Fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of pain, fear of loss. I’ve been sitting with this question the last week. Fear holds us back far too often. I don’t think we even realise it half the time; we often phrase it being practical or realistic. We hide it behind cynicism, and demands of “if only other people/my family/the government would…”. We limit our imaginations, our ideas becoming stunted, by making choices based only what can see, not what we dream.
What would you do if you were not afraid?
I mean really do – that thing that’s been clawing at your belly and living in the back of your mind for all this time. I believe that we have gifts to offer the world, gifts as unique as the patterns on our skin, our strands of DNA, the snowflakes that cover the ground each winter. When we think that we have nothing to give, we forget we live in a world made of diversity, that there is nothing else out there exactly as we are. Every one of us is making the world through our actions, how can we plant the seeds of beauty?
What would you do if you could not fail? What would you do if you were not afraid?
I believe our lives are supposed to be bold, daring, audacious adventures*. They don’t always feel like this though. And even though a bold, daring, audacious adventure sounds great – it’s also terrifying af, none of those words are synonymous with safety. Too often though, we become mentally trapped by systems we never chose to be a part of, rather than find and craft a different way. We allow jobs that we don’t enjoy to dictate how we spend our lives, to determine our mood and attitude on certain days (Monday blues, Happy Fridays, Humpday Wednesdays). We tell ourselves we’re too small to make a difference – but what if you could?
What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
Would you go to therapy? Heal the traumas that keep running your life? Would you do the inner work? Or what if you stopped doing all the things and just breathed for a while? Allowing what is within you to arise, even if it scares the hell out of you?
Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash
For a culture that loves the shallows, exploring our own depths is a rebellious act.
What else would you do if you were not afraid and you could not fail?
Our lives are short, and I believe that life is asking more of us. Life is asking us to live it, to trust it, to embrace it. To take everything we love and everything we feel called to do and take that first step.
Our job is not to fix the world, it is to love it.
And yes, fear is normal, caution wise. The world is a terrifying place sometimes and we all want to belong, feeling loved and safe. One day, however, there will be a day that is our last, and none of our fears will matter so much as whether we truly, ever lived.
*Bold, daring, audacious adventures look different to everyone; what this means is to live a life with choices true to you, that align with your values & make you feel alive, rather than following the idea of what you are ‘supposed to do’.
Maybe it starts with those few extra meetings each week. It’s an important cause, and there are deadlines we need to make, actions that need to happen. Soon we’re sleeping less, waking up stressed in the middle of the night, or struggling to drift off. Insomnia is the new norm.
Our social lives become pretty quiet, or perhaps just enmeshed with our activism. Who has time to catch up with friends? Aren’t most of our friend’s activists too? Don’t we see them through the movement?
The exhaustion is setting in. Then the moodiness, the small irritations that are building. Our relationships, both in the movement and out, begin to suffer. Work feels harder. We’re losing the joy of it, the spark that made us part of the movement in the first place.
Before long, we’re spent. We’ve got nothing left.
Burnout takes many different forms in activism. It shows up as anxiety, guilt, exhaustion, cynicism, despair and so on. The World Health Organisation refers to it as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed, characterised by feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and reduced efficacy.
But with changemakers it doesn’t just come from our workplace. Many activists have day jobs that pay the bills, but spend increasing amounts of time outside of work campaigning, lobbying and protesting for change. Those who know that a more beautiful world is possible often have a deep understanding of current injustice and oppression, this knowledge a weight pushing us to work and fight harder.
Harder, though, is not necessarily effective, and burnout culture doesn’t need a place in activism if we address the root causes.
CYCLES OF CHANGE
Activists are often the epitome of ‘hustle’ and ‘grind’ culture – work spilling in to every hour and area of our lives. There are bills being passed, or campaigns being launched, corporations are pushing ahead with plans at lightning speed. As such, we feel the need to constantly be engaged and working – if not us, who? If not now, when?
Rest, however, can be a form of resistance (h/t to Tricia Hersey from the Nap Ministry), shifting our participation in the systems of toxic capitalism. If we look to nature we see it exists within cycles. The seasons, the tides, it is all in a constant ebb and flow. There is a time for growth and a time for slowing down. Activism too can follow an ecological cycle, allowing time for dreaming, planning, acting, reflecting, as well as rest & nourishment. We cannot expect ourselves to be machines without a break, we’re human and part of nature, our lives and work must reflect this.
Building cycles of regeneration and self-care into our work is what allows a movement to sustain itself.
SELF CARE IS MOVEMENT CARE
Photo by Abbie Bernet on Unsplash
To quote the fabulous Audre Lorde, self-care is not self indulgence. It is a vital part of the role of changemaker. You must put on your own oxygen mask before attending to the needs of others. But let’s be clear here: self-care is not bubble baths or face masks or any of the other ways capitalism has hijacked the movement. Self-care is practicing deep rest, it’s saying no & setting boundaries, it’s taking time for stillness & pleasure, it’s understanding that our care for the world must also encompass an active care for ourselves.
Emma Goldman (feminist, anarchist, activist) is often quoted as saying ‘if I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution’. I’m not sure she actually said this, but the sentiment remains true. What is the point of a revolution if we are not also living lives that excite us? That make us feel alive? That allow space for awe and wonder? Making time for our hobbies, doing the things that make us laugh & smile are the bedrock of sustaining activism. Dancing, music, cooking, hiking, whatever it may be, is not wasted time, it is actually what sustains us in the long run.
OUR JOB IS NOT TO FIX THE WORLD, IT IS TO LOVE IT
As changemakers, we know the world can be a more beautiful place, and in trying to make it so we often wear the weight of the world’s injustice on our shoulders. We cloak ourselves in its burdens and troubles with the hope that no one else will need to wear them.
If we want to be effective changemakers however, change needs to be approached from a different place. Fixing, fighting, pushing uses the same energies of force that the system feeds off. If we’re working for a specific outcome, and our sense of worth or happiness is dependent on it, we’re prey to falling disillusioned, cynical with our abilities to make change.
Activism is service. Our job is not to fix the world, it is to love it. Love is not passive, it does not roll over to injustice. Love rises, it stands up, it is active & vocal, but while it aims to heal the systems that ail us and to prevent injustice, it also marvels at the beauty of the world. It acts from a place of service, a more sustained approach to activism unattached to specific outcomes. Rooting our actions in a foundation of love-based service allows us to stay hopeful, to reduce cynicism and to care for our fellow beings.
Each of us is remaking the world through our actions, the slow and beautiful work of restitching our society with fabrics of compassion & connection. We are our most effective when we take the time to care for ourselves, to know that our work is just a piece in a much larger puzzle. A beautiful translation of the Mishnah, a central text of Judaism, is often attributed as saying:
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.
Do justly now
Love mercy now
Walk humbly now
You are not obligated to complete the world, but neither are you free to abandon it.
Interested in a free one hour workshop on activist burnout? Join Sanctuary, on 12 July 2020 – 9am UK | 10am Amsterdam | 4pm Perth | 6pm Sydney. Read More Here
I haven’t written very much the last few years, not for someone who would call themselves a writer. I haven’t written because the words that would come out felt forced and contrite. They felt like words that I was supposed to say, stories and advice that belonged to someone else, not what was actually true. And so, with some exception, I held my voice back.
Crisis may be too strong a word, but I have been on a reckoning of sorts. A questioning of where my life has been, where it stands and where I want it to go. Questioning my career, my values, my sexuality, my truth; trying to answer the question that has been a predominant theme in my experiences: what if life doesn’t turn out like I thought it would?
While I’ve been on this reckoning of sorts, stepping back from areas I thought I was meant to serve, I’ve been discovering new paths and trails ahead of me. The ecological crisis, with its companion fear and grief, has fuelled my activism, allowing me to step forward in a way that perhaps I would not have without. There’s this voice that beckons to me, the time is now; there is nothing more to wait for. The world is unravelling like that thread you pulled on your sweater, and it’s too far gone to remain the same. So, what do you want to make of it?
On culture
Our culture has this wonderful myth of the linear life. That you finish school, start a career, get married, have children etc, and eventually you reach the place you’re meant to be. And even when you know this not to be true, or maybe not true for you, this myth pervades our consciousness with its idea of the upward trajectory. Life is always in the next place, and the next place is always better than here. The goal is always to be reaching somewhere else, because that is where your happiness will lie. It’s mimicked in the cultural beliefs we hold of eternal growth, of cities and economies that never come down, and in our ideas of “I’ll be happy when…”. It’s an alluring story, if only it were true; that life is this simple line, and if we follow the steps we’ll eventually arrive.
I remember a video with Stephen Jenkinson; he spoke about how in the western world growth is a precondition of happiness, but that growth in and of itself is not a good thing. A tumour grows itself to death, he said. It proceeds absolutely undisturbed by the consequences of the actions it takes. The myth of eternal growth, our continual seeking of the next place: this is our tumour. The symptoms are screaming at us through soaring rates of depression, inequalityon unfathomable scales, and now mass extinction. The systems that run our world are, without a doubt, dying.
Inner bitch? We all have one. It’s that negative voice in our heads, the inner critic, the one that says you’re not good enough, or skinny enough, or you’ll always be broke or you’re never going to reach your dreams. Our inner critic is a broken record of self-criticisms, a feedback loop where we speak to ourselves in a way that we would probably never speak to others.
That inner critic, however, believes it has an important job – to protect us. The intention behind our inner critic is not to be cruel or harsh, but to keep us safe. Our ego thinks that if we know our limitations, if we don’t push too far or try too hard, or if we re-think every mistake we have made at 2 o’clock in the morning, that maybe we’ll be okay – maybe we will find that magical way to be liked by everyone or we will motivate ourselves to make the changes that we know deep down we need.
Our culture encourages this, whether it intends to or not, by perpetually feeding the voice of inadequacy with ad campaigns that tell us that we will be happier when we have the bag, the shoes, the house, the car, the next vacation. All this does is feed our inner bitch – the “I’m never going to be enough; I’m an idiot; I thought I’d be more successful by now; Oh God I’m still single and 30, what if no-one want me?” voice.
Despite its best intentions, this survival tactic – this inner voice which aims to keep us safe – usually does the opposite. At its best it holds us back, safe within our perceived limitations; never rocking the boat, never stretching, never choosing what we really want. At its worst it becomes the cornerstone of depression, we listen to the voice so much we forget that it and us are separate. That we are not our thoughts, but rather the awareness of them; that we are more motivated by love and positive reinforcement than by fear and negative thinking.
The inner bitch territory can be hard to navigate, a rabbit-hole of dead-ends and circle-backs in a land of not-enoughness. It can be tempting to go down the one-way streets of negative thinking, getting lost in the dodgy neighbourhoods that litter the corners of our mind. Compassion, particularly in those rough parts of town, can seem unlikely.
In the past, I tried everything to combat this inner critic. Starving it through meditation and thought monitoring (highly recommended), beating it through more self-criticism and judgement (not recommended), and by acting tougher, more confident, more self-assured – most of which were band-aids for a wound that needed surgery.
In the words of Kristin Neff, “when you’re in the trenches, do you want an enemy or an ally?”. Sometimes we need to learn to practice compassion for our inner bitch.
The foundations of self-compassion are understanding that we are not our thoughts, that we can choose whether we believe what our inner critic says, and the acknowledgement that at its essence, our inner critic wants our highest good.
Self-compassion is often misunderstood. It isn’t weakness. It isn’t settling or holding back. It doesn’t mean we are not accountable to ourselves or that we lose our drive or ambition. And it is not the same as self-esteem, self-confidence or even self-love.
True self-compassion, rather, is the ability to see ourselves as human. It is rooted in kindness, providing a cushion on which to fall as we stretch our known boundaries. It is an expression of inner strength. It embodies a gentleness towards ourselves, an acknowledgement not of failure but of persistence. It allows us to rest, to push forward, and to re-write the script of our inner bitch.
Self-compassion allows us to not be perfect. To be silly, but never stupid. It allows us to change our negative thoughts – the “I am never enoughs”, the “I’ll be happy when’s” – to guideposts of what we truly desire, rather than stop signs along the way. Without the need to be perfect or live up to unrealistic expectations, we give ourselves a chance to listen to feedback, to grow, to improve – to be human.
Compassion for our inner bitch doesn’t look the same for everyone. For some, it is an internal journey – a shift in our thoughts, perceptions and the way we speak to ourselves. For others, it might mean pausing, shifting, changing life direction. It might mean speaking up and standing out, knowing that whatever the outcome, you’ll treat yourself as you would a close friend. After all, self-compassion is sitting with what is; acknowledging our suffering and our fears, without running away.
Sometimes the most self-compassionate thing we can do is to make friends with our inner bitch, know that she is scared, and ignore her terrible advice.
How can you practice self-compassion? How can you be kind to your inner bitch today?
Launching February 2018 is Courageous Conversations, a 5 week online masterclass in having brave, real and honest conversations. Learn to say no, to express your true feelings, and to ask for what you really want. Want more info as it launches? Send a note with the subject “Courageous Conversations” to stay updated: laura@appleseedcoaching.com (more…)
This blog was first posted in 2016. Interested in deeper work about burnout, internalised capitalism and getting free? Check out our group program, Internal Revolution, or coaching with Laura Hartley.
Restoration (noun): the action of returning something to a former owner, place or condition, eg the restoration of peace.
The concept of rest has been calling my attention in recent months, as I’ve listened to an inner need to slow down. By nature I am a doer, and prone to all the highs and lows that that entails – a sense of striving, of completion, of getting things done; and sometimes a sense of burnout, exhaustion, and feeling pulled in a thousand directions.
I considered myself relaxed and rested by having nights in with Netflix or a sneaky doze during savasana, yet I still found myself plagued by a sense of deep tiredness, of needing a break no matter how many times I skipped a night out or lost myself in the world of my phone.
A Sunday sleep in is considered the epitome of rest, and yet so many of us still live with a sense of chronic exhaustion. I credit this partly to the fact we live in a culture that glorifies busy and burnout.
Of capitalism and its endless quest for growth.
Our realities are often consumed by our to-do lists, outstanding tasks and projects become plot points in the narrative of our lives. How little time we have and how full our calendars are often seen as the traditional markers of success, while little importance is placed on time connecting with ourselves and nature.
That experience of ‘time scarcity’ – that there’s just never enough time – creeps everywhere. “There’s not enough hours in the day”, “I don’t know how she fits it all in”, “There’s a lot to cover in this meeting, let’s just power through lunch”, “You can rest when your dead”, “After this week things should slow down…”.
Pick your favourite.
A week or month spent doing nothing is seen of little value, and yet having taken time to do this whether through travelling or simply in my ordinary life, I know that this is not true.
Without time away from our to-do lists, without learning to listen to our body, we miss the beauty that comes with being fully alive.
Burnout and exhaustion are tricky spaces. We so often think if we just ‘relax more’ (cue glass of wine), or take a weekend off (cue vacation), we’ll feel better. That we just need a little help switching off.
But by the time we’ve reached exhaustion, the heaviness in our shoulders and jaw, it’s not as simple as just relaxing. We need to start looking within, and exploring what restorative rest and might actually look like.
Restorative rest is about taking ourselves away from the need to do, fix and complete. It’s what happens after we let ourselves deeply feel and experience the truth of our emotions and bodies. It’s space and seed of renewal.
Restorative rest though requires us to take radical steps. To move beyond the (beautiful, amazing) space of massages and wellness, and into the messy, uncomfortable space of feeling what our body has to say to us.
Because until we stop running, truly pausing and listening to what is arising within us, then restorative rest will remain distant.
Interested in some examples of rest you can take?
BODY REST
In my journey of rest, there were days I worked from bed, and nights I tucked myself into books and stories and epically great TV shows (ahem, *homeland*). The guide was my body, sleeping when it needed sleep, waking when it wanted to wake, and allowing it to recalibrate its rhythm.
I’ll be real: this meant at the time I was often late to work, and not everyone has that luxury. And many of us have more agency than we think to sleep earlier and schedule our weekends to match our bodies needs than we allow.
Body rest is about letting our body guide our movement. It meant skipping the gym when I thought I ‘should’ go, but instead was bone deep tired.
Body rest is about letting the soft animal of our body guide our way, and not our thoughts about what we should do, or are supposed to do.
SENSORY REST
As an activist, a media fast at first seemed outrageous. I felt a moral responsibility to stay informed, and for current events to guide my activism. I still feel this way to an extent.
And
We were not designed to process the amount of news and speed of information we are currently experiencing. The pings on our phone telling us of the latest crisis or scandal are creating real, physiological reactions in our nervous system. Our brains and bodies don’t always know the difference between danger that’s imagined or distant and danger that screams RUN or FREEZE.
Media fasts are necessary for a period of time to recalibrate and restore. Delete the apps, turn them off your phone, delete your social apps for just seven days. See how you feel.
BOUNDARIES AND CALLINGS
This isn’t ‘rest’ per se, but if we’re looking at this idea of restorative rest or restoration, we must look here. Giving ourselves permission to stop saying yes to shit we don’t want to do. To rest from the endless shoulds we subject ourselves to.
To do what you feel called to, and to set a boundary where you don’t. (Prentis Hemphill says it best when they write, “Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously”).
Ask yourself, why are you doing what you’re doing? Because you felt you should? Because it’s what a ‘good’ person would do? Because people expect it?
Or because you truly desire it?
Give youself some rest from yours and others artificial expectations, and rest into what feels true, whole and yours.
Learning a path of balance has not come easily to me, and it still requires much practice. Restorative rest, however, has become a place to return to, a staple in the toolbox of practices.
In the words of John Lubbock, “Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time”.
Where can you bring some restorative rest to your life?
Feeling burnt-out trying to change the world? Check out Changemaker Coaching here.
I was slowly settling into a new life in Amsterdam when I saw the advertisement for the Slow Change program in Bhutan. Despite being a world away, I instantly knew I needed to join. 2016 had been a challenging year for me – I moved countries twice, ended a meaningful relationship, and despite having the intention to ‘lay foundations’, spent most of my time country hopping on over 30 flights between 14 countries, searching for something I felt I had lost. Bhutan, it seems, was it.
Bhutan is a small, mountainous country nestled between the giants of China and India. No paved roads until the 1960’s, no TV or internet until 1999, no GMO’s and almost entirely organic farming. A country that is not just carbon neutral, but carbon negative, and a land with no foreign tourists until the 1970’s. With an entire series of kings that prioritised the wellbeing and happiness of their people, Bhutan is a country like no other.
Landing after a mildly harrowing flight from Bangkok to Paro, the crisp mountain air and startling warm sunshine provided me with an early appreciation for the small mountain kingdom, and marked the beginning of what I knew would be a transformative journey.
The Slow Change program was a two-week workshop run jointly by the Gross National Happiness Centre and Humankind Enterprises, bringing together 20 young changemakers to learn about the intersection of Gross National Happiness (GNH) and Slow Change – a deep inner transformation in the way we live and work. We travelled across the country exploring the country’s cultural vibrancy, strong sense of spirituality and the nations governing principle – Gross National Happiness.
I first heard about Gross National Happiness, or GNH, about five years ago, and although I was fascinated with the concept, I remember thinking that it sounded a little like a puff piece, a nice idea with no real substance. What could a country so small, so isolated, and so radically different have to teach the world? As it turns out, a lot.
While I won’t go into the history, pillars or domains of Gross National Happiness (you can read more about these here), the deep complexity and versatility of GNH became clear as we visited local schools, attended daily lectures and were given opportunities to question local spiritual leaders.
Being a Buddhist country, mindfulness quickly became a daily practice, and we were privileged to visit sacred meditation sites, some as old as 800 years. The stillness embedded in the land was palpable, and although we were encouraged to ponder the meaning of Gross National Happiness and Slow Change, another topic – living from the heart – was begging for my attention.
It’s not news that the world faces challenges never encountered by earlier generations, whether it is climate change and sustainability, plastics pollution, increasing refugee numbers, fear, xenophobia or terrorism. We see over 350 million people worldwide suffering from depression, soaring rates of anxiety and a culture that glorifies burnout, exhaustion and chronic over-working. We are more digitally connected than ever before, but rarely know the names of our own neighbours.
These problems will not be solved by a quick fix or magic bullet, but are representative of the need for a fundamental shift in the way we live and work, a large reason I was drawn to Bhutan. As Albert Einstein once said, no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
In the pursuit of happiness, western culture encourages us to pursue extrinsic goals such as financial success, an ever-growing economy, popularity, networking and looking attractive, as ways to be successful. It’s these same values, however, that have us pursuing endless growth or ‘more’ at the expense of our communities, our environment and our connection to nature and each other.
If you ask the average person, however, what is most important to them, they tend to list intrinsic motivations such as family, friends & community (connection), health (physical wellbeing) & feeling good (self-love & acceptance), which research backs up as ultimately being more fulfilling.
Intrinsic goals like the above, along with values such as compassion, mercy, wisdom and love, have long been associated with the idea of heart, and as I travelled through Bhutan I began to answer my own question of what a heart-based society would look like. Gross National Happiness is an example of one such way of life, which is why it is so radically unique. Its guiding principle is not the endless pursuit of ‘more’, of searching for fulfilment outside of itself, but rather the wellbeing of its people, its environment and its culture.
Bhutan is not a perfect country. It is not without problems, and it too is facing unprecedented challenges as it moves further into connection with the rest of the world. For me, however, it is best described as a heart opening land. Its stillness allowed me to stop chasing the extrinsic goals I had been pursuing all year. It reminded me that I am exactly where I am supposed to be, and that the first step to creating a more heart-centred society is to tune in and listen to my own heart.
Bhutan provided me with a deep sense of connection to my values of compassion, connection and grace, and it showed me that not only must we live by heart-based values as individuals, but as communities and nations too.
Concepts like Gross National Happiness, and even happiness in general, don’t fascinate us because they are a pretty term or a fancy band-aid for the world’s problems. They connect with the part of us that recognises our current model of living is not working, and our endless desire for endless growth is no longer fulfilling. As individuals, communities and nations, we crave something more – something embodied by Bhutan and its philosophy of Gross National Happiness. Perhaps the small Himalayan kingdom, with its radically big idea, can show us the way.
I’ll write more on my Bhutan experience and the lessons I have learnt from Gross National Happiness and Slow Change over time, but if you’re interested in learning more, you can check out the blogs of some other participants, Sophie Benbow, Samantha Bennett, Mike Davis & Christiane Schicker.
Procrastinate much? Yeah, me too. That’s why it has sometimes taken me months to put out a blog or three weeks to renew my gym membership. Procrastination is pretty common, and most of us know that it doesn’t serve us, so why do we do it? Why is it so hard to follow through on our plans and get stuff done?
Procrastination is a form of resistance. Maybe we’re scared of whatever it is we are trying to do (hello, fellow perfectionists!), or maybe we are avoiding something we feel we have to do but don’t want to. Either way, telling ourselves to ‘just do it’ or setting daily reminder messages just doesn’t seem to cut it.
A lot of coaches will say that the key to overcoming procrastination is to break the task down – make the big goals smaller, so that they don’t seem so overwhelming and unattainable. This is super useful, and it is true that when we understand the small steps we have to take, they are easier to action on a regular basis. There are also times, however, when we know the small steps to take (start a yoga class, finish our homework, stop eating bagels for breakfast), and we still don’t do them. Why? Because our habits are not supporting our goals.
Let’s take writing as an example. There is no use saying, “I’m going to write 2000 words by next Friday and submit three articles for publication in the next month” if we don’t have any habits to support us. Even if we understand the basic action steps involved and commit to writing every day (or eating healthy, completing our assignments, starting our pottery lessons –whatever it is), we would find it hard to continue as soon as work had a stressful week, the kids got sick or we woke up a little too hung-over one morning.
Procrastination is a form of self-deceit, and we trick ourselves into thinking we are too busy, too tired or too un-supported to undertake a certain task. We look for evidence by prioritising everything from cleaning our house to walking the neightbours dog, but this is difficult to do when our daily habits and routine are supportive of our dreams.
If you are serious about overcoming procrastination, consider adopting some of the following habits in to your routine.
1. Meditate
Meditation isn’t just for yoga enthusiasts or Tibetan monks in mountain caves. It is a practice that can help even the worst of procrastinators, which is why I set it as homework for all of my clients. It could be considered ironic that by taking time to sit still and do nothing we actually accomplish more, but in the words of Lao Tzu “By letting go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go, but when you try and try, the world is beyond winning”.
Meditation helps us to go within and centre our minds. When we are able to slow down and observe our active thoughts, we can see where our resistance to a certain task is coming from, and how to move past it. Meditation allows us the space to start each day in a way that is sacred, and to make a silent commitment to the tasks we want to complete.
2. Be Mindful
Some might say that this is the same as meditation, and indeed there is such a thing as mindfulness meditation, but what I mean here is to be present in every day life. So often we are racing from one thing to the next – we are in the shower planning what we will eat for breakfast with our spare seven minutes, or scrolling through Facebook on our morning commute. Rarely do we take the time to truly sit and be present with the activity at hand.
Daniel Goleman, best-selling author of Emotional Intelligence, says, “While many assume we’re splitting our attention while multitasking, cognitive science tells us this is impossible. We do not have an expandable area of attention to offer simultaneously; instead, we have a limited amount to allot. We’re not partitioning our attention, we’re just moving it back and forth rapidly. And doing so really prohibits us from being fully absorbed.”
Our culture says that multi-tasking is valuable, and it is considered almost a pre-requisite to many jobs these days, but it isn’t necessarily what makes us the most productive. Multi-tasking often means our brains become so scattered that we forget to drink our coffee until it is cold or we finish the day with eight half-written emails and a third of a presentation, but nothing complete. Mindfulness, or ‘single-tasking’, allows us to be present, to process information faster, boost our attention span and is even known to decrease anxiety and stress.
3. Write, daily.
Journaling is a profoundly powerful practice, so I don’t just suggest this for budding writers and bloggers. Studies have shown that daily writing helps decrease anger and frustration, elucidate our goals and inner thoughts and even boost the immune system! Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin empire, is quoted as saying, “My most essential possession is a standard-sized school notebook”.
Starting your morning with just 10 minutes of free-flowing writing can have an impact on the rest of your day.
4. Remember Your Compelling Why.
Most of us procrastinators find it easy to forget (either selectively or unconsciously) why it is we are doing what we are doing. Understanding our ‘compelling why’ (also known as the end-goal or grand vision) gives us the motivation to work through the uncomfortable muck we avoid by procrastinating.
Above my bed is a vision board which I look at each day. This collection of images serves as a reminder of why I have certain goals, and where I want my life to go. It shows me my ‘compelling why’, and provides me with the motivation to work through the uncomfortable and not delay my dreams.
5. Get a Coach.
Yeah, yeah, I know I’m saying this as a coach myself, but having a life coach is what has helped me work through countless issues, including procrastination. A life coach not only helps keep you accountable for your regular actions, but also provides insights and strategies for overcoming fear, breaking down obstacles and getting clear on the big picture. They’re cheerleaders and strategists for your dreams, and a good coach will help you get from where you are to where you want to be.
Depending on what you are procrastinating over, there are countless other daily habits which can support you in your goals, but the above is sure to help. What can you adopt into your routine today?
How have you overcome procrastination? What habits have you adopted? Let me know by commenting or send an email to laura@appleseedcoaching.com
Recently I was speaking with a friend about what makes a happy life, and like many people, he didn’t know what made him happy. I didn’t find his answer surprising, except he then said that he didn’t really need to be happy. He viewed striving for happiness as potential failure – too much effort, with too much risk. He continued that if you asked the average person what happiness was, and what made them happy, that they wouldn’t know the answer, and what was wrong with that? Not everyone could do what they wanted in life, and contentment was safer.
As I listened to him speak, I recognised him use the same words for happiness that I had always used – reaching happiness, finding happiness, doing something that makes me happy. I’ve been searching for happiness most of my life. I’ve looked for it in travelling, drugs, sex, careers, moving countries and, like most 20-somethings, relationships. I’ve searched for it, strived for it, and without even realising, devoted most of my life to achieving it.
But here’s what I have learnt – happiness isn’t something that can be achieved. Happiness isn’t a moment, and it doesn’t live in the individual dramas of our lives. It is not a place we reach or something we find, but rather a way in which we live. Happiness is the summation of our willingness to grow, our acceptance and embrace of the present moment, our honour for our deepest callings and our gratitude for everything, even that which hurts.
It sounds clichéd, and we’ve all heard the quotes of happiness being the journey, not the destination. On an intellectual level I always believed this, though it is only recently that I have come to understand it.
There is a difference between happiness and joy, and I truly believe that our lives can always be happy, even if we are not always joyful. A happy life should have frequent and consistent moments of joy, those times when our face lights up with excitement and passion, but some pain is unavoidable. Whether we respond to the pain with resistance however, or recognise it as part of our becoming, is what measures our relationship to happiness.
Several years ago I wrote a piece on the Huffington Post in which I spoke about a moment of awakening. I realised that my life was not singular or alone, and that our purpose came not from serving ourselves but from connecting to something greater than us, whether that be God, nature, or simply humanity. Our happiness comes from the same place; not an event, a person or even an achievement, but a connection to the deepest parts of ourselves, and that which is eternal – the present moment.
Maybe we struggle with the question of what makes us happy because we haven’t learned what it means to live in a happy way; to make choices that empower and support us, to cultivate compassion, to act courageously in the face of our fear and to feel, fully and wholly whatever we are experiencing, whether that be anger, sadness or joy.
We live in a society that tells us that happiness is outside of us. Brands like Coca-Cola suggest we ‘open happiness’, and magazines offer five tips for a happier life, as if enlightenment will come from the next kale smoothie. It is no wonder that contentment is seen as easier than happiness, and we live in search of something elusive. I’m learning though that if we change our understanding of happiness to a way of living instead of a place to reach, maybe it isn’t so elusive after all. Maybe it’s here, right now, in my every day choices and my embrace of what is.
I’m grateful to be joining a 10-day trip to Bhutan this November, the only country which measures Gross National Happiness over Gross Domestic Product, and in the lead up I’m spending some time reflecting on the idea of happiness. I’m curious about what you think makes a happy life. Do you agree with the above or would you change something? Let me know in the comments or send me an email to laura@appleseedcoaching.com
Recently I felt hurt by a close friend. She wasn’t aware of this, and being honest, I never told her. The reason is not important, and is more a reflection of me than her. As with any conflict though, feelings of rejection and frustration that used to be frequent in my past started to arise.
I considered telling my friend how angry I was. A (somewhat substantial) part of my ego wanted to call her out and make her feel exactly as I felt – rejected and hurt. My feelings of rejection weren’t reasonable, and I knew this, but there is often a large difference between what we know to be true intellectually and what we actually feel. I recognised an old pattern of mine appearing, wanting to push people away before they can reject me.
When someone hurts us, it is easy to want them out of our lives. To push them away and stop talking to them until they understand how hurt we are. Sometimes it is a form of punishment, a ‘see what it’s like without me’ vibe; other times it is not that we want them gone, it’s simply that we don’t know how else to voice our feelings. We think if we express our opinions we’ll be told we’re wrong or we’re insecure, or they will push us away first.
Wayne Dyer often asked, would you rather be right or would you rather be kind? Pushing people away says we want to be right. It says our current pain is more important than our shared joys, laughter and happiness. It says that my need for you to act a certain way is more important than respecting you as you are.
I believe when we push people away we are holding on to a wound inside of us. The source of the wound might go back six months or sixty years – where it comes from is less important than the recognition of its power today. Our mind tells us to avoid that pain at all costs, and so we react to situations that mimic the past with fear and more pain.
We have a choice in all situations whether we react with pain or with love, with kindness or with ego. Feeling rejected allowed me to question how honest I was with myself and others about how I feel. It also gave me the opportunity to prioritise love over my feelings of insecurity and to take responsibility for the way I react.
To be clear, sometimes we need to remove people from our lives. Disrespectful, unkind, or abusive relationships should never be tolerated. Relationships, however, are complicated and rarely black and white. When we don’t express how we feel, we can’t expect other people to understand or react in the way that we want.
Often, when we want to push people away like I did, the solution lies in being honest with others about how we feel, and expressing our unfulfilled wants and needs. This may result in people leaving our lives, but if we do this with kindness then more often than not it will empower us to strengthen our relationships.
Other times the answer lies not with the other person, but solely with ourselves. For me, it meant being honest with myself that my friend wasn’t rejecting me, but rather I was afraid she would. My usual reaction to push people away was based in a wound of my past, and not in the person I choose to be today.
Reacting to rejection with rejection will only ever result in one thing, and so the choice is always ours: do we react to pain with more pain, or do we react to it with love and honesty?
I believe it was Carlos Castaneda that once said, if you don’t have a story, you have nothing to live up to. We all have a story that we tell ourselves. A story of where we come from, who we are, what we are capable of, how lovable or worthy we are, our likes and dislikes and where we want our lives to end up. Our story shapes our lives and the life of the culture we live in. But what if we could change that story, or what if we didn’t have one at all?
Most of my life I have had a story of not being good enough. It’s a story common to my generation and society at large. Corporations and brands bombard us with images every day that confirm this belief – that we need to be prettier, smarter, better, stronger in order to be enough, and we can do this through buying more. We’re told that we live in a finite world, and that if we’re not enough, more money or a new outfit can help fix that. As most of us learn, it doesn’t work this way.
The stories we tell ourselves are really just a set of beliefs, handed down by our parents, our teachers, our friends and the ‘tribe’ at large. Sometimes they start when we are young. We get picked last for a sports team as a child and we decide that we are terrible at sport. It just isn’t our forte, and we don’t have good hand-eye coordination (or fitness, or strength or tactical skills). Our parents might say they weren’t good at it either, and so we decide that if they weren’t good at it we never will be either, and so the story is continued throughout our life.
Sometimes we write them as adults. We write a story about the opposite sex and their role in relationships. Men aren’t trustworthy. I’m too fat/unattractive/broke for someone to love me. Women are too needy. I can’t be happy being single.
Often the stories go deeper. That we aren’t lovable. That we aren’t smart enough or beautiful enough. That there will never be enough money. The reasons behind how they develop vary, but inevitably the story is the same. They reflect the limitations we place on our lives.
What if they weren’t true though? Life the way we tell it and life the way it actually is are often two different things. What if we learnt to change the stories we told ourselves and recognise them for what they are? Stories. Our lives are shaped around the narratives we tell ourselves, some of which were true when we formed them but rarely carrying through to the present day.
In any given moment we have the power to choose a new story for ourselves. To believe that we are enough. To know that we are lovable, always. To know that every problem in our lives can be seen from a different perspective, empowering us with the potential to change our lives.
They say you can’t hide your secret thoughts, because they show up as your life. You can change them though. You are not your past, your habits, your job, your faults or your struggles. You are only the person you choose to be in each present moment, and your life is only the story you are choosing to write.
I was slowly settling into a new life in Amsterdam when I saw the advertisement for the Slow Change program in Bhutan. Despite being a world away, I instantly knew I needed to join. 2016 had been a challenging year for me – I moved countries twice, ended a meaningful relationship, and despite having the intention to ‘lay foundations’, spent most of my time country hopping on over 30 flights between 14 countries, searching for something I felt I had lost. Bhutan, it seems, was it.
Being a Buddhist country, mindfulness quickly became a daily practice, and we were privileged to visit sacred meditation sites, some as old as 800 years. The stillness embedded in the land was palpable, and although we were encouraged to ponder the meaning of Gross National Happiness and Slow Change, another topic – living from the heart – was begging for my attention.
Procrastinate much? Yeah, me too. That’s why it has sometimes taken me months to put out a blog or three weeks to renew my gym membership. Procrastination is pretty common, and most of us know that it doesn’t serve us, so why do we do it? Why is it so hard to follow through on our plans and get stuff done?
Recently I was speaking with a friend about what makes a happy life, and like many people, he didn’t know what made him happy. I didn’t find his answer surprising, except he then said that he didn’t really need to be happy. He viewed striving for happiness as potential failure – too much effort, with too much risk. He continued that if you asked the average person what happiness was, and what made them happy, that they wouldn’t know the answer, and what was wrong with that? Not everyone could do what they wanted in life, and contentment was safer.
