Category: Mindfulness

  • Jack of everything necessary

    Jack of everything necessary

    One of the effects of having to be pretty self-reliant as a child, is that you learn to stop asking for help and just do everything yourself.
    It’s easier, or so we think. The term used to describe it atm is parentification.

    Instead of relying on others, feeling safe and being able to ask for guidance or help, we learn to just learn it ourselves. We become our own parent.

    This, I think is one of the reasons I can do so much today and have absorbed so much knowledge. We build ourselves up into a self-reliant fortress.

    One of the trade-offs is, trust becomes difficult and reliance on others becomes something to be avoided. Over giving to others can also be one of the ways of approval seeking that fills some of the gap of absent love. And as we become parents ourselves, we might be over protective of our children to compensate for our own childhood.

    After doing the inner work for so many years now, I don’t seek the approval of others anymore. But I’ll give freely, I give what energy I can afford to bring positive change to others.

    Eventually we learn that asking for help is a strength. And I love learning from other people when I’m present and aware enough to ask for guidance.

    Physical closeness, gestures of affection and just spending time being present are great ways to rebuild our relationships.

    Some may offer the advice, “you need to unlearn all of that childhood pain”. Maybe. I prefer to think of it as a process of relearning and healing.

    If you have drowned yourself in knowledge and gotten jacked with skills, this may resonate with you in some way. Those behaviours may have been coping mechanisms for survival.

    One by one, putting some things down and letting them go, reducing our knowledge intake and just relearning to breathe and focus on one thing at a time, brings peace and the ability to accept help and love again 🕊️✨

  • Boil the bay leaf

    Boil the bay leaf

    There was a thread I was following that someone posted with a throw away comment about, “what does one bay leaf add to anything anyway?!” 🤣 Valid.

    There’s a lot of recipes that have a bay leaf or two in the list of ingredients but they never really explain much what it’s for or what it adds to the dish.

    When you think about it, there’s a bunch of common ingredients like bay leaves. If we take an elimination approach, we’d cook the dish in halves one with, one without bay leaves. Who can be bothered doing that though! 🤣

    But someone had a clever response to this problem, and that is to cook it on its own.
    Yes, put the bay leaf into a small portion of water and boil (or distill it if you have the gear) it until the water is flavoured by the leaves.

    Smart. By understanding the building block, we can start to comprehend what it brings to the mix.

    So yeah, ima try that experiment on the weekend. I wanna know what the flavour is.

    Thanks internet stranger 🧡✨

  • Plant a smile

    Plant a smile

    There’s a theory that if you smile at a certain location in the world, that the happiness you generate stays in that particular location.

    So one day, a lifetime later someone walks past that spot on the earth and feels the happiness you have left.

    And they smile in turn, and plant another one. It sort of feels like geolocating happiness on the earth’s surface.

    I’m not sure about the theory, I’d like to believe in it. I do know that a smile and a laugh can often influence those immediately around me.

    When lining up at the bar last night, I got talking with a guy who’s son was having his 18th party at another location in the city. His Dad was off partying at another dance event! lol. I firstly found that hilarious and inspiring.

    The people behind us were clearly listening into the chat while waiting for drinks. So I turned up the energy a bit and emphasised how he as a father must be so proud of his son having his 18th with mates, in a sensible way while he partied closeby.

    🥹 boom, a bunch of big smiles 😊✨ right behind us.

    We can use our energy to generate happiness. And I wonder sometimes, how far that happiness carries.

    Planting a smile on the earth, yeah it’s an interesting theory.

  • 5 years of swimming

    5 years of swimming

    I think it’s been at least five years, swimming every (almost!) afternoon after work.

    Years ago I decided to take my physical health a little more seriously. I can’t remember the actual reasons tbh, but I wanted regular exercise that was achievable, practical and not too expensive.

    I tried running, but it just wasn’t me. I can run, but it just feels like such an effort for minimal results. Maybe I’m doing it wrong 😂

    I’m so far, not a gym person. Instead, I use the kettle bells at home and I seem to be able to do most of what I want with those.

    My regular full-body exercise though, is swimming and I love it.

    It’s my switch off after work, it’s a cool down , it’s my mechanism for changing over to my time and it’s great exercise for my whole body.

    It is very cold in winter tho! But I’ve found over the years that I’ve gotten stronger and stronger with ignoring the cold. If the ice water is really healthy, then I’m getting a good dose of it. Recent research seems to indicate few benefits though it seems.

    If you’re looking for regular exercise regimes, what works for you and each person will be different, but I can recommend this combination. It works for me.

    In tough times, or when stress has been high, exercise and art have saved me and kept me sane. Regular physical body movement is the best, especially if you need to get out of your head.


  • We arrive and leave with nothing

    We arrive and leave with nothing

    In this life, we’re born small, naked and in possession of absolutely nothing.

    Not a single thing. When I reflect on that for a moment, we really do arrive in this world with nothing.

    But in some ways, it’s everything.

    We’re born with everything we need. Hopefully we have parents who will care for us. We have health, warmth, a food source and all of the genetics to grow into an adult.

    And yet in life, we chase everything else.

    We spend our time chasing wealth, things, entertainment, power and whatever else the world of commerce wants to trend.

    It would appear though, that each person arrives at the point where we recognise that chase. The way we’ve spent our life, how and what we’ve chased.

    For the lucky and enlightened ones, that point might be early on in life. For others it’s part way through and for some, just before death.

    But at some point, I think the vast majority of people pause, look back and review their life.

    We do leave with nothing.

    When our physical life ends, it’s like despawning in-game 😂 Or as SpaceX puts it, perform a rapid unscheduled disassembly 😂 Well hopefully we don’t disassemble!

    The point is, we drop everything that we had spent our life chasing.

    Whatever money, things, power and everything else is suddenly given up in one single moment. We exit the world with nothing but our memories.

    We are gifted this life though and to live amongst society, we need certain basics. Still I find myself admiring those who are able to live with a completely different set of basics, or barely none at all. A privileged perspective really.

    So what do we live for and focus on? Each to their own, but for me it’s things that feed or light up my soul. Soul work. When I choose work now, that’s my main criteria. I need to be doing good for the world, it’s people or giving back in some other way.

    It really does train you to follow your energy to the truthful work that gets you lit 🔥 You can do work for the money or other reasons. But that work is counterintuitive (in the long term) to what you were likely brought here for. Burn out can be the symptom of choices that didn’t align. Choose the path that energises your soul.

    For me, I use the reminder that we leave here with nothing, as an end check point and level reset for life.

    If I’m ever uncertain about what aligns, there’s lots of things that guide me, but when I’m really lost, sometimes projecting out to the end and tracing backwards is an interesting method to guide the path forward.

    Actually when I leave, can I just take a nice freshly toasted bagel 🥯 with salted butter please? 😂😂✨