Tag Archives: habits

Great-Great Advice

Posted on July 26, 2015 | Leave a comment

I’m going to share with you a brief but worthwhile exercise from Prof Steve Peters’ book The Chimp Paradox: The Mind Management Programme for Confidence, Success and Happiness.

Imagine you are 100 years old and on your death-bed with one minute left to live. Your great-great-grandchild asks, ‘Before you die, tell me what I should do with my life.’

Pause for a moment and try to immediately and honestly answer this question. You have just one minute.

Answering this question, according to Prof Steve Peters, will identify what is important to you. It is what life is all about for you. It is your ‘Life Force’.

Whatever your advice was for your great-great-grandchild is really the advice you need to hear. If you’re not living by this advice, which is the essence of your existence, you are living a lie.

“Don’t live a lie,” urges Prof Steve Peters because, “it will unsettle you more than anything else.”

My advice for my great-great-grandchild is to: “Be happy and really really live your life.”

So how can one be happy?

On Friday night, I watched a movie called Hector and the Search for Happiness. This uplifting film is about a psychiatrist who takes himself on a journey around the globe to research what makes people happy.

Without giving too much away, Hector discovers that happiness shouldn’t be the end-goal of the things we do. Rather, we should do the things we like to do and then happiness will emerge as a pleasant side-effect.

One of the most common barriers to happiness that Hector diagnoses is the destructive habit of making comparisons. When we believe that others are happier, more successful and better looking than us, we fail to feel content where we are. We ignore all the positives that are right there in front of us, waiting to be appreciated.

It’s simple really. Happiness is a choice. Do the things that bring you happiness, and appreciate and enjoy all that you have and all that you are.

The second part of my message to my great-great-grandchild is to really really live life. Are we not already living our lives seen as we are alive, you ask? Yes, of course we are. But there’s a difference between living and really really living. And I want to really really live my life.

Really really living means getting out there to experience, explore, learn, grow and expand. It means being present to beauty, to nature and to love.

It’s in the sharing and connecting with other human beings and with all living things. It’s in the embracing and supporting. It’s in our tears and in our laughter.

It’s when we dance, sing, hike and swim. It’s in inspiring and being inspired. This for me is really really living.

Am I following my own advice? Am I being happy and really really living? For the most part, yes. Then sometimes, I compare. I think too much. I worry. I complain.

I wish things were different and I turn my back on the abundance that’s right here right now. I shut myself into a safe, boring, compact box and forget that there’s a glimmering world out there and I can do anything. Anything.

And then somehow life reminds me that it wants to be really really lived. And I thoroughly agree.

What advice would you give your great-great grandchild? Are you practising what you preach? If not, listen to yourself. You’re a wise one!

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Release Me

Posted on April 5, 2015 | Leave a comment

Last night, a Facebook friend shared Doreen Virtue’s post about how the full moon and lunar eclipse is the perfect time to release anything toxic or completed from our lives.

I’m ready to release everything that is no longer serving me well. I release:

Anxiety about an imagined future.
Fear of rejection. Fear of not being accepted, wanted, liked or loved.
Old patterns, fear-based and limiting beliefs, negative thoughts, judgements and attachments, and any stagnation and resistance that have been blocking or damaging me.
Harmful habits, behaviours and relationships.
Physical and emotional pain and suffering.
Trauma, hurt, grief, sadness, shock, disappointment and anger.

I’m willing to release:

Any barriers that I’ve constructed. Now that I’ve dismantled these barriers, peace, happiness and love are flowing freely.
Shame. I am enough. I am loveable. I am worthy.
Fear of failure and fear of success.
Unhealthy needs and desires. I am now present to my wholeness and perfection.

I happily release:

Worry that I’m lacking in anything and I accept abundance into my life.
Codependency, control and guilt from my interactions with others.
Preconceived assumptions or historical perceptions about people, places and things. I am present, open and loving to them as they are, now.

Finally, I release myself from the grip of my ego. I observe it with interest and humour as it plays out. I learn from it and so I evolve.

What are you willing to release? As Doreen Virtue says: “Trust that when you close one door, a better one opens.”

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Lost in Thought

Posted on September 1, 2014 | 2 comments

It’s after midnight so it is now the first of September. My self-determined challenges for this month are to stop biting my lip and fingers (something I’ve been doing since I was a child) and to be present (and whenever I discover that I’m not being present, I’ll gently bring myself back).

Tonight, I lie in bed, wide awake. I cry for my friend Michelle, who died suddenly. Since receiving the shocking and upsetting news, my emotions have become heightened.

I went for a long walk today and photographed the sun in the trees. I gazed delightedly at the yellow crescent moon perched low in the dusky sky. Music pulses through my body like blood.

I feel for Michelle and her parents. I remember the times we had together. I wonder how I’ll be at her funeral.

My mind flits from Michelle to a guy I’m interested in to an upcoming holiday to work and back to Michelle. I bite my lip.

I glance at the time. It’s twenty-five minutes past midnight. It’s September, I realise with a jolt and snatch my hand away from my mouth. I’m supposed to be present now.

I groan as I recognise that sometimes I actually enjoy being entertained by the drama of my mind. I quite like fantasising and reminiscing and anticipating. Mindfulness can be boring, right? Twenty-five minutes in and I’m already resisting the challenge.

The clock creeps past one am. I know that my mind is keeping me awake, like an enthusiastic relative back from their travels, telling me stories and bombarding me with pictures.

It’s late and I’m still wired. Not so entertaining now, is it? Maybe being present would be a good idea, I decide.

My breath deepens. I sink into my body and snuggle into the bed. My mind escapes again. And again. I patiently allow it to shuffle back. My shoulders drop. I stop holding on so tight. And I fall asleep.

Perhaps living in the past and potential future is just another bad habit like biting my lip and fingers. Apparently it takes 21 days to make or break a habit. Thirty days hath September. So let’s see if this month bestows me with boredom or liberation and peace…

How will you challenge yourself this month?

Safe journey, Michelle. Rest in peace xxx

Image: Author’s Own.

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Posted in Personal development, Spirituality

Tagged 21 days, acceptance, allowing, anticipation, bereavement, body, boredom, breath, breathing, challenges, crush, death, ego, emotions, enjoyment, entertainment, excitement, family, fantasy, feelings, freedom, friendship, future, grief, habits, holiday, insomnia, journey, liberation, memories, mind, mindfulness, music, nature, nervousness, now, past, patience, peace, photography, present, relationships, relaxation, resistance, sadness, september, shock, sleep, soul, work

Thinking Clearly

Posted on April 16, 2013 | 2 comments

I turn off the tap and sweep the water from my body using my hands. I saw an ex-boyfriend doing this and I continue to do it long after we’ve broken up. I step out of the shower and start to think of all the other habits I’ve caught from former boyfriends and even old friends. How I no longer close my bedroom curtains at night. How I add paprika to my scrambled eggs. And how I know that a glass of milk with dates (the dried fruit, not a rendezvous with a potential love buddy) is a surprisingly delicious combination.

I’ve held on to these things because they make sense to me. Because I’d rather not have puddles on my bathroom floor. And because I love to look out at the stars and wake to the morning light. But what about the habits and beliefs I’ve latched on to that definitely aren’t serving me? The ones I thought were a part of me but that actually came from other people. From parents, partners, teachers and friends.

Are the beliefs that are running our lives really ours? The ones that instruct us on how to look, feel and behave, and on what to do, say and even like. Are these second-hand belief systems right for us at all?

It’s time for a spring clean. A thorough clear out. Pick up and inspect each belief. If it makes you feel good, keep it. You can reexamine it in another while. If it makes you feel bad, chuck it. It was never yours anyway. Once you’ve decluttered your headspace, make sure to only decorate it with things that are authentic and functional. Things that make you smile. Living with yourself will be a lot more pleasant once you’ve feng shui’d your mind.