Tag: life choices humankind actions coaching

Too much Social not much living

There’s angst that rises from within, a silent cry. We reach out to our own identities in a busy, loud world that forces us to have, to own, to go, to do, force a smile, fake happiness. It wants our constant unswerving attention; it wants to master us, keeping us distracted, discouraging us from stopping, thinking, reflecting and discovering out who we are. That can only be found reaching within.

We exchange peace and solitude for constant limelight, the social media spotlight. That is killing us; our species is living a severe existential crisis. For most, that angst is kept silence within while striving to ‘get by with a smile.’

When we forget the simple we neglect the essential; we become blind to what is truly beautiful in this world.

Too much social yet not much living. Too much attention-grabbing effort very little delivering value affecting the lives of people in a meaningful way. The numbers battle, we all want a piece of the action, a dive in the money stack, a ride in the Lamborghini, a nightstand with the blonde of the hunk with six-pack with a bright smile.

Social Media Threat
Henry David Thoreau

Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus have written an amazing book on slowing down and reducing your living so you can live a more fulfilled life – Minimalism: Essential Essays. The essence is to look inside of you and ask the question how much do I really need to be happy?


“Happiness, as far as we are concerned, is achieved through living a meaningful life, a life that is filled with passion and freedom, a life in which we can grow as individuals and contribute to other people in meaningful ways. Growth and contribution: those are the bedrocks of happiness. Not stuff. This may not sound sexy or marketable or sellable, but it’s the cold truth. Humans are happy if we are growing as individuals and if we are contributing beyond ourselves. Without growth, and without a deliberate effort to help others, we are just slaves to cultural expectations, ensnared by the trappings of money and power and status and perceived success.” 
― Joshua Fields Millburn, Minimalism: Essential Essays

In Walden, transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau encourages us to pursuit nobility in living a simple life surrounded by nature. He is on a journey towards natures and his own nature. In 2015, I decided to start this journey, the one I’m still on and have not to regretted an inch. When you stop living under the pressure of others, society, family and friends you can finally stop and breathe.

Fact is we have never had so much ‘social’ online time and never felt so much isolated and lonely. We have traded living for existing. What should we do then?

STOP – TURN AROUND – TAKE A BREATH – SMILE INSIDE – BE THANKFUL – JUST BE

In Thoreau’s case, The Minimalists guys and even myself we discovered that going back to nature as well as going back to one’s nature was the key to leave a life of social conformity and embrace a life of true self-reliance and self-actualisation.

What is it for you?

Leave your past in the past…

The Power of Now
Discovering the power of NOW

American Psychologist Rollo May believed depression was the “inability to construct a future”. Depression is rampant in our modern society and a very complex subject to tackle.

Whilst a great portion of what is felt when depressed might be related to physiology and chemicals in our brains, a lot of it is directly associated to the way one thinks of oneself. The way in which I reflect and respond to stimuli and the narratives I construct create my ‘reality’, almost always related to my past life registries and the interpretation of my personal history.

That has a direct effect on the choices I make and the decisions I take for the creation of a better future. This is true for every single human being. Some have managed to rewire their brains retraining their minds whilst the large majority lead as Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden, “lives of quiet desperation”.

Many people get trapped in an ever-present past reality. Living and reliving an almost unconscious sensory loop, oblivious to the mind trap they find themselves in. Self shortsightedness prevents them from reasoning the meaning and origin of such feelings. Then they go on blaming life, God, family members, past relationships, the world (you name it!) for the state they find themselves in and their shortcomings in life.

They miss the power that exists in the NOW because they just can’t let go of their past traumas, pain, sorrows, fears and frustrations. All those toxic negative experiences caged inside the mind become a constant trap in moving forward towards the desired future.

NOW is all we have to change anything! Don’t let you past negative experience, toxic relationships and traumas dictate how you live, your decisions and how you move on with your life. TAKE OWNERSHIP OF YOUR MIND!

The only power your past has over you is the one you give to it, the meaning it has for you. You don’t have to trip over what is behind if you just leave it behind, for good!

 

The Road to Success…

Someone once said: ‘the way you do anything it is the way you do everything’. So, how we will achieve anything in life is directly linked to way we face and takle our daily menial tasks. Even the most simple ones or the ones we feel we should not be doing.

Success does not happen to you by chance, but rather it is born out of a lot of sweat and tears. It is often the result of years of practice and determination, repetition and failures, ultimately of compound actions based on your beliefs and the dreams you might entertain for how you want your future to be.

When you decide to pursue that vision and build your life goals the you set off on that road, your journey to success.

Whatever we want to manifest, it will not happen to us as a matter luck. It is what we do repeatedly until it becomes a habit, then those habits will take us to our destiny.

It might start with something as simple as an idea, as Tony Robbins likes to put it our ‘sweet obsession’. Something that will compel us to keep going, pushing forward.

The road to success is a rocky crooked one, never a straight line and always under construction.

But what is success? How do we know we got there?

We all have our ideas of what success is. For some, it could be financial freedom, for others the limelight, stardom; or both. Some may define success by the recognition they receive based on the intellectual contribution to science and human development. They seek their place in history.

True success is manifested in how deeply our lives are touching others and how much we have become an agent for transformation, peace and love, for equanimity. Success is about building and raising up futures generations and the legacy that survives us after we departure from this life.

What is success for you? Are you pursuing it with all your strength? Are you devoting time and energy to make it happen? What do you want to leave after you? Or what do you want to be remembered for?

“There’s no faith and no courage and no sacrifice in doing what is expedient” prof. Jordan Peterson