Health – The Fullfilment Project

Spirit Of Generosity

Christmas is a time of giving, as the saying goes. It is a time when we spend a lot of money on presents for our loved ones. We also spend our time with then too. I would argue that it is more meaningful and more of a gift to spend time with others. We can always get more money, but time is a non-renewable resource. Who we choose to spend our time with is meaningful and has a significant impact on our lives.

This generous spirit is not something we should limit to the Christmas period. Ideally, it should be a way of life. If we live our lives with a generous spirit then we will make those around us happier, whether they are family, friends, or colleagues, or people we are meeting for the first time. The wider we extend who we are generous to the happier our lives will be.

To help others without expecting anything in return is planting trees under whose shade we will not sit. The fruits of the trees will benefit those we will never meet. It is also true that one generous act encourages another and the wave of generosity goes out into the world making it better one small act of generosity at a time. Even a smile is a gift that can lift someone’s spirits. So go and be generous every day and see how your life changes and how you change the lives of others.

Choose Your Direction In Life

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Relationships, Success

When you stand or sit still you are already moving. The Earth is spinning moving you in one direction, the Earth is orbiting the Sun moving you in another direction, our galaxy is rotating moving you in another direction and the universe is expanding moving you in yet another direction. We don’t feel any of this because the speed is constant in all of these directions, but we are always being moved. When we pick a direction to move in and we start to move then we are choosing our own direction.

In life we are often moved by the will of others or our circumstances, but in each situation we have a choice in how we respond. Be a victim or believe in yourself. Be pushed down by life or rise up. Choose how you move and no matter how the world moves you, you will be in charge of your life.

Why We Should Thrive

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Leadership, Relationships, Success

A tree like all things in nature tries to thrive. It does so naturally, it is it’s normal state of being. In thriving it roots itself to the ground, it fights against gravity and grows towards the light, and it produces fruit to serve those around them.

We are not much different. Our natural state of being is to try and thrive, but often our past experiences and our understanding of them shape our mind in ways that make us think small and live small. To thrive seems scary, it seems beyond our capabilities or too dangerous to attempt. It is as if we don’t want to sail the sea because we think we might fall off the horizon.

As scary as it might be to try and thrive, a life wasted living small would be a regret worse than thriving and failing along the way.

My past traumas make me want to live small. My unconscious beliefs formed like mental scares from my past experiences feel like an invisible force stopping me from doing what I know will help me thrive. It takes courage to push through these mental barriers. I plan to try and be brave. I will fail along the way, but no mountain can be climbed sitting in a chair.

Remember, you are not alone. Like trees whose roots link with other trees to share resources and hold each other against strong winds, you have a community to lean on, so do. When we serve each other we all thrive together. There is no me without you. We all exist interconnected. We walk our own paths but we do so beside others walking their own paths.

When we thrive we can better serve others. When we serve others we thrive more ourselves. Take your first step. I am taking mine.

You Can’t Step Into The Same River Twice

Happiness, Health, Relationships, Success

I recently visited a church that was my spiritual home for many years before I moved away from the area. The church was the same with the same minister, but the congregation had grown and was filled with new people.

At first, it felt uncomfortable as it felt so different because I didn’t know most of the people attending, but the vibe and the spirit of the place were the same. It made me think about the idea of not being able to step in the same river twice because the water constantly changes as it flows downstream.

However, the name and location of the river remain the same. I suppose you could say that all things, people and places are both different and the same each time we encounter them. They are the same river but the river is different.

We are also different each day and in each moment. The eyes through which we see the world at 15 years old are very different to the eyes we see through at 30 and 60 and 90 years old. To a large degree, we see the world how we are not how the world is. Becoming aware of this and recognising the changing state of things and of us can help us to navigate the world successfully.

The Decisions We Make

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Leadership, Relationships, Success

The other evening, I was getting ready for bed and was about to wash my face and brush my teeth when in the bathroom I saw a bee sat on the windowsil. My first reaction was fear, and my mind started racing with imaginings of the bee stinging me. At this point, I was presented with a choice: be scared or be curious.

I chose the latter and moved in closer to have a look at the bee. It was alive, and it seemed to be sleeping. I noticed it was a honeybee, and my mind became filled with compassion. The bee must have been flying around all day looking for pollen to make honey and was exhausted. I left the bee there to rest, and in the morning, I opened the window, and after a while, it woke up and flew out to head home.

The point is that when we are faced with making a decision we can decide what to do based on fear, anger and other negative states, or we can make it based on curiosity, empathy and other positive states. The choice before we make the decision is whether we react or respond to circumstances. Do we step back or attack, or do we lean forward or empathise? Whichever we choose can become a habit, so choose carefully.

This Is Your Craft

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Leadership, Relationships, Success

The work that people do when they are working at a successful level is often described as a craft. A craft is an activity with specialist skills that need to be perfected to be good at that thing. It is the element of perfecting these skills that causes the work of successful people to be described as a craft.

I have come to realise that whatever a person’s craft is, there is another craft that sits behind it and is the same for everyone. This singular craft is the craft of thriving. It involves the thinking of the mind, the actions of the body, and the cultivating of chi. If you do not have the right mental health, physical health, and chi health, you don’t have any health at all. And without good health, you can not be successful.

So, the craft behind your craft is to make sure that you thrive. This begins with your mind. The thoughts you have and the beliefs you hold, both conscious and unconscious, control most of how your day goes. If you are not in a good place mentally, most things will not go well. You won’t be happy and you won’t be successful. When your mind is in a good place, you can make sure that your body is healthy and your chi is balanced, strong, and flowing. Then, with this foundation, you can work on your craft and be successful.

When you thrive, you can better succeed and serve others. When you serve others, they can better thrive, and so can you. To thrive and help others to thrive is the foundation of a good life.

Don’t Be Authentic

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Relationships, Success

Like choosing a character in a computer game based on their skills and characteristics, we get to choose our character by the choices we make every day, big and small.

Quite often, these choices are small, like miner course corrections that a pilot makes as the plane gets buffeted by winds and storms along the way to the planes destination. There are times in life, though, when we make what feel like life altering decisions. This can be in relationships, at work or where we choose to live, and many other areas in our lives.

One for me was when I worked in a coffee shop run by two businessmen, and they offered me a job with lots of money and travel prospects. I had just got married and was moving to another city. My gut told me that lots of travel opportunities would mean spending lots of time in hotels and not with my wife. I had to decide what was more important, money or time with my wife. I turned down the big money in favour of time with my wife.

I’m not mentioning this to say something about myself, I’m mentioning it to illustrate the kinds of decisions that become compass markers in the direction that our character takes. It might have worked out well if I had taken the job offer and I may not have been away from my wife all the time, but I went with my gut and I’m happy with the decision I made.

The point is that making decisions big and small tells us who we are. They mould our characters and sense of self. It is more important to be aligned with our character, to be ourselves than to aim to be authentic. Often, people will excuse bad behaviour by saying that they are being authentic. Hitting someone in the face because you are having a bad day is being authentic in the same way that a 2 year old is authentic. It is better to be true to yourself with the choices that you make. True to your principles and values, which comprise your character.

Find The Quiet In The Storm

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success

Find the quiet in the storm,
Find the path in the chaos.
The quiet is the mountain,
The path is the light.
Find the balance between the two.

We all live through challenging, noisy times and chaotic times, too. Not necessarily every day, but it happens to us all. To try and control the storm or the chaos would be a fools errand really as the world can not be controlled. The only thing we can realistically control is ourselves; our minds and the paths we choose to follow.

To find quiet in our minds amongst the storm around us, to find it despite the storm is a skill that can be practised and mastered. To practise meditation is to lift the mental weights that build the capability to be quiet and calm when all around you is not.

Similarly, the paths we choose in life define us, but there are so many paths, so many choices to make each day. To choose a path and to stick with it is also a skill. To follow a path amongst the chaos is not easy, but it is possible. The trick is to see the light that illuminates your chosen path and to follow it, no matter what.

These two things, the stillness in your mind and the path you follow, are different things, both with their own importance. The challenge is to balance them both. Too much stillness, and you don’t get anywhere. Only follow the path, and you can get lost along the way. This is the challenge of living a wise and intentional life.

Thrive to Serve, Serve to Thrive

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Relationships, Success

When being asked what the meaning of life is, I have a tendency to say 42 with my tongue firmly in my cheek. However, it is something I think about quite a lot, and currently, I have settled on the meaning of life to be to thrive and help others to thrive.

I could go into the many reasons for this, including the evolution of our socially focused species and the effects of feel good hormones when we do good for others, but essential if we thrive we are more able to help others, to serve them. Also, if we focus on serving others, our own well-being is improved, helping us to thrive. And on it goes.

I do not mean to be someone else’s servant, I mean to have the mindset to help others, to serve what they need to be happy and successful. Conversely, we also need to be open to allowing others to help us. Allowing this is a gift to the person helping us because it allows them to reap the rewards that come from helping other people.

This cycle goes on and on and can spread through the world, causing us all to thrive together. So, if we work on thriving in mind, body, and chi, we can serve others when they need us to, and in serving others, we thrive even more.

The Rhyming of the Universe.

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Relationships, Success

So many elements of the world and the universe work together like musical notes, like a symphony of sounds. Like the rhyming of poetry. Womb rhymes with tomb, bet rhymes with debt, and so on. Words that oppose each other yet are paired by their meaning. We give things words and meaning, we categorise and divide up the world so that we can make sense of the complexities of it all, but really, it is all one complex happening that we are each a part of.

We shy away from thinking about these complexities and prefer to think of ourselves in tribes and countries, races and genders. It is less scary to be part of a tribe and not to have to face the enormity of the universe. Division, however, invariably creates conflict. From the very first them and us, we are in conflict, even if just in our own heads.

Things like birth and death, work and play, happy and sad are not opposites in a finite sense. They are more like Yin and Yang, opposite sides of a circle. Ultimately, a circle only has one side. It is the balance of life, whether our individual lives or the interconnected web of all living things. The universe is not a collection of opposites, it is a symphony of sounds, a rhyming or words, it is one big happening.

Focus On The How Not The Why

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success

Life runs away from us backwards into our pasts, giving us the sense that we are being propelled forwards in time, when we think about it. But our speed is constant, which is why we don’t really feel it day to day. The thing to do is to pay attention, be mindful and enjoy the scenary. Time gives us no choice but to age, if we are lucky.

The grey and the wrinkles are gifts. They remind us how far we have come and that we are still here. That we still have choices of how we can live. The how is the most imprtant thing, more so than the why.

Figure out the how and the why will take care of itself.

Don’t Call It Mental Health

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Relationships, Success

It seems that the idea of mental health permeates Western culture as a requirement of wellbeing and a keen focus for employers and self-help gurus alike. The problem with the term and idea of mental health is that it is innately something that you have or you don’t. To feel that we don’t have it makes us feel that our life and mental state is below par and, therefore, less worthy than those who have it. It can make us feel that we are not enough.

I agree with Simon Sinek that a better term is ‘mental fitness’. It better describes the gradient upon which mental wellness sits. It becomes a scale and a skill to improve. It opens up the idea of working towards mental wellbeing one step at a time, much like building up strength or stamina. It implies a journey and not a binary situation where you have it or not. It allows for bad days and good days and avoids the self degradation that befalls those who do not feel mentally well. This includes those who have experienced war, as a soldier and a civilian.

Face What Scares You

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success

There is a Buddhist idea that comes from the Sanscrit word ‘maitri’, which means loving-kindness. Quite often, we are hard on ourselves, and we put ourselves down, or we are judgemental towards others. In each of these cases, we are thinking about ourselves or others based on opinions and beliefs that we have collected over the years. Opinions and beliefs that may not have any truth to them at all.

This is also true of the things that scare us. The reason we are scared of people or situations is because of our opinions and beliefs about them. It is as if we are running away from them without actually looking at them. When we apply loving-kindness to ourselves, we are looking at ourselves openly and with an embracing sensibility that diffuses negative thinking until what remains is only positive.

If we apply loving-kindness to the things that scare us, when we are curious, when we are interested in why these things scare us, then they lose their power. They lose their power simply because you have chosen not to run away, we have chose to face them. I am not saying that this will be easy, but it is worth it.

Choose a Better Response

Happiness, Health, Relationships, Success

I often see people swiping their arms at flies buzzing around them, which is usually accompanied by comments such as “damn fly” or “irritating fly.” I have increasingly been of the opinion that being annoyed by a fly is a choice.

This comes from the perspective that life and the world are not as they are but how we are. We interpret the events that go on around us based on the meaning we put on them. This is not to negate verifiable facts that exist independent of interpretation. What I mean is whether we see something as good or bad, intimidating or joyous.

If it is true that we put such meaning on the events that we experience, then we choose to see a fly as irritating. We can, if we choose to, say hi to the fly and thank them for their visit, for example. They can not harm us and will usually fly away shortly after they fly near to us. If we apply this idea to the rest of our lives, there are many situations where we can choose a better response rather than reacting with negative emotions.

To Serve First Thrive

Happiness, Health, Relationships, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

Put on your oxygen mask first is the instruction to parents when being given a safety briefing on a plane before the flight begins. The reason is that if you are unconscious, you can not help your child.

Equally, in day to day life, if you spend your time helping others and not looking after yourself, then you will become depleted, and your metaphorical cup will be empty. If you fill up your cup, then you have more to give.

In order to serve, you must first thrive yourself. To give you must first have plenty. This applies to your health, both mental and physical. To help others, you need to thrive so that the energy you give to others leaves you with energy to take care of yourself, too.

You also see the world and other people through the prism of yourself. You see things as you are, not how they are.

How We Treat Others

Happiness, Health, Relationships, Success

Before J K Rowling wrote Harry Potter, she was just another person sitting in a cafe working on a story. It is tempting to preach the idea that we should not judge a book by its cover, as the person we see as less than might become a billionaire. However, it is better to think that everyone has importance right here, right now.

It is better to avoid thinking of judging at all and instead to focus on treating each person you meet with dignity and respect. It does not matter if they are a billionaire or they are homeless and penniless. They are still human beings and still have value. The way in which we treat others says more about us than it does about those we interact with.

So, be the person who brightens up the day of others. Smile, say good morning, open doors for people, say thank you, put down your phone and speak to people face to face. Connect with others in meaningful ways.

The Power of Thoughts

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success

Yesterday it was sunny and around 20 degrees Celsius, so I needed to put suncream on my 5 year old. As I was about to put it around her neck she said don’t tickle me and preceeded to wriggle around on the floor giggling as I tried to put on the suncream. I then had her sit up and take some slow breathes to allow me to try again. She let me put on the suncream and she didn’t feel like I was tickling her.

When she prepositioned in her head that it would tickle, that was her experience. When she prepositioned in her head that it wouldn’t tickle it didn’t, as much.

A more extreme example can be found in Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search For Meaning. In the book, the author recounts his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp. He describes how some inmates would give up and others would move around helping others where they could, giving away their last piece of bread. The point being, one’s attitude or thoughts in any given situation can bring about very different states of mind.

Our thoughts become our emotions, and our emotions become our experiences, and our experiences, if repeated enough, become our reality; the world as we see it. Our thoughts are very powerful, and we have the power to choose them. So, we have a choice on how we see the world. Empower yourself by selecting your thoughts.

Be A Rebel, Be Content

Happiness, Health, Success

To buy the new fashion item or the new gadget, etc is to be unhappy with what you already have because it is not the new thing being sold to you. That is what it boils down to. This comes from the story told by those selling things to us that what they are offering will make us happy. This cannot be true if the last thing they sold us, which is now out of fashion or less up to date, also was supposed to make us happy.

It is better to try and be content with what we already have. Otherwise we will be leaping from shiny object to shiny object and never really being happy, just momentarily joyful.

What Changes Do You Need To Make?

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success

There were two lumberjacks who spent their days chopping up wood with an axe. They both started and finished at the same time yet one of them would leave in the middle of the day for an hour and would still chop more wood by the end of the day. Frustrated by this the other lumberjack complained about how he chopped more wood but left for an hour each day and asked where he went everyday. He responded by saying that he went home to sharpen his axe.

The point of the story is that effort does not always determine results. Being effective can sometimes matter more. We all have things in our lives that need ‘sharpening,’ things that would change our lives for the better off if we made specific changes or improvements. The question then becomes, what ‘axes’ in your life need to be sharpened.

Build The Life You Want

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Leadership, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

I recently watched an interview at Harvard with Oprah Winfrey and Arthur Brooks where they were discussing the book that they wrote together called Build The Life You Want. This book is on my to do list of books to read, but they covered the essentials of it in this interview. You can watch the video by following this link, but here are the essentials.

Happiness has three elements.

Enjoyment (not pleasure)
Meaning or purpose
Satisfaction

Enjoyment is pleasure plus people and memory. You must spend time with other people and make memories together to experience enjoyment. Also, you cannot keep satisfaction through acquiring things. There is an equation, however, for lasting satisfaction. Lasting satisfaction equals all the things you have divided by all the things you want. If you reduce the things that you want you increase lasting satisfaction.

Faith is believing that there is something larger than yourself. This could be God, nature, the universe, etc. The point is that you are not the centre of your universe.

As well as the elements of happiness that are mentioned above, there are institutions in your life that all need your attention to be happier. They are like a pension fund where you have to deposit in all of them to reap the rewards of feeling happier further down the road. These institutions are:

Family
Friends
Faith
Work that serves others

It is important not to think of happiness as a destination, but to aim for happierness. To be happier than you are now. It is a shift in state by ensuring that you focus on all four institutions.

When good things happen to you or bad things happen to you a good practice is to think, how can I use this in the service of others? This will mean that the bad things and the good things have purpose and you have control over what you do with what you get.

It is good to do small things with great love. Don’t always focus on having a big impact or making a big change. Doing small things with great love will, in the end, have more of an impact. After all greatness is determined by service to others.

Social media is the junk food of social life. There is no substitute for being in the same room as someone and being able to look them in the eye. This human to human interaction will give you more of the feel good hormones and will build stronger relationships. Interacting through screens is not the same.

Finally, your legacy is not some great thing that you leave behind, it is every life that you touch.

The Atomic Bomb And The Infinite Scroll

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

When navigating the world countries and companies will try to invent things to tip the balance in their favour. In the case of the atomic bomb, during the second world war America was concerned that Germany was building a bomb that could destroy entire cities so they set about figuring out how to create an atomic bomb themselves. They put together a team of physicists and others to secretly figure out and build this new bomb. When the first bomb was tested J. Robert Oppenheimer, the lead physicist, is said to have quoted the Bhagavad-Gita with “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” He regretted the invention. Then America dropped two atomic bombs in Japan killing many many innocent people and the age of the nuclear bomb began.

Aza Raskin invented the infinite scroll on mobile devices. This meant that when you scroll down on your social media account new content keeps being generated infinitely. The inventor said afterwards “It’s as if social media companies are taking behavioral cocaine and just sprinkling it all over your interface and that’s the thing that keeps you like coming back and back and back.” Extreme maybe, but the hit of dopamine that you get from finding a new video or post that you like over and over again is creating a society addicted to their devices.

The first example of the Atomic Bomb is far more extreme than the infinite scroll, but the point is that we need to consider the consequences of what we do. Making decisions for moral and ethical reasons could not be needed more. We are seemingly more divided and more obsessed with status and money than we have been before. It is time to live lives with values and principles.

Chances To Practice Good Habits

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success

In mindfulness meditation the aim is to focus on the breath and when your mind wanders to gently bring it back to the breath over and over to better control your mind and be more present. However, in order to come back to the breath we need something to come back from. The same can be said of all the things in life that we do not like. They are a chance to practice good habits.

Wishing someone would hurry up is a chance to practice patience. Being faced with an angry person is a chance to practice empathy, as to being angry causes the other person to suffer. Feeling angry ourselves is a chance to practice self control. And on it goes.

Everything in life can be seen as a way to become happier and more fulfilled by practicing good habits. We are what we repeatedly do, so practicing the things that will make us the kind of person that we want to be is a good way to live your life. If practiced well then we become the person that we are trying to be.

Turn Towards The Light

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success

A shadow is an absence of light. When we focus on what is not working in our lives and all of the negative things it is like we are looking at a shadow. If we change our perspective and turn towards the light our lives look very different.

We can choose what we focus on, if we try. It may require building new habits and letting old habits whither, but it is worth it. We are what we repeatedly do, so change what you do and you will feel the benefit. However, in order for the new habits to stick we have to believe that we are the kind of person who does those things.

For example, you are not quitting smoking you are someone who does not smoke. Turn your attention towards what you want, towards the light, and your life will get better.

Just Do It

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success

The ‘Just’ in the Nike tagline Just Do It recognises that we have a moment of hesitation before doing something new or scary and we need to push ourselves by Just doing it. The word ‘just’ is very powerful in this context. It cuts through the crap and the overthinking and compels us to take action and move forward.

The word reduces the pressure that we or the world is putting on the intended activity and encourages us to switch off our overthinking mind and to take the leap. Without this many of us would not start. Great ideas and opportunities would go undone without it. So the next time you hesitate to do something that would be good for you Just Do It.

The Five Laws Of Stratospheric Success

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

These laws come from a great little book called The Go-Giver. The book weaves a narrative of a man trying to end the third quarter of the business year with improved sales. In desperation he reaches out to someone to help him and they teach him these five laws. They are laws that can have a profound impact on your life if you were to take them to heart and live them out.

In the coming days I will be exploring each of these laws as I start the year releasing a new blog post each day. These are the laws.

THE LAW OF VALUE
THE LAW OF COMPENSATION
THE LAW OF INFLUENCE
THE LAW OF AUTHENTICITY
THE LAW OF RECEPTIVITY

Many of us set new goals when a new year begins. We set new year resolutions that we often break by the end of January. It almost seems to be expected that we will fail. That is usually because we set a goal but do not change our habits very much. These laws, if taken to heart and followed, will bring about new and different habits. They will unlock a new way of seeing yourself that could bring about ‘stratospheric success’. Let’s own 2024 and make it a successful year.

We Can Be Peacemakers

Happiness, Health, Relationships, Success

Much of the world is at war with other parts of the world, but also, much conflict is celebrated in the news and social media, when one celebrity is fighting with another or some situation is pitting one group of people against another. It makes good viewing, because people watch. Some conflicts are real and others are not. However, all forms of conflict seep into our lives through our exposure to them.

We can be mindful of what we let into our minds, what things we agree with because those around us do, what we watch on TV and whether we encourage or engage in divisive speech. We are not in a war zone, but we can be peacemakers. We can seek resolution and not conflict. We can become open hearted and not hard hearted. We can learn to assume good intentions from those we interact with. We can seek out our prejudices and judgemental thinking and remove them. We can meditate and pray and share what we have with those around us. In the end, from the cosmic perspective, we are all in this together.

We are on a planet hurtling through space around a star, one of billions in our galaxy in a universe that has billions of galaxies. We share our DNA with all other life on this planet. We share DNA with a banana, and a fruit fly, believe it or not, because we have the same origin as all other life on this planet. If you choose to, you can see all living things as our brothers and sisters, as many native peoples do. Otherwise we risk conflict and divisiveness, even if unintentional.

We are all brothers and sisters. One human family. The chasm between us and our enemies is but a step towards love and compassion. The space between enemies is decided by how we see them and how they see us. In reality there is no space.

The Power of Momentum

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Leadership, Success

When a large ship wants to change direction it’s turning circle is quite big because it has inertia, or momentum, to keep going in the direction it has been traveling in. Our lives are no different. Our habits keep us moving in a particular direction and we have to work against that momentum if we want to change direction.

On the flip side, if you want to achieve something in life starting from a standstill is difficult and small barriers will prevent us from forward movement. For example, if a train is standing still you can put a one inch block in front of the wheel and it will struggle to move at all. If a train is going at full speed it can smash through a concrete wall.

Momentum matters. Building the right habits gives you that momentum. Doing the right things everyday will give your life an intention and a direction. We are what we repeatedly do.

Reducing The Suffering Of Others

Happiness, Health, Relationships

Naturally in life we don’t want to see other people suffer. However, we often go about the world interacting with others from our own point of view. We think about things in terms of how they impact us. This can cause us to be reactive to life’s events, asking ‘Why have they done this to me?’, for example. A better question to ask is ‘Why did they do that?’ This moves the thinking from us to them and allows us to consider the reason the other person is behaving the way they are.

Hurt people hurt people. So if someone hurts you with their words or their actions it is an indication that they are suffering, and rather than becoming reactive and trying to hurt them back, we could be compassionate and empathetic. This diffuses the situation and creates a space to helps the other person to heal. We will heal a little too.

If we reframe how we see our interactions with others and move from ‘How can I make things better for me?’ to ‘How can I reduce their suffering?’, then your relationships will improve and life will become more fulfilling.

The Problem With Complaining

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success

There is often a sense in today’s culture that suggests that we should complain because we might get something out of it. The goal being to get something not to have an issue fixed. There are also times when we have a legitimate complaint, where something has gone wrong. I’m not talking about either of these types of complaints in this post.

What I am talking about is moaning about day to day things that we are unhappy about. In conversation with a colleague I complained about the time I would have to get up in order to catch the train to a training event in another city. Rather than the socially accepted response of validating my moaning, they said, “Well you did volunteer for the training.”

The point is that most things that we complain/moan about are things we have signed up for but we still want sympathy for the effort we have to put in. If you want to be productive, effective or in demand you have to change your mindset and quit the moaning. If you just get on with it life will be better for you. You will be happier and you will become someone others go to in order to get things done. A simple change in habit will have a big impact.

Awaken The Greatness In You

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

Once or twice in a generation there are born people of greatness. People like Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King come into the world and make it a better place for us all. The difference between us and them is that we often are waiting for people like them to turn up and save us. This is not likely to happen. Therefore, we need to save ourselves.

Not an easy task. The problem is in thinking that such greatness is something people are born with, but history shows us that people of greatness are molded by the circumstances they are in and the decisions they make every day to respond to those circumstances.

Even though Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years he demanded respect from the Prison Officers every day. That was a decision made once and kept for 27 years. Seth Godin has written a blog post every day for many years and has now posted over 7000 blog posts because he made the decision decades ago that he will write a new blog post tomorrow. Once decided no more thought needs to go into it, because he knows what he will be sharing with the world tomorrow. This takes discipline no doubt, but it can be done, we just need to decide.

There are many in the world who go through difficult times, and I am not dismissing these difficulties, I am saying that you choose to see yourself as a victim or as someone who will take ownership of your difficulties and make them better, in whatever way you can. If we think of ourselves as victims and wait for someone else to come along and save us, this does us a disservice to our own abilities.

The future you is capable of extraordinary things, if you decide that you can and work on fulfilling that belief every single day. You are your own saviour. Your circumstances, though challenging, can mould and awaken the greatness in you, if you believe it is possible and live up to that belief every day.