This post was inspired by (and is dedicated to) all the students I have taught and worked with and to those who I am yet to teach and learn from.
When designing and planning your personal and professional life, pay attention to how you want your life to look and feel to you and not how you want it to look to anyone else. When you do that, not only will your goals change but executing them will feel much easier. It will take work, of course, but it won’t feel like work. Goals and aims are hard to achieve when they’re not really our own or when done for external rather than our own internal gratification. So seek approval of your heart instead of other’s approval.
Remember we each view the reality through the glasses made up of our thinking moment by moment (whether we are aware that we’re doing the thinking or not), this is why any situation looks different when we’re in a low mood (“blue glasses”) and when we’re in a high/good mood (“pink glasses”)—-> remember that mood chart? So is the case with other people, they too construct their own realities with how they think, and when they think a one particular thought for a long time, it becomes a belief (i.e. “life is hard”, “you can’t be honest with people”, “you should never quit” etc.)and so even when the reality wants to prove them otherwise, they won’t see it. We adopt a lot of these beliefs from our society, culture, parents and peers. So please, whenever you hear statements other people make about the situation or a person, listen, but try not use their glasses as your own. Ask yourself: is this true? Is this true for me? Do I have an evidence of that? Or am I adopting someone else’s point of view? And even if you have had bad experiences and created your own beliefs based on them, it’s OK as long as you enter any new situation with an open mind, a beginner’s mind you’re chances of having a different experience will always be there.
When feeling low, be kind to yourself and know it is temporary. The less you analyze the reasons why you feel this way and simply go and do something else and occupy your mind with things you enjoy the quicker your mind will settle on its own and your mood will change. Trust it! As soon as you’ll ask yourself “why” you feel the way you feel, you will find multiple and compelling reasons why you feel this way (more “full stops” less “comas”, remember?). But if you remember it’s not “London” that makes you feel bad or good, and it’s not the “sun” that makes you happy or the “rain” makes you feel sad, you gain a healthy distance to what you think or what you feel and open up a space for a new thought, for your feelings to change much more quickly and naturally. If there are practical things you do that helped you settle in the past, then make them part of your routine. It can be anything, a bike ride, going for a walk, reading a good book, cleaning the house :-), meditation, yoga; whatever works for you.
I have no idea what it means to be an “adult” and I’m not sure I want to find out; I’m sure I’d find lots of ideas. All I know is that we really do have a choice in how we show up in life, in any situation and in our relationships with other people. At any time we choose (even when not aware) to complain or to understand (a person or a situation), we choose to criticise/blame or to give a constructive feedback, we choose to commit to tasks or to “full around”, we choose to show up fully engaged or distracted, we choose to see only our point of view or to be willing to consider a different/a new one, we choose to give something a try or dismiss it without trying and say that it didn’t work, we choose to respect or disrespect someone, we choose to keep promises or break them etc. I could go on. So I guess knowing that is really the only indicator of one’s maturity over others, and it often doesn’t come with an age, because it’s not about the age, it’s about an awareness.
Beyond our thinking, our intellect and beyond the beliefs we carry, there really is an “infinity of awesomeness” available to you all, a space for creativity and new ideas and the knowing that you are not a “fixed” human being which means that sometimes you will feel insecure or secure but you are never permanently either of those. It means that sometimes you will be scared and sometimes you won’t but it doesn’t make you a permanently “fearful” person. It means that sometimes you will feel strong and sometimes you will feel weak, but those experiences do not make you a permanently weak or permanently strong person. It means that sometimes you will be stuck and sometimes you will be creative, and those too are not permanent, which means that when you feel weak, insecure, scared you can be kind to yourself and remember that a different feeling is always available, very soon if you don’t make it to a label that sticks. It also means that you are not “fixed” and you also don’t need any fixing! It means that you are a human being, and life is a dance between feeling FINE (Fucked Up, Insecure, Neurotic, Emotional) and feeling really fine. So when you don’t treat these feelings too seriously you will begin to experience the real fine feeling more and more often.
Life is a constant dance to the music played in our hearts and the music played in our heads (concepts, ideas, and beliefs about the world and about ourselves, opinions of others), and that’s OK, that’s human. But, and I don’t really know why, the more we listen and dance to the former, the more OK we feel within ourselves. Our intellect is an awesome tool too and it works perfectly and smoothly when we use it to turn into a reality what our heart/intuition asks of us. Then it’s a truly perfect match. It’s like Dancing with the Stars 🙂
Far more important than your daily, weekly, monthly or yearly goals is your “vision bubble”. The bubble contains things you truly care about, things that really, really matter to you and your values. It contains the image of the kind of life you dream about not too specific and not too general. It contains the kind of relationships and people you hold dearest to your heart. It contains your dreams and wishes whether right now you believe they can come true or not. All the stories, reflections and discussions during our time together were created for you to determine what goes into your bubble. The bubble is your true north, your compass, when you hold it “there” it will guide you and influence your choices. So check in with it, every once in awhile. Because even though life isn’t linear and there will be diversions, and your goals will be changing, and you will be taking different avenues – that’s life, but the bubble will always ensure that you’re going in the right direction.
Dream, act, fail, learn, keep on moving, repeat. Dreams are nothing other than ideas that others have not yet thought of or not yet made happen, and it is only because of that that some will judge whether something is or isn’t possible. Don’t buy into that. Many thought the idea of planes was plain crazy, or that nobody would ever buy shoes over the Internet (Zappos). Dream your own dream, that’s one thing to never give up. Remember there are things that we make possible by our own work and efforts and there are things that this awesome thing, called intelligence behind life, or the Universe (whatever you want to call it) puts right in front of us in the right time. So you want to make sure that you leave in your life some space, some room for the Universe to play, to have its say.
I don’t know where the idea that failure is somehow “bad” came from. But I do know that it is inevitable when we move toward our goals and dreams, and it means absolutely nothing about us as humans, it only means that we are doing something that we care about, and as far as I’m concerned it’s a good thing. I also learnt that any failure is just a failure full stop. Unless we attach any meaning to it. Sometimes failures serve as a lesson or a feedback that we should adjust, regroup and rethink what and how we’ve been going about things. I believe every single failure teaches us a valuable lesson. Sometimes failure is a sign that we should give up what we’ve been doing all together. Failure feels bad because someone somewhere decided that it is bad, or decided that we’re not supposed to fail, or that it is a sign of not being good enough, or whatever. A lot of heartache comes from us thinking we can avoid it. So I want to suggest that you welcome it instead, embrace it as part of the deal, and learn from it. Sure we feel bumped when it happens, so allow yourself to be human, have a little cry, a rant, or even a tantrum, have the under duvet liaison with Ben & Jerry and Netflix and then re-think, re-group and keep on moving toward your dream. And if you want to take it even further, I’d say: go and suck at something, go and fail and something and see how different it feels when we give ourselves a permission to that.
Be you, be true to yourself and in relationships with others. This is the only way you’ll create true and long lasting connections and relationships with people in your life. They might be a few but one true connection is more valuable than 100s of relationships built on “impressions”.
Remember you have a set of multiple intelligences within you (IQ, EQ, SQ, remember?), use them all in a balanced way. This is why you are the best expert on you and what’s right or wrong for you. Listen to the experts and read books and research, but don’t buy into the “expert truths” and don’t treat them as ultimate; all of us have seen experts and scientists change their opinions throughout a history. Listen and check in with yourself. If it feels right to you keep it, if it doesn’t ditch it. Simples!
Above all be kind to yourself and to others. Try, as much as possible, to see every human being as valuable. Be impressed by who they are far more than by what they do or what they have. Remember, we have no idea what hides behind the outer appearances of people we meet and behind they’re flashy social media profiles and we don’t know what hides behind dirty clothes and messy hair. So don’t be fooled but what appears to you on the outside. We are all humans, which means we all, with no exceptions, have our struggles and insecurities, they just don’t look good on Facebook, but it doesn’t mean they don’t exist. It’s nice to be liked, but make sure you care about the number of “likes” you give yourself and your life far more you’d care about getting someone else’s likes, including Facebook “likes”!
When showing up at work and in life, aim to be “self-less”. Not selfless (although that’s a noble goal), but self-less, which means try to think about yourself less. It means, keeping the balance between thinking what you can get and what you can give and contribute to others in any given situation. When they say “be the change you want to see in the world” it really means, that we all at any moment can have an impact on someone else’s lives, even through the smallest, seemingly inconsequential acts of kindness. But it is only when we think about ourselves less that we can see an opportunity for a positive change, for a positive impact all around us at all times.
There is no such thing as “bad” choice or “dead end” situation if we look at it objectively. “Bad” is purely a matter of interpretation and one way of looking at it. Every seemingly “bad” relationship, “bad” situation holds a tonne of valuable lessons for us to learn and take them into the future. It is through those “bad” choices that we learn what we definitely don’t want, we discover something new about ourselves and our true desires, but we’re usually able to see it after the fact, looking back. Being afraid of making a “bad” choice isn’t at all helpful or productive, and in reality, it doesn’t prevent us from what’s going or not going to happen. We cannot evaluate any situation, as positive or negative, good or bad, unless we’re actually in it, anything before that is just “making stuff up” and it actually decreases our ability to think clearly and creatively about our future choices. Once in the actual situation (i.e. job) there are multiple factors in play, factors which determine how we see the situation: there is the low mood and bad mood perspective, there is the attitude with which we choose to show up, and then there is the quiet, neutral and drama free, clear view of the situation which is the most reliable source of information.
Knowing that at any point there are those multiple factors at play, knowing how to be aware and discern, and knowing that at any moment or we can apply the victim/fixed mindset or the creator/growth mindset means that there also multiple ways to address and solve any issue and any situation and multiple ways to get out of it, if we choose to. When we go into any situation with this knowledge and with an open mind it is and will be a real game changer, and a hugely empowering one when we know that, we have it all within us, because we can choose how we’ll respond to any situation that comes along and we can always design and create the life that works for us.
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