Tag: Nature
Program Yourself To Thrive
I was in a taxi on the way to work the other day and while we were stopped at the traffic lights I saw a little blue flower growing out of a crack in the tarmac path. It had no business being there but there it was anyway doing its best to survive and thrive. It got me thinking about the way nature strives to live and grow all of the time, as if it is programmed to thrive anywhere it finds itself.
Often we talk about needing the right resources or the right conditions before trying something new. We overthink new ventures and often talk ourselves out of them. If we were to take examples from nature and aim to thrive no matter the conditions, then we would do well in life. We would take every opportunity with both hands and just get on with it.
Thriving is not about the conditions we have but the mindset that we have. To be excited about a new challenge and to have the courage to give it a go and see what happens, while also applying our skills and common sense to bend our path towards success. We can program ourselves to thrive by the thoughts we have and how we explain both and bad situations to ourselves.
Be like the little blue flower.
Feeling At Home
I have a few places where I feel like I belong. One of them is being at home with my wife and daughters. This is my home base, to use a baseball euphemism. To extend this euphemism further, I feel that when it comes to my religious beliefs my Unitarian chapel is my religious base. I feel at home in any Unitarian church or chapel.
When it comes to feeling connected to the natural world, being near trees and grass, flowers and all of the animals, birds and insects that share the Earth with us, feels like being in my natural world base.
You will have places and situations which are your bases, places where you feel a connection to something outside of yourself, and this is a very good thing. These bases are spaces in which we should spend time just being, and exploring all that it means to be a human being, and more than that, being the individual human being that we each are.
It Shouldn’t Be Like That
Often we feel that a situation should or shouldn’t be like our preconceived ideas, and if the situation does not match our ideas we get upset, frustrated or angry. We do this a lot, we should all over the place.
Problems arise in life when we try to make reality as we want it to be. We share the world with a lot of people, animals and insects. Each with their own views and behaviours. Trying to control what happens is like telling water not to flow, it will flow, as that is it’s nature.
If we let go of judgements and preferences then we are better able to accept what arises in life and see the positives and the opportunities that each situation creates. We also feel less upset, frustrated and angry. If we accept each moment with gratitude then we feel blessed to be alive