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. […]
Tag: #happiness
Flipping adversity into a source of strength
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.
Creating time and space to do nothing
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.
Living life like you have nothing to lose
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.
Seeing sensitivity as a strength
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.
The incredible power of saying ‘I don’t know’
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.
Releasing the mind through the form of movement
This week, I’ve started work with a new coach around body movement. I’ve been working a lot on myself, but an area I hadn’t really addressed was around my comfort in my own body.
I remember being in India in February and seeing people dancing. I felt absolutely paralysed by the idea of it. More broadly, the moment anyone suggested dancing I felt frozen to the spot.
Somewhere along the way I had created body movement to be such a complicated thing that I felt an anxiety cycle the moment a situation came up.
The stick-or-twist of whether to celebrate a birthday
I turned 30 this week. And I wasn’t sure how much I should celebrate or not.
I turned 30 this week. And I wasn’t sure how much I should celebrate or not.
I have a somewhat difficult relationship with birthdays. I found it hard to celebrate the occasion over the years because I felt it came at an inconvenient time. It was just after the school holidays, or just as the university term had started and everyone went home. Nobody was really around to do much for it.
On reflection, I think I learnt to dread my birthday. It was a day where I heard a lot about what I should experience, and how it was meant to be such a great day. I found that generally any such expectations were not met. Looking back on it I found the whole ordeal rather painful emotionally for many years.
In my adult years, my newest line has been to reject the notion of birthdays as a concept. ‘What’s in a day anyway?’. It made it a lot easier to just not engage with the idea of it, rather than deal with the expectations that came with it.
There is some truth to the fact that a single day does not make us nor break us. Yet If i’m honest with myself it’s also been a self defense mechanism I built up. It’s become so instilled in me I hadn’t even realised I had created it.
I’ve been travelling a bunch in the lead up to my birthday. I had a few social engagements dotted around before and after, so it got to the point where planning felt inconvenient. In the end, I didn’t really do a whole lot. And whilst I think ‘regret’ is too strong a word, a few days later I feel I probably missed an opportunity to mark the moment more vividly.
The beauty of personal development is that every opportunity is a moment where we can learn deep things about ourselves. This experience fits in with my journey of the last few weeks, notably realising how emotionally sensitive I am as a person.
I am reopening my heart to the world. Honestly, it’s a pretty painful experience. I am letting down guards that have been up for so long I didn’t even realise they were there. And opening up means both reexperiencing things I had shut away, but also coming into a deeper state of vulnerability. I’m having to reevaluate things like my ‘who cares’ attitude towards birthdays. I’ve also noticed that the bitterness towards my own experiences has been souring how I show up for others in their celebrations too.
All is not lost, birthdays are a great opportunity to reflect no matter how much or little we actively celebrate them. I’ve heard someone describe them as our own personal new year, which I’m quite fond of as a concept.
This last year has been a crazy journey for me. I’ve had many people talk about how much I have changed and evolved. I’ve had achievements like writing my book. But more profoundly, friends around me talk about the way I have shown up for them in a deeper, more powerful and loving way.
Life is opening up in ways that I didn’t think possible. I feel my 30s are going to be more fun and wild than my 20s, which is an exciting feeling. I am clearer in who I am choosing to be.
I’m on the path to self betterment and creating the life I want to live.
I have a somewhat difficult relationship with birthdays. I found it hard to celebrate the occasion over the years because I felt it came at an inconvenient time.
On reflection, I think I learnt to dread my birthday. It was a day where I heard a lot about what I should experience, and how it was meant to be such a great day. I found that generally any such expectations were not met. Looking back on it I found the whole ordeal rather painful emotionally for many years.
The Power of Movement to Free the Soul
Last evening I went to my first ecstatic dance party in London. I wasn’t really sure about what to expect, but I’ve been enjoying entering into new experiences without too much thought. Ecstatic dance parties are a no-alcohol, shoes-off, no chit-chat experience. More ethereal vibes and melodic, hypnotic music. It was probably the most fun […]
Our language creates how we experience the world
This week, I’ve been in several conversations about the massive power language has in the way we live our life.
The language we use is the way we create our reality. For example, if we say that the meeting we’re going to have this afternoon is going to be ‘tedious’ or ‘boring’, we are already creating this to be how we are going to experience it. I’ve been far more mindful in the way I have been prejudging situations. Holding off on these labels has meant I show up in situations far more open. This in of itself is a massive lesson.
But the power of language goes even deeper. The way we describe events can cause emotional reactions which frame our wider worldview