Zest for Life

13/05/2024

Thank you, Ma Nature, it’s a glorious morning 🌞

25/02/2024

Magical tranquility

27/08/2021

It is so easy for us to forget that we live in a world of joyous wonder - especially given the drama and upheaval we’ve been living through these past 18 months.

All about us is beauty, colour, vibrancy, delight … LIFE ! … yet all too often we tell ourselves “we’re too busy to …”:
- too busy to savour the joy
- too ‘realistic’ to pause for a moment and observe, feel, connect…
… instead we submerge our sadness, our deflation, our sense of ‘something missing’, under a blanket of ‘work’ or beneath a sense of obligation, saying to ourselves “not everyone gets to stop and smell the roses”!

‘Play’ need not be an activity, rather, play can be found in a ‘lightness of the mind’.

Opportunities for play are plentiful all around us - even in lockdown: the cat will suddenly go crazy chasing a leaf across the floor; the tree outside the window will burst into flower; the birds in the branches will feel spring in the air and begin delightful courtship dances.

Even in the darkest of times, opportunities to find ‘lightness’ abound; they don’t need to be sought out, because they’re present wherever we are … our choice is simply whether to remain wilfully blind, or instead to allow ourselves to embrace the magical wonders all about us.

Enjoy giving yourself time to recognise the playful lightness that surrounds you, right at this moment.



Photo by Scott Webb from Pexels

23/08/2021

A gardener lets their imagination flow with “what if?”, and then sets their creativity free with “how?”. Be like a gardener.

It is said by those who count such things (National Science Foundation, 2005) that we have up to 60k thoughts each day, most of which are the same as we had yesterday!

So why do we invest so much thought energy into our past, rather than into the present (“stop, and smell the roses”) or our future (“imagine if…”)
… Perhaps the most potent driver is ‘comfort’.

While yesterday’s thoughts can have the allure of a comfy chair, a warm blanket and a hot drink, the same study suggests 80% of those replayed thoughts are negative - so how is that comfortable? … We’ve already experienced it, we survived it, so we know we can do so again.

Perhaps the greatest balance in past/present/future thinking can be found in the mind of a gardener. While thoughts of the past are present (“the wisteria was magnificent last year”), their minds are on the future: when to prune or fertilise, where to plant … a gardener’s thinking lives primarily next season, next year, over the next decade…
… and when they want a hot cuppa or a cool drink, they enjoy it in their garden, very much in the present moment.

So how do we stop replaying past thoughts? The trick is not to stop them, rather it’s to redirect them, one thought at a time, by asking 2 simple questions…

💭 reach in and catch a thought as it swims past;
💬 examine it, and ask yourself … “what if ‘this’ could be different tomorrow?” ... and let your imagination loose;
🗯 then ask ... “how?” … and simply release the thought back into the flow. It will now ‘swim’ in a new direction, seeking answers.

“That’s fine and good” I hear you say, “but what about the thoughts I missed?” … don’t worry, they’ll be back again tomorrow 🙂



Photo by Harrison Haines from Pexels

23/08/2021

The seeds of our future remain ‘unrealised potential’, until we scatter them on fertile soil.

A windowsill covered in lunch bags - what’s that about? It’s a fair question, and may I pose a question of my own…

Do you ever feel that you’re not living up to all you could be?
Do you ever wonder what more you could be doing … how much more you could be giving … how many opportunities for growth and development you’ve left unsown?
I certainly do - each and every day!

You see, those bags contain seeds; not metaphorically, but literally … they’re seed pods I’ve collected while out walking. The pods need heat to open, so they’re bagged and go on my hottest windowsill.
21 species in all, each with dozens if not hundreds of potential plants within - but…

… sitting on my windowsill, they can do no good whatsoever, because I’ve not yet taken that vital 2nd step - actually sowing the seeds!

In these “I want it now” modern times, we have to remember that good things generally take time.
In the greenery behind the window can be seen a single white flower:
* 12 months before, in that same spot, the plant finally reached the balcony railing, having climbed 12’ to get there
* 6 months before that, it was planted at the base of the climb
* a year prior, it was a seed sown in a nursery
… and before that, it was simply potential - a seed sitting in a pod.

A year ago, that railing was completely bare. One year hence and there’ll be no railings visible, and it’ll be not one flower but dozens! But …
… I remind myself constantly that 30 months ago, this balcony-covering was no more than potential, simply an idea !

How often do we leave unsown the seeds of possibility, the seeds of change, the seeds of a lush and vibrant new life? When I’m honest with myself, I have to say - “all too often !”

What about you? Are there seeds you could be sowing today? …

20/08/2021

I'm rather late to the party with the vast output of John Maxwell. With my first half-dozen of his volumes now on the 'up next' pile, I'll be able to make a dent in that part of the reading list.

4/5: In some ways this is a quick read, filled with engaging and inspiring stories. Definitely a book to keep to hand when seeking a little uplift. In other ways it's a slow read ... Try reading it with a notebook and pencil alongside, pausing at each quote or example that resonates, and muse on the...

19/08/2021

Dreaming of ‘what might be’ can lift our spirits more powerfully, potently and speedily than anything else - be that drug, or diversion. Have you had dreams you’ve set aside? What if you were to reawaken them?
Allow yourself a moment now …

Dreaming is a power we all have, an ability we all use - yet for the majority, it’s an ‘indulgence’ we don’t allow ourselves.

Before we’ve given our dreams the time, the space, and the nurturing to develop, we direct our attention unwisely: we listen to doubt; we ‘give the floor’ to our internal whisperer, whose message is always driven by safety and certainty; we share our dreams with those around us who’ve made a practice of retreating to the comfort of ‘small thinking’.

It’s natural to want to share our dreams with our nearest and dearest, with our family, friends and colleagues, but in doing so we risk sowing the seeks of our dreams onto infertile ground.

We must remind ourselves that the people in our circle today were drawn to us through the thoughts we’ve had and expressed up to this moment. When we ‘dream big’ and think expansive thoughts, we’re changing who we are to them. Asking others to share our dreams pulls them out of their comfort space, so it’s natural they’d rebel and hold back!
Consider … if your dream were to skydive, how many of your circle would welcome being dragged into a plane, strapped into a parachute, and shown the door at 14,000 feet ?!?

We’ve all had dreams that we’ve let fade away after sowing them on fallow ground. Allow yourself a moment to recall some of your dormant dreams…
What might happen if you were to re-gather those seeds, nurture them anew, and sow them into fertile soil?
What could a ‘dreamed future’ hold for you?…



Photo by Ron Lach from Pexels

14/08/2021

‘Living life from a place of worthiness’…

We live in times that are highly critical, an era where fault and failure are spotlighted more readily than striving and success. Our news media highlights negativity, with ’success’ receiving a mention primarily in places like the finance report (“XYZ Company rose 10% today”), or the sporting and entertainment news.

Criticism is a commonplace in our personal lives too; it may be from our employers, often more ready to chasten than to praise, or in our private lives, with subtle expectations imposed insidiously in the present by popular media, or historically through our upbringing and family environment.

These drivers of ‘how we should be living’ and ‘what we should be achieving’, regardless of source, all too often receive reinforcement from our harshest critic … ourselves.

The values we adopt unconsciously, and their supporting beliefs, are oftentimes conflicting; this conflict creates an internal discord that can leave us in a state of constant vigilance, ever-needing to be wearing our emotional armour.

In her book, Brown speaks about ‘wholeheartedness’ as the state of having an ‘unarmoured heart’; her key to wholeheartedness is …
… “engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness”.

“How do we do that?”, one may reasonably ask…

Perhaps the simplest key to that place of worthiness lies in daily reflection; not a self-recriminative review of all the things that ‘should have’ been done, rather a pause to consider all the ways in which we engaged positively with the world, our daily connections of the heart.

How do you imagine you’d awake to your tomorrow, were you to take into your sleep state the recollection of all the hearts you’ve touched today?…


Photo by Symeon Ekizoglou from Pexels

10/08/2021

Procrastination is a debilitating disease, a malady that robs us of growth, of opportunity, and of our most valuable resource … time. Procrastination born of perfectionism ups the ante, and can justifiably be called a curse!!!

Perfectionism can serve us well - to a limited degree - but it also comes wth a hefty cost: it denies us joy, as whatever we achieve, nothing is ever enough; it also denies us freedom to explore, to discover, to create…

In the 80s Nike advised us to “Just Do It”; in today’s times, with the pace of change being so much greater, that advice has evolved to ‘do it scrappy! … but do it’.

Do you have a ‘something’ that you want to do, but perfectionism holds you back?

When seeking the ‘right path’ toward change, one potent driver we tend to forget is our past experience … remember, we know EXACTLY what will happen by delaying, by staying still and waiting for the ‘opportune moment’ - after all, we’ve been living with the results of that strategy for months, years, maybe even decades!

How much longer are you willing to endure sameness? Years?... a lifetime?… or have you reached the point now of saying “enough”?

So I wonder…

What might happen with your special ‘something’ if you were simply to ‘do it’?
What if, beyond all the fearful thoughts and anxious imaginings, we held a recognition that ‘it just might work’?…
… now isn’t that a picture worth imagining, a thought worth fostering, a possibility worth leaning towards?