Take the time to do the things you enjoy.
Be it reading, writing or listening; make time for it.
The rat race has us spending a disproportionate amount of time doing things we don’t like, leaving minimal time for those we do. Maximise it.
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Whilst You Can…Do (5)
Remember to breathe.
It’s the thing that will keep you calm when all around you becomes chaos.
Calm, clarity and serenity can all be achieved by taking care of your breathing.
Whilst You Can…Do (4)
Go outside and enjoy the natural world.
The earth is changing before our very eyes.
What you love about nature, could be gone – forever – soon.
Whilst You Can…Do (3)
Say yes and take that chance of doing or trying something new.
Variety is the spice of life.
Your comfort zone can stand being expanded.
Who knows when something new will be offered to you again?
Whilst You Can…Do (2)
Tell those people you love, that you love them.
You’ll never know how much they need to hear it.
After all, tomorrow is never promised.
Whilst You Can…Do (1)
Take the stairs, rather than the lift; one day you won’t be able to.
Convenience is efficiency, but that choice won’t always be there.
One day you’ll long to be able to take the stairs, but your knees won’t let you.
Building Up, Not Down
It’s come to my alarming attention, that a lot of the time when seeing other people’s successes, I’m often wanting to see them fail rather than celebrate their success. I blame this largely down to being involved in sports from a very early age. Sport fosters and builds a competitive spirit that can lead to a toxic mindset of needing to see other’s lose, in order to allow us to win. Be it that last second free-throw or watching others struggle in general; the mindset is that you want your opponents to falter for your own gain.
But what happens when that mindset infiltrates normal life?
Well, we still need to be somewhat competitive in life to be ‘successful’. Job interviews require you ‘winning’ against others and that will require, in some part, your competition failing in comparison to yourself. It involves you highlighting your strengths, which becomes a highlighting of these weaknesses in others.
But there isn’t always a need for this competition, whereby you are directly competing with others.
Be it cars, houses or holidays, society has drilled into us the need to compete. Social media ‘likes’ effectively force competition and that’s a large reason as to why I no longer use Facebook. A quick aside, this decision was reaffirmed recently when dining out. A couple on the table next to me sat without conversation for 10 minutes, instead dedicating their focus solely to their phones. Their dinner was served and they instinctively asked the waitress to take a photo of them with their meal. Big smiles, etc. and the photo was taken. They ate their meal in silence and then left. But I suppose it got them the likes they craved on their relevant social media platforms. Behind that snapshot always lies a different picture.
So why do we seek to build down, rather than up? A lot of it is to do with us looking for validation by comparing ourselves to what others have. We do not seek to enjoy the now, instead looking constantly for what we can have next. We judge our own possessions and achievements by who else has them, or can have them.
Instead of judging our own worth by comparing to others, consider how our own worth makes us feel. There is no greater feeling in life to be contented with life. Seek contention in what we have, rather than what we think we need to make us happier.
How much is enough?
Be it money, power or possession; when is enough, actually enough?
Having sat fairly stagnant in a job role for 5-plus years, it’s recently become apparent to me of a need to ‘move on’ or perhaps more importantly, ‘move up’. ‘Up’ being vertically up the hierarchy in order to take on more responsibility and power armed with the experience I’ve gathered. But why would I actually want to move up?
Up would bring with it additional responsibilities, the tasking of which would be financially remunerated. The money is actually less about the additional responsibility placed upon the elevated position, and more the additional time that would be required to complete the relevant tasks. So, how do you actually put a price on that time?
I once turned down a job promotion at a new company because of the length of commute. It looked manageable on paper, but actually making that journey twice during the interview day showed that even on a good day with regards to traffic, it wasn’t time that I was willing to ‘waste’. The money being offered wasn’t worth the additional hour-and-a-half of idle time. But what if the money had been greater? May that have made me think twice?
So if it’s not money, it must be power. The power that appears to come with elevated job roles. Be it for self-satisfaction of making it to a certain level or being able to allow others to benefit from your experience, or from the ability to demonstrate to others that you’ve ‘made it’ by achieving a certain level of the hierarchy; power means something. You either use your power to empower others, or to oppress those same people. A sustainable society has the ability to empower others to become as good, if not better, than those currently in power. But how often does this theory become practice?
All of that aside, is there anything really wrong with staying where you are and being contented? My current role is not one that requires a huge amount of thought given the experience that I have accrued, nor does it require a substantial amount of time to complete outside of the regular working day. But there’s an itch that needs to be scratched, and if I’m honest it’s more to do with money that anything else. Money that can help get a larger mortgage in order to buy a bigger house which is becoming a necessity with regards to how life is panning out.
The end result is that we are slaves to the power of money. We need it to achieve what we believe to be an acceptable quality of life. If it takes more effort and time, then that simply will need to be the trade-off.
When it’s hard to let go…
Every experience in life leaves behind its own memory, mark or scar. To what extent we allow those to define us and to influence our next experiences are largely our own choice. But what happens when this becomes more difficult to control?
Relationships are most commonly things that leave behind indelible marks. Having had long-term relationships in the past, certain experiences from them stick with me more significantly than anything else in life. Yes they’ve shaped my views on relationships and what a healthy one looks like, and yes they’ve resulted in better situations. But, they also leaving their calling cards of things that went wrong and these things are exactly what needs to be let go of in order to avoid the same mistakes being made again. If only it were that easy…
We look into things, scrutinising interactions to find what we want to find, rather than what is actually there. We want to find the things that we have experienced before, because this is what we are comfortable with. We always look for reasoning in everything and if that can be sought from previous failed relationships, then so-be-it. Looking for what has occurred before – that which was unhealthy within a relationship – can prove toxic for new relationships. Looking for those signs of failing relationships, within a currently positive one, can throw the balance of things all off. It can bring out insecurities about the current situation and reveal old wounds to new people; people who trust you and don’t want to be judged based on the mistakes of those from the past.
It’s the letting go that is tough. The moving on and moving forwards. The platitude that we tell ourselves that what doesn’t kill us will make us stronger, certainly sounds plausible. But these battle scars are still there, whether on show or not.
The conclusion we have to make is to allow those scars to help us win the war, not the battle.
What are social dynamics?
We’ve all been there: a social environment in which you’re the ‘outsider’. One where everyone else has at least two branches of connections to others, but you’re left with just the one. The dilemma being as to whether you attempt to further strengthen that branch of the tree or whether you try to get the trunk to sprout off new branches.
The dilemma is furthered by the idea of time. There is only a finite amount of it in this life and attempting to spread it too thinly can mean said time is wasted. Sticking to what you know will mean time isn’t wasted, but could it also means that opportunities for future time to be more positive are lost?
Experience has shown that such social gatherings, stag dos for example, provide opportunities for friendship furthering or friendship frugality. The main link is to the stag, so surely there must be a reason why these other people are also liked by the main focus of the event – why not try to find out what it is that makes them in his favour too? After all, you’re a good guy aren’t you?
Part of the issue with this is that we are reliant on others to be willing to spread their time, attention and engagement to include those who are on the periphery of the group. After all, their friendship tree within the group is already strong with a variety of branches. What possible benefit could it bring them?
Some of the strongest friendship bonds I have, have come from such experiences. These people were willing to invest time into identifying what it is that the main focus of the gathering liked in myself. By both them and I breaking away from the idea of sticking to what we know, I’d like to think all of our lives have been improved. But I would also completely understand if they hadn’t wanted to take time away from being with their friends to investigate whether a new friendship could potentially be created.
We are creatures of habit, but we are also creatures who have the ability to feel empathy for those who are in awkward situations. So try that conversation with the outsider. It may benefit you much more than you ever thought it could.
What Next? 