Category: Mindful

Elevating the ordinary…

While we may live in vastly different circumstances, there is one universal truth that unites us all: 90% of our daily lives are filled with the mundane tasks that sustain our existence. Whether it’s attending meetings, doing the laundry, watering the plants, commuting, preparing dinner, writing emails, or reading bedtime stories – these routine activities form the backbone of our everyday lives.

Just quickly reflect on your past week. Do you agree that the moments that truly captured your attention or elevated your life experience were few and far between? At first glance, this realisation might seem like a letdown — perhaps even a little disheartening. Can life really be summarised as such a monotonous affair?

The truth? It is what it is, and this rhythm will likely continue for the rest of your life. Life, for the most part, involves chipping away at the unglamorous tasks of living, only occasionally flavoured by unusual experiences. Even the most passionate acts of creation are made up of many tedious and repetitive tasks; even breathtaking places soon become familiar; that beloved piece of clothing still needs to be washed and ironed; a long-awaited newborn baby requires mostly unvaried tending, feeding, and bathing.

But here’s where you have a choice. Living solely for exceptional moments may lead to missing out on 90% of your life, always waiting for the magic to happen. Instead, you may consider transforming daily, menial tasks into something more conscious and meaningful. To embrace the chores of life differently, without constantly longing for the extraordinary.

This approach is more challenging than it seems. It requires a significant mindset shift to make more out of life’s trivial activities and to engage in everyday routines with greater awareness. Novelty excites us, which means turning mundane activities into rituals of groundedness and finding beauty in the unspectacular may be a stretch. But it can be a profound stretch; connecting with life’s simplicities more intentionally. There is so much beauty to be found in those moments.

Challenge yourself to embrace this approach. Life, for as long as you live, is mainly going to present itself in chores; make a beautiful peace with it. An ordinary day is where you will receive the gift of living — take delivery of it in a more remarkable way. Instead of viewing these activities as tasks to rush through mindlessly, slow down and approach them differently. Find joy in them. Redefine them. Turn them into mini-celebrations. Befriend them. Perform them with poise.

The point is simple: An ordinary day is the only canvas upon which you paint the story of your life. Embrace it. Be fully there.

Remember, your intention toward anything in life shapes your experience of it. May mundane tasks become acts of thoughtfulness and care. Each time you water a plant, may you remember it’s a matter of life and death for another being. The next time you prepare dinner, turn the simplest of rituals into gourmet ceremonials. And as you read that bedtime story to your child at the end of another ordinary day, may you remember that you are shaping the way in which someone will view the world.

The gift of freedom…

Ample freedom is a precious state of being.

There are few sensations as profound as the sense that you have a say in the way your life plays out, and that you could pursue the aspirations that matter to you.

Appropriate personal autonomy is the cornerstone of dignity. It is a treasure that brings a permanent spring to your step. And the understanding that you are entitled to take charge of decisions in your life, whether small or big, simple or daunting, is crucial to your happiness.

Is permissible freedom one of your prized values? Because what you value in life, tends to flourish in your own life.

Personal liberty is born from an unshackled mind. It starts with confronting – and undoing – any form of inner captivity. Many of our outer constraints correlate with our unresolved innermost confinements.

Being kind to yourself is a good starting point; self-condemnation is a harsh sentence. And be careful not to be held hostage by fruitless mental paradigms; restrictive inner dialogues, limiting beliefs or debilitating dogmas can become ever-present bindings. Beware also of bitterness, as holding on to grudges can detain you in a loop of chronic negativity.

A light heart and spacious spirit represent the purest form of freedom. Refuse inner incarceration.

But make no mistake, outer freedom is a delicate matter too. It demands ongoing reinforcement and practical dedication; entails safeguarding your time, owning your privacy, taking responsibility for your health, selecting your relationships with care, guarding over your finances, fostering your intellectual growth, choosing integrity as your compass… Legitimate self-rule requires active participation. When you purposefully govern yourself, you are less likely to be swayed by the world’s external influences or disagreeable conventions.

May you choose to keep the possibility of freedom alive to its fullest in your life; to live a life beyond the bondages of inner turmoil – and the constraints of external control, incentives, or coercion. May you cherish your freedom, without having to lose part of it first to remind you of the privilege of self-determination. May you never use it to the disadvantage of others. And may you choose mindful self-stewardship, and so preserve the rightful liberty you were born to enjoy!

Your presence…

One word can spark a moment,
One bird can herald spring.
One tree can start a forest,
One hint can light a dream.

One smile begins a friendship,
One hope can lift a soul.
One star can guide a ship at sea,
One cheer can stir the goal.

One touch can show you care,
One sunbeam lights a room.
One candle wipes out darkness,
One laugh will conquer gloom.

One voice can raise a spirit,
One heart can share what’s true.
One life can make a difference,
That life is me and you.
Drawn from “The Power of One” by Ashin Ram

May you bless others with your way of being in this time of rest. May thank you be your prayer as you reflect upon your journey. May you practise your faith in a way that extends peace beyond religious boundaries. May you rediscover abundance by seizing the bliss in ordinary experiences. And may your homes and hearts be filled with joy this holiday season.

Our own hand in unhappiness

When you pose the question, ‘What makes you unhappy?’, many can offer passionate responses and justifications. When you change the question slightly, to ‘How do you make yourself unhappy?’, the explanations seem to be less definitive.

We have a knack for outsourcing our quest for well-being to the world around us, yet reluctant to own up to the inner atmosphere of our own happiness. We readily blame external events, symbols, and situations as surrogates for most of our miseries – and drag our feet when we need to examine our own hand in scripting discontent. Continue reading “Our own hand in unhappiness”

What a time…

The final weeks of 2022 marked the birth month of the 8 billionth citizen of planet earth.  Vinice Mabansag, a baby girl born in Tondo, Manila on 15 November was chosen to symbolically mark this milestone.

Vinice was born in a truly remarkable time:

On average, she arrived twice as wealthy as a baby that was born 16 years ago (measured by GDP per person, in global real purchasing power parity terms).  She opened her eyes in a world in which around 91% of its inhabitants have escaped extreme poverty.  When her mother was a toddler, 38% of people on earth were still trapped in deep destitution, not to speak of 120 years ago, when an estimated 75% of people on the planet were desperately poor.  Indications are that desperate poverty will be totally eliminated during Vinice’s teenage years.

Famine and its consequences is something Vinice will probably only be exposed to in a history class lesson.  For her forebears, it was a universal, regular and devastating phenomenon.  In the past two decades, only 0.5 people per 100 000 died due to famine per decade, against between 30 and 80 people per decade in the first half of the twentieth century.   Today, global undernourishment is estimated to be around 9% (compared to 50% as recently as 1945). 

Vinice arrived in a world in which the average under-five mortality rate fell to below 4%, down 61% since 1990.  In 1800, nearly 50% of children died before their fifth birthday.  Life expectancy in her part of the world is 74 years today, compared to 41 in 1950;  The time-saving technologies of her time probably means she will live at least ’10 times longer’ than her grandmother.   

She will grow up in a world in which life-saving vaccines will be developed in months instead of the traditional 10 to 15 years; in which ‘-isms’ are called out and prejudice and attitudes of inequality are vigorously opposed.  In the year 1900, women only had the right to vote in New Zealand; women now have the right to vote in every country and territory in the world except for one.

The new-born would not have been happy if she could have been told that she inherits a region in which air pollution is causing nearly 20% of deaths; but she will spare a thought for the fact that it has come down by 6 percentage points since 1990 – and take comfort in the fact that her birth coincided with the 27^th UN Climate Change Conference, where world leaders were held responsible for solutions to turn around the damage her forefathers had done to the planet she became heir to. 

Fortunately, Vinice entered a much more peaceful world: Over the last 1 000 years, an average of two new conflicts between European countries broke out every single year.  In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Great Powers were at war more than 75% of any given year.  The rest of the world was not much more peaceful.  Miraculously, conflict has become an exception rather than a rule.

There are so many more relative blessings in which our 8 billionth citizen had been born, aside from all the daily challenges of our time.  Suffice to say that President Barack Obama’s words of a few years ago offer a valid reprise in a lullaby to Vinice: “If you had to choose blindly what moment you’d want to be born, you’d choose now’.  Let’s hold thumbs that she will not allow herself, as she grows up, to be overcome by the bleak view of the world that dominates headlines every day.

As you reflect upon your experiences of 2022 and contemplate the project of living a significant life, may you spare a moment to pause in gratitude; realising that you are also sharing in so many of the under-published comparative privileges of our time; that most of the challenges of those of us who read this Mindful today are those of flourishing, not survival.

And may you accept the responsibility to turn these favours into magic and momentum – as an individual, family member, citizen and business owner; commit to be most of who you can be, and so express appreciation for the stroke of luck to live in this time.

Why…

Our minds are mostly occupied with two types of thoughts:

• • • figuring out what we (should) want, and why it matters,
    • and working out what to do next – and how to do it.

It sounds logical to assume that we would spend enough time on the first; selecting sensible priorities before turning our attention and energy to execution.  After all, how can you set your sails if you don’t know to which port you are sailing?

Unfortunately, that is not how we do it.  We are, as a general rule, victims of the intrinsic conviction that ‘getting on with things’ is worthier than thinking too deeply about the ends we pursue.  It is as if we have an innate energy for execution and being engaged, but an equally inborn resistance to thoroughly reflect before we start doing. 

We ever so often ‘dive into it’ before asking fundamental questions about the intention and merit of the causes we launch ourselves into. Many of our actions are not backed by a credible answer to ‘why’ – and so leave us with meagre rewards.

To change this, we need to accept this weakness of ours: that being efficient is more appealing to us than being effective.  We find a to-do list more alluring than an empty page with a fundamental question on it.  Running between back-to-back meetings feels so fitting to the diligent servant in us!  We will keep record of excess stock in great detail, without being clear on why we hold the stock in the first place.  We will go the extra mile to earn more money, without a clear idea of what to do with it once we’ve earned it.  We will pack in more subjects in children’s school years, without a clue how the additions will really benefit their development.

Is this true for you as well?  Are you over-devoted to execution, chronically absorbed by haste and action – but vague on the overriding ends you pursue?  Do you pause frequently enough, to ask ‘why’ you do what you do in the first place?   

It may be harder than you realise to unchain yourself from tight schedules, harsh timelines and rigid performance targets.  From an evolutionary perspective, mulling over larger questions was never a high priority.  Our strategic goals were all based on daily survival; being efficient.  Modern life, however, is not about basic survival anymore – and avoiding the central enquiries into why we should – or should not do something, can leave us very occupied but highly unproductive.

Challenge yourself to pause more.  To deliberately raise larger questions instead of indiscriminately following your intuition to be dutiful.  Make time to reflect upon more of life’s ‘why’ and ‘why not’ questions; finding clarity on ‘What is the point of this?’.  You may be surprised by the insights that follow the question ‘Is this the best way to spend my time?’. 

The point: Develop healthy suspicion of our covert devotion to haste over enquiry.  Relegate the glamour that famously clings to busy-ness – and carve out more space for speculative reflection.  If you do, you may find that many of those ‘to-do’s’ no longer make the list.     

 

The future…

Besides life’s two most reliable certainties – Caesar’s hand in our pockets and the matter of our own impermanence – there is another one we repeatedly tend to overlook: The future will surprise.

Our depiction of the future is coloured by the present; we are, after all, just human.  In good times, we often step into the quicksand of hubris and get trapped by deceptions of invincibility; confusing fortune for competence.  In testing times, we extrapolate misery; and time after time underestimate the world’s (and our own) ability to counter distress and bounce back. 

Two years and three months ago, we were enjoying the December spirit of 2019.  We were six months down the path of Ramaphoria, the name ‘Zondo’ was becoming a comforting news item, and the nation’s month-old William Web celebrations dwarfed the country’s economic growth rate of only 0.2% for the year.  We took comfort in the SA GDP growth projection of closer to 2% for 2020 – and above 3% for the world.  We looked forward to life after state capture – and were inspired by a livewire one-monther called Andre de Ruyter who cancelled his December holiday to sort out load shedding.  Things were on the up!

Three months later, two years ago to this week, the world however went quiet.  No car on a highway, no feet in shopping malls, no toiling in office buildings, no chattering diners at packed eateries, no passengers at airports…  No one projected this turn of events, although Bill Gates probably whispered ‘I tried to warn you’, and some media channels once again bellowed out ‘The end is near’.  Our country’s official Covid infections stood at 709.

In the year that followed, 2020, the global economy shrank by close to 5% and South Africa’s by some 6.5%.  And in the two years to this month, families globally are estimated to have lost at least 20 million loved ones to the Coronavirus pandemic; South African families around 300 000 members.  The world’s monetary authorities implemented unprecedented programmes to address liquidity shortages and prevent market freezes amidst the carnage; South Africa’s interest rates were cut to the lowest level in more than 50 years.

And here we are in March 2022, putting pressure on supply chains, looking back at a year of around 5% economic growth in South Africa; the economy bent but not broken, roads abuzz with cars again; many office buildings still quiet, but profit announcements surprisingly positive.  We are masked, sanitising at every second door, Zooming, home-officing and (hopefully) vaccinated – off most red lists, not being taxed more in the latest Budget, vaguely remembering the unrest of July 2021, and hearing the splashing of our mines swimming in cash.  All in all, a much gentler silhouette of the future indeed.

But just as we readied ourselves to take a deep sigh of relief and shift gears, Vladimir Putin decided to replace Covid as a global menace, double our fuel price, and halve our confidence levels…

Reflecting upon the last two years, the message is simple: Don’t ever try to live your life according to a forecast of the future – or your own inflexible expectations.  Rather spend your energy on building a system, personally and for your business, that is robust enough to get you through ‘any future’. 

Such fortification ideally consists of a never-ending effort to be best at what you do for a living.  When you are known for excellence, harsh times are normally less chilly; your recoveries more dependable.  It also consists of a strategy that doesn’t make you sail too close to the wind, however optimistic the times, but in fact ensures a reliable buffer to hedge you in times of unforeseen trouble.  A safety net is a life saver. 

Furthermore, it comprises of a never-ending process of investing in good relationships – and surrounding yourself with reputable people.  We get through our crises in life on the shoulders – or in the arms – of people we cared for when it mattered; and who care for and respect us for the right reasons.  And finally, to live with the unknown means you never say die; be quick to adjust your sails when the wind changes; make plans, turn hope into action, never stop trying.

We encourage you to build a life – and an economic model – that are friendly to the unforeseen; to position yourself as the most reliable constant in changing times.  Remember, anxiety lives in the gap between what you fear ‘might happen’ and what you hope ‘would happen’.  Shrink that gap, mindfully; let nothing be unexpected!

The ultimate response…

As 2021 draws to a close, it may be fair to describe the last two years as one of the more surreal – and frankly most challenging – periods of many people’s lifetimes. 

Many households have experienced unparalleled economic challenges.  And many individuals have suffered the tragedy of loss in an intimate way.  Worldwide, nearly 5.2 million people is reported to have died from the coronavirus (unofficially, the number is estimated to be closer to 17 million – and as high as 250 000 in South Africa).

We want to devote this final message of 2021 to a simple reminder; that, however contradictory it may sound, one of the most reliable breaks from negative preoccupations is gratitude.  We want to encourage you to oppose agitation with gratefulness; to replace despair with appreciation.  And to make this way of opposing adversity your key defensive strategy, going forward.

Cicero, the Roman statesman, once said that gratitude is the greatest of virtues, and the parent of all others.  He reminded us that although we tend to believe that happiness will make us grateful, that instead, it is gratefulness that paves the way for happiness.   

The struggles of the soul disperse when gratitude commences. Our brain cannot be in a state of gratitude and a state of sadness at the same time.  Our soul cannot stay in deficit, when we prefer to acknowledge the good that exists; when we choose to turn our little blessings into meaningful admirations.  

Let’s learn to transform more ordinary days into celebrations.  To more astutely witness – and honour what is still good in life.  To find godsends in and amidst our challenges. 

Let’s open all our senses to the poetic eloquence that await us in so many of life’s familiar scenes.  And allow a sense of abundance to dissolve any privation we may experience.   

At some point in the last two years, you might have realised that your heart is more brittle than you ever thought.  If so, may you find courage from A.A. Milne’s observation in Winnie-the-Pooh: “Piglet noticed that even though he had a very small heart, it could hold a rather large amount of gratitude”.

“Thank you” remains the best prayer you can say.  May gratitude be the meditation in which you send off 2021 – and the spirit in which you decide to decorate your 2022!