Month: December 2022

The New Year and Resolutions, I tell you..

“What the New Year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the New Year” – Vern McLellan.

 

It is said that you may be whatever you resolve to be. Nothing relieves and ventilates the mind like a resolution.

 

As we say adios to another year and get ready to welcome another, let us take a look at some potential resolutions that we will bravely (or tamely) bring to fore.

 

“I want to laugh more, the laughter that makes you cry and makes your sides ache.” Now that is worth a standing ovation.

 

“My intention for 2023 is to replace mean thoughts with kind and patient ones.” Keep the applause going.

 

I stay resolved to take “everything (especially politics) and everyone less seriously and try to be the best person I can.”

 

Going further, another one can go like this..
“I resolve not to take anything personally or overthink or politicize any comments … just play dumb and not engage, like a robot, like I’m Siri.”
A more succinct one would be..
“I want to be better at understanding others.” That’s a great starting point.
And a perennial one for a lot of us would be: “talk less, listen more”.
” To live with gratitude and an acceptance of our mortality is a fine realization not only on New Year’s Day, but every day “.  Give this the cult status.
Will be speaking for many of us when you say, “Less screen time, more real-world time.”  
How about ” from time to time, send handwritten snail-mailed notes/letters to family and friends.” Definitely worth the ink that will be used.

 

How about some idiosyncratic resolutions? Like “I intend to eliminate very and really from my vocabulary”. That is really a very good idea. Oops. Sorry.

 

 

I heard about a resolution from a friend which was to have “someone repair the wristwatch his dad bought him for his high-school graduation in 1985, so he can wear it again.” This is truly timeless.

 

 

Here’s one with a purpose ” I would like to continue and increasingly support biodiversity in urban areas “.  Enrollments are open. Let’s go for it.
That seems a lot more complicated than my big idea of going back down one pants size, but a plan’s a plan.

 

 

Some of us are charging right at 2023 with angry-rhino determination. Keep the fire in the belly burning.

 

 

“Good resolutions are like babies crying in church. They should be carried out immediately.” ― Charles M. Sheldon
So, let’s Begin Again!
ENDS

An attraction called distraction!

” Your real competition is your distraction “– Anonymous

 

If you are reading this, amidst your deep immersive work, you shouldn’t be. This would seem weird coming from the guy who sent you this in the first place.

 

The achilles heel of our times: Staying focused and distracted by a lot of ideas.

 

We are living through a crisis of distraction. Plans get sidetracked, friends are ignored, work never seems to get done. Why does it feel like we’re distracting our lives away?

 

Donuts taste great when we are eating them. But we feel like shit some time after. We get a bit of short-term pleasure and long-term pain.

 

The two primary motivators of changing our behavior are:

 

Avoiding pain &

 

Experiencing pleasure

 

All the attention management strategies in the world will not work unless we feel the pain and the opportunity cost of distractions.

 

If anything, the world is becoming a more distracting place. Technology is becoming more pervasive and persuasive.

 

We all suffer from the shiny object syndrome. The thrill of the chase. And the after glow.

 

Our biggest obstacle is fighting our addiction with social media and the mobile phone.

 

Wasting time online, ironically consuming content about how to be a more prolific, successful creator.

 

Digital distractions create somewhat of a paradox. We get to avoid the pain of focusing on something that matters to us. And the dopamine hits we get from checking our emails or scrolling through our Instagram | Facebook feeds. That gives us a lot of pleasure.

 

But that little boost of pleasure becomes painful when we realise that we’ve wasted time on something that prevents us from accomplishing our real goals.

 

It’s hard to change anything until our motivation is strong enough. Before we can deal with our addictions to distraction, it is important to uncover our motivations.

 

A donut called distraction.

 

ENDS

Power of Darkness: Switch Off to Switch On!

Please forgive the almost oxymoronic nature of the blog’s caption. We all think that no power leads to darkness, isn’t it?

 

The world owes a lot to Benjamin Franklin, the scientist who invented electricity. It’s human to want light and warmth. God’s first recorded words, according to the Hebrew Bible, were: “Let there be light.”

 

The night has a dark side; literally and metaphorically: ghosts, scary monsters, robbers, the unknown. Electricity’s triumph over the night keeps us safer as well as busier.

 

But whatever extends the day loses us the dark. Our always on, 24-7 culture has phased out the night, so much so that we treat the night like failed daylight.

 

Night and dark are good for us. As the nights lengthen, it’s time to reopen the dreaming space. Have you ever spent an evening without electric light? You would have noticed that when the lights are on, we are all in conformity mode. Saluting the default template, playing it safe, keeping up with the Joneses, effectively talking about our outer lives. Living the expected.

 

It’s different when we are sitting around a fire or candlelight which is when we begin to articulate our feelings. Our inner lives. We speak subjectively, argue less, there are longer pauses. Noticed? Or you could not see it in the dark?

 

To sit in isolation in darkness is curiously creative. We have our brainwaves , best ideas and Eureka moments in the dead of the night and the moment the light comes on we are thinking projects, deadlines, groceries, bills…

 

The famous “sleep on it” when we have a dilemma we can’t solve is an indication of how important dream time | darkness is to human wellbeing.

 

Food, fire, walks, talks, dreams, cold, sleep, love, slowness, time, quiet, books, seasons – all these things, which are not really things, but moments of life – take on a different quality at night-time. Creativity, like human life itself — begins in darkness.

 

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”
— Mary Oliver

 

Switch off to Switch on!

 

ENDS

Attention Piece!

It is said that attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

 

The poet J.D. McCatchy captured this essential fact beautifully in his observation that “love is the quality of attention we pay to things.”.

 

It’s a no brainer. Before we can create anything worthy of other people’s attention, we have to learn to manage ours.

 

Our world is the outcome of what we pay attention to. Period. Attention is the currency of achievement.

 

Being present is the best present we can give ourselves. And to others. There is a curious power in being present. When we are present, we see the other person more clearly. We communicate better. We make lasting connections.

 

Unfortunately, in our always on, go-go-go world, being  with someone who is fully present and therefore offering attention is rare.

 

Good work and great art comes from deep focus and deep work. Our ability to be prolific, create art that resonates, that strikes a chord , tug at the heartstrings and hit people in the face with a crowbar depends on our ability to focus.

 

Consider for a moment the kind of mental world we can construct when we dedicate significant time and attention to deep endeavors.

 

“Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer,” Simone Weil observed as she considered the relationship between attention and grace at the peak of her short life. “Attention without feeling,” Mary Oliver wrote a generation later in her beautiful elegy for her soul mate, “is only a report.”

 

It’s hard to carve out time and space for work or art that matters if we’re always distracted by things don’t.

 

So, how much art have you made today?

 

” I truly believe that everything that we do and everyone that we meet is put in our path for a purpose. There are no accidents; we’re all teachers – if we’re willing to pay attention to the lessons we learn, trust our positive instincts and not be afraid to take risks or wait for some miracle to come knocking at our door “. Marla Gibbs

 

ENDS

Belief it (or) Knott!

In our lives, many of us favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of truth.

 

We listen and lean towards opinions that make us feel good rather than ideas that will make us think hard.

 

We regard disagreement as a threat to our egos, rather than an opportunity to learn.

 

We, by design, surround ourselves with people who echo and endorse our thinking and beliefs, rather than gravitating toward those who challenge and question our thought process.

 

The result is that our beliefs get brittle long before our bones do.

 

Intelligence is no cure; in fact it can even be a curse( we have heard of ” Curse of Knowledge “, haven’t we? ).

 

There’s strong evidence that being good at thinking can make us sub optimal and worse at rethinking. The brighter we are, the more blinded and limited we become to our own thinking. We short change ourselves. Constantly.

 

We don’t have to believe everything we think and internalize everything we feel.

 

Give yourselves an invitation or permission to let go of views that are no longer serving you well. In lieu of that, prize mental flexibility, humility,  and unabashed curiosity over foolish consistency.

 

There’s immense power in intentionally creating and opening the doors that accommodate you—instead of shrinking yourself in order to squeeze through whatever door happens to be there.

 

If knowledge indeed is power, then knowing what we don’t know is wisdom.

 

Once you’ve decided what you want from life, go off-menu. Ask for it. Create it.

Because the best things in life aren’t on the menu.

 

ENDS