Do you ever find that sometimes the same thing keeps showing up in your life in different forms and situations like it’s in a slightly different colour to everything else so that it will stand out and you take notice? Well, I’ve been seeing lots of amazing projects and meeting with lots of courageous, community and system changing people lately that have brought a number of things to me to ponder upon.
I’ve been reflecting upon what we seek out of our experience of being alive. Personal fulfilment, a feeling of connection, a perception of belonging, happiness and a sense of self-worth all seem vital components to living a happy life (securing a definition of ‘happy’ would take another article so please just see it to mean what it means for you).
I have learnt that there are many simple things that you can do so as to have these in your life, but here are a few to get you started.
Pay it forward. I am continuously amazed at how the more I give, the more I receive. I seem to live on fresh air at times, yet me and my children have enough to meet our needs and a little more. I’m not sure how it works other than seeing it as an energy that flows around people who engage in this way of operating.
Get involved in a project in your Community. Find something locally and become a part of a bigger picture to make a difference. In Oxfordshire, there is a new project just launching called The OTCN Oxhop Challenge. There are always things happening in your community and if you can’t find something, create it!
When you stop to talk to someone, a friend, a colleague, an acquaintance, comment on how well they look, or how the colour they are wearing suits them, or pass on something good to them that you heard someone else say. It’s not hard to say something nice to someone but it can make the biggest difference to the receiver of the compliment and they’ll be left with a lovely feeling. The quote “People may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel” springs to mind.
Being who you are is actually all you’re meant to be….self-love is the cornerstone to everything! Remember that….
What do you do? What brings you the happiness you seek? How do you feel a sense of belonging and purpose? What can you share about what you have learnt on your journey that might help someone else reading this post?
As the Christmas holidays come to a close, and my house looks like a bomb site, my 15 year old barely grunting at me as he rises at 12 noon, eats and leaves the building, and a 12 year old eating her entire bodyweight in sugar when I’m not looking, I’ve been continuing to ponder about what messages we give our children about “The Real World”.
While distracting myself from my work, I found an extract from a speech by Bill Gates given a few years ago at a High School about things they did not and will not learn in school. He expressed concern at a generation with no concept of reality and a lack of the necessary skills with which to function in the world. I think this is a great reminder of our role as parents. Even though I am often faced with a horrified expression from my off spring when I try and impose certain values, beliefs, rules and life lessons, with their biggest moan being about why I can’t be a ‘normal’ mother (whatever one of those might look like)!
Rule 1: Life is not fair – get used to it!
Rule 2 : The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3 : You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4 : If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Rule 5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.
Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, ‘learn from them’..
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.
Feel free to print off, colour in and use blutak to stick on their doors!
So we have arrived at the end of another year, or in the words of the great John Lennon, another year over and a new one just began. It is one of my favourite times of the year, far more meaningful to me than Christmas, and it spares any negative emotional yearning that the week prior to this always makes room for. It doesn’t take hold of me because of the external celebrations on offer but because of the internal opportunities to pause, reflect and create. This time allows us to quantify what we have achieved, note who we have in our lives that were not here at the beginning of the year and who we no longer have around us. The deepening of long term friendships is always a favourite reflection for me and it is the ability to project all of that information into the future in terms of thinking about what the following year may hold, that really captures me.
I have given 2012 an incredible amount of thought. I have a clarity about the year ahead and what I want to achieve that can only be described as daring. But, if we are to fully understand that the future is made up by what we do in the present moments that we have right now, then we absolutely have to set ourselves challenges beyond our wildest dreams.
Glossy magazines and newspaper articles are currently spouting the monotonous resolutions dialogue that involves all that we should undoubtedly be striving for anyway…losing weight, getting fit and reducing death-enhancing substance use! These are the kind of goals that we set in order to feel like we ‘fit in’ with what we think people want from us. These are essentially setting resolutions for others’ approval. I’m suggesting that we set different goals altogether.
Make your future different, make it really different. Make resolutions that come from your inner desires born of your authentic self which stem from your very core. Set goals that frighten you as they seem out of your reach, like dreams. I realise that this is contrary to much of what you will read which will include ‘keeping to realistic goals’. But I absolutely wholeheartedly know, that if you reach for the stars, even if you get to the trees, you will have achieved something amazing.
I have set a goal for myself that is terrifying. I know I can do it. I believe it is there for me to do. I know I can make it happen. But the voice of doubt that sits on my shoulder from time to time is saying “You can’t do that”, “Why do you think you can do that?” and “Who do you think you are?”. Well, I am going to do it and I know that when I sit down next year and pause and reflect and look at what I have achieved and created, I will be able to know that I made it happen. I made it happen and I ignored the doubting voice and the constraints of limited thinking. So tell me, what will your resolutions look like? Are you looking at the same picture that you looked at a year ago or are you going to change your future into a future you want for yourself… because I know you can!
In February 2010, with two months gardening leave, the emotional recovery of my marriage ending only 9 months earlier still in full swing, two children, a mortgage and my ever so slightly feisty attitude, I walked out of my job. I worked in the Public Sector and the contract was always going to end and the inevitable fight for another job that failed to satisfy would be due to take place soon and I just couldn’t face it anymore.
I left behind a slightly startled Manager, six weeks paid leave, sick pay, mileage allowance and a respectable salary. It wasn’t enough for me on any level and single parenting with a full time job based an hour away, is a comprehensively difficult task for reasons that shouldn’t need detailing.
As I head towards two years of self-employment, I have learnt more than I could ever have imagined. The very process of getting up each and day and having to take responsibility for your earnings, ensuring that the children have food and warmth, is character building to say the least. I regularly meet people who are setting up in business who want as much information as possible as to how you can actually make this happen. So what can I tell you?
Get used to having only what you need. When you strip away most of what you spend your money on, much of it only serves to make you feel better about the unsatisfying life you lead. We actually need very little. Strip it right down. Now. And hope that you have lovely friends who pretend to employ you for bits of work that need doing.
When you first start in business, days off and work/life balance are luxuries spoken of by employed people or people supported by a partner. If it’s just you, prepare to work all day and all night, managing the basics of sleep, food and conversations with your children (if you have them) that are in the very least, done face to face. I absolutely promise that life will not stay like this. I have at least one day off a week now and I balance my life through the days that I do work by working hours that fit around my family and my social life.
Know this, you will become unemployable fairly quickly. The thirst for making a success of your business will be a driving force that most employers don’t really want in their workplace. No longer limited by other people’s needs and expectations, you can reach as high up to the stars as your wish. Also, taking lunch, starting work and finishing work, will all become time frames that you wish for no-one else to ever interfere with again. In short, once you start on this journey, you’re likely to have to stay on this journey!
Connect with as many people as you can from which you can then find people to form your support group or your team. These are the people that you will learn from and that you will teach, that you will have coffee with and cry with. These are the people that you will grow with and you will form a Network with whereby you recommend each other businesses forming a thriving business community that then connects with other thriving communities.
You are now several departments. You are Marketing, Personnel, Payroll, Health and Safety, Book Keeper, Social Media Strategist, Communications and, of course, you complete the job itself. It is possible that you have not ever learnt so much information before.
Being Self-employed is a little like life before children…you really can’t explain it to someone until they’ve done it. It’s hard, it’s amazing, it’s frustrating, it’s fulfilling. Like parenting, it is every emotion and it takes you right through the sleepless nights to that look of love you have on your face as you gaze down at your full diary in a doting fashion and think “I made you”.
So there we are, a very short introduction to my life in Business with more posts to follow. This is my own story and I have learnt that I have quite a high propensity to risk taking behaviour (although I think that has lessened somewhat over the years) and this attitude has helped. Running your business is not about certainty or safety or security, even if these are future goals. But it is definitely about excitement, learning, empowerment, creativity and an overwhelming sense of achievement that I don’t recall feeling since I put myself through my degree while working full time back in the early 1990’s. If I have any regrets, it’s that I didn’t do it sooner!
I remember being given a sheet of paper, many years ago and long before Google searched your needs out for you. On it were these 10 rules for being human. I cannot remember who gave me this and in what context but I carried it around with me just about everywhere and stuck it to any wall that was close. It felt like the instruction manual that ‘they’ forgot to give me when I arrived here to this thing called life! You may well have seen this before….
You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it’s yours to keep for the entire period.
You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, “life.”
There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately “work.”
Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.
Learning lessons does not end. There’s no part of life that doesn’t contain its lessons. If you’re alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.
“There” is no better a place than “here.” When your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here.”
Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
Your answers lie within you. The answers to life’s questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
I came across this piece of writing, writen by the then 19 year old Veronica A. Shoffstall and was taken by it’s beauty, observation and eloquence, particularly for one so young. I hope it resonates with you too….
“After a while you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul and you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning and company doesn’t always mean security. And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts and presents aren’t promises and you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes ahead with the grace of woman, not the grief of a child and you learn to build all your roads on today because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight. After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much so you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers. And you learn that you really can endure you really are strong you really do have worth and you learn and you learn with every goodbye, you learn…”
Inspired by a repeated pattern of behaviour that I have observed of myself all of my adult life, I feel compelled to write about ‘sabotage’. Those of you who have done some work on yourself will be familiar with this terminology in relation to self-destructive behaviour, but for those of you who may be yet to explore it, allow me to offer my understanding of this.
Sabotage is born out of fear and operates so as to prevent having to deal with questions such as ‘I’m not enough’, ‘I won’t be loved’, I don’t deserve it’ or ‘what’s the point – I’ll be rejected/abandoned/fired sooner or later’.
In recovery terms, recovery from drug addiction or alcoholism, it might be that a person sabotages their recovery by continuing to go to places where they are at risk of using and then blaming the places, people or things that ‘made’ them use, rather than facing their role in that outcome.
Sabotage is not about taking responsibility. It seeks to blame other people for an outcome. For example, pushing someone away continually until they have no choice other than to actually go away and then they can be blamed as the person who was the abandoner…. In a kind of ‘see, I told you they would leave/reject me/abandon me’.
As a person who is aware of sabotaging, in particular, potential intimate relationships, I am knowledgeable and aware of this behaviour, a behaviour that I was made aware of a very long time ago. But what happens when it becomes more subtle? When knowledge does not equal power? Or worse, when you can actually see yourself in the behaviour but feel powerless to stop it?
We:
Forgive ourselves…first and foremost
With that comes compassion
We then take responsibility
With that comes repairing any damage
And when all is said and done, sit safely and quietly in the knowledge that we have just learned a little more about ourselves that will then make the lesson next time shorter until it has been learnt and does not come again!
Self-awareness is an amazing, frustrating, liberating state of mind, body and spirit. The lessons may take longer than we would like and they may get harder and more difficult to manage than we would like. But essentially what choice do we have if we are to become the best that we can be? The personal goal in life has to be that we can become the very best that we can possibly be, so learn, grow and love yourself in the process, as you are and as you can be.
I came across this fantastic poster which I periodically paste up all over the place and I love it, primarily because it forces us to think outside our little boxes, moves us to the edge of our comfort zones and reminds us that life is to be lived, felt, experienced and filled with longing….
I don’t want to leave my time on this planet having not pushed myself to my limits, having not explored every possible part of who I am or who I could be. Within that process, the aim for me has to be trying to leave the world a better place than when I arrived here….making a difference is what makes a difference to how I feel about everything I do. Will you walk with me too?
Why oh why does the whole world, the part of the world that does not have to be consumed each moment with searching out the basic needs of food and shelter of course, not understand that Life is a gift? A gift given for just a short time for us to fully appreciate and enjoy all that is on offer?
Soap Operas and hateful jobs and meaningless relationships are not what we are meant to be doing. What would be the point in that? Sometimes I feel like I want to run up to people and say Wow! You have life! Now what will you do with it?
I have lived a life and I shall continue to live my life exploring all that I can be, because a life worth living is a life that has been lived, and I have lived…thank goodness, and I continue to expand every aspect of my being.
So go and look into the eyes of life and fall in love because my friends, life is very short. It is very short indeed…
