Week 20 - Aaaaaagh!

"Sometimes sometimes I’d like to shout, at the top of my lungs and just let it out." (First Aid Kit)

I've just remembered the following this week:
Date- Friday, July 22nd, 2022
Time- 6.45 pm
Place- Balbriggan Beach
What happened? Three young adults strolled onto the middle of the beach, took turns screaming like mad and then strolled off together, happy out. The whole event lasted about 123 seconds.

Question: What do you to release any excess energy or pent up frustrations?

Action: Head to a beach and scream at the top of your lungs. Alternatively, experiment in your house or back garden, if you like, I guess.

Week 19 - I'd rather be eating

"There is no sincerer love than the love of food." (George Bernard Shaw)

Simply put, I'm happiest when with food. I'm not really sure I need to add to this. Maybe it's a ridiculous thing to say, but I can only hope that you get as much satisfaction out of eating and talking about food as I do.

Question: What food/meal do you love, but haven't eaten in a while?

Action: Option A- Ask a friend to recommend a new recipe. Option B- Buy and sample a random new food in the supermarket that you've never eaten before.

Week 18 - Sparring partners

"How we enter our conversations is how we emerge from them." (Susan Scott)

In The Daily Stoic, Ryan Holiday emphasises the importance of seeing the potential for training and learning, rather than competing and fighting, in our everyday interactions with others. If we treat our daily debates as championship encounters, somebody has to lose.

Question: What would be different about your conversations (or heated debates) with others, if you treated them as sparring matches, rather than championship belt battles?

Action: Be aware of your body language during your next difficult conversation with another.

Week 17 - Press pause

"Our obsession with extracting the greatest future value out of our time blinds us to the reality that, in fact, the moment of truth is always now." (Burkeman)

In an effort to constantly grow, change, progress and develop, there can be a danger of always attempting to live in a time ahead of where you're at. Burkeman questions this approach to living and encourages us to focus more on the here and now.

Question: What would you say if you were asked to describe what "being in the now" looks like for you?

Action: Practise doing nothing and perhaps acknowledge the discomfort this brings. Burkeman refers to Young's 'Do Nothing' meditation in his book: (a) set a timer for five-ish minutes (b) sit on a chair (c) do nothing.

Week 16 - I'd rather be ___

"We give up leisure in order that we may have leisure, just as we go to war in order that we may have peace." (Aristotle)

In 4,000 Weeks (a book that is likely to feature regularly enough in this newsletter over the coming months), Burkeman discusses the importance of engaging in pure leisure activities. He suggests that we create time for our hobbies and not treat them as some kind of subversive acts. You'll know it's a hobby if it doesn't necessarily matter if you're any good, you're doing it for the love of it and time often slips away during the process.

Question: What do you love doing where results don't matter? Where do you create space for the above in your daily/weekly life?

Action: Get curious and ask others about their hobbies this week. Alternatively, list your five favourite hobbies.

Week 15 - What are you saying no to?

“... come home to yourself and slow down to the speed of life.” (Pat Divilly)

Daily work pressures and other stressors are common areas of concern for many of us. It might be worth considering that always saying yes to productivity, hard work and busy-ness, is likely to lead to saying no to the creation of space in weekly calendars for the rest of life.

Question: When you think of the important aspects of your life (e.g. sleep, diet, relationships), which ones are you currently saying no to?

Action: Talk to a friend, family member or colleague about making a small and sustainable change in one of the above areas.

Week 14 - Make your bed

"If you want to change your life and maybe the world - start off making your bed!" (McRaven)

In his book, Make Your Bed, William H. McRaven discusses the power of this simple task. He highlights that making your bed sets you up for the day and improves satisfaction levels when you hop back into bed at night. I'm not going to lie, this is not something I have yet managed to master.

Question: What do you currently do at the start of every morning to ensure some positive momentum as you head about your day?

Action: Experiment with making your bed (or something else that's small and manageable) each morning and see how it goes.

Week 13 - Solid foundations

"Our values should be so crystallised in our minds, so infallible, so precise and clear and unassailable, that they don't feel like a choice- they are simply a definition of who we are in our lives." (Brown)

Over the last number of months, guided by the work of Brené Brown, I have been choosing, experimenting with and rethinking a range of different values. During this time, I have tried my best to limit my values to a maximum of three; the suggestion is that if you try to live into an exhaustive list of values, you are unlikely to really prioritise any of them.

Question: What kinds of behaviours are a hell yeah or absolutely not for you?

Action: (1) List your three values. (2) Experiment with letting them guide your decisions.

Week 12 - Digital developments

"...it's not your fault you can't focus. It's by design. Your distraction is their fuel." (Hari)

Due to an understanding of the impact that my phone can have on my own wellbeing and interactions with others, I have spent the last few years experimenting with the layout of my device and how I engage with it. Positive developments have included the following: turning off most notifications, moving certain apps to a page far from the homescreen (e.g. Twitter), charging my phone in the kitchen at night, limiting use when in company and leaving the office email off my phone altogether (only available on my laptop). The phone is probably still winning in this ongoing struggle, but I'm committed to constant change.

Question: How could you hack your phone to decrease it's capacity to distract you? What changes could you make to how you engage with your phone on a daily basis?

Action: Uninstall an app from your phone that you have been meaning to remove for quite a while now.

Week 11 - Rubik's Cube, anyone?

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." (Beckett)

Over the last number of years, I have come to understand the benefit of making mistakes, falling short and losing. Failures in different areas of my life (e.g. parenting, job interviews, golf, etc.), have helped me to improve my own self-awareness. I also think that modelling failure (and I find this very easy) have supported others around me in feeling more comfortable with failure too.

Question: What have you learned about yourself from recent failures?

Action: Experiment with failing at something. If you're struggling to think of anything, a rubix cube usually works for me.