, so I need to avoid these. So actually, eating more salads would be discouraged considering my current state. Spicier foods tend to encourage pitta too, which right now I don’t need.

One of the biggest struggles I’ve had is when I’ve had a ravishing hunger. Sometimes I will eat dinner, only to find myself hungrier than I was before I started. The answer to this is not about calories, nor is it about quantity of food, it is about giving the right thing that my body needs. This means having more warmth. I’ve cut out cold drinks and switched them for warm water or tea. I’m figuring out how I can have more soups and broths, as well as changing from cold desserts to warm things like microwaved rice puddings.

This feels far more intuitive as an approach than anything I’ve ever seen before. It’s also built upon wisdom that has been built up over thousands of years, whilst also taking a far more holistic approach than western scientific approaches do which are so heavily focussed on optimisation.

I’ll have to see how it goes with the results. The early days have actually been quite rough. I’ve cut out energy drinks and coffee, which needs an adjustment period. Although these give a temporary boost to my energy, these are only perpetuating my imbalance by being high in Vatta. But I’m hopeful that this will give a framework for a long term way of living.

Time will tell.

Finding solace in the solitude

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This last week has been quite humbling. I wasn’t really expecting it, but I crashed. My nervous system is shot. Daily tasks have been difficult again.

It’s hard not to feel a little despondent. I was somewhat hopeful that things were improving. But sometimes, it’s two steps forward, one step back.

In response, I’ve decided to slow down even more. I cancelled pretty much all my plans, and most of my time has been in solitude. And actually, it’s been quite nice. Indeed, perhaps this has been the lesson I’ve needed to learn all along.

When I reflect on it, there does feel like some sense of coming full circle. When I was younger, I was far more withdrawn. I did enjoy socialising, but I did it far less. I also enjoyed having time for my own, as well as totally empty weekends.

Overtime, that changed. I started doing more, and progressively built more activity in my life. The years of my life before my burnout were built upon a buzz of adrenaline. Activity, projects and events. Often back to back.

This may sound bad, but the truth was that it was actually serving me well. When my life felt full, I felt energised. I felt more present, and actually more alive. I was better balancing my energy, which meant I had a lot more space to do new things.

The problem though was that I became overly reliant to external stimulation. When things stopped feeling exciting, I ended up feeling drained. The response to a setback was always ‘how can I do this better’ rather than ‘perhaps it’s time to put this down for now’.

I imagine this was probably an over-correction after the pandemic. We had our lives frozen for several years that returning to ‘normal’ felt chaotic. Some people responded with trepidation, finding it difficult to reconnect. I went the other way – throwing myself hard into people and projects. In hindsight, it was perhaps a bit too hard.

I wanted to be great at everything I put my mind into, and I also wanted to solve the world’s problems. I wanted to succeed in all my goals, whilst also wanting to do the deep, inner work. Even typing all of this feels exhausting. It’s no wonder that I crashed. In fact, I think I needed it.

If that previous period was about expanding my energy, than this period has been about conserving it. Funnily enough, this has lined up with how I look at my finances too. In the past, it was all about ‘how can I earn more to do the things that I want’. Now it’s interrogating more deeply ‘do I really need this?’ I’m seeing that sometimes, the best solution is simply release the desire. If I don’t feel the need to have some grand exotic adventure, then I don’t need to find the money to pay for it. Blindly following all of our desires is falling into both a moralist and capitalist trap.

I wrote about feeling more hopeful in the last few weeks. This feeling hasn’t dissipated even with this sudden drop in energy, but I think has come with a bit more grounded expectations. I’m unlikely to suddenly have things massively improve, that’s rarely how life works. But things will start to feel easier.

I need to be grateful for the lessons of this period. I am better at erring on the side of caution, rather than throwing myself into new activities. This will be a vital lesson for the next stage of my life.

The understated value of being discreet

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We live in a world where the measuring stick is how vocal and loud you are. If you’re not making noise people seem to think that you aren’t doing anything.

Social media serves to blast out our everyday acts. We announce our new job on a LinkedIn post, then share our breakfast on an Instagram story. We then tweet our thoughts whenever we get the chance, not because we want to share something useful, but rather to demonstrate we have something useful to say.

Somewhere along the way, many of us have seemingly forgotten the value of discretion. If making noise is taking the big battering ram, being discreet is the subtle art of sowing the seeds in the background.

We use a hammer to hit nails into the wall. But if we only ever use a hammer, all we will ever see is a nail. Hammering a screw in usually causes more damage than good. The more delicate work of a screwdriver would be far more effective.

One thing I miss about being a civil servant is that there is a far better understanding around discretion. We knew that our work was not meant to be about getting personal headlines. After all, much of what we did would not get noticed (unless something went wrong). But deeper within the culture, there was a greater appreciation and value set upon working the system through subtle sleights of hands. Building relationships across departments and ministerial offices was what got things actually done. These sorts of approaches were far more valued skill than they were on the outside.

I would sometimes see external hires struggle. The most visible ones were the big shot directors coming in from the private sector. Their operating script was to push things through with a sense of energy and force. But in the tangled webs of the civil service, they would quickly get caught up by the complex processes and need for approvals. Some learnt to adapt. For others, it never really worked out.

Coming into the advocacy world, I feel like everything is about noise. There is such a need to justify action to colleagues and funders that it becomes a game of doing more rather than having impact. I remember writing reports around how we created so many social media posts, and how great it was. But it quickly turns into a game – just have a look at most corporate and NGO posts and it becomes obvious how boring and unengaging they are.

When I look at publications in the climate sector in Brussels, I often want to tear my hair out. Most reports are just unreadable. Often great research will go unread, wasting tens, if not hundreds of thousands of euros. This all stems from people not willing to do the softer, more discrete work. Being scared to ‘step on people’s toes’, technical experts are left to run free with incomprehensible jargon.

I always valued one-to-one discussions far more than big team meetings. It was here that you could actually get to the truth of the matter. Openness and honesty can cut through a problem like a butter through knife. Instead, what often happens is a problem drags for months upon end.

Part of the blame can be laid at the system, but equally responsibility needs to be placed upon people working within the sector. Behaviour is so often driven by ego and saviour complexes. I found it insane how everyone around me seemed to be running around like headless chickens looking for the next thing to tweet about. I often felt like an alien. I made sure to give time and space to develop relationships and understand people. But this was not the metric, even if it actually was far more effective. No, the metric was to talk about how busy you constantly were, and making out how important the work you were doing was.

I dream of a day where I can work somewhere which focusses on impact, rather than noise.

Searching for a spark of hope in life

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Tough times are tough. It’s why they name them so.

The current moment feels like a tougher time. Global war, political division and increasing financial hardship for many. These are not simple things to navigate.

I’ve had a particularly rough period in my life. I’ve had several years of seismic, volatile change. This has included periods where I’ve barely functioned. At one point last year, I struggled to get out of bed. And even then, I was only doing the bare minimum to keep myself alive.

Yet with time to reflect, I realise that the darkest periods were not necessarily the hardest ones. There were extremely tough periods that were physically or emotionally more demanding, yet I had the will to work through them. But the darkest moments ones where I had lost hope for things to get better. When the desire left my eyes, it became extremely difficult to do the most basic of things. At one point I wondered whether the rest of my existence would be this barely-functioning corpse. I started to wonder, what would be the point in continuing to live?

Things have felt different recently. I’ve started to be hopeful that things will improve. I’m seeing some signs of improvement, even if they are slow. Different facets of my life are starting to stabilise. Most importantly, I’m feeling calmer. Even if my energy levels are still quite chaotic, they are still much better than they were about a year ago.

I’ve gone through a particularly tough period according to the astrological chart. Whilst we all go through difficulty, I had several sets of very testing times back to back. The good news though is that this is meant to end in November. From then, this particularly testing period is meant to move towards one with more opportunity and connection.

Is believing in astrology delusion? Perhaps so. But I do not do so without some level of discernment. I don’t follow what it says out of a blind fanaticism, but because it seems to have explained my existence better to me than any person or science has otherwise.

I think the difference between delusion and hope is that delusion is devoid of any practical or realistic reason to believe in something. Hope, on the other hand, has some level of grounding. We can see a possibility for improvement, even if we aren’t sure it might happen.

I’ve come to increasingly appreciate the role of art and fiction. In the past, I would want my entertainment to have a form of education. I would exclusively read non-fiction books. My TV watching habits gravitated to reality, even if I allowed myself the more trashy. For me, fiction was a form of escaping the realities of the world.

But recently, I’ve been seeing the way in which the fantastical can make us dream bigger. It is far more playful and vivid than non-fiction. There is a reason that the Lord of the Rings resonates after so many years compared to a history tome of World War Two. It evokes a sense of spirit and emotion that transcends our daily reality. By transporting us out of our normal world, we are less stuck in seeing things the same-old way.

Right now, there is a distinct lack of hope in the world. I see little of it in the people around me. People falling into the grind, or fearing the worst out of a negative news cycle.

But hope is always there. Bad times are followed by good ones. Things do eventually improve, even if it can take some time.

But ultimately, it is our own choice: do we choose to look for hope?

You *cannot* be anything you want to be

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It was a lie. But in your heart, you probably knew that already.

Even now, it doesn’t stop us telling that to our kids. After all, our generation may be doomed, but the next one will have real freedom, right?

For a long time, this was one of my underlying beliefs. Anyone, if they tried hard enough, could achieve anything. The power of the mind was so powerful that we can make it happen, no matter what the odds.

There’s something comforting in this belief. It certainly allowed me to protect myself from seeing the harsher realities of the world. Even if you have disadvantages such as racial barriers or disabilities, there were always ways to overcome it. You just had to work harder and smarter.

In truth, life can be cruel, and there is something deeply upsetting about this fact. We end up believing such things to avoid this feeling. But we need to be honest – for example, If you grow up in Palestine right now, you may die from malnutrition before reaching adulthood. This is due to no fault of your own.

No amount of positive thinking can do anything if you have a bomb drop on you.

This is not to be fatalistic. If we have some fortune to have a functioning life, positive belief can naturally have a massive impact. So many people are stuck on the idea that they simply cannot do lots of things, when in reality they probably could if they really wanted to. This is where the shift in mindset can be very powerful.

Yet we need to not forget about the realities of the world. I personally wish someone was more honest with me when I was younger. I choose a career in policy because I thought I could genuinely make a positive difference through these traditional roots. If I had known the realities of how things are really done, I may have done so differently. Or at the very least, I would have gone in knowing the truth of what I was getting into.

Meritocracy is the leading mythology of the modern day workplace. For all the talk of equality, there is still a sense that you need to be the ‘right sort’. In fact, that’s probably more the case now then it was ten years ago. Nothing shows this more than our current world situation. Diversity and inclusion was always an optional extra and right now it is out of vogue, and as such is being dumped. Unfortunately for me, I’m on the wrong side of that fence.

What helps me in moments of despair is looking at this more spiritually. I’ve been more drawn to the idea that we have our own ‘life directions’. I use the word direction, rather than path. This is not something set in stone, instead it is a general direction that we walk towards. The compass points us in a certain way, but it is for us to find the routes and paths in our own journey of life. How far we go on the journey is dependent on us. If we are determined, we will go further. If we are uncommitted, we will languish half-way through.

In the western world, we seem to either go way too broad of saying anything is possible, or try and diagnose what people should be doing as soon as we can.

I remember when I was at school I was quite good at maths. I therefore was pushed towards a career in sciences, even though I had little desire to really follow that path. I remember the careers adviser being surprised that I wanted to do something more creative, even though my grades were less good there. Apparently the most important direction is whether we are good at something, rather than whether we actually enjoy it. What is even more ridiculous is that this conversation was when I was 15.

This is how many limiting beliefs get created. When we get told at a young age that we are only destined to do what we enjoyed at school, well it’s no wonder that many people are too scared to try other things. Yet we see many examples of people who end up being successful in domains that they originally didn’t do well in. Steve Jobs studies were nothing to do with IT, yet he ended up founding and leading Apple as their CEO for decades.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can see that my draw has been towards helping people, and generally some sense of altruistic work. I like to analyse and reflect. I have a gift for seeing things that are not evident to most people (which I’ve only learnt recently). This is going to be a theme of my working life no matter where I go.

Since working on my father’s biography, I’ve become aware at how coded this is to my genetics. My father has done plenty to support development in both the local community in the UK Bangladesh, and many of his brothers did so as well. My oldest uncle worked for decades in Sandwell Borough and was awarded an MBE last year. I also have an older brother who ended up working in international development in Kenya.

In this sense, I know that I’m broadly moving towards where I’m meant to go, even if it’s been a bumpy ride. For some people, such a direction is a lot clearer and straightforwards. My one is apparently more chaotic, unconventional and norm-breaking.

So rather than giving the ambiguous and often overwhelming advice of ‘you can be whatever you want to be’, I prefer to go with the idea of ‘be the best version of you’.

Life plays an important role in guiding us on where we are to go. Then, it is up to us to see how far we reach.

Learning the lessons of life’s tests

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One thing I’ve noticed is that my mind feels calmer.

Despite shifting storms, political and personal uncertainty, I feel more balanced. This doesn’t mean life has gotten any easier. But it seems to feel a little bit easier anyway.

If anything, it’s actually been a more testing period. I’ve had to turn down opportunities which would have been unhealthy and toxic for me. I’ve been struggling with sickness and stomach problems as well. Meanwhile, the news cycle has been hitting harder, and I’m genuinely fearing authoritarianism like never before.

The most prime example of tests was a job offer I had. I ended up deciding to pull out of it two days before the start of the contract. As the date approached, more and more things felt off.

I’m glad I followed my gut. I sent an email beforehand querying a lot of issues that were bothering me. Stuff like expecting me to work a full day of work before the contract started, as well as doing a full e-learning training as ‘pre-reading’ (i.e. unpaid work).

Sadly, the response to my email was very disheartening. It became apparent that the organisation did not believe that it needed to follow Belgian labour law. It described the ‘difference in expectation’ as me seeing this as a belgian standard contract (which it was), whereas they say this as a ‘stipend’ for a career.

Of course, such an approach is totally illegal. But certain organisations see themselves above the law. It probably would not surprise you if you live in Brussels that this was one of the ‘go-good’ NGO type organisations. Labour violations are absolutely rife in these places.

What has been heartening though is how much the people in my life have supported my decision. In the past, I would have had more people questioning me. This time, the people around me were quite unanimous that I had made the right call.

I’m in the midst of my deep-dive of Vedic astrology. Apparently one of the big challenges of the last few years has been about a balance of my relationship with work. It even said that 2024 was a year where there was a real risk of burnout, which was actually the case (it definitely would have been nice to know this in advance!).

So in this context, I think the latest job contract debacle was a test. It was to see whether I had really learnt my lesson, or whether I would ignore my intuition. I think I did the right thing, and I hope the universe will recognise that too.

Another example was during a facilitated conversation I had yesterday. We were speaking about the topic of intuition, and I uttered the line that constantly analysing everything in life is ‘no way to live’.

A participant took particular issue with me saying that. She said she was offended, and that I was being judgemental against her. It was a little odd, as it was obviously not directed against her personally.

In the past, I would have felt a lot of stress and awkwardness. Now, I just let things be. I explained that this was based upon my own experience, as in the past this was how I lived, and I was totally miserable. So yes, I didn’t think it was a way to live.

After a while, she announced that she was uncomfortable because I did not apologise. She got up, and left.

Perhaps it’s wishful thinking, but an increase of life tests suggests a greater amount of response. In that way, it shows that things are shifting. Whereas before I felt like nothing was happening, now I am getting more energetic feedback.

In a weird way, I think it’s a show that things are happening for me, even if in the short term it’s unpleasant. Naturally, not all tests are pleasant, nor are they positive either.

But sometimes, I think it’s also the universes way of telling us to keep going.

Keeping faith with the tides of the universe

Photo by luca romano on Unsplash

Sometimes it’s pretty hard to keep faith in the world.

This weekend, there was a far-right protest of over 100,000 in London. On the same week, we had the shooting of Charlie Kirk in the US too. It’s safe to say we’re in choppy waters right now.

Yet the point in faith is not to hold it only when things are good.

I admit that my belief in the universe has ebbed and flowed. More recently, I’ve gone more inwards, choosing not to think about ‘what it all means’.

I think there is wisdom in this. Many people I see get very caught up in analysing current events. But trying to rationalise the world is like trying to explain time and matter. Our brains cannot comprehend things that are so beyond our reckoning. Sometimes we need to just stop thinking so deeply about things. There’s a life to be lived, after all.

Yet I’ve also found some comfort in connecting with the beyond too. It’s not always about understanding everything, sometimes it’s about understanding enough.

The world seems to move through periods of intensity. Some periods are calmer, some are stormier.

Right now, we seem to be in quite a stormy moment. This is our reality, and probably will be for a while. Sometimes we have to know how to hold tight. The boat navigating through the torment may have to brace through the night to get to the light of day. I think that’s the period we are in right now.

On a personal level, I’ve ended up getting into reading about some of the ancient historic south Asian texts. It’s helpful to see how the world has evolved before us. It puts things in context, and helps us see how periods of hardship and prosperity ebb and flow.

I ended up for one reason or another into looking into a Vedic astrology chart. Understanding what these actually mean can be quite complicated, so I never really could read it in the past. Ironically using the ultra-modern technology of chatGPT I’ve been able to read something that is based upon technology built thousands of years ago.

Apparently I’ve been going through what will probably be the roughest period of my life. It started in later 2022. I was tested in what was doing in my life, as well as what I wanted. These years had a real risk according to the charts of challenging working conditions and burnout.

Broadly, this feels pretty accurate. My last few years have felt very choppy, and lots of things have changed. I did indeed go through a burnout over the last year. I think it was the world’s way of saying things needed to shift in my li.

The good news is that this three year cycle is coming to an end. From November, I’ll enter into a new cycle. Things should start to settle, and life will improve. By 2028, I’ll have several years which will feel like a golden period.

I’ve learnt to be a little cautious around these readings. There was a point a few years ago that I got so caught up in them that I was tracking it month by month. I slowly realised that such micro-reading ends up being quite unhelpful. I lost an ability to live more serendipitously, and I ended up believing that everything had to have some deep meaning. Plus, these astrology charts can get it wrong.

But I have experienced when it has gotten it right too. I remember meeting a man in India in early 2023. He was an astrologist, based in Jaipur and apparently a particularly renowned one. Within a few minutes of meeting me, he told me very directly that I had a high level of intelligence, and that I would write books. In the conversation he said that I should be working in a top institution such as Oxford. Funnily enough, at the time I was working at an Institute in Brussels which was part of the University of Cambridge. There were a bunch of other things he said. A lot of it made plenty of sense, even if some of it didn’t.

When we look for signs in the universe, they are often there. If we completely ignore them, we are doomed to be limited by the capacity of our brains. But if we look too hard for meaning everywhere, we can end up getting surrendering any sense of self-agency. We don’t need the stars to tell us what bread we’re going to buy today.

It’s important that we continue to lead our own lives in the best way we can. Some of us have the fortune to not be caught in the crossfire of world events, whilst others will have their lives cut short due to the evil of others.

In moments of despair, the universe is there to guide us. But we must remember that it is ultimately us who holds our own destiny.

Getting back into the back-to-work vibe

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

The summer holidays are over. Brussels is slowly coming back to life after its sleepy summer. We’re coming back into the traditional return to work.

I actually am enjoying a sense of energy in the air. It’s nice to have things happening again in this town. I’ve spent quite a lot of time here in the summer. I enjoyed the peace and quiet, but it’s also felt a little empty. Now, there’s a bunch of events around town over the next weeks for me to look forward to.

It seems like a rest has done people some good. many people will feel the heightened political tensions, but this is particularly the case in the political hubs such as Brussels. Disconnection is what keeps us from getting too caught up in work and forgetting to live.

Yet the rest people get these days is relative. In the past, summer meant total disconnection. These days, who can really disconnect for more than a week or two? It’s becoming increasingly difficult to do so without getting caught up about work anyway, not to mention the unfolding of war and politics.

The reality of our working lives has shifted. Gone are the days when we could follow a more traditional boom-and-bust model. Before, it was possible to work hard, long hours but then take extended time off for Christmas and summer to recharge. The modern day schedule is one where the workloads have only increased. Now, it requires a far more sustained approach over all 12 months.

Ironically, some of us face the hardest work during the summer break. We can find ourselves the only person ‘on-call’ in August when something urgent comes in. Suddenly we have to deal with a topic that we have little understanding of, or well above our pay grade. It’s not a fun situation to deal with, particularly if you’ve just come back from your own early-summer holiday.

My aim (or perhaps it is a plea) is for a more sustainable approach to living. It’s been three years since the end of the official COVID pandemic, and we can no longer use it as an excuse for messy working cultures or lack of social interaction.

I feel like people are slowly making this shift. We’re seeing a growth of in-person social events and networking. Community creations are rebuilding their roots after having them ripped up due to the lockdown.

I hosted my local Toastmasters club yesterday, and the energy felt vibrant. After a good number of years of struggling to get numbers, people are increasingly coming out to build real-world connections again.

As for work culture, I can only hope it gets better. Burnout rates are out of control. Perhaps a few years of heavy churn and self-implosion may make some organisations reflect on their practices. But maybe I’m still stuck in wishful thinking.

Yet we always have more power than we realise. Don’t be afraid to fight for your right to a healthy, safe and sustainable working practice. If people are reasonable, they will see that stressed, last minute work (and potential burnout) is to the benefit of no one. And if they’re not reasonable, well, there’s a reason that labour laws exist. Don’t be afraid to enforce your rights if you need to. I certainly have numerous times in my career.

My invitation to you is to set up this new year in a way that is productive, but also sustainable. Manage your workload, your social life, and time for yourself. Don’t wait till the situation is in the red-zone to act.