Tag: #happiness

An invitation to try less hard in your life

This is the first weekend I’ve spent at home in Brussels in over a month.

The last four weekends I’ve been away, on a mix of travels through India and successive trips to the UK.

And you know what? I’m tired. Not because of any overt travel fatigue, but because I’ve felt like life has been a consistent set of new hurdles.
The irony is that the only person who fundamentally has been placing these hurdles is myself.

Having now got through a lot of courses and personal adventures, I’m feeling quite worn out. I’m really glad I did these things, but I’m also conscious at how hard I have been pushing myself. Do I really need to live life as if I don’t have time to breath?

‘Being’​ and the power of coming from the heart rather than the mind

Last week, I attended the Ultimate Experience in India. The event was a gathering around ‘Being’, the way in which we choose to ‘be’ in our lives.
The idea is very simple. Our Being sets the foundation of how we show up in the world. We can choose to be loving and kind. We can choose to be the best mother, father, actor or production manager.

What I learnt in Mumbai is that our wisdom starts from our heart. When we recognise that our deeper knowing comes from there, it changes things dramatically. Now, I start from a place of love. The heart gives the framework for the mind to operate in. Coming from love and being in service is a central principle of what I do, rather than an after-thought.

I am a far more emotional and sensitive human than I ever really thought. Now when I look back on it, I was rather sensitive when I was younger, but somewhere along the way I had learnt to push that behaviour away.

Who are you Being in your life?

Are you travelling to escape the reality of your life?

We often spend a lot of time fantasising about our next great escape. But what does that say about how we are feeling right now?
I’m travelling to India for ten days. In fact, I’m writing this on my layover in Istanbul Airport. I’ll arrive in Delhi in about 9 hours
A few days ago I started wondering whether I ‘should’ be feeling more excited about my trip. After all, isn’t the excitement part of the fun part. In the midst of my active life, was I missing something?
Ironically, by being more present to my day-to-day experience, I am strengthening the muscle which will allow me to enjoy my travels more fully.
What are you escaping from?

Why I returned back to my hometown after five years

Last weekend I traveled to Bath. This was the first time I had visited since the pandemic. Although I did come in 2018, it was a fairly fleeting visit as a tourist. This time, I made a point to revisit the places that had shaped me as I grew up.

Fast forward to January 2023, there wasn’t any particular reason for me to go to Bath. Nonetheless, I felt there was something important for me to explore about my own upbringing.

Before this weekend, I had a relatively negative view of Bath. I would often describe it as a boring place to grow up, and that it was difficult to fit in considering the majority-white background of the people here. Whilst this was not untrue, what I was also missing was the great things that I did get from growing up in an international, humble, historic-yet-modern city.

Feeling ‘very busy’​ is a changeable state – no matter our workload

Over the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time working with people with increasing workloads. I can probably hear the word ‘busy’ being used at least 10 times each week.
This week I read something that really struck me this week – that being busy isn’t actually linked to how much work you are doing. Instead, it’s a state of mind.
Now I’ll be honest – such statements can get people’s backs up – ‘how dare you say I’m not busy, after all look how many tasks I have to do over the next 3 days?!’

Our anxiety is stopping us from making positive change

Through my professional and personal life, I’ve come across many extraordinary, driven individuals who want to make a positive impact in the world.
Unfortunately, what I also see is a lot of stress, anxiety and overwhelm. There is an increase in the amount of burnout which is negatively affecting people’s personal sense of wellbeing. This is sad in of itself – everyone deserves to live a happy, fulfilling life.
But also, when we are stressed or burnt out, we are also becoming far less effective in making the change we want to see in the world. This means the positive change is severely limited.
But the great news is that we can change our outlook. One of the big revelations for me was recognising that the barrier to my own performance was the way I treated myself.

There is no past. There is no future. There is only now.

I generally like to keep on top of my work, but recently I’ve found myself procrastinating. Sometimes I know a deadline isn’t coming for a while, so I can put it off. I believed that the time to do it was sometime in the future.

But it’s not just the future – it’s also the past. I found myself lingering around past thoughts. A conversation someone had with me. I relive the frustration or anger, as if it were happening today. Suddenly these emotions are seeping into the feelings I’m having right now.

Most of us tend to see-saw between these alternate realities. Either we are stuck in the past, or wondering about the future. But what if neither of them actually exist?

The mind is self- cleansing. You don’t have to do anything to fix it.

I’ve been having issues sleeping in the last few weeks. I fall asleep quite easily, but I have a tendency to wake up in the middle of the night. Sometimes I manage to fall back asleep for a mediocre night’s sleep, but some nights (including two nights ago) I woke up in full alertness and was awake from 3am.

I don’t think this will be ‘fixed’ overnight. But I also recognise that I don’t need to be defined by my tiredness or lethargy, nor let it overly negatively affect my life.

Our minds go through pain, but we don’t actually have to do anything to heal it. If we trust the process of letting our minds be, it will return to its natural state of health and wellbeing without us interfering with the process.

How to make your tasks feel more effortless

Do you find yourself constantly at the wrong side of a never-ending to-do-list? The stress and overwhelm can take a massive toll. Worse, without remedial action we’re doomed to a cycle of overwork, burnout and always needing a holiday.

People often talk about prioritisation as the key to a good life – indeed I’ve even posted around that recently. If we don’t prioritise things, we’ll end up getting spread too thin. No matter what our abilities, we cannot do anything and everything.
But one thing that is less talked about is how we make the process of living our lives far simpler. In other words, how can you make your daily tasks feel far less burdensome, leaving you feeling lighter and in control of your life, rather than being controlled by your tasks.

Clarity of thought will drive your life to its highest level

How much time do we spend questioning ourselves around what we should be doing?

Should I go to the gym today? Should I find a new career? Could I be more fulfilled right now?

At some point, we all go through a period of questioning ourselves. Sometimes life throws us curve balls which make us reassess what we want without clarity of thought, it was hard for me to focus on any single thing.

I thought about whether I might want to move to a different job, sector or country. The possibilities could sometimes feel overwhelming because I didn’t really know what I wanted to do.