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Rusty, our cat died this weekend.
She was the sweetest yet most verbal cat I’ve ever come across.
Because she had so much to say, she played a big role in our life.
She was very wise, our little cat.
She took life as it presented itself, she showed us how to relax and be peaceful; but above all else she knew a lot about love.
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 Rusty, a balm for wounded hearts. |
That was very clever of her because if you don’t have love, no matter what else there is, it will never be enough.
This makes having a wounded heart a serious matter indeed.
To never feel satisfied, to never feel you have received enough because your wounded heart is not up to dealing with love, is a nasty life sentence in my book.
Isn’t it true that above all else we want love?
Isn’t it love that colors our world, what makes it beautiful, what has us to whistle while we work, what unearths our brilliance, our talents and our beauty?
Isn’t it love that has us live a life WE choose and has us pursue all we possibly can?
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Follow your heart, create your dreams, go for it, you can do it!
Such a great message, such a wonderful promise. These messages should get me excited, shouldn’t they?
They should have me racing off into the direction of my dreams, shouldn’t they?
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 Making a heart on Bethells beach while my heart sings. |
Did they and was I on my way?
No, I did NOT race off and no, I was NOT excited!
Even when I got as far as the start line, I had no idea what direction to race off into.
I hate to admit it, but for most of my life I couldn’t find my dream, my purpose in life and I could NOT race off powerfully mowing down every obstacle on the way.
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As always there is a bit more to the story of 10,000 hours than we think.
How come the Beatles and Bill Gates could stick to doing what they were doing and avoid the trap we normal mortals seem to fall into most of the time?
I am talking about the trap of stopping just 2 inches from gold, of giving up before we hit the jackpot.
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 John and I on our way to striking gold here and loving every minute of it. |
There is no doubt we are all doing things, we are all striving for something.
But how come they kept going until they made it and we don’t.
Let me begin with a story.
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How do you reconcile two great books which seem to say two totally opposite things?
In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell proves his explanation that the Beatles and Bill Gates’ fame and fortune was a result of at least 10,000 hours practice. And at the same time Tim Ferris promotes success in life with his book entitled the ‘4 hour work’ week?
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 Could I get my 10.000 hours in this way? I wish. |
So if 10,000 hours breaks down into 5 years at 40 hours work per week then a 4 hour work week would equate to 50 years AND . . .
Bill Gates and The Beatles would never have made it until they reached their sixties.
How does that compute?
In the beginning it didn’t.
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I love Malcolm Gladwell and his book ‘Outliers’.
It all started with reading the investigations into why the Korean pilots crashed so many planes.
You can imagine that they wanted to know . . .
It was the black box AND a linguist that solved the mystery in a most unexpected way.
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 No crash here in NZ and I now know why it is not likely to happen either! |
This story gave me an insight into an unusual connection.
That is why his book so beautifully compliments my quest for questions.
You see, Malcolm obviously loves to enquire too and I am excited when I read what he comes up with.
“The premise of Outliers is to have us think about the world differently and by digging down deeper to come up with another set of explanations that can have a profound effect on how we see and do things.
The bonus here is that different sets of explanations give us a wider understanding about what is happening to us. This gives us the knowing that the future can be better than the present and we have the power to make it so.
That’s such an amazingly hopeful and uplifting idea.”
Hearing him say this is music to my ears!
I too am absolutely fascinated by finding new explanations that can make such a difference.
So what was it in the story in Outliers about Korean plane crashes that blew me away and showed me the extent of how this explanation can make to difference to us women.
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I am fascinated by thoughts.
Sure why wouldn’t I be; they can make or break my world.
If people keep saying that it’s their thoughts that determine how they feel then I’d better pay close attention here.
Keeping an eye on their contribution to me, so to speak.
Humm, so what IS the contribution level of my thoughts, overall that is?
Since I’ve been paying attention to them I must say that I am NOT impressed. |
 Bullying water, or just the tide coming in fast. |
I particularly noticed that I have a lot of nasty thoughts about me popping up in my head.
They come out of nowhere, uninvited, making a lot of noise and they certainly do not contribute very much.
Instead they do the opposite; they disturb, they distract and they deceive.
They are like bullies; unpleasant and uncomfortable.
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Ever seen someone who’s stuck in life?
They no longer enjoy their life yet they haven’t a clue what to do or how to get out of their sticky situation.
So instead they do nothing except sit there feeling and looking completely miserable. |
 Stuck, I don't like this. What now? |
I know what I am talking about as I was once stuck myself.
As a result I can easily recognize others in the same predicament; it takes one to know one.
The first sign is total confusion. It’s a dead give away!
The second sign is that the individual is full of ideas, they’re constantly talking about what they intend to do yet they just can’t seem to make anything come to life.
Their thoughts are all over the place. And there’s no way that they can make up their mind or get into action.
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Not so long ago I was agitated, often feeling overwhelmed, irritable and quarrelsome.
Things that happened around me could very easily do my head in and I often was all over the place with my thoughts, feelings and actions.
These days I feel quite different. I am a lot more at ease and I am so much happier.
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 Loving my life!
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I certainly notice the difference when I look at the people around me and recognize my old self in them.
I don’t see many of them oozing calm and happiness.
Even in these days with all the bad news stories that are doing the rounds I feel wonderful, calm and happy.
I keep on going adoring the place where we live and I absolutely love my life. It’s uncanny how I can hold these lovely feelings in the face of all this current recession talk for example.
In the past that would have definitely got me going too, but not now.
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I simply have to share with you how choosing delivered me a freezer.
It all started with this wonderful ABUNDANCE.
We have apples coming out of our ears!
I am not complaining but from the photo you can see I have an issue here.
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 Abundance, abundance, choosing what to do with all this. |
We distributed as much as we could amongst our friends and relatives, but I knew that we had saturated that market when people started to hide when they saw us coming laden down with bags and bags of apples :)
So there I was, left to deal with the rest of the hoard.
Which I did, however . . .
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Ever wondered why you feel happy and why you feel miserable?
I have, often.
And you know what?
Feeling miserable can be caused by a missing link in our decision making process; the missing link being the ability to choose. If you leave out choosing, you are in BIG trouble.
What?
Yes, and you know why? |
 I love but no longer choose Holland. |
Because . . . ‘Deciding’ and ‘choosing’ are NOT the same and to be happy you need to do both.
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Who am I?
I guess there is not one person who has not dealt with this question.
I have dealt with it often enough when writing resumes.
But there was always a context I was describing myself into.
For a resume it was the job description, the industry and the company that would determine who I was.
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 Who am I? Dare devil in the surf, cheat posing for picture, water baby having fun? |
But it is a different ball game now I have to describe myself meaningful outside this prescribed and known context of a resume.
On my own volition I have ventured into this new context, this great unknown cyber space, and now I feel lost without the rules that have guided me for so long.
It is just me and my own creativity AND . . . ahum freedom.
Freedom to declare who I am.
Doing it in any way I like . . . AND I feel the pressure of; “What do I say that does do me justice, is authentic and is how I desire to be seen?”
If I am honest, I think this freedom to declare ‘who I am’ is actually freaking me out.
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On the Zen Habits blog, a guy asked how to deal with disruptions in life.
He recently had a NEW baby and he was wondering what he did wrong because he couldn’t keep up with his exercise regime and his goal of regular gym visits.
My reactions was;
“Oh Pleeease, where is your head at? You just had a major NEW addition to your life and you think it is business as usual!!”
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 Definitely new, my niece's baby. |
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