Smokey Mirror

On the road, when you follow the direction signs you get to wherever you’re heading for. I have discovered only recently the same principle applies to everything in life. Nowadays, instead of saying where I don’t want to go, getting me nowhere, I simply state where I do want to go and automatically find the direction signs pointing to my destination. 

Imagine the brain as a radar. When I state “I don’t want to eat chocolat chip cookies anymore.”, this leaves my brain with too many options. The brain needs a focus, so it takes the only information it has got, and starts scanning my environment for chocolat chip cookies, causing me to see them everywhere and think of all the places where I can buy them, making it very likely I will eventually eat the cookies I didn’t want in the first place. Having eaten those cookies, I Read the rest of this entry »

What is rare is actually wanting to do a certain thing: wanting it so much that you are practically blind to all other things, that nothing else will satisfy you… I know I have said a lot when I say ‘You can do anything you want to do’. But I mean it… Blunder ahead with your personal view… The real work of art is the result of a magnificent struggle. ‘

Robert Henri in The Art Spirit

Do I let people see the real me? (Is this a trick question?) A part of me wants to scream ‘Of course you see the real me!’. As hard as I try to live life without masks, deep inside some part of me always pretends her way through life, pretends to be smarter, wiser, more disciplined than I actually am. That’s not the real me though. I’m the one messing up all the time. I’m the one struggling. I’m the one who can’t seem to find the time to meditate, who doesn’t always eat right or find the time to exercise.  The real me is ok with that, doesn’t mind showing my imperfections to the world. I’m human, I’m born to make mistakes. That doesn’t mean I let these mistakes define me. I always wants to do better, to learn from my mistakes. The real me knows I can be all I want to be, but sometimes it helps to fake it ‘til I make it.

A new philosophy, a new way of life, is not given for nothing. It has to be paid dearly for and only acquired with much patience and great effort.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

Margaret Atwood

Today, I turned 35. I feel a deep gratitude for each breath I take. I feel blessed beyond measure for reaching this age. I’m still here, still healthy. So many people cannot repeat these words after me. They have either been infected with HIV or have died of AIDS already. Entire generations wiped out. Babies and young children dying of AIDS alone, because they have no parents to take care of them. Hospitals filled with people who do not get the proper treatment, because there is no money. While we live our lives comfortably, pretending everything is OK, people are dying on our watch. Take a moment to realize your blessings and be inspi(red) to act. Embrace the world and give life!

‘Most people go through life rather organically, whereas you have a whole set of rules you apply,’ a friend mused, referring to Thursday’s post. That is true, I’m an all or nothing kind of person. For most people, this is hard to grasp, they think I’m too strict on myself. As for me, it is about giving the right kind of energy. For instance, I want to age healthily. To attain this goal I need a healthy lifestyle and part of that is exercise. I decide to go running every day. Of course, I could start with once a week, but that doesn’t work for me. I need it to be an automatism to get up at a certain time, put on my shoes and just start running, rain or shine. This way, I do what matters without putting in the effort. I don’t have to think about it, I just do it. Same with meditation, study and, writing this post. In the bowl that is my life, I try to put in the big rocks first, than the pebbles, than fill it up with sand. This way, everything will fit in, whereas the other way around…  you just do the experiment yourself and find out.

Rowers have a word for this frictionless state: swing … Recall the pure joy of riding on a backyard swing: an easy cycle of motion, the momentum coming from the swing itself. The swing carries us; we do not force it. We pump our legs to drive our arc higher, but gravity does most of the work. We are not so much swinging as being swung. The boat swings you. The shell wants to move fast: Speed sings in its lines and nature. Our job is simply to work with the shell, to stop holding it back with our thrashing struggles to go faster. Trying too hard sabotages boat speed. Trying becomes striving and striving undoes itself. Social climbers strive to be aristocrats but their efforts prove them no such thing. Aristocrats do not strive; they have already arrived. Swing is a state of arrival.

Craig Lambert in Mind over water

Several years ago, I wrote a mission statement for my life. When I look at it now, it is clear I didn’t understand exactly how to write it; how powerful language is. But most of all I didn’t ask myself how I could make it true. I didn’t make a plan to make it work. I didn’t understand a mission statement is a sort of living will, it not only ensures that I am aware of what I want in life, it provides a plan to act on. These last weeks, I’ve been thinking about creating version 2.0., but I didn’t know exactly how to handle it. This week, while reading David Allen’s Getting Things Done, I learned exactly how to make it happen. All I needed were the right questions to ask myself and some knowledge on how I process information. Read the rest of this entry »

A man who lost both his legs in an near-death accident, climbed the Kilimanjaro. A woman who was overweight for her entire life, lost over 300 pounds. A boy who was born without legs, ran the marathon. These people can break our limited perceptions of what is possible. Their accomplishments awed me, but I didn’t understand, and therefore dismissed these  stories to the realm of the amazing. It never occurred to me they were showing me I could do great things too.
All my life I’ve limited myself by thinking ‘I can’t do that’ or  ‘I would never be able to do that.’ Yesterday, I shifted gears. I changed my obsolete mantras for a brand new one: I can do this, I just have to figure out how.’ However impossible it might seem at the moment, I’ll be all I can be. I don’t know how I’ll get there, but I will. I believe that when I’ll keep the end in mind, keep believing in myself and just keep going, I, too, will accomplish great things.  

 Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, - act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sand of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solenm main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Trying to live each day as if it were your last, seems awfully tiring to me. Frustrating too. I mean, if I had only one day left, I certainly wouldn’t bother cleaning my house or paying the bills. Yet in order to live a balanced life, be happy, it is also necessary to those things you don’t like.
Although, I refuse to see this day as my last day, I live my life as if death were around the corner. This means I’m aware of my mortality, but it also leaves room for the future. It gives me focus. I try to enjoy every moment to the fullest and be grateful for everything I experience, so I will have lived a full life. I try to keep the end in mind and make choices that reflect my values, so I will have done what matters to me. I try to do my best and learn from my mistakes, so I will have no regrets.
And if this were my last day…? I would organise a goodbye party to celebrate my life, to tell everyone in person how they enriched my life and how thankful I am for their presence in my life. While writing, I realise I don’t do that enough. I make the decision that from today on, I will tell the people in my life how appreciative I am of them on a regular basis, so that when I die suddenly everyone will know for sure I have loved them. 

At this moment in her life, this was perfect for her, said a woman living in an apartment of 23 m2 (about 250 ft2) in the West-Village, NYC. Maybe one day she would love a penthouse with a roof terrace, but for the moment she wouldn’t want it any other way.  It raises a question: How much do you need to be happy? Do you really need that extra pair of shoes, that bigger house? How long before you would want more? Really, what would it take?  Imelda Marco’s shoes? Buckingham Palace?

This year, I’ve come to understand that if you’re not happy with where you are and what you have in this moment, all the shoes in the world or the largest house on earth will not make you happy. I repeat: will not make you happy! You will always be in search for more. Life will never be good enough.  Ask yourself: would you rather be happy now or in a year? Well, what are your waiting for? Choose to be happy right now. Love who you are. Be grateful for what your have. And enjoy what you do. Everything else will come naturally…

On the news, I saw a man who was $14.000 in debt. Due to the  increasing interest, his monthly mortgage costs had increased by $700. Yet, he was very reluctant about selling his house. He didn’t want to go back, he said. Back to what, I wondered. Why was he holding on to a house he so obviously couldn’t afford? It was clear that this was about more than just a house. What was he afraid of losing if he sold that house? It seemed as if his self-esteem was linked to this structure of wood. He was even willing to get more indebted to hold on to this false sense of security. 

How about you? Have you built your self-esteem on fleeting things like success, good looks, health or even a house. How far would you go to keep the picture perfect? How would you feel about yourself if you lost your ‘house’?

I have learned that true self-esteem comes from self-love. Ask yourself: which parts of yourself do you need to accept, before you can love yourself? Why can’t you simply accept these parts and what will it take for you to accept them? Work through the answers. Have patience and most of all: have compassion on yourself. Then one day, when you’ll lose your ‘house’, you’ll be able to stand tall, accept the challenge and move forward.  Then you’ll know that a house is a house is just a house.

‘Don’t aim at success - the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run - in the long run, I say! - success will follow you precisely because you forgot to think about it.’

Viktor E. Frankl

Preface to the 1984 edition of Man’s search for meaning