I have noticed this book several times before and bought it recently after it appeared on one of the happiness blogs I read and I realised I follow the author on Twitter – serendipity it is.
Reviews promised a kick up my butt and this is exactly what this book delivers – it slaps you on the face, pours a bucket of ice water over you, then tells you everything you knew about happiness is wrong (while being firmly rooted in concepts like Buddhism). I like it. I think this book is one of the most honest and view changing books on self development I’ve read.
I gave it to a friend as a present and plan to make it a default present to give in 2017. As you grapple with yearly reviews and goal setting for 2017, this book might just change your outlook. Have you read it already? What did you think? Highly recommend.
I moved house. On moving as an exercise in mindfulness later, what this meant however was that a) I got thrust out of my oh so comfortable routine, b) I suddenly had an even longer to do list and even less time to do it all. STRESSFUL, right?
When you are out of your comfort zone, facing uncertainty and under stress, life can suddenly seem daunting and bleak. Everything is a problem and everything is a drag. My commute is longer and more fragmented, it’s dark outside most of the time and you wonder how you ended up in this mess and what the hell to do next. Full on victim mode.
Whenever I am dealing with a difficult situation and when I go into the victim mode, I remind myself this:
Transcend through acceptance, through overcoming resistance. Difficult situation? Which difficult situation? And back to the lightness of being… Thank you, Eckhart Tolle.
This guy is amazing and what he did is awesome. We can all benefit from rejection therapy, or even from just being aware of what we think and feel when we are rejected or think we will be. Perhaps being aware of the fear of rejection and choosing not to act by default in response is what it takes to get unstuck and take that all important next step on the journey to fulfilling your life calling. I understand this in theory, don’t ask me about practical application – watch someone who has done it instead:
To all of my friends and creative mentors – Aliya, Lia, Yulia, Kate, Gera, Misha, my family and all amazing bloggers I follow and get inspired by! On the low days you breathe life back into me. Forever grateful that you are in my life.
Does not this quote completely change how you think about what next? Go do that thing that brings you joy and makes you feel alive!
I love this quote. It is so simple to say ‘happiness is here and now, in you, you don’t need to look for it’. I found that I needed to work to be happy. I had to shed a lot of stuff, painfully unpeel one thing after another. I had to learn a lot of stuff, learn about myself and what ticks me. For me, enlightenment, achievement of happiness is a path, perhaps circular where you return to where you started, albeit with a new perspective, but still a path. You have to walk the path. You need to work on being happy. You need to learn the skills. You need to seek out things and people that make you happy. It’s a process. Don’t give yourself a hard time if progress is slow and non linear, but remember – there are choices to be made, and they won’t be easy, and you will have to make them. So don’t just sit and wait for happiness, it does not just come, go get it, work for it, make some choices and take some actions!
I used to think meditation was some mumbo-jumbo. Retrospectively I wish I tried it earlier. How many insights could have been gained! How calmly I could have dealt with stuff that life threw at me and what better choices I could have made! Opportunities noticed! Time wasters left behind! Crises averted! More importantly, how much less suffering and more joy I could have had! If you are on a fence, try it. Start as early in life as you can. Meditation will give you so many answers…
Perhaps you are a new parent and it seems that the Groundhog’s day will never stop. Maybe you are not happy with where you are and it seems that there is no alternative. Maybe you, like me, wake up one day and realise that you were so busy with this whole adult thing, being a parent, bringing income, running a household that you found yourself stuck in a rut, bored out of your mind and it’s been years since you last truly experienced joy.
Joy, feeling alive – this amazing feeling of being wide open to the Universe. I looked at joy in my life and though I appreciate its sources are different now than 10-20 years ago, it’s still important to have and maximise it. I invite you to do the same – take stock. When was the last time you felt truly alive and full of joy of living? What can you do differently, what do you need to reconnect with to bring more joy into your life?
Universe seems to have given me the answer to my question about work vs freedom vs money. Minimalism is the answer. Continue reading
Nomad of the Universe 