The Sweet Spot E-Book

Sue Fuller-Good

• Herausgeber: dot dot dot publishing
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 433

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

When you are pushed from pillar to post, when work wants 100% of you, when your family always needs more, when your bank statements scream at you, when time races away from you, when your body feels like a tired, old machine badly in need of a service and you aren't sure how to keep going... Where do you begin? How can you recognise, tame and direct the warring beasts within and without? Building upon the foundations of self-awareness and reflection, Sue Fuller-Good guides you through honest, powerful exploration to find well-being in all aspects of your life. This empowers you to decide upon and design your own future, your own way of living in your sweet spot. Honest, vulnerable, powerful, personal stories Insight from the latest scientific research Practical tips and techniques All ensure you avoid toxic, simplistic work-life balance and quick-fix formulas. The Sweet Spot invites you to a richer, liberating and enjoyable life adventure-one that is ever-evolving, just as you are.

Leseprobe

The Sweet Spot

Energise your work and life so you thrive!

© 2022 Sue Fuller-Good

The moral right of the author has been asserted

First published in Great Britain 2022 by dot dot dot publishing

www.dotdotdotpublishing.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Libary

ISBN: 978-1-907282-84-3 (print)

ISBN: 978-1-907282-45-4 (ebook)

Design: Alex Casey—mPowr Limited

Sue Fuller-Good

The Sweet Spot

Energise your work and life so you thrive!

Contents

The Puzzle of True Well-being

The I Factor

This Extraordinary Moment

Getting Present to Your Sensory System

Stress and the Nervous System

The Antidotes to Stress

Essence versus Ego

Laid Low

The Slow Climb Back Up

Trust is a Golden Ingredient

The Ever-Changeable Brain

Attitude—The Route Map to Freedom

Balance

Moving Forward

Real Joy

It’s a Journey not a Destination

Resilience in The Sweet Spot

The Game of Life

The Tail End of Balance

Endnotes

Appendices

Chapter One

The Puzzle of True Well-being

It requires a whole journey of discovery to explore true well-being and what it means. My lifetime has been just this: a journey of discovery, exploring every angle of the subject. The discoveries that the journey has enabled have all come from studying myself and my own body as well as from being a course junkie and a compulsive student. I am excited to have this conversation with you and together we can delve into the complexity of this seemingly simple, yet mercilessly elusive state of being: well-being.

Hopefully we can agree that well-being is multidimensional, multifactorial and is just like a puzzle. Each puzzle piece is integral to building the puzzle of well-being, each piece is vital to creating the whole picture and no piece is more important than any other. Most of us easily find some of the pieces and slot them into place, but getting the next pieces in place is more difficult. Some pieces may have been temporarily lost and some may just be hard to spot. Some aspects require real investigation and focused shining of the light of awareness to get them out of our blind spot.

Some even call creating well-being a skill, like performing a perfect golf swing. This is a wonderful metaphor, because even as a non-golfer, I know that a good golf swing is a culmination of hundreds of small tweaks and adjustments. We can all meet ourselves with compassion when we think of well-being this way! No wonder it’s hard to find and it’s even harder to maintain. No wonder it slips through our fingers at times like sea sand. It looks so easy to do a perfect golf swing when we watch the professionals. We hear that delicious sound as the ball is hit right in the sweet spot of the club.

It’s easy, until we try. Then we realise how the head moves the pelvis and the shoulders affect the hips. and we sense how getting each part to flow and do what it needs to in the exact moment it needs to, is very hard to perfect, yet is absolutely integral to the swing. It’s so hard few people ever do perfect it.

Now we can meet ourselves with true empathy and real tolerance. We will never create well-being for ourselves if we don’t start. And if we don’t start with a real knowing of how difficult it is and how much compassion and encouragement it requires to just take the first step.

So, dive in with me and let’s explore together. I’ll share my learnings and save you some of the grazed knees, sleepless nights and weekends on courses. Together we will emerge at the end, knowing we can feel great and when we lose our path for a time, we can get ourselves back on track quickly and effortlessly.

Having well-being is sometimes described as being comfortable, healthy or happy. Wow, that makes it the ultimate prize, the ultimate gift. Most people don’t value their well-being until they have not got it anymore and only then do they recognise the treasure they had and have lost. When the resource of well-being is there to support and hold you, everything else is easier! Just thinking about not having it can make you shudder. So, let’s be proactive, let’s use this opportunity to build it, to create it and to support it so it flourishes and remains for us as long as possible.

The well-being puzzle looks like an awesome picture when the pieces are all in place. The pieces are: food, hydration, a healthy gut and a healthy weight, fitness, balance and strength, sleep and rejuvenation, personal mastery, mind mastery and emotional mastery, healthy relationships, sensuality, sexuality and financial health. None of the pieces, however, will slot into place unless they are glued in with sweet-spot cement.

The Sweet Spot is the space where just the right amount of everything is present and the maximum possible output can be achieved with the least possible effort. When we find this magical place, we find the place of perfect balance which resonates beautifully. Life just works, the body operates with least stress and strain and it feels fabulous. It may be a transient place to find, but it is one worth seeking over and over again.

To fit the pieces into place and hold them there requires balance and the perfect amount of all ingredients. Pieces don’t stick well with extremes of anything. The puzzle distorts when we have too little discipline and it distorts when we have too much. It distorts when we have too much criticism and when we have too little. Too much compassion and kindness destroy the glue and when we have too little the puzzle pieces warp.

If everything was measured on a continuum, then the vital amount of any ingredient is the middle ground of it. This middle ground is seriously hard to find, but awareness that this sweet spot exists and is worth seeking is the central theme of this whole book. We often find it by trial and error, but we have to know that it’s the middle ground we are looking for.

You will discover the secrets I discovered on my journey. No matter where you are with well-being right now, whether you are struggling and just surviving or actually not feeling too bad, as we travel together, your vitality will come into focus. Slowly the art of seeking and finding the magical sweet spot will be perfected and you will be able to find it in every domain of your life. Then the puzzle will be built, the picture will radiate energy and you will glow from the inherent health that makes up your cells.

Well-being as a Factor of the Sweet Spot

Well-being completely encompasses hundreds of words and ways of being:

Playful

Sexy

Fun

Passionate

Excited

Relaxed

Energised

Connected

Beautiful and feeling beautiful

Sizzling hot

Calm

Serene and at peace

Curious

Interested

Fascinated and awed

Grateful

Optimistic and realistic

Positive and hopeful

Accepting of reality

Powerful and empowered

Productive

Focused

Present

Balanced

Able to switch off

Fit and strong

Flexible

Resilient

Having grit without being stubborn

Self-assured and confident

Trusting

Creative

Able to quit

Detached but not disconnected

Sensual

Go ahead and add to the list if you think of ones I haven’t thought of yet, make this list your own

The Rollercoaster of Aliveness

Reflecting on this journey of discovery that my life has enabled has created a clear picture of the puzzle that well-being actually is. My life so far has been a divine and furiously fun rollercoaster ride peppered with loads of learning and exposing. Many of the beliefs I held dear have been proven to be untrue as I have explored. Much of what I thought I knew has given way to more questions and more inquiry. I’m sure you have had a similar realisation, just when you think you know something, you find you know almost nothing at all. The more you learn, the more you find there is you don’t know.

Along the way, there have been upslopes and downslopes, rushes and slow patches. I am certain that I will get to the grave totally spent and shattered one day!

There is no doubt that, overall, it has been incredibly exhilarating. When I have been stuck in the centre of some of the upslopes, I haven’t experienced them as fun. Many uphills, I have found utterly devastating and many I have found frightening. Yet the whole picture of the story is quite spectacular. The reason I have written this book is to share the discoveries and the pathways that led to them. Each of you has your own story and has been on your own rollercoaster ride. Maybe you will take some time to marvel with gratitude at each and every part of your own brilliant story and use this book to join the dots of your own discoveries into answers that add to this book and enable you to truly thrive.

“Physician, know thyself.” I have no idea who added physicians to the ancient Greek aphorism “Know thyself,” but it has been an instruction I have given myself millions of times over the course of my life and career. This invitation and instruction were built on Socrates’ statement that “The unexamined life is not worth living,” and made me a huge devotee of personal mastery.

The quest for self-awareness and understanding has underpinned my life and the choices I have made to the extent that I often forget that other people may not share this paradigm. If you haven’t shared this passion for personal development until now, don’t run! You may just find the ideas that follow inspiring and thought-provoking. At worst you may find them interesting. If you have been delving into your inner world for a long time already, then this may give you some angles and corners in which to shine the light of investigation. Whichever it is for you, I am grateful you have picked up this book and I deeply hope that it will be a route map for you.

Thriving is a common hope. Almost all parents wish their children to thrive in their lives. Almost everyone wants to have vitality, whichever culture or strata of society they come from. Yet, thriving remains elusive for most. Well-being as we have already said is a transient state for almost all of the world, it may even be a luxury most people in the world never even get the chance to think about.

Among the people who have a quest to thrive, some people may have it all buttoned up physically, but then they have too much stress, which deflates their balloon and grounds them, or they have it all buttoned up mentally, but socially they struggle. We all seek the magic wand, the easy way to just get results. “It’s exercise that’s the answer,” we think. So we push and pull and try that and, sadly, we land up only a tiny bit closer to thriving, so we look again.

“Maybe it’s the diet pill that suppresses your appetite and speeds your metabolism?” We try that. It works for a while and all the pieces fall into place. Then life shows up and everything moves into turmoil again and that fleeting glimpse of well-being vanishes into the ether. We start again, resiliently searching for the quick-sticks-fix and another decade passes us by.

Now it’s a true priority. “I have to change my ways,” we think. We set about trying again, but the complexity remains. Or it may be that the solutions and strategies that worked before have simply stopped working and now you don’t feel good anymore! Why ever not? It’s always worked, until suddenly it didn’t and you are flummoxed, perplexed.

It’s a series of choices that win out in the end. Choices that we may make in autopilot if we aren’t aware, that can slowly guide the ocean liner of ourselves towards the beacon of well-being. Or away from it if we leave our autopilot in charge. Becoming aware and awake to these unconscious choices is the key to the thriving we seek. Understanding the nature of the unconscious desires that underpin the choices we make and meeting those desires with compassion and kindness, is what helps us to change the choices and slowly and sustainably steer towards true well-being. Reading this book will help you to develop this awareness and bring the choice points straight into your conscious mind. It’s a complex web of factors that interrelate and influence each other. Understanding this complex web is fascinating and fun. Let’s see how much clarity we can create and how we can bring the seemingly unrelated parts of life together and let your vitality be the outcome.

Let’s look beyond the magic wand fantasy to find answers that answer. I have been blessed with many years of working intimately with people, each and every one of whom has taught me a little bit. All the little bits add up to a freakily large amount of insight. Being a scientist at heart I have tested the science to check it backs up whatever I have come to “know”. I have also been blessed with an enquiring mind and an insatiable quest to learn and expand. This constant learning has filled every corner of my mind and has been at the forefront of my thinking as I have encountered the myriad of problems people have come to me to help them solve. I’ve then had the opportunity to test out any hypotheses I’ve come up with, either in my own problem-solving for myself or with these awesome people, being alongside them as they tested the ideas. When the ideas have failed, I have seen it first-hand. And when they worked I have celebrated with them as they enjoyed feeling better.

My journey has included a lot of extreme sports and ultra-endurance activities along with mountaineering and adventuring which have been my passions since I was small. Mountains are in my family’s blood. My parents met in the Drakensburg mountains in South Africa. We returned there many times in my growing up years, where we would do long day walks and climbs and then sit around at suppertime and relive our treasured experiences. This left all of us children with a burning passion for nature, exercise and climbing mountains. All of the next generation carry this passion as well.

An outsider listening in on a family gathering may say we are super-goal-orientated and have a skewed idea of what is normal. This may well be true, but it’s all we know. It’s our normal.

My adventures and activities may differ from yours, but only in the details. We all have our own mountains we seek to climb; we all have our own races to run, we all have our own exploring to do. Your races and mountains may not include running shoes and carabiners, but they certainly include your effort, sweat, blood and tears. We are all in this thing called life together and although the details in your life may vary, sharing is possible, because the basic ingredients are the same.

I hope you will leap forward with me and turn down the path that you may have avoided until now. Turn into the path that takes you to the destination your heart has been aching for. The prize you seek, this destination will not look the same as my prize or anyone else’s so you will have to define it for yourself. You definitely won’t find the prize in the comfort zone of any rut you may have got stuck in, nor will you find it if you stay walking on the path you have been walking on for years. This prize needs a new road, a different path. And you have the strength, the courage, the ingenuity to step onto this path, however hard it is to find and follow. Even if you are not in a rut and are on the path you want to be on, this path may disappear at times. You will need to seek it out again.

So here goes, sit back and enjoy.

Chapter Two

The I Factor

I grabbed my degree having graduated as a physiotherapist after four glorious years in Cape Town, South Africa, and boarded a flight to the UK. I had never been abroad before and I was deliriously excited. I travelled with my dearest and closest friend. So the reality of living in a strange country and having to make a living for the first time, didn’t hit me immediately. I felt euphoric and invincible. I didn’t know how little I really knew. I had no idea that my learning curve and growing up curve had only just begun.

There was an underlying tension in the pit of my belly as I needed to start earning money as soon as possible. But the world was my oyster and I was fabulously ready for it!

I was floored by how fast I was offered a job, but when I read the job description, I paled. I was to work in a ward and care facility in the far East End of London (this was 1990, it was the home of the Cockneys in those days) and my job was to take care of the dying and the elderly.

I felt out of my depth with this job. And I was. I felt ill-equipped to cope. And I was. But economics dictated so I took the work and started almost immediately.

I cared for many older folks over the months I was there. I looked after their physical well-being during their hospital stay, in the last chapter of their lives. I went home with any who were discharged from the facility and helped to ensure that their homes were fit for them to inhabit and that they had the aids they needed to cope. I held some of their hands as they took their last breaths and I spent time with them and with their family members, who came when their hours were few. I loved every second of my job. I am sure I messed up a lot and I am sure I said the wrong thing often, but I cared and my intention was to help.

Maybe you are like me and learn by doing? Making mistakes and realising how you could have done better? I hate messing up, but I was willing to do it badly as long as it was on the way to doing it better. Maybe you too have learnt through your failures and mistakes? It’s uncomfortable for sure, but it’s often the only way we can learn.

I developed many precious relationships while I was there. Sid was one of my favourites. An old gentleman who had no front teeth and a furious temper which covered a deeply buried soft and kind heart.

Sid smoked all day and sucked on anything he could get his yellowed fingers around. He would leave the cigarette butt next to his bed and light it again a bit later to suck the last drags from the dregs of it. He lost his big toe first, to gangrene, then his foot. Inch by inch the gangrene claimed his whole leg until he had only a stump on the left side. The right foot was blackening and he continued to smoke. He couldn’t breathe and he certainly couldn’t walk.

We talked a lot. His daily lament was: “If only I’d done it differently!”

His daughter came sometimes and she brought light to his dull eyes when she came, but he never told her he cared. He just grunted another complaint about how he hated his life and how she wasn’t doing anything to make it easier for him. I often saw her brace herself for the onslaught. No wonder she didn’t come much!

Sid was an extraordinary teacher. I wept when he died. I felt like I had lost someone truly unforgettable. The sad truth about Sid was that he had almost no one except his neighbour, his daughter and me at his funeral. And this, because he never let anyone know him. He lived out of habit, he went to the pub every night and never made a choice about whether this was getting him what he wanted from his life. He never questioned his actions. He just carried on, day after day doing once more what he had done the day before.

For me there was a chorus in my head after the months I spent with Sid: “Live while you are alive. Treasure each day. Build relationships with precious people. Take every opportunity with two hands,” and most importantly, “Make time for reflection and re-evaluation.”

“Beware of being left with a Sid-lament when you die, Fuller-Good,” is still a common thought in my head. Is it worth reflecting on your own life and situation? Are you in danger of being left with a “Sid-lament” too? What will it take to avert that? There are two steps to this active aversion. The first is to actively do the reflection, what would you regret if tomorrow was your last day here on earth? And then the second step is to decide what action it would take to shift things and remove the potential for this regret and take those actions? The thinking doesn’t help, even although it’s a vital step, it’s the actions that make the difference. It’s not the things we do that we regret, it’s the things we don’t do!

Sid was such a great teacher that I have never forgotten what he taught me and I have built my life on these lessons.

Those months in London were emotional times. I didn’t have the tools to deal with the profound emotions that came up for me and I really struggled to manage. I was living in a big commune with loads of fun people, many of whom were working pub jobs. We were young and we were all about having a great time and experiencing everything our new-found freedom and financial status offered us. We travelled and we partied, we saw shows and we tried new things.

At work, I existed in a different world and I had to find how to serve my patients the best way I could and keep myself floating. I often had too little sleep, far too little downtime and absolutely no alone time to support me. Add to that three hours commute to work and back, which many Londoners are used to, but for me this was unfathomably long.

No wonder the question that came up strongest for me was, “Who am I?”

I’m still asking this of myself and I still can’t say I know, but I do know the question has enriched my life and deepened my life experiences. As the years have progressed, many ideas and strategies have come to me and I have played with them. Some have made a resounding difference in my life and some have faded away. Meditation has stuck in and around the turns and curves, the uphills and downhills of my life so far. It is one thing that has provided daily sustenance and sanity in the crazy times.

After years of reflection and enquiry as a physiotherapist and a coach, a sexual health practitioner, a chronic pain specialist, a mom and a philosopher, an entrepreneur and a speaker, there is loads I want to share with you. As you read on, inspired by Sid and determined not to have a Sid-lament at your life’s end, the invitation is to check where you are at and make some tweaks if that’s what you see you need to do. If you find yourself struggling even a tiny bit or in survival mode, wishing you had vitality, passion and capacity for high performance, then this book is written for you.

It is so clear that living consciously and in a state of awareness is absolutely vital if we are to make the best of our time on this planet. Some of the tools for this seemingly simple, yet challenging endeavour are included in the chapters that follow. One of the critical factors in each tool is finding the sweet spot in absolutely everything. This means the middle ground, the place of balance, not too much and not too little.

Chapter Three

This Extraordinary Moment

People always say, life is short. Certainly, it may be cut short and we have no clue how long our time in this existence will last, but maybe one of the best defences we have against a short life is to live in the present moment. When we are in our thoughts, worrying about what lies ahead, or are in our minds worrying about what happened yesterday, this treasured moment slips past and disappears, never to be retrieved!

So, I hear you saying; “How do I do that? I’ve heard it so often before and what does it really mean in my life?” It’s so much simpler than it seems and there are certain things that make it easier. The first thing that makes it possible is being the watcher of ourselves. If we can’t see that we are in our heads thinking about yesterday or tomorrow, we can’t change it. Just like if we can’t see that our shoelace is undone, we can’t change that either. Once we have noticed our undone shoe, we can tie the lace with ease. Once we can see in ourselves that we are not present, we can do something to get ourselves into the present. Noticing is truly the hardest part! It’s not rocket science, but it’s easy not to notice.

Once we have seen what is going on, we can use something that is in the moment to change our state. The things that are in the moment are our bodies and our breath. Consciously taking in a lungful of air and feeling the exhalation of that air is as complex as it gets. Consciously feeling our feet on the ground or our buttocks on the chair we are sitting on is another method. We can also tune into the sounds around us, the birds or the breeze in the trees, the sights around us or the tastes of the food we are eating or the beverages we are drinking. Just zoning into these present moment experiences will bring us back from wherever we were.

Our minds are programmed to keep us alive. So our brains create a constant stream of data that it considers necessary for our survival. When we realise that the data is exactly that; data, then we can let it stream away without disturbing our present moment. Our minds are programmed to avoid threat and maximise reward. We are constantly the victim of this threat avoidance and reward seeking if we allow our minds to run our lives. When we become aware of this fact, then we can reduce the status of our minds to the level of servant and not master. We can choose what, of the stream of information, we want to pay attention to. We can let all the rest slip peacefully away.

It’s just like being in the traffic on a busy road. When we are in the traffic and in its flow or gridlock, we are at its mercy. Once we are in our home, we can take refuge from the traffic and be in a state of relaxation and enjoyment. The traffic keeps on flowing, but we are separate to it. We can tune into it and listen for it or stand on the side of the road and watch it moving or we can just stay separate to it and allow it to pass without our involvement. Working with our thoughts is just like this. We get to choose to let them flow without attaching to them, or we can get involved with them and worry about them and ruminate about them or rehash them a million times. Whether we realise it or not, the choice is ours to make.

Sometimes it’s fascinating to watch our thoughts and discover what they are all about and sometimes it’s a waste of our attention. We get to choose. If there is something you need to know, you will get the information. So you don’t need to worry that you have to pay attention. Your thoughts give rise to your emotions, especially if you attach to them. Emotions are just thoughts in physicality, or the physical expression of thoughts.

Alexandra was a client of mine. He had been suffering from severe obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety since he was very young. He was seventeen when he came to see me. He told me that he had bad thoughts and when he did, his best route to cleanse himself of the bad thoughts was a shower. He was spending a lot of his precious time in the shower and was constantly trying to rid himself of his bad thoughts. He told me that seeing someone play with their nose was enough to set off a tidal wave of dirty thoughts. It revolted him and led to a campaign of avoidance, trying to control the bad thoughts. This started with avoiding the nose picker and all of the people who may have been contaminated by him. This strategy worked for a while and then it started to fail, because there were increasing things to avoid, because bad thoughts multiply when left to their own devices. By the time I met him, his thoughts had backed him into a corner and he was struggling to thrive at all and his school marks were suffering. He could clearly see that his school success was suffering and so was his happiness and health.

Our first job was to remove the judgement of bad on his thoughts. As soon as there is a judgement like bad, there is an attachment to the thoughts. When we try to avoid and suppress thoughts, we increase them and give more energy to them. We started by helping him to see his thoughts as just thoughts. Neither good, nor bad, just streams of information. We got him to look at the thoughts with fascination and non-judgement.

Suddenly, they had less power. We didn’t have to try to stop his shower fetish, we had to take away the feeling of revulsion and contamination. When we enabled him to be the observer and watch the thoughts coming and going like clouds in the sky, irrelevant to his happiness or sanity, the thoughts stopped being a factor. He could never say whether the thoughts stopped or whether he just stopped noticing them. He could even resume his friendship with the nose picker and many others he had previously diagnosed as possible threats. His anxiety reduced remarkably. Of course, it wasn’t a miracle cure, it took practice and hard work and there was much else we had to do to help him, but that was the first and most vital step.

Being Mindful

One of the easiest forms of meditation is mindfulness. In its simplicity it is easy to use and is everlastingly available. It has provided me with the tools to follow my heartfelt quest to live consciously and hopefully die with no regrets.

The three tenets of living mindfully are so simple they seem almost not worth the literally thousands of studies that have proved them to be true. They are so simple in their wisdom, that scientific minds around the world keep testing and retesting them to make certain they really are as life-changing as they are. They include: curiosity, compassion and non-judgement.

Living the happiest and most brilliant life possible must include multiple strategies. In Western society and especially society where survival is not the only driver, there are many ideas thrown at us. Success underpins happiness is one of these. Most people never think about what success really means for them. They get brain washed by the school and university systems and start chasing external signs of success. What if success is an inside job? What if it has more to do with your inner state of being and living your purpose and your dreams than getting awards and certificates or a big bank balance? What if feeling content is more successful than coming first?

My strategy includes mindfulness practice and a really healthy dose of self-awareness, body awareness and emotional intelligence. This I called presence practice. It is based right from its centre in mindfulness practice as described by Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn. My understandings of the fundamental living of mindfulness have been formulated by my own experiences. The three tenets provide a way of encountering the world that can change your existence completely.

Curiosity

Curiosity takes us back to our childlike state. Children are filled with curiosity. They ask endless questions and listen with a beginner’s mind. They don’t start from the premise I already know that! Instead, they don’t know. So they listen with an open mind. They don’t feel the need to defend their point of view and prove their rightness, so they listen with wonder and to discover.

I learnt the real meaning of curiosity from my son. He was about two years old and was watching a colony of ants which had moved in around some crumbs on our patio. He sat for the longest time on his little haunches and watched them. Surprisingly, for a child, he kept his hands clasped under his chin and just watched with fascination.

He had no agenda for them. He had no preconceived idea about what ants are supposed to do and so he just watched and discovered. He didn’t expect them to pick up the crumbs and take them to their nest, the way I would have done, because I thought I knew what ants do. Instead, he perched in the now, discovering these particular ants and found out how they moved and behaved.

When he finally bored of watching and stood up, I saw the light in his eyes. He truly was filled with wonder. The wonder of being alive and wonder at the wonderful world in which he existed. That was the moment that the true meaning of curiosity became clear for me.

What if you could take that level of curiosity into every day and every experience and allow it to underpin every minute of every day? Imagine the juice life could offer you!

Some years later, I was offered the chance to understand the next piece of the subject. Again, it was a child that taught me.

I was asked to feed my niece her food, while my sister rushed to do something else. It just so happened that the menu of the day included banana and it was the very first time she had eaten banana. Imagine that! Eating mashed-up banana for the first time. No previous banana-eating experiences to cloud the picture and no judgements to cloud the taste.

This little, wonder-filled child opened her tiny mouth and delighted in the explosion of sensation that filled her world. I’m guessing she loved the texture and the taste; she loved the smell and the whole delicious thing. She mushed the banana around in her mouth for a while, allowing some to squish out of the sides of her mouth and she clucked her tongue on her sticky palate. She swallowed and felt the sweet and cool mush slither down her throat. And then greedily opened her mouth for some more. She was totally engrossed in this banana-eating opportunity. Her mind was completely engaged with every part of the experience. She didn’t compare it to her previous eating experiences. She didn’t judge the banana to be too green, too overripe or too warm. She took it as it was and enjoyed every part of it with unbridled relish and delight.

This made me see how I turned every mouthful of my food eating into a duller experience than it needs to be. It made me realise how little I enjoy the magnificent sensations in my reality. In spite of having beautiful, delicious, fresh food available to me, I deny myself the fullness of eating, because I am multitasking, I am not paying attention.

This opportunity of watching this virgin banana-eating encounter, underpinned mindful eating for me. It also opened my eyes to presence. When we allow ourselves the simple pleasure of doing one thing at a time and paying attention while we do it. When we drop our judgements and expectations and just meet each moment with its sensory treasures with wonder, life becomes completely different.

Imagine how life would be if we could meet each moment as if it were our first time with that particular experience and if we were really present to the sensations available moment by moment.

In reverence for that moment with baby Aisling, maybe we can all thrill at the feeling of our sheets on our skin, at the deliciousness of soap lathering our bodies and running water on our backs when we shower. Maybe we can all tune in and treasure the coolness of water as it cools and soothes our throats when we drink and appreciate this sweet, life-giving and, hopefully for you, freely available water. Every sip is an opportunity for pleasure. Can we all zone in and delight in the airiness of clothes that swirl around our bodies as we move and feel grateful for the greenness of the grass under our feet in a garden and the smell of rain when it falls? I could go on, but when we remember to pay attention, life is a feast of magnificent treats. We just have to notice to receive all that treasure. When we are operating robot style, we are oblivious to all this wonder. We simply have to return to our childlike state and meet the world with curiosity and fascination.

Human beings are consumed with the need to be entertained and to consume things. I wonder if this is because they are missing all of this sensory stimulation that is freely available to them. I wonder if all the stimulation that is available is actually dulling our senses to the simple pleasures in life. A music video, a modern song, a movie, all provide such intense stimuli. The more we engage with such strong stimuli the less we get to notice the muted stimuli. It’s almost as if we become addicted to strong sensations and lose our sensibility for more subtle ones. The intensity is going up as technology improves and we are the losers. It’s never going to go backwards, so we have to give ourselves the chance to step off the bus of development a few times a day and raise our awareness and sense the subtle sensations. Zoom in on the little sensations. We can always zoom back out again and engage with the big world stuff. The problem with technology is it makes us do everything at once and stops us from doing things deliberately and with all of our attention. The only defence is to zoom in and zoom out, moving the spotlight of our attention intentionally.

Watch one of your favourite old movies someday and see how dull and unstimulating it looks compared with what you have come to expect from a movie. Look at the old ABBA clips and see how amazingly different they look when compared with how they looked when they first came out in the 70s. The music is still as intoxicating, but we have come to expect so much more from sound and sight.

One of my greatest pleasures in life is mountain climbing. Ever since I was a little girl, I have been climbing mountains of ever greater height.

I started by climbing Mushroom with my dad. I have no clue why he singled me out that day and took just me up that mountain, but it may as well have been yesterday, I remember it so clearly. We set out early and my dad explained that the first rule was never to ever complain! It was hard and the pace was fast for my small legs, but I loved every step and I felt like my chest would explode with pride and thrill when we stepped onto the top and looked out at the view around us that we had gained access to. I thought the green grass looked just like velvet and I imagined I could do roly-polys all the way down if I just stepped off the top. I felt so connected to nature that I could literally feel tears stinging my eyes. That moment is etched like a famous oil painting into my mind for ever. I have seldom felt anything so intensely or been so immensely alive and grateful. I was only seven, but what a gift to have been given.

One of the things that mountains have given me is the ability to be pleasured and entertained by the simple things in life. Once, when in the Drakensberg, my son and I set out well before dawn to manage to fit a very long climb into one day. The sun came up over the mountain and the sky slowly caught alight with the most gorgeous colours imaginable. The air was cool and moist and there was a gentle breeze in my hair, damp with the effort of walking. My whole body was covered in goose flesh as I took in the breathtaking view. The moment of utter joy is etched in my treasure chest.

The connection we had that morning was also enough to satisfy a need for stimulation for many weeks. We can both draw back on it and reclaim that euphoria anytime we need to.

If only we could slow down our quest for more and take greater pleasure in what is already ours, ripe for the picking and freely available.

Non-judgement

We name everything. We were taught to do that when we were children. We categorise everything. Things are either good or bad, likeable or not likeable, worthwhile or not. When something appeals to the masses, it goes viral as the judgement of “likeable” and “nice” lights up the sky. By the same token if something is not worthwhile or likeable, the “no” judgement spreads like wildfire. This is our culture and our training. It’s hard to do it any other way! But what if there was another way? What if real happiness depended on us suspending our judgement?

Take grass for example. Most people love grass. They love the green of it and the smell of it when it’s freshly cut. Most people appreciate a beautiful lawn. Sometimes a lawn looks delightful from a distance, but when you get close up, you can see it’s full of weeds and there are gaps where the grass hasn’t spread properly. How disappointing if you compare that grass to your expectation. Yet, if you compared it to an un-grassed yard, it would be totally different. Grass would be available to be enjoyed just as it is if you didn’t compare it and if you didn’t judge it and if you had no expectations of it.

Imagine your life without judgement.

Imagine if your inner critic didn’t evaluate everything you did as either “great” or “dreadful”.

Imagine, if your inner world was free of all that judgement and you could just live each moment as it unfolded without that endless commentary and criticism.

Imagine if you could meet a person and have absolutely no judgement, only curiosity for them. It certainly would change every encounter and it would make showing up in front of you a million times easier for people.

Imagine being able to meet a person as they are that day, not as you thought they were last time you met them and not as you expected them to be. Every encounter would be like a lucky packet, a treasure waiting to be found, rather than a potential disappointment or potential opportunity for endless mind chatter.

Imagine if you could enjoy your health and your body without comparing your backside to Angelina Jolie’s, or your smile to Brad Pitt’s. Imagine if you could enjoy your home, your children or your holiday plans without needing to compare them with someone else’s. There will always be someone better than you and there will always be someone worse. No one is anything like you and no one has your circumstances, so comparing yourself with someone else is like comparing lasagne to ice cream. Insane!

Why not practise suspending your judgement and being with something or someone without categorising or judging them, just encountering the treasure chest that constitutes them every time, seeking out more of the treasure that remains to be discovered?

What about practising letting go of your expectations for a while and just meeting each life event as a virgin experience. Even if you have done something before, it’s not the same, so it is unique and incomparable. You can never eat the same ice cream twice. You can never climb the same mountain twice. It wasn’t done in the same state of mind, the same time of day, the same state of body, so it’s never the same.

Let’s connect our inner judge to an alarm bell. Just like a cow or goat in the mountains which has a bell around its neck. This way, we can alert ourselves to our inner judge’s presence when it shows up. And it does and it always will. All the time. But at least we will notice before we get sucked into all its drama and noise pollution.

We don’t want to eliminate any parts of ourselves, so this is not about judging your judge and making it wrong. This is about noticing really quickly when your judge shows up and maybe inviting it to take a chill pill. It’s about asking your inner judge to wait a while before it protects and defends you with its hard work. It’s almost as if you had a bodyguard to give you space.

There are so many occasions when your judge gets it wrong.

As a child, I hated leeks. I hated them so much they made me gag. My mom knew how good they were for me and insisted I eat them. There were many mealtimes when I sat miserably trying to get the leeks down my throat. Now, I find myself putting leeks in my trolley week after week. I cut leeks into almost any meal I can. Wow, I misjudged leeks. I also took my judge’s word for it every time they were presented to me instead of investigating them afresh. Until one day, I read about their vast nutritional value and I decided to give them another chance. Hey presto! They aren’t just nutritious; they are also delicious and they are definitely NOT a threat to my survival which my inner judge had decided they were, when I was four. Just because I didn’t like them yesterday, doesn’t mean I don’t like them today.

How many other misjudgements have we all suffered the consequences of? I wish I had learnt to suspend judgement earlier in my life! What about you? Are you missing out on things and people, because you have misjudged them? Have you mistaken threat, perceived by your unconscious, as truth?

Learning to suspend or even drop the tendency to judge has been one of the biggest gifts mindfulness has given me. It’s an ongoing exercise to remember over and over again to drop the judgements my mind is so quick to make. The liberation this brings is worth the effort.

Compassion

Compassion is a softness of heart, a gentleness of encounter. It’s a heart emotion. It includes tolerance and acceptance of what is. When we start by meeting ourselves with compassion, we change our whole lives. Compassion softens the voice of our inner critic and enables us to grow and thrive without wilting under constantly harsh words and admonishments. Compassion allows us to look at ourselves as if we are enough, just as we are. Compassion allows us to appreciate our efforts and seek out our magnificence instead of focusing on what we could have, would have and should have done more, better or differently.

So how do we cultivate more compassion for ourselves and other people? When we meet something with compassion, we meet it with a soft heart. So much of what we do is done with criticism, with harshness, with exacting rules and judgements. It’s very soothing when we can do something with compassion. When we are met with compassion then we can do whatever we do with creativity and flair and joy.

Imagine your life if you were gentler with your beautiful self? Compassion is a way of being and a way of living. We have to practise in order to shift into living this way and it’s worth it, because it has the potential to change every part of our lives. When you find yourself being judgemental and critical in your self-talk, can you stop and send compassion to yourself instead? Can you meet yourself with a few degrees more kindness?

I turned right suddenly on spotting a road I was looking for and felt an unspeakable smash and a blinding bang on the head. As I regained control of my car and brought it to a halt, I remember thinking I must have had a blowout. I had not had a blow out at all! I had hit an oncoming, speeding car that I failed to see at all. We collided at such a pace and with such a force that the entire left side of my car concertinaed inwards hitting me on the left side of my head and cutting my beautiful baby boy’s cheek very badly. Imagine, hurting your own child!

My son was eighteen months’, he was a busy and frenetic little boy and I was juggling the balls of being a working, business owning, studying mom, wife, family member and friend. I was not quite coping and was hanging on by my teeth. It was at this critical time that my mother-in-law passed away, very suddenly. She suffered from dreadful emphysema and had been literally suffocating for years. It was torture to witness her suffering. Unexpectedly, her body gave up the struggle. It was a terrible shock and I found myself even more off balance after this. A few days after her death and her funeral I had the urge to move my son’s car seat from the left side of my car to behind my seat. I think it was in response to an intuitive knowing that I was often distracted by him when I was driving.

The car I hit contained: the driver, a panicked aunt who was rushing her sick newborn baby niece and its mother to the hospital and a six-week-old baby girl. Baby niece was on Mom’s lap and had no seat belt on her, no car seat and no protection at all except the angel that must have been at the scene of the accident. The sum total of the injuries from the ghastly moment were multiple face cuts on my son, which were stitched by a very expert plastic surgeon with 80 minute stitches and a mom with a fractured sternum. That’s it! The baby got to the hospital and was fine and my son and I were taken to the hospital in the car of a man who was driving past. This man was so incredibly kind and gentle with me who was utterly distraught. He saw that we were safely in casualty before he left us.

I called my husband and broke the news to him. Just try to picture this poor man receiving my call. His first son had been in a terrible car accident when he was just a six-month infant and required almost six months of medical care to help him heal. He healed in many ways but was left almost cortically blind and was quite severely brain injured after the accident. He suffered hydrocephalus and seizures and so many other results of his accident which dominated his early life entirely and changed his future and with it his parents’ futures, forever. My husband must have received the most excruciating shock when he got my news. He rushed to meet us and watched in horror as our son was wheeled into theatre.

We were so mercifully lucky. His face healed so that you could almost not see the scars and in no time, he was back to living his busy life, blissfully unaware that anything happened at all.

I, on the other hand went into a desperately dark space. I hated myself utterly for what I had done. I beat myself to near death day in and day out. Every time I looked at my son’s perfect face now covered in wounds, I felt a wave of guilt, shame and self-hatred come over me. I could not forgive myself. My husband was wise enough to recognise how bad I was feeling and he insisted I go to see a psychologist. I felt so ashamed I didn’t think I was worth any care at all. I just wanted to hide away and felt my child would be better off without me: a mother who hurt him!