This week I’ve been spending a lot of time in the world of fantasy. I’ve been binge watching Japanese anime, mixed up with RPG video games. I had forgotten the beauty of getting engrossed in a whole different, fantastical dimension.
But as an adult, the world of ‘fiction’ lost its appeal. In fact, I think I’ve ended up becoming quite condescending and judgemental about it
This week was the point that I realised that somewhere along the way I had lost my joy for fantasy.
I’m writing this on a lazy Sunday, where I’ve been feeling anything but with the essence of joie de vivre.
I had an injury on my abdomen return on Friday. My Saturday was watching England get hammered by South Africa in the Cricket World Cup (and also lose to the same opponent in the Rugby World Cup, but I follow that less). Meanwhile, Chelsea managed to throw away a 2-0 lead against Arsenal in the last 15 minutes to draw 2-2.
But this week was around connecting with my joie de vivre about what I do.
If you’ve been following my writing for a while, you might not be surprised to learn that I’m currently on the Eurostar. I shift across from London and Brussels regularly, in fact this is the second time I’m in the UK this month.
I’m attending another three-day intensive around personal development. Each time I attend, I find new ways in which I can deepen my understanding about myself and the world. This time, I want to go with nothing to prove, nothing to take and no one to impress. Instead, I want to really live into being fully present and receiving the learning opportunities.
The fact I’m doing this is illustrative of how much I enjoy different things. And why not? After all, there are many rich experiences to enjoy in life.
Nonetheless, what has become apparent has been the way in which this makes it hard to keep track of my priorities, with the risk of spreading myself thin.
Five minutes before writing this article, I dropped my toiletries off the side of my sink. The result was a dramatic explosion of products and powders on the floor.
Not only was the stuff kind of expensive, it was also a rather sizeable mess which was not fun to clean up.
I was pissed off. In fact I still am.
Some people think that this space of personal development is about not letting things upset us, but I think that although that can be part of it, we can fall into denying our feelings if we are not careful. It’s okay for me to get frustrated – I am only human after all. But the way I deal with that frustration can either be constructive or destructive.
Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash How often do you spend your evenings thinking about work? Perhaps you have issues sleeping because you can’t ‘let go’ of the thoughts that persist in your head. Even when you’re on holiday, you will find yourself checking your emails ‘just in case’. These are all symptoms of overthink. […]
Heart openings can bring up a lot of emotion. I’ve been feeling it the last week or so.
What I hadn’t realised was how much emotion I had kept stored in the body. My methods of dealing with feelings I did not like was to push them away. This meant they were left unexpressed. Over time, a lot of residue has stored up within me.
Expression of these stored emotions allows me to be lighter. This in turn allows me to feel more deeply without feeling like I need to withdraw. The more I lean into these discomforts, the deeper I go into my transformational journey. This allows me to enjoy the gifts of life in a much more enriching way.
Life can feel too busy to stop – even in the month of August. It can make it feel like we are on a constant treadmill of doing, with moments of respite few and far between.
But what if rather than needing to wait for moments of rest, it was something we actively created?
I haven’t really allowed myself to return to a steady rhythm of life. The implicit ‘need’ to make the most of summer pushed me into a state of freneticism.
Having no plans allows us to do things far more spontaneously. This is very different to the pressure of *needing* to do something.
Last night (rather late because of timezone differences!), I listened to a talk by John Patrick Morgan, a practical philosopher who is highly regarded in the coaching space.
The talk yesterday was around the concepts of living like you have nothing to lose, and the idea of not *having* to do anything.
The idea of having nothing to lose is not meant in a maverick, Machiavellian sense. Instead, this is about shifting our view to understand that our attachment to possessions is not actually one we possess in the first place.
Attitudes have progressed a lot in the last few years. We see more open discussions around burnout and mental wellbeing. Nevertheless, emotional sensitivity, particularly in ‘professional’ settings, is still seen as an unwanted, or bad trait.
But sensitivity is what makes us human, and in a world where we use terms like having ’emotional intelligence’, it’s something that is sorely lacking in the business world (not to mention in our personal lives too).
Ironically, my journey has been one of reconnecting with my emotions over the course of my adult life. It started with realising that not everything is about winning the argument. It then progressed to realising that the intuitive sense I had came from an ability to connect and understand people in a deeper way. I thought this was normal for everyone. Turns out its not.
There are so many questions that we answer every day. Some of these are straightforward – ‘what should I eat today?’ or ‘what TV channel should I put on?’ But we also quickly amass large, existential questions that are so overwhelming and complex that they become frightening. In our society, we’ve learnt that we must answer every question, as if it were a pop quiz. But what we have missed is that there are certain questions that go beyond the capabilities of the mind – the spiritual, emotional or philosophical. To me, the phrase ‘I don’t know’ is my own acceptance of surrendering to something bigger than me.