Tag: Pathway To Fulfilment

Your Best Self Is Yourself

Leadership, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

Many of us want to be like Steve Jobs or Michael Jordon or Barak Obama, but the world already has these people. If we are to strive to be like anybody else we lose, because we lose ourselves in the process.

We can certainly learn lessons from these people, in fact we should learn their lessons, but more important are the lessons we teach ourselves through trying and failing and trying again. When we try new things we learn how We do such things, what our strengths and skills are and how we can use them effectively in the world.

Don’t strive to be the next anybody, strive to be the best version of yourself that you can. Read, watch and learn the lessons of others, understand the wisdom that has come with their experience, but never avoid going out into the world and gaining your own wisdom through your experience.

If nothing else, learn how to be yourself and seek to make a difference in the world, and you will.

Seeing And Being Seen

Happiness, Leadership, Success

Recently, I saw a homeless man asking for change and I stopped to give him some money. I looked at him straight in the eyes, smiled and I said “have a lovely day.” The fact that I acknowledged him and made a human contact seemed to mean more to him than the money. Hundreds of people must walk past him every day and ignore him. I made him feel seen.

This is the power of being seen. Not just looked at but acknowledged and appreciated. Seeing the other person as just as important, as a human being. And when you see other people in this way you make tangible, authentic relationships with them.

To see someone and to be seen by someone are the central connection that creates opportunities to thrive, together.

The Gift Of Giving

Happiness

Giving is a mind-set, it should not be limited to single acts of generosity. It is something that we can strive to do every moment of our lives. Each time someone shows me kindness by giving me something I try to do something similar for somebody else. I say try, because I do not always get the chance or think to do it, but I do try. And I think in giving back to others that which has been given to us, is putting positive actions out into the world, in the hope that they will be passed onto others again and again, so that we can all build a better world together, just by giving what we can, when we can.

One of the things that I have come to realise is a precious gift to give someone is to listen to them. To give your time to actively listen to what other people want to talk to you about. By ‘actively listen to them’ I mean to not allow your mind to wander, to give the person your full attention and to show them that you are listening to them, with your body language and the way you respond to what they are saying. It doesn’t matter if it is something seemingly unimportant, or something that is very difficult for the other person to deal with, whatever it is, just listening can be a gift.

Stress In The Workplace

Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

There are many jobs which are naturally stressful, like being a Fireman/woman or a Police Officer. There are, however, many jobs which are not inherently stressful, but the working environment makes them so. This is the main cause of stress in the workplace, I would say.

If colleagues are pitted against each other in compitition to earn bonuses, a cut throat, winner take all culture will develop. If colleagues are encouraged to collaborate and find fair outcomes for customers, then a supportive and uplifting culture will develop.

Another consideration is whether things like the values and operating rhythm of the workplace match your own. In other words, are you a good fit for your workplace and your role. Figuring out your own values and how you work best is a great place to start.

Sometimes though, the problem is the view you have of the work you do. I work in complaints and I could say that I speak to angry and rude people all day long, but I don’t. In fact, I speak to people who have problems, often caused by the company I work for, and it is my job to fix the problems and rebuild the relationships between the customers and the company. In other words, see them as human beings first and take responsibility for fixing their issues.

The views we have can blind us to the opportunities that problems provide.

Meet People Where They Are

Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

When we have big plans or we want to bring something new into the world or we are strong with our views, we often forget to see the position other people are in, because we are so focused on our own message.

This way of communicating often feels natural or the right way to behave, but when we do we miss a huge opportunity. When we communicate in this way we meet people where we are, we project 100 percent outwards. This often causes clashes and conflict, because others are doing the same thing.

We could let others communicate 100 percent and become completely passive, but this is not good either. The ideal is to meet people where they are and where we are and aim for a 50/50 exchange. This involves actively listening and caring about the other person and taking turns. All very basic things to do, but often forget to do them.

What To Be Grateful For

Happiness

Recently I have begun to realise that I am getting on in years. Next year I will have my 40th birthday, a number that seems a lot bigger now it is pending in my life. I’ve also got more grey hair appearing. At first I had the usual fear based reaction that makes you question if you’ve done all that you set out to do and makes you reassess everything.

I felt myself going down a rabbit hole of despair and I caught myself and six words changed my mindset immediately. I am grateful for the grey. Many people do not live to 40. I realised that every year, every day is a privilege many have not had.

Advertising companies and our culture in general will have you wanting to be grateful for material things, things that you can buy and own. In my view these are the wrong things to be grateful for, as nice as they are.

Be grateful for waking up this morning, for have the health that you have, the partner you have, for having a home and food to eat, for having a job that pays the bills, for having friends and colleagues, for the challenges that help you grow, and for having been born at all.

If you are grateful for these things then your life will be so much happier and you will live a more present life.

Love What You Do

Achieving Goals, Leadership, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

We hear the motivational mantra “Do what you love” a lot in the motivational coaching sphere, and in society generally, but I think it is bad advice if the suggestion is to have the thing you love as your source of income. The thing you love may not be something that you can be paid to do, or at least difficult to get paid for.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t do what you love, but assuming everyone can is misleading. By all means do what you love, but make sure your rent and bills are paid. You will find it even harder to be a success if you end up homeless.

When you are wanting to be successful it is more effective to love what you do. Some people sell coffee in a coffee shop, others create meaningful experiences for customer that lift their day and make them feel good, while selling them coffee. Some manage a team, others lead a team in such a way that every member of the team contributes and works towards a shared vision.

You get my point. Sometimes it is better to love what you do, but also do what you love when you can. We all want different things and have different life experiences and constraints. Don’t feel that you have to do what you love because society says so, do what is best for you.

Always Look For Beauty

Happiness

For some the day ahead seems to be filled with boredom, for some it is dread. Many have felt the devastating sting of loss that makes it difficult to carry on. Many live the same day every day through the repetition of events and interactions. Many feel lost and don’t know what to do with their day. Many feel as if they have reached rock bottom. Many feel as if they are drowning in debt.

These are realities for a lot of people, but every day there is still beauty in the world. A smile, a sunset, a song, a flower, an opportunity to be generous, an opportunity to be kind. The world is full of beauty and the opportunity to create it. The negative things in life can cause us to be blind to them, so we must actively look for beauty every day. This will increase our sense of gratitude and improve our wellbeing.

It will not solve all of our problems, but it will put us in a better position to solve those problems for ourselves.

Do Something

Happiness, Success

Often we wait for the right idea, the right job or the right partner before we trying something new. This waiting is a form of hiding, hiding from trying that new thing, because we fear failure or we fear making the wrong choice and wasting our lives.

If we don’t choose something we are wasting our lives. The regrets most elderly people have is the things they did not try. You have time to try and fail and try again. You will also either succeed or learn and then succeed. Failure is essential to success, because we can learn from it.

My advice is this, figure out what your values are, what your beliefs are and what your ethics are. Then go find a project to start, a challenge to take on, a problem to solve or a role to try that aligns with these and see what happens. If it aligns with your values, beliefs and ethics then you will thrive, you will feel empowered and you will feel fulfilled by the work you do.

But you must choose something and start.

Art Is I; Science Is We

Achieving Goals, Success

This is a quote by Claude Bernard, a French Scientist, and it reflects the two modes of being human; to create individually for the purposes of creating is Art; to create individually or together for the collective good is Science. For me the best Art blurs the line between these two, because some Art changes society.

Art can also be how you live your life, how you interact with people. Leaving a person uplifted after your interaction with them is Art. Solving a person’s problem in the way only you could is Art. It is turning an interaction, a collection of ideas, an opportunity of any kind into something that makes a life or the world better. It is creation in its best sense.

You can change the world for the better. We can change the world for the better. It does not necessarily matter which, only that the lives of others are blessed by your presence. Go be an artist my friend.

Go Ahead And Lead

Happiness, The Pathway To Fulfilment

We think of leaders as big, charismatic characters who lead from the front, who announce their vision and point in the direction they are going in. They inspire us to follow them.

This is not what I mean when I say lead, though to be visionary is certainly needed. To me, leadership is taking care of those around you. It is servant leadership. This type of leadership does not require vision, it requires empathy, compassion, and above all, courage.

It means that you become the solver of other people’s problem and check in with those in your circle, making human connections and taking care of people. Not in big ways but in small uplifting comments or in time spent engaged with someone, and so on. This to me is leadership.

So go ahead and lead.

Trying Something New

Achieving Goals, Success

Where do our beliefs and values come from? They are manifestations from the culture and community we grow up in, the examples our parents give us and how they raised us, as well as the experiences that we have had. Through all of this input we piece together what we believe and what we value.

All of this then affects the decisions that we make on a day to day basis, but I believe that if we are to make wise decisions in life then we should seek out wisdom as well, which can be found in any of the many religious scriptures and philosophical texts from around the world. If we have wise guidelines or principles to follow then stepping into the unknown will seem less scary.

Something else that can help us in our ventures into the unknown is to have an attitude of asking ourselves “what if…?” What if we tried something new, what if we gave it a go, what if? Being open to the many positive possibilities that could result in trying something new means that we will more likely have a positive outcome.

It is also a way of getting past the barrier of failure, a way to overcome our fear of criticism or looking like a fool; what if we succeeded, what if we achieved our dreams. This allows us to consider the possibility of actually succeeding, rather than becoming consumed by the thought of failure.

Being Creative

Success

The act of being creative is essentially to take existing things and ideas and to create something new out of them. We write with words and we paint with paint. These are the typical things we think of as being creative, but there are many ways to be creative.

However, the things we create end up creating us too, because the act of creating them changes us. We are a different person after each act of creating through what we learn about ourselves and the world via the creative process.

Many people think of the thing they create as their baby. It is not a baby, it is a thing that exists because of you, but it is not a human being.

The human being in the creation process is the creator. If you want to use the Parent Child analogy then the creator is more like the Child, because the process of creating changes us and contributes to creating who we are.

Self Made Possibilities

Achieving Goals, Success

I was scrolling through my news feed on Facebook and a picture of a purple flower growing out of a brick wall appeared and it struck a chord with me. It reminded me that many people have been successful when they started off with nothing and no one on their side. Also, there have been many who had everything and did nothing with it.

The possibilities we have in life are sometimes given to us through the things we are born with or born into, but much of what is required for success to happen is self made. The possibilities for success have to be seen and then the work done to make them a reality.

Success that is worthwhile pursuing is always self made. Success that is given to us is not really success.

Which Is Right?

Happiness

Some find a perfectly mown lawn beautiful, others find a field of wild flowers beautiful. Which is better? Neither is better, because it depends on the context and the option of those looking at them.

If you wanted to play a game of cricket then a field of knee high wild flowers would not be a good place to play. I neatly mown cricket pitch is better. If you want to paint a colourful landscape painting then a field of knee high wild flowers is better.

Some find the neat lines mown on a football pitch to be beautiful. The order and the precision align with their values. Some find the splashes of colours and life giving properties of wild flowers to be beautiful. The randomness and pollination align with their values.

Neither one is better than the other. It depends on context and personal opinion.

Inner And Outer Circles

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Leadership

In the business world there is often what is referred to as an inner circle, a group of high ranking colleagues who have their own circle that the majority are kept out of. There are also examples of inner circles in other types of organisation too.

The problem with inner circles is that they create a division that casts everyone as lesser or below those in the inner circle. I guess you could say that everyone else is in the outer circle.

Any division creates conflict and there is an us and a them. Within an organisation if there is division within it, hopes of working together are reduced. The idea of a circle is a positive one though, what matters is how many people are included within it. It is better to be inclusive than exclusive. The more we include the better our society will be.

What We Tell Ourselves

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success

We need to consider the things we tell ourselves about ourselves. When we internalise the voices of others they become part of our inner dialogue. This includes what our parents say, what our friends say, what our employer says, what the news says and also what the teachings of our religion or philosophy says. All of these voices become part of who we are, but if we do nothing to take control of what we allow to become part of our inner voice, then we give up much of our power and self-control to the direction of others.

It is important, I feel, to do some mental spring cleaning every now and again to take a fresh look at what internal voices we want to follow and what internal voices we don’t. Some of this is of course subconscious, so is not obvious, but keeping a journal to put down thoughts, feelings and experiences and questioning these can lead to powerful realisations about why we make the decisions we make. In more extreme situations reaching out for support from a Councillor or Cognitive Behavioural Therapist can be invaluable. For most of us self-reflection and opening up to friends and family will help us figure out a lot of what is holding us back and find better ways to think and act to bring about a more fulfilling life.

I have reflected on this a lot over the past few years and I truly believe that we can be the architects of our own lives. What we tell ourselves can be with us throughout our lives, being careful what we think and say to ourselves is important. If we find ourselves saying that we cannot do something, because we don’t feel ready, equipped or able, then there is a simple thing we can do to help us get out of this trap. If you find yourself saying that you cannot do something out of a belief that it is beyond you, then I encourage you to add the word ‘yet’ to the end of each negative thought. “I can’t drive a car yet.” “I can’t draw yet.” “I can’t lose weight yet.” “I can’t find a new job yet.” “I can’t run a marathon yet.” Whatever it is, there is power in the word ‘yet.’ It opens up the possibility and hope of achieving whatever it is in the future, and it is empowering rather than dis-empowering.

Why Should We Read?

The Pathway To Fulfilment

The first step on my Pathway To Fulfilment is to Acquire Wisdom. It is essential, I feel, to have a grounding in wisdom, because on a journey to living a fulfilling life the more wisdom we begin with the less time we spend making mistakes and going down blind alleys.

The traditional way of acquiring said wisdom is to read, to read lots and read broadly. This is still an effective way to do it, and I will explain why in a moment, but the same information can be obtained through conversations with well informed people, exploring websites or watching YouTube videos. Many universities have lectures on any subject you could want to study free on YouTube.

The advantage I have found in reading books is that often someone has poured their life experience into the book they have written and this is invaluable. Also, a book does not require batteries and can easily be carried around and shared with others.

When you have acquired a number of books you will end up with your own personal library and simply looking at the books you have read will remind you of snippets of wisdom without needing to read the books again. Though reading some books again after you have lived a little bit of life will bring a new perspective to the ideas and words in them.

So, read frequently and broadly, but also take advantage of the masses of resources available on the world wide web. I have a list of books that I recommend on the Resources page, please do have a look.

What Is Normal?

Happiness, The Pathway To Fulfilment

When we look at a bottle of shampoo it will often say that it is for Normal Hair. In our culture we have an idea of what normal is, it is what the majority of people we know do or say, or in the case of shampoo, the type of hair that the majority of people have. I would like to suggest that normal is simply what is most popular, it is not a trait by which people should be judged.

In marketing, companies will often aim their interruptions at the majority in the hopes that everyone will pay for their product or service. There is a fundamental problem with that. Either the product or service is designed for a particular kind of person, in which case it is not for everyone, or it is aimed at everyone and therefore no one, because we are not all the same.

In culture, we often want to be ‘normal’ and to fit in, but when we try to act or think in ways that are the most popular then we are not being ourselves. We are performing a role to be accepted, but everyone ends up doing the dance of normality and losing themselves in the process.

What we should do, in my opinion, is to figure out what our values are, what we believe and, importantly, what our ethics are. This will determine which people we will enjoy spending our time with. We can identify our ‘tribe’ and we will then genuinely fit in and thrive. The goal with this is to belong rather than to be accepted, and these are two very different things.

Choosing Hope

Happiness, Health

We often don’t believe something is possible, that we cannot achieve or do certain things. We have a diminished sense of hope. This belief, I would argue, is a choice, whether made consciously or not. Our life experiences, and the meanings we place on them, direct our thinking when it comes to our abilities.

However, every new experience changes how we understand and view our past experiences and our current selves. This process of new understanding can actually cause our memories to change, because what we remember is always held in our present mind, along with our understanding of it.

We might remember new details which change what we think happened or a change in our understanding of what happened can profoundly alter how we feel about these memories. For example, I have been living with Fibromyalgia for over ten years and for a long time it felt debilitating, with pain in my joints and muscles and feeling exhausted most of the time.

But, as is often the case, this struggle became something that led me to understanding how Chi (Qi), or energy, flows through our bodies and how Chi Kung (Qigong) gives us the ability to master our own Chi. It has put me on a path towards self mastery and a profound understanding that we are in fact our own saviours, we can heal ourselves, if we learn how. Hope very often rises like a phoenix from the ashes of the trauma and challenges in our lives. Hope has a power to transform how we look at ourselves and our circumstances.

As Maya Angelou said in her poem Still I Rise, 

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise

Getting The Right Kind Of Status

Achieving Goals, Leadership, Success

In society there has always been a version of an Alpha male or female, or the top dog. The general consensus is that you need to be the best at what you do and take charge of whatever situation you are in. The status of being the ‘top dog’ is then earned.

The problem with this method of getting status is that no trust is built up and no feeling of fellowship. In other words people just get out of the way, rather than forming genuine relationships. This is a problem when tough times require friends or colleagues to support each other.

In business, if the culture encourages internal compitition in order to bring in more money for the company, then tough times will mean the company crumbles. If the culture encourages teamwork where colleagues take care of each other and the company takes care of colleagues, then colleagues will rise to save their company in tough times.

A culture of working together can also be found in friendships, and any other human relationships, and within these cultures the person who always gives help and support, or goes above and beyond for others, will get the high status. They will be trusted, respected and followed, in the case of leadership. This, in my opinion, is the right kind of status to work for.

The Art Of Interaction

Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

We don’t often think of how we interact as something to work on or improve. We learn how to communicate with each other during our childhood years and that’s that. However, if we are to make a real difference in the world then we need to master how we interact with each other.

I first came across the concept of the ‘art of interaction’ in Seth Godin’s book Linchpin, where he describes every interaction with a colleague or customer as practicing the art of interaction. It is an integral part of becoming a linchpin within your organisation, someone who is indispensable.

It is also good to practice how to interact with others on a general basis in order to develop good relationships and to uplift others. Treating it as an ‘art’ also means that how you interact with others can be unique to you. It is an art not a science. It is also one of the strings to your bow that are needed in order to have self mastery.

How To Deal With Change

Happiness, Success

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

– Bruce Lee

We are in a time of the year that we associate with change, the season of Autumn, when we see leaves turn vibrant colours before falling. The Autumn equinox was on 22nd of September, where the length of the day matched the length of the night and it signals the change from Summer to Autumn. It is the mid-point between the Summer and Winter Solstices. Although change is a constant, it is not so clearly expressed in nature as it is in Autumn.

In day to day life change can be seen when cups of tea or coffee go cold, when children become adults and then become old and the future all to quickly becoming the past. It is a fact of life that things will always change, yet often our experience in life is that some things seem to stay the same. This is usually because the change of these things is slow. Yet over a long enough time-line key features of a generation often seem very familiar. The fashion of today seems a little reminiscent of fashions of the past, which I suppose is to be expected, after-all fashion is an aspect of culture, which defines itself by what has come before, either by being different from it, or being the same as it, and it appears to me that the same fashions come around again every twenty to thirty years, in an ever changing cycle, which goes back again and again to where it came from, though is never exactly the same as it was the previous time, or the time before that. This idea is put well in the book Hagakure, The Book of the Samurai. It says this:

“It is said that what is called “the spirit of an age” is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world’s coming to an end. In the same way, a single year does not have just spring or summer. A single day too, is the same.

For this reason, although one would like to change today’s world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done.”

We often wish that things could be as they were when we were younger, or we wish we could go back to a time in our lives when things were better, but, we always look back at our pasts with rose tinted glasses, and if we did go back, I suspect that it would not be as good as we think it would be, and this would ruin the memory we have of that time. Our perspective of the memories that we have changes too, as we experience new things and gain new understanding of the world around us. This all gives us new understanding of our memories as well, which in turn changes the memories we have. There will certainly be memories from the past 18 months that we would prefer to forget, if we could.

From the perspective of many religions from the East, the present is all that exists, and the past only exists in our present mind, there is only the now, which is itself eternal, because it is always here, yet that which exists always changes in a constantly evolving moment. However, that is not to say that memories are not to be treasured, of cause they are. We all have photo albums documenting our lives and the lives of those we care about. Some of the first baby photos of me that my parents showed to my Wife were those in which I was not wearing any clothes, or I had covered myself in food. Photos are put into albums, not only to be treasured by ourselves, but also so that we can easily show them to other people, and in doing so, share the experiences we had. After-all, life is to be shared, is it not? These moments that our photo albums document are themselves, often, moments of change, the first day of school, all dressed up in our school uniforms, our birthdays, weddings, christenings and so on, these are all times in which we were once one thing and we became another. All very personal moments in our life stories.

On a larger scale, all the changes that occur in the culture around us are a kind of background noise, in comparison to these personal changes that each of us make, or have thrust upon us, each day.  For me personally, getting married was not that much of a change, because my Wife and I carried on happily as we did before we were Mr and Mrs, though the wedding day itself was joyous. Becoming a father was much more of a change for me, and demanded a few inner changes to how I saw the world, as well as some changes to how I lived my life, which is continuing to evolve. This is all a natural part of being a parent, as well as wanting our children to be happy and healthy, no matter what changes life might throw at them.

It can be difficult to walk the fine line between fearing change and embracing it, especially after how devastating the COVID-19 pandemic has been in some people’s lives, through losing loved one, losing regular income with the loss of a job or being separated from those we love. We truly do not know what is around the corner in life, but we do need to find balance in all the potential and real chaos. In Taoism, they have the symbol of the Yin and Yang, which is very familiar to most people. It is a circle with one black part and one white part, each of which has a spot of the opposing colour within them. The general principle behind this symbol is that in every good there is bad and in every bad there is good, if you look for it, and that life is constantly an interplay moving back and forth from good to bad and back again. If we understand that this is how life operates, then finding balance to navigate the events of life can be very beneficial. If we put all of our energy into one thing in our lives, even if it is good, other areas in our lives suffer and eventually the thing we are investing our time in stops being so good for us too.

Equally, if we worry about the bad things that are, or might, happen, then our life also gets out of balance. It is like navigating a boat through the waters of our lives, with one leg on the port side and one on the starboard side. If we tip too much one way or another, then we fall in. Finding balance means checking in with ourselves every day to see if we are looking after every part of our lives. Cultivating our relationships, working hard at work, taking care of our family, managing our finances, focusing on our spirituality, etc.

There is another concept you may have heard before, the concept of flow. The state you are in when everything you are doing is effortless and time disappears, because you are fully engaged and really enjoying what you are doing. In Taoist thinking this is referred to as Wu Wei, the art of non-action. To our Western ears this sounds paradoxical, but it has finally sunk in in my head recently and I finally get it. Wu Wei is flow, it is effortless action, it is doing, not worrying or planning or speculating, it is the act of just doing. Put another way, the art of non-action is to embrace flow instead of effort to achieve a result. Living life through Wu Wei is, as Bruce Lee said in the quotation at the top of this blog post, being like water. He said, “Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it.” And with many Eastern things, this is an art more than a science. My advice would be to try to do everything that you are doing with joy, and then this flow state will be more accessible. As Sadhguru, a Guru from India, has said “Anything you do joyfully is always effortless.”

When big changes appear in our lives, the more flexible we are in our thinking, the easier it will be to manage the challenges each big change brings. Some changes are thrust upon us, as we have experienced, they are things that are out of our control, and we have to some how deal with them in the best way that we can, by focusing on what is in our control, which includes choosing to be in a joyful state. These times of major change are times that will test our characters, they will highlight the strengths we have, and tell us how strong we are inside.  The paradox of Wu Wei is that being humble and flexible is stronger than being full of ego and rigid when we want a positive outcome.

For those of us that are not strong in difficult times, such as a tragedy or a pandemic, there are others, to whom we turn, that are strong and who support us through these hard times. We all have people like this in our lives, perhaps you are the person to whom those around you turn when they need a strong pillar to support them. If you are such a person I commend you, because without people like you many of us would not be able to cope. However, you also need to have people around you to whom you can turn in difficult times.

At the end of reading this blog post you will get on with the things you have planned for today, the rest of the week, and the rest of the year. The seasons will change from Autumn to Winter to Spring to Summer and back to Autumn again, the sun will rise and set as it has for millions of years and change will continue to affect our lives. How we choose to respond to the changes we each face is up to us, but I hope that most of the changes in your lives are for the better and the changes that are hard to bear are lessened by those around you, those who care about you, and those you care about. These are the consistencies that allow us to deal with the changes that life throws at us.

I would like to end with another quotation about Autumn, by Albert Camus. “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” 

Finding Contentment

Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough”
― Oprah Winfrey

When thinking about contentment and what to talk about in this blog post I thought about what makes me content. I thought about my wife and daughters, the books that I read, how I feel when I am painting pictures, and then I started thinking about things that make me laugh, things that make me smile. Contentment, as a subject, is a big subject to tackle in something as short as a blog post, but I thought that it was also an important subject to talk about too, especially after the stresses and changes, the grief and the trauma that we have had to deal with over the past 18 months.

So, what then can be the solution to the age-old problem of how to be content? If we are all different people then how can there be one answer to this problem? Many different people have tried to come up with an answer, each with a different perspective on the issue, often driven by their theological or philosophical beliefs. Some we know to be powerful spiritual figures such as the Buddha and Jesus, others were, and are, just philosophers trying to answer the question of how to be content. The rest of us, generally, just try to make the best of things. With all of the difficulties we each face in our lives it is hard to find the time to philosophise about the ways and means of finding contentment. For the majority of us we spend our days working hard to have money to pay the bills and the rent, or mortgage, hoping to have a little left over at the end of the month to treat ourselves, and the ones we love.

Yet, somewhere in the busyness that is our lives we do find some time to set aside to enjoy ourselves, whether it be spending time with the kids, going for a drink with friends, a walk in the woods or just staying in to watch something on the TV, we all do somehow manage to find time to enjoy ourselves a little. This time spent relaxing and enjoying ourselves is greatly necessary for us to go on functioning in the jobs that we do and the responsibilities that we have, we need to laugh and play and get back to the things which make us who we individually are. But is this contentment or is it just making the best of things?

I would say that we can find moments of contentment in these periods of relaxation and enjoyment. We have all, I think, or at least I hope, had moments when we’ve paused and thought ‘my life is good right now, the good things outweigh the bad things and I am happy.’ An attitude of enjoying the small thing in life can be a useful attitude to have, as it helps us deal with the big problems we all face. The old saying ‘The best things in life are free’ is in a similar vein, and is good advice, often given by parents, or grandparents, to children who want things that are expensive and well advertised on the TV.

That being said, contentment can seem a complicated or difficult state of mind to achieve. But perhaps it isn’t contentment that is complicated but ourselves. Perhaps it is our own complications that can make it so difficult for us to achieve contentment, consistently. We have many thoughts running through our minds each day, as well as many emotions, either flaring up, such as anger, or lingering, such as sadness. There is a constant flow of both thoughts and emotions, almost like a river, which swells and runs dry over and over. With such turbulent minds it is no wonder that we find it difficult to settle and be content.

People also deal with things differently. In any situation there are those who are totally emotionally involved, and as a result their emotions jump up and down with the ups and downs of life. Others do not engage their emotions very much at all, and so are quite detached from any ups and downs that life throws at them. We all know people that fit either of these types of behaviour, and we know people who are both negative about life and those who are positive. I can be beneficial to think about how positive or negative we are to life’s us and downs. 

How we feel about our lives is often caused by our reactions to the events within it. Our reactions to the events of life are the responses that our brains throw up almost without us thinking about it, they are habits that we have formed over our whole lifetime. For example, if we disagree with something do we get angry very quickly and say the first thing that comes to mind, while we are angry, or do we take time to create a considered argument to explain how and why we disagree. If something bad happens to us do we react emotionally, getting angry or upset about our favourite cup getting broken or missing the bus to work, or do we think that the cup was only a thing and can be replaced and even though we missed our bus there will be another one along soon?

Things are only good or bad depending on how we see them. Roger Walsh M.D., Ph.D. put it well when he wrote “We do not see things only as they are, but also as we are.” If you think about that for a moment it is actually quite profound. This is only a quotation, but if you think about it in a wider context you could say that everything we see, or even experience, is coloured by the way we are at the time, how we are feeling, if we are tired, if we are in a rush or taking our time. This might be an obvious point that I am making but it is something we often forget when we are reacting to things that happen to us, because we are reacting. But if we remember that what we are experiencing from moment to moment is affected by how we are in those moments then we have a better chance of dealing well with the ups and downs of life, and I would say a better chance of being content as well. This is consciously choosing to be in a beautiful state, not an angry state or a stressed state, but a beautiful one.

Talking of beautiful states, the Euros 2020 final was a big moment in my home country’s footballing history, where England made it to the final of the Euros, something many football fans thought would never happen. Prior to the result of the match, the mood of the nation had been lifted, whether you enjoy football or not, the positivity has been infectious and we have been living in a happier state, generally, until of course we lost in penalties again. But we must remember that both Italy, who we faced in the final, and England have had a really difficult time during the pandemic and the joy we felt in both of our nations up to the final, and more so for Italy now, mark a new chapter in our national stories, it is a great contrast to the suffering we have had. The deeper the turmoil the higher the joy and the better we can choose to live; this is also true even when our football team does not win. And with the Olympics starting in Tokyo I hope each nations spirits will be lifts as they follow their athletes who are competing.

In order to be more content it is perhaps better to act instead of react, by which I mean taking control of the moments before we react so that we can make better decisions in what we say and what we do, in response to any situation. There is a Buddhist Mindfulness practice called the Three Minute Breathing Space to be used when we feel angry or stressed about something. The practice consists of stopping what you are doing and taking some slow and deep breathes for three minutes, or less if you like. It is a quick time out from the stresses of life, which can help enormously if you live particularly stressful lives. Practices like this can reduce stress and give us the presence of mind to avoid reacting to situations without thinking about what we intend to say or do in response to them.

We all have ways that help us de-stress, ways that we have developed through out our lives, hobbies that we have chosen to do, activities that are part of our daily routine, which are enjoyable and fun. But, these things are rarely structured activities as part of a path to find contentment, they are the things that make life enjoyable and fun, when it can be. There is nothing wrong with making the best out of life and enjoying it as much as possible. In many ways I would say that this is a road to contentment itself, but for those that want a more structured approach to finding contentment there is religion or a spiritual path. Here are some words on contentment from the some of the great religions of the world.

The Buddha said: ‘Contentment is the highest wealth.’ (Dhp.204), meaning that when we are content we do not need to get anything, go anywhere or be anything to be happy because we already are, and thus, contentment is more valuable than any possession or accomplishment. The Buddha describes the monk’s contentment like this: ‘He is satisfied with a robe to cover his body and alms food to satisfy his stomach and having accepted no more than is sufficient he goes his way, just as a bird flies here and there taking with it no more than its wings.’(D.I,71).

In the Bible, in the book of Timothy 6:verse 6-8 it says:

“Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.”

In Yoga, in the Hindu tradition, there are the Niyamas, ten ethical guidelines, which are the foundation of skillful living, or living in a morally good way. The second Niyama is called Santosha, or Contentment, and the expectation is this:

Nurture contentment, seeking joy and serenity in life. Be happy, smile and uplift others. Live in constant gratitude for your health, your friends and your belongings, Don’t complain about what you don’t possess. Identify with the eternal You, rather than mind, body or emotions. Keep the mountaintop view that life is an opportunity for spiritual progress. Live in the eternal now.

This is all good advice, and it makes it clear to me that on the road to contentment a spiritual path can be beneficial, because we are given advice on how to live in order to be content. There is a direct relationship between the directions given and the attainment of contentment, as many who have followed spiritual paths have stated in the past.

But what about those of us who are making the best of things, those of us that have busy lives spent doing what we can to provide for our families and ourselves, and follow our own spiritual paths when we can. Life can be difficult, and keeping a calm perspective on things when life doesn’t always go to plan is not an easy thing to do. I recommend using the wisdom of the many religions of the world, and the wisdom of those around us, our friends and family as well, they are our helpers, they sustain us as we sustain them. Our paths through life are also greatly helped by the enjoyment of life itself, our pleasure in the small things, and not wanting more than the world has allowed us to have. I believe it is a blessing to be alive at all, everything else is a bonus.

Choosing Joy

Happiness

“I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.”
― Anne Frank

Recently I have been suffering with what appears to be Sinusitis and Labyrinthitis, which has caused sinus pain, painful ears, dizziness and Tinnitus for the past four months. I have been through several stages of dealing with this seemingly unending suffering. First I thought that it cannot last that long. Then it did and I became somewhat unhappy and a little depressed about it. Then I remembered the words from Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor E Frankl, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

I began to seek out reasons to be joyful. I work in telephone customer services, so I speak to a lot of people. Some of which, as is normal in customer service, are unhappy and take it out on you. I began asking customers how their day was going and having really lovely conversations about the ups and downs of life living through a pandemic. I focused on how lucky I am to have a Wife and Daughter, to still have my parents, to wake up each morning. The pain, dizziness and noise in my ears remained constant, though subdued through medication periodically throughout the day, but my attitude to how I was physically feeling changed. I decided not to let how I was physically feeling determine how I was mentally feeling. This helped a lot, I began to feel that there is a way to master how we choose to feel each day, joy being the best feeling to aim for.

I then moved into a phase that was reflective. I reflected on how I miss silence and being pain free. I realised that the simple things in life are really important. The ability to sit and meditate without the constant buzzing of Tinnitus will be something that I will savoir once I recover from whatever is going on in my sinuses and ears. It is important to be grateful for everything that we have, as well as the tough experiences we have. The valleys we go through serve to highlight the euphoria of the mountains we climb. We all have, to varying degrees, the ability to choose how we want to feel, by choosing what we focus on. If we are unwell do we focus on how that is making us feel or do we focus on still having the ability to do the things we enjoy, even if the illness reduces these options. We all have the ability “…to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Setting Goals For 2021

Achieving Goals

“It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goals to reach.” — Benjamin E. Mays

Another year has begun, and like many people I have set myself goals for the coming year, things I intend to do to improve or enrich my life. I’m sure many of you have at least thought about making new years resolutions, it is something that seems to be a requirement of starting a new year. Often our goals are based on what we have done or not done in the previous year. 2020 has been a very different year for us all. Much of what we had planned at the beginning of the year had to be set aside as we navigated the challenges of living through a pandemic.

We have had to connect through screens to feel close to the people we love, our families, our friends, and many used Zoom to maintain team cohesion at work and fellowship in collective worship. The year 2020 will be a year that we will want to leave behind us. It has taken its toll on us in many ways. However, with the vaccine being rolled out we can look at the year ahead with more optimism. We can hold true to the very human notion that better things are coming our way. There is hope that we will return to a sense of normality. More than ever in our lives, the end of one year and the beginning of another brings with it a sense of both relief and hope. Hope for a better year to come. More than ever, this is also a good time to look at setting goals for what we want to achieve in the year ahead, Coronavirus permitting.

As we set these goals we could consider some of the top new years resolutions, like being more organised, quitting smoking or learning something new. These are all good resolutions to aim for. The general impetus is the improvement of ourselves and our habits, but underneath all of them, I think, is the drive to try and become happier; happier with ourselves and with our lives.

For as long as human beings could conceive of such things, people have been in search of this thing we call happiness, this illusive state that underlies the motives behind much of our thoughts and actions. Aristotle said that “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” However, it is often something that we experience only in fleeting moments, in brief periods of time that come and then go as we venture on into the future of our lives.

This is often the case because we are seeking happiness out there in the world. We often make the acquiring of things the way in which we try to find happiness. Whether it is a new car, a new TV, recognition for an achievement or becoming wealthier than we currently are, the failure is always going to be in the hope that the things and people in the world are going to match our expectations. Things rarely work out as we expect them to, life, as we have discovered over this passed year, is often not like that. If we look at the many religious and philosophical writings of the world we will find a recurring idea, that the root to happiness is to be found within ourselves rather than in the acquiring of worldly things.

In the Bible in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke it says “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” A parable I think many of us have frequently heard, and what Jesus means by the ‘Kingdom of God’ is heaven, a place or state where we would have complete and unending happiness. You may not believe that there is such a place or state as heaven, and you are well within your rights to do so. Beliefs are personal and personal beliefs should be respected. But if there was such a thing as unending happiness, it would be such a wonderful thing that most, if not all, of the world religions have this desire at their very heart. Indeed it is at the very heart of what it means to be human. Whether we call it heaven, moksha or nirvana the experience of it will be the same.

Just before the passage in the Bible about the camel and the eye of a needle, Jesus says “Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” Here I think Jesus means that if we try to receive heaven with expectations then we will never receive it. In other words, if we seek happiness with expectations then we will not become happy, because, as I have said, life rarely conforms to our expectations of it. I say this because one of the main things that separates children from adults is that children begin from a place without expectations, they do things for the pure joy of doing them. They spin around on swings, climb trees, dance and run around because they enjoy doing so. They do not think about the end result of spinning around on a swing, they just do it. We can learn a lot from children; I think we loose a lot when we transition into adulthood.

In the Tao Te Ching, a text written around 500 BCE by Lao Tzu, a Chinese sage, teacher, and scribe, it says,

“Better to stop short than fill to the brim. Oversharpen the blade, and the edge will soon blunt. Amass a store of gold and jade, and no one can protect it. Claim wealth and titles, and disaster will follow. Retire when the work is done. This is the way of heaven.”

To be and to do, this is what is important, rather than to get and to have.

I have heard it said that we struggle to find happiness  because of the very act of seeking it. This might sound crazy, but what I mean is, that if we make the pursuit of happiness a demand, something that we feel we must do, then the pressure of this demand can make us unhappy. The desire to be happy becomes twisted into a demand that we think we have to achieve. What we need to do instead is to create the conditions for happiness in our lives. This could be found in enjoying activities for their own sake, much like children do. When we are engrossed in something we become one with the moment that we are in. There is no past or future, only the now, the moment we are in. When we are engaged in sporting activities, creative activities,  good conversations, listening to a fantastic piece of music, we are lost in the moment, we are centred and content. We have all experienced glimpses of this and once we have had a taste of it we generally want more, and I think this fuels our pursuit of happiness.

The problem with life is that with the fantastic moments also come the sad and painful moments, moments that can make us feel that we may find it difficult to find happiness again, so we immerse ourselves in the pursuit of happiness in the world, when the answer is not in our experiences in the world, but in our understanding of those experiences. Happiness is found in how we view the world and all the people and things within it. It involves our beliefs and our opinions, and it involves letting go of our prejudices and judgements.

There is something else which is important, especially in times such as these, and that is building resilience. Some people are generally more resilient to challenges in their lives, and some really struggle. I recently watched a TED Talk on The Three Secrets of Resilient People and I think they are good pieces of advice. The first is that resilient people now that challenges happen, that everything is not all a bunch of roses, they are realistic about the ups and downs of life. They also do not say to themselves, “why does this happen to me,” which would put them in the position of a victim, which takes away any control they think they have in the situation.

The second is that resilient people are careful where they choose to put their attention. They focus on what they can change and not what they cannot. We are hard wired through evolution to pay attention to the negative, to the things that could harm us, but we no longer have to worry about a sabre-toothed tiger being around the corner. In short, resilient people tune into the good things in life, they focus on being grateful every day. In fact studies show that if we think of three things to be grateful for each day over a period of months our tendency towards depression decreases and we become happier.

The third is that resilient people ask themselves, “is what I am thinking or doing helpful or harmful” and if it is harmful they they stop and change to something more helpful. They are kinder to themselves, and this puts them in the drivers seat of their lives. It gives them control over the decisions they make.

These three actions are things that we can all do, and we are all people who have and will have challenging times, especially at the moment. Following these three steps can make the challenges we face easier to bear and make us more proactive in our own happiness making.

This all being said, should we still make new years resolutions? Of course we should. Without setting goals we will never progress or achieve anything, but I would suggest we should firstly think about what it is we really want, what personal problems we are currently facing and how we might change our thinking or our actions to make them better. However, these goals should come from a desire rather than a demand, within a context of the changes we can make in our lives that will allow our goals to happen. This is creating the conditions for happiness to find us, rather than seeking the happiness we want.

Every living being has the right to be happy, but we should remember that it is OK to be happy with what we already have; we can be content with what we already have. So it can be helpful to think about what in our lives is just as we want it to be, what things don’t need changing, and whatever is left over can become things we aim to improve. Being aware of the good things in our lives first can make us more grateful, and therefore happier without trying to achieve happiness.

We could also set ourselves goals aimed at improving the lives of other people. This could be giving to charity or a food bank, it could be trying to make other people smile each day, whatever we can think of to help other people. Whether we did or didn’t achieve our goals last year let us strive to achieve our goals this year. Let us aim to make it a very good year for ourselves and all of those around us, because some of the best goals are those that enrich and improve the lives of other people.

2020 was a very challenging year, but we got through it. People came together and did extraordinary things in the service of others. The human spirit persevered. We take this energy through to a new year. Let us make it a wonderful year, for us all.

Making The Most Of 2021

Achieving Goals

“There is nothing magical about the flip of the calendar, but it represents a clean break, a new hope, and a blank canvas.”

― Jason Soroski

The year of 2020 will go down as possibly the worst year we have lived through, especially for those born after World War Two. The Coronavirus has ravaged our health services, our economies and our personal lives through loss and separation. The end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021 was an emotional one for many, as it means that even though we still need to remain vigilant around keeping ourselves and our loved ones safe, through social-distancing measures, 2020 is behind us.

In 2020, many of us had to adjust to living more solitary lives, with us not being able to mix with friends and family as we normally would, and many had to learn new skills around working from home. The term Key Worker took on new meanings, as supermarket assistants became essential to keeping us all going. Those on the front line in hospitals in our battle with this virus went through seemingly unending heartbreak with a kind of hardy stoicism that made them into superheroes in our eyes. The use of technology like Zoom became the way we remained connected to loved ones, to congregations from places of worship and to colleagues for team meetings, where we gathered remotely. Much of which we will be taking with us through to the coming year.

All of the normal things are true about starting a new year. The days will be getting longer and warmer, we get to set goals for the year ahead and there is a new beginning before us; we can rethink what we want out of life and we can reinvent ourselves to a degree. This is our moment to decide what we want our 2021 to be like. There will still be much that we cannot control, as is the nature of life, but if we accept what we cannot control we can put our focus and our energy into the things we can. The prime example of this is our attitude to the circumstances we are in. If we are working from home, we can see this as a barrier to team cohesion or we can see it as an opportunity to learn new skills and work in a more flexible manner to get our work done. If we have to use technology like Zoom to keep in touch we friends and family, we can learn new ways to connect and be grateful that this pandemic is happening now and not before the invention of the internet.

So, when it comes to setting goals for the coming year I would like you to consider that one of the reasons that new year’s resolutions tend not to work is that as we are resolving to make the changes for the year ahead, by default, we are not thinking of them as permanent changes, therefore we are often not 100% committed. Research on this tells us that even if we are 98% committed, we often do not follow through, because that 2% matters. Instead, if we see the new resolutions as life resolutions with 100% commitment, then the decision is made, it is done, and we do not need to deliberate it any more. We are all in on the new changes we are making.

The areas I recommend you look at making goals in are your health, your career, your relationships and in your self mastery. The last one is around developing a growth mindset, seeing confidence, optimism and resilience as skills to be developed. Also, to go all in on the project, the plans or the challenge you have been putting off. If we have learned anything from 2020 it is that life is precious and a long life is not a guarantee. So, let’s go and make 2021 an amazing year, full of ambitions achieved, kindness shared and joy generated.

How To Make The Best Out Of Life

Happiness

“One way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as an adventure.” William Feather

How do we make the best out of our lives? This is an age-old question that has seen many different suggested ways of achieving it. I believe that we find this question so hard to answer because we have grown up in a world that favours things more than relationships. If there is a scale of what makes people happy, I believe there would be relationships at the happy end and things somewhere towards the other end of the scale. I’m not saying that things can’t make us feel good; buying a new car, a new piece of clothing or a new mobile phone can make us feel good, but this is not happiness. This is a good feeling created because our bodies release dopamine, a hormone released by the brain.

Whenever we achieve something or we get something we want, our brain releases dopamine to make us feel good. This is partly how our ancestors survived, because finding food or a mate felt good, making us want to do it more and more, it is a survival mechanism. There are many other hormones that our brains release in different situations, causing us to be in different states, whether we are anxious or angry, sad or hungry, the state we are in can dictate how we behave and what we do or say. What state we are in matters, and I believe that we can, to some degree, affect what state we are in, by choosing what we focus on and how we respond to the circumstances that we find ourselves in.

If we let our circumstances dictate our lives, we will be like a ship without a rudder or a sale, and we may be thrown against the rocks by our circumstances. To illustrate this, I have an extreme example of how some, even under the most horrendous circumstances, can choose how they respond to these said circumstances. Viktor Frankl, a Jew, who survived being an Auschwitz concentration camp inmate, imprisoned by the Nazis during World War Two, years later wrote the book Man’s Search For Meaning, a reflection on his time in the concentration camp. Viktor Frankl’s experience and his training as a neurologist and psychiatrist gave him a unique perspective on finding meaning in the worst of circumstances.

In this book he wrote “We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” This is an extreme example, as I have said, but I believe what was said in the quote applies to any human experience. Some circumstances will undoubtedly make it very difficult to “choose one’s attitude,” but I believe that this is the key to making the most out of our lives and how we can lead a happy life rather than the opposite. I know from personal experience that this is not easy, but with practice it is possible.

Another example from history is that of Nelson Mandela, who is famous for memorising the poem Invictus, which was read to you earlier, and how the poem helped him stand when all he wanted to do was lie down, during his time in prison. On the first day he arrived at the prison on Robben Island, that would become his home for the majority of his 27 years in prison, he insisted that the guards address him as Mr Mandela, he would not respond to anything else. In the end, the guards gave in and did so. Nelson Mandela chose his attitude to the circumstances and demanded to be treated as an equal. 27 years later, as he was released from prison, becoming a free man, he realised that if he continued to hate those who imprisoned him, he would never be free. He decided to forgive, and in doing so he lead the whole country as its President to peace through forgiveness.

Choosing one’s attitude to the circumstances we find ourselves in is a powerful way to get the most out of life, it puts us in the driving seat of our lives. It allows us to respond to circumstances rather than react to them. One way to do this, that I have found helps me, is to focus on being grateful for as many things as possible. Grateful for having a family, for having a home, for the air I breath, for the relationships I have, for the challenges that test my patience, for opportunities that life sends my way. It is very hard to be angry and grateful, or sad and grateful.

If you are lucky enough to be born in the western world you have effectively won the lottery. There are countries where the citizens do not have access to the Internet or the government controls the media they have access to and people can be executed for things we take for granted in our day to day lives. These are extreme examples but they are true. A large percentage of the world’s population live on less than £1 a day. In comparison, many of us live a dream life. So, perspective can be a great motivator to become more grateful, and gratitude is a powerful force that can bring happiness to your life.

Sometimes life can seem to give us challenge after challenge to the point where we struggle to keep ourselves going. The impact of the Coronavirus pandemic have brought us many struggles, financial and social, many have lost loved ones or have felt the difficulties of isolation, as we keep our distance from each other in order to keep each other safe. Sometimes life can seem out to break us, but what can keep us strong is the relationships we have. Our strength often comes from other people, others pick us up when we are knocked down by life and we pick up others in the same way. We all live in a community of human connections. We may sometimes feel that we have to go on alone, to stand strong by ourselves, but just asking for a little help can change our whole perspective on what is happening.

Sometimes, when life becomes hard, we can feel that we are not making any progress, we might be making little steps forward towards our goals, but because they are little steps they don’t feel significant. However, baby steps still count, as long as we are moving forward. When life is hard we can end up focusing on the negative, which does two things, it can make us feel miserable and it can mean we miss opportunities that come into our lives. This is when we need to consciously focus on the positive and to create an opportunity mindset, which everyday looks for opportunities. You may believe in God, you may believe in Karma, you may believe in luck, but if we don’t see the opportunities that come into our lives then we will miss out. This reminds me of a story I once heard about a flood that left a man stranded on the roof of his house, surrounded by water. A man came past the house in a small boat to help people to safety, but the man refused the help and said, “God will save me.” Then a helicopter came to pick him up and again he refused saying “Gods will save me.” Soon the water level rose above the house and the man drowned. When he went up to heaven he asked God “Why did you not save me?” and God said “I tried, I sent you a boat and I sent you a helicopter.” Sometimes we need to open our eyes to get the most out of life.

Some say that religion can help you live a good life, which I believe is partly true, it depends on how you apply the teachings of the religion. Most religions have good teachings, but like in the Biblical reading, if the teachings are taken to heart, they do form a strong foundation for our lives. The teachings of the world religions invariably preach forgiveness, gratitude and love, they promote the necessity of community and that we should be generous in spirit, these are the ways in which we can make the most out of our lives. We all know this, but we do not always put it into practice. I am guilty of this myself, as we all are, but if we try every day to be better than we were the day before, then we can make our lives a wondrous experience, full of hope and joy, of friendship and love. We can create a community that includes as many people as we choose to include.

Our lives are not just our place of worship community, our job community, our family and friends community, we often live at the intersection of the relationships we have with others, but this is not a bad thing. The best in life exists on the boarders of two neighbouring places, just look at the edges of jungles and open land, or where fresh water meets the sea. Life thrives in these places, and it is the same in our own lives. Our relationships are in a way the framework of our lives. Our beliefs are our foundation and both are needed to be strong enough to withstand the storms of life. Let us all strive to be grateful and generous, joyful and respectful, loving and open to new opportunities, and focused on building positive relationships with those in our lives.

How To Live Your Purpose

The Fullfilment Framework

“If you have a strong purpose in life, you don’t have to be pushed. Your passion will drive you there.”
Roy T. Bennett

Starting With Your Why

The work of Simon Sinek has popularised the idea of having a Why with his book Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action and his TED Talk How Great Leader Inspire Action. However, how can you use your Why to figure out what you should be doing in your life, your purpose?

As Simon Sinek rightly tells us, your Why is your origin story, it is the reason behind why you do the things you do. It is how you were raised, the early experiences you had and the decisions you made leading up to adulthood. In essence it is who we are. It is not always clear how to define your Why, but with self-reflection and self-observation you can find it.

Take me for example, I have a desire to figure out how to live life well and to share this with others. I have led worship in Unitarian churches for several years and worked in customer service and special needs education and started this blog without knowing my Why. It took the discovery of Simon Sinek’s book and some focused self-reflection to realise that my Why is to help others to live well, to find fulfilment. In all the areas of my life that I have mentioned I felt at home when helping others.

You might feel comfortable being a leader, being creative, working in a team or working alone. Whatever you do that makes you feel happy or content, these are clues as to your Why, because you feel good doing these things. Your Why is what defines you as a person. If you need guidance on finding your Why I recommend you read Simon Sinek’s book Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your

Turning Your Why Into Your Purpose

Once you have defined your Why, you will be able to use it as a compass to direct you towards the things you should be doing. Ideally, your job should be aligned with your Why. In other words your work should make you feel happy, successful and fulfilled.

This is largely effected by the environment you work in, the leader(s) you have and the people you work with. But, if you know your Why then you can choose work that is aligned with it. Work that you can really get your teeth into and make a difference in the world.

At the moment, with the difficulties caused by the Coronavirus pandemic, we have to do the work that is available. As needs must we must go. However, if you are interviewing for a job it is a good opportunity to interview them at the same time.

Choosing The Right Work

A good question to ask interviewers is how they reward performance. If they reward good performance with bonuses, money incentives, for hitting the numbers they set, then the company values your output over you. If they reward good performance in a way that values you as an employee then the environment you would work in will be more fulfilling and you will feel looked after.

You should also look to work in roles that fit your Why, that align with who you are. The work we do in the world matters. If we are not doing what we are meant to be doing, then resentment and unfulfilment sets in. I recommend using the Ikigai method, where you look at What You Love, What You Are Good At, What You Can Get Paid For and What The World Needs. This will then reveal your Passion, Profession, Vocation and Mission. Knowing your Why will help you fill in these categories and find your Ikigai, your Purpose in life.

Conclusion

When we start with defining our Why we can start to figure out why we do what we do and then what we want to be doing in our life. Once we know our Why we can narrow down what we are meant to be doing, what our Purpose is. And when we live out our purpose, our work feels like a privilege.

Defining Your Purpose

The Fullfilment Framework

Starting With Yourself

The Pathway To Fulfilment has the steps that it does because the end result are thoughts, speech and actions that are aligned with your purpose that you will define. They come from your Purpose Prism, which includes your beliefs, your ethics and your purpose.

You will have gained deep Self-Knowledge (Step 1), which is when you will define your beliefs and ethics, and you will have Acquired Wisdom (Step 2). A purpose can then be defined aligned with these elements from Step 1 and Step 2 that together will make your thoughts, speech and actions full of altruism and wisdom.

Om Mani Padme Hum

In regards to altruism and wisdom, there is a Buddhist mantra, Om Mani Padme Hum, which explains how, in Buddhist understanding, one reaches enlightenment. Om is made up of through sounds A – U – M. These represent thoughts, speech and actions, and once we are enlightened these are pure. Mani means Jewel, which represents altruism. Padme means Lotus, which represents wisdom. Hum is unity of both infinite altruism and infinite wisdom, both of which are needed to become enlightened, in Buddhist understanding.

The reason I am asking you to begin with self-knowledge, then to acquire wisdom, and to figure out your beliefs and your ethics, is so that your purpose will be imbued with both altruism and wisdom, and that your purpose becomes your unity, your Hum. Your thoughts, speech and actions dictate how your life will be, because whether your life is good or bad, enjoyable or not is firstly based on your thoughts, of how you see the world, and secondly the impact that your speech and actions have on those around you.

How We Walk Through The World

If we walk lightly through the world, trying to live in balance and to help others, then we will live a more fulfilling life. Also, in order for us to find a purpose in life, we need to know ourselves really well, to have gone deep into the parts of our minds that we often shy away from, but also to develop a wise understanding of how the world works and how we can have a positive impact on it.

This is why Defining Your Purpose and Living Your Purpose are Steps 5 and 6. There is work you must do with yourself before a purpose can become clear. This work will not always be easy, but it is necessary, and I will be putting together a guide to help you along this Pathway to Fulfilment. It will take time to put together, as I want the pathway to be simple and the steps to be clearly defined, which means there is a lot to distill down into a clear and effective pathway. The outline of the pathway is set out below.

Something To Think About…

Think about how you currently live your life, how you treat others and how you earn a living. Are these ways that make you feel good? If not, what changes could you make?