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Moments of bliss

"Oh how to describe those moments of bliss" quoted a character in a radio drama this evening.  You may wonder to what she referred.  Well in fact it was watching a film with a really good friend in a very comfortable seat with delicious refreshments.

When you seek enjoyment and gladness it doesn't have to be an earth shattering event. I've found joy in the last few days in seeing the Cumbrian mountains from the train, a hug from a good friend, an email from a client telling me of their success, some feedback on my newsletter and my own success in winning though to the presentation stage of a tender process from a field of 90.   I've also really enjoyed some crunchy tasty oatcakes, seeing my junior neighbours careering past on their bikes and a vase of daffodils in a cafe.

Moments of bliss have a great effect on the brain, releasing loads of feel good chemicals. They also give you your very own bliss archive.  Those memories are stored away and always available to you.  When you think about those past joyful events your brain also produces feel good chemicals.  So a moment of bliss is actually forever, filed for access whenever you want to re-create that feeling of joy, gladness and happiness.

What moments of bliss have you enjoyed this week?  What archive moments of bliss can you re-create today?

Your top team

Who are your top team? They are your board of directors, your trusted advisors, your unofficial mentors and coaches. Most companies however small have a team that helps them set strategy, deal with major issues and plan their growth. As an individual you can do exactly the same thing and have a top team who you talk to when you need advice.

I'm considering making major changes to my business life and about a month ago I was mulling over the opportunity. I felt uncomfortable and sort of edgy about it and knew I needed to get the advice of my top team. Because my business is me, any major changes are as much about me as they are about the business. I have a top team who I consult about major things in my life. In the space of one evening I spoke to 7 very different people, all friends who know me well. They had very different perceptions of what this might mean for me. They each highlighted different things that I should be thinking about and had a different reaction to the idea. Some were very cautious, some thought it was a risky move, some thought it might compromise my freedom to do the other things that I enjoy doing and some saw it as a fantastic opportunity.

However none of them said they didn't want to talk about it and they all said that I should keep in touch about what was happening. After these calls I felt much more settled. Although I hadn't made a final decision about what to do I felt I was better prepared to ask the right questions that would help me to gather the data that I needed. I've spoken to them all again this week as the matter progresses. It's a difficult one to make a decision about and although no-one else can make the decision for me, knowing that the top team care about my happiness and my future really helps.

Who are your top team? When did you last ask then for advice? How can you include them more in your decision making? What can you do to help them in return?

Just watching...

Where are you most of the time?  This may sound like a stupid question.  What I mean is, do you ever get outside of yourself and just watch?  I don't really mean having an out of body experience or anything spiritual like that. I mean observing yourself (at the same time as being yourself) in your daily life. Its not a schizophrenic, having a second personality type of thing. Its simply the capacity to be doing something and at the same observing yourself doing it. So you might be thinking

• I don't actually look convinced, despite what I'm saying?
• That sentence sounded very confident
• Gosh look how close I am standing to the boss
• My voice sounds very firm
• I look like I am in control
• I don't look as if I am standing up straight
• My smile seems false
• I look really angry
• I seem to be very frustrated

By observing yourself being yourself you can learn lots about how other people see you. That helps you get a better understanding of other people's reaction. It helps you change what you are doing or saying to get a better reaction.  It helps you monitor changes in yourself.  It helps you develop greater empathy for other people. It develops your understanding of the reasons why you react they way that you do and the effects of that on other people.

I am sure that I spend far too much time in "self" mode and not enough time as "observer".  How about you?  If you observed yourself today what would you see?  How could you use that new knowledge that you have about yourself, now? Why rely on other people's feedback when you have a system all ready set up so that you can provide feedback to yourself simply by observing yourself?  Try it today!

Wisdom

There is naught between birth and death except the acquisition of wisdom.  More or less went a quote that I read tonight.

At first reading it seems to take away any joy in living. But think again. If we are spend all of our lives in the acquisition of wisdom then as we get older then we are indeed becoming wiser.  Is so often used that phrase "older and wiser" that we don't really hear what it says. Yes older, yes wiser as well. I bet though there are times when it doesn't feel like that. When they move things around in the supermarket or change the way your bank works or where you have to go to catch your bus. Then you are left feeling frustrated, not wise.

When this happens its worth just reflecting on how much knowledge and wisdom you have acquired till  now.  You can get food into your mouth with a fork.  You can operate the kettle and probably the mower unaided. Those are just knowledge. But buying petrol the day before the budget, navigating the back way when the motorway is closed, having a corkscrew amongst your camping cutlery, taking one adapter and a plug board on holiday those things are wisdom. This doesn't come usually from reading books but from real life experience. As we have more experiences and learn from them so our wisdom grows.

I'm looking forwards to becoming wiser every day - how about you?

I have a dream.....

I was reading something the other day about dreaming. It was saying how everything that we see about us started life as a thought inside somebody's head and that many inventors claim that some of their best ideas have come from dreams. I know myself that some of my most creative thinking (as opposed to the subconscious stuff) happens when I am hanging in that delectable space between sleep and wakefulness.

At the weekend I was at a good friend's 50th birthday celebration. It was sad to hear several people talk about their dreams in the past tense. "I don't what happend to those dreams of X that I used to have"  or "I used to dream about X but now I know that its all unrealistic so I've stopped that".  Putting these two incidents together made me realise that there is a whole section of the population at our age who are missing out one of the most satisfying and creative ways of planning your own future - by dreaming about it. Whether its those daytime reveries, gazing into nothingness on the bus, wondering "what if?" or impossible feats in weird and wonderful worlds that come to you a night, they are all windows into your unconscious desires, that could lead you down new and exciting paths.

As we get older we should be dreaming more not less.  What are you dreaming of today?  What can you do to make those dreams come true?

Retirement Age

I read an interesting article yesterday bout how some organisations like the Co-op and the Foreign and Commonwealth office have abolished the retirement age. That means that as long as you are capable you can keep working as long as you want to.

It made me wonder about how our lives would be different if the "retirement age" had never existed.  How would we approach our working lives if there was no obvious end point?  How would we approach getting older without the spectre or goal (depending on your point of view) of retirement in front of us?  What decisions would we make? How would those decisions be different from those that we have already made?  Should we review our existing plans and goals?

As I am self employed and I love my work I have no real plans to retire so the retirement age hasn't really loomed large for me at all  - I don't have enough money yet anyway. I can just see myself gradually spending more and more time climbing, skiing and traveling but not really ever not working.

So how would you live your life if there was no retirement age?  What plans would you make about how you would spend your time if there was no real endpoint to your working time?  What would you do differently now?  Why not live tomorrow as if there were no retirement age and see how that feels?

Friday night

This weekend I seem to have given myself an impossible list of things to do. I have lots of writing to do (in addition to the blogs) and everything seems to have come together at the same time. I have evaluation reports, tenders, courses, articles, the newsletter and broadcast pieces to write.  And also I want to get a new crop of poems ready for submission for a competition by next week.

This has all meant that its a working weekend, starting on Friday night.  When I am working at the weekend, especially on Friday and Saturday night, I sometimes feel like I have no life and I should be out on the tiles like everyone else. However when I ask around I find that lots of people are not out on the weekend nights cos its too busy, too expensive, no transport, too cold, wet, can't be bothered!  So I do know that I'm not the only one sitting at home beavering away.

This has only come to us as we have got older, we've lost the fear that if we are not down the pub on Friday night we'll miss something important.  I used to worry that if I didn't get out I might end up really boring with nothing to talk about, but that has not turned out to be true, I'm never stuck for conversation.  Its actually quite a relief to know that there is no restless imperative to get out on the town, getting dressed up, coming home late, tired, penniless or drunk (or all 4)!

What do you not miss that you used to do?  What are you relived that you can let go now that you're older (and wiser)? Lets celebrate being more our own person and less following the crowd!

Children are our future

Yesterday we visited Pahalgam, a beautiful village, the site of a former hill station, nestling amongst the Himalayan foothills at 7,200ft.  It was about a 3 hour bumpy ride from Srinagar on a wonderfully clear autumn day.  On the way there we passed many families in their valley fields threshing their wheat crop in the traditional way by bashing it across a large boulder and collecting the grain on a tarpaulin, upon which it will be spread out to dry in the sun.  This is an ages old practice and whole families were involved, from the very young to the very old.  It’s the last harvest to come in, the rice and saffron having already been collected. 

Here in Kashmir the majority of the population have no pension to look forward to when they reach a retirement age, if they even live that long, with the continuing military and political trouble, accompanied by poor health and sanitation.  So they are still out working in the fields whatever their age.  Their security for their old age is their children and grandchildren.  The family culture is very strong on the Indian subcontinent and literally as in Sting’s song “children are our future, teach them well”.  Your expectation is that if you become unable to look after yourself your children will welcome you into their home and care for you.  There are no old people’s homes up in the wild hills.

Just for a moment now imagine that you have no pension, no inkling of what a retirement plan is, no opportunity to ever stop “working” – whatever that means to you, no vision of life being different after a certain randomly picked age.  Imagine that life just goes on until the end, pretty much the same every day, changing gradually with the seasons.  How does that feel?  How does it make you think about your future differently?  What other options does it help you to think about?  What would you do differently if this was how your life was?  What will you do differently tomorrow as a result of this reflection?

Believe in the best outcome

So here I am in Shimla in the Himalayan foothills and damp, rainy Cumbria feels a whole world away.  After arriving at a seething Delhi airport late last night I followed all my host's instructions and engaged a pre-paid taxi.  That is when the trouble began.  My very willing young taxi driver didn't have a clue where the government guest-house was at Mandi House.  This is despite being assured that it was one of the very well known parts of the city.  I actually thought this was very funny.  I made the 6am flight from Newcastle, getting up at 3am after 90 minutes sleep, managed to do a record T1 to T4 transfer at Heathrow for my international flight, we are delayed by an hour but make all that up and I arrive hopefully in this new city, then to be let down by the last link in the chain.

Anyway, I got out my trusty map of Delhi and showed him where it was and where India Gate was, which he knew.  He still looked blank.  After asking some of his taxi colleagues we set off hopefully into the sticky Delhi night.  He was soon on the phone to a friend, then we stopped to ask a policeman, then got some more advice after raising some napping tuc-tuc drivers, checked in again with some early rising workers and then finally stumbled upon my destination as we were turning around to set off in the opposite direction!

Despite all this I was completely comfortable all the time and found it all really amusing.  I just believed that I would arrive safely, if by a rather unorthodox route.  Sometimes you just have to trust to the fates and have confidence in the best outcome happening.  What areas of your life are you imagining the worst?  Why were you surprised when it happened?  Now try imagining some more positive outcomes and see what happens.

Looking forwards

It was my birthday yesterday and I always find that for me its a good time to review my progress by looking back at past achievements, both personal and work, and then looking forwards to the future.  I choose this time cos its always easy for me to remember my birthday last year and how I celebrated it.  So looking back this year I realised that I hadn't acquired any new music since last year - no new CDs or downloads - I think that's pretty bad as I love to be surrounded by music both in the car and at home. So action point for the coming year is to get find some new sounds that I like.

Too often though what I have found is that we spend too much time looking back and not enough time looking forward. We dissect all those apparent failures with such precision and go over again and again what might have been, what could have been.  Looking back is a great way to inform our future. We should look back and learn from it, then look forward and make a new plan NOT dwell in the past and beat ourselves up about it.

So what can you learn from your life over the past week, month or year?  What are you going to do differently as a result of that, in your work or personal life? 

Hanging in there

Just got back from a week's climbing in Switzerland in the Grimsel Pass. Hence the lack of recent posts. Fantastic scenery and I didn't even take my laptop with me! We were back again to climb delectable hard granite slabs high above the dam, in the upper reaches of the pass. Or so we thought....

Great weather and climbing Sunday and then it rained. And rained. And rained. And snowed, just for good measure, oh and we had some thunder thrown in. It did this for four days.  We amused ourselves going to the Aareschlucht Gorge, the Reichenbach Falls and a very wet walk up towards the Gaulihutte.  We were just hanging in there waiting for the weather to change. We knew that the forecast was good for later in the week so we just passed the time until then. No point in getting frustrated or upset - at least we were looking at the rain in a beautiful location with no emails to answer. Just finding the best out of each day.

Then we climbed on great slabs for three days - here is a picture of what it was like

We recognised that we may not have been prepared to hang about without the good forecast.  What is the forecast like in your life?  Are you hanging in there with the prospect of a change for the good? Or are you just hanging on with grim determination in the vain hope that something will change. We need to recognise when the forecast might be good and when its a mistake to just forge ahead blindly. Sometimes your gut feeling will help you out with this. Listen to your inner voices, ask others what they think, because we all have a view on the weather and each others lives.