The Rice

I got an email today that I really liked. It tells the story of a man who goes to his wife’s grave. He sees a Chinese man putting a bowl of rice on the next grave. He asked the Chinese fellow: do you really think the dead will come out of the grave to eat the rice?

And the Chinese guy said: Yes! When your wife will come to smell the flowers.

The moral is to be open to other ways of thinking and to different customs.

But why is it so important to be open?

Openness allows you to grow as you do not restrict yourself to a certain outcome. It makes you a better recipient of experiences and by being open you have better chances or seeing the opportunities that comes your way.

The world around us is constantly changing. The people we meat, the jobs we do, family etc. It is important to be able to move on smoothly with the rest of the universe. It will make our lives easier and we will be able to better survive the changes around us.

It is like the soft grass and the tough stick in a strong wind. The stick will break but the grass will sway until the wind go passed him and then will be back to its original position.

I read once that one can open up by practicing empathy. Simply try to get in the other person’s shoes and try to feel what they are experiencing. Try to get into their way of thinking to better understand them.

Who will it be for you? Your neighbour? Your colleague at work?  Your mother in-law?

Believe in you

Your personal beliefs affect your destiny and success in life in a direct relation. The more you believe in yourself the more you get what you want. This could be the relationship you think you would like to have, the money you would have liked to earn or anything else in life.

We all have a set of believes we carry about ourselves. Some can be carried from childhood experiences and others from personal experiences later on in life.

Just like I wrote in my previous post regarding the way we look http://lifeintransformationuk.blogspot.com/2010/11/mirror-mirror-by-wall.html  ‘What we all should remember is that we are very different. No person is like the other and none of us is perfect. It is the way we see ourselves that makes the difference.’ This is true also regarding success in our lives.

If we think we are unattractive or do not have a nice personality, we will not attract a partner for relationship. If we were told in a young age we are good for nothing and we will keep that belief into our adulthood that is exactly what we will be.

Even if you really want to achieve something in your life, as long as you don’t have the right mindset about yourself you will not achieve it.

There are several methods one should follow to change pesonal beliefs:

Achievements -Think of all the achievements you had in the past regarding your goal. The date you had and saw the partner is falling for you but you didn’t like them, creative ideas you came up with in the past that could be useful in promoting your career etc.

Repetition – Repeat what you did in the past and you marked as ‘achievements’ in your life today. Make adjustments to your current goal.

Visualisation – By visualizing our self where we want to be, in as many details as possible, we are ‘tricking’ our brains to think we can do it. It works as self –hypnosis and one should practice it daily.

Practice – All that you visualize should be practiced regularly. Take a friend out and ‘practice’ the characteristics you think are attractive for a date, do that thing you are good at in your work place. Not only you get a free try in practicing your abilities, you will get a direct or indirect feedback which will tap into your confidence.

Take the plunge – Even if you are anxious just do it. Treat each step as the first step and deal with it accordingly. Before you know it, you will be already there. On your way to achieve what ever it is that you wanted.

Best of luck to all of us!

Happiness

My husband showed me this sentence he kept for many years in his diary:
‘If you don't enjoy what you have how could you be happy with more?’
I don’t know who wrote it, it was on the date of 27th Sep in a calendar, not sure which year, but it made a lot of sense to me.
Read it again. ‘If you don't enjoy what you have how could you be happy with more?’
But what exactly is happiness? Wikipedia definition to that is 'Happiness is a state of mind or feeling characterized by contentment, love, satisfaction, pleasure, or joy.'
 
We are all looking for something that will make us happy. People are walking about with the thought that if they got this car/income/sofa etc. they will be happy. And after a lot of hard work they get the car/income/sofa they wanted and guess what? They are still feeling the emptiness.
I am not saying one shouldn’t thrive for more, but I am stressing that a person should try and aim to live in the present and feel happy here and now. Not look to another date in the future when he will be mortgage free or with the chandelier his wife was dreaming about in the past decade.
If we think about what do we have at present that is totally ours? It is only ourselves. A person should love himself for who he is. Get to know himself and try to look at himself externally. Try to imagine what someone else would think about him.  And then when he feels proud, respected for his views and values, loved and looked up to, only then could he appreciate everything he has.  
That would be a state of happiness.

Keeping a promise

Before we moved out of London I promised myself I would develop in certain areas of my life. One of them was practicing meditation regularly.

Why meditation?

There are so many researches about the subjects and they all come up with positive affects on the human body and mind.  Some research shows that regular practice of meditation trains the brain to reach different emotional and mental states. Others show that the area of the brain that is affected mostly by meditation is the one that is associated with happiness and positive feelings. Some researches shows a positive effect on the heart and blood pressure and others pointed to the fact that regular practice reduces the release of a chemical called Cortisol, which is related to stress and over eating.

So all the good reasons are there and yet I am still not doing it!

I could say that time is my main constrain. They say it is best to meditate first thing in the morning but I am already up really early as it is. It’s time to compromise again. Just as I did with my Yoga practice and I am so glad I did as from no Yoga practice I am now practicing regularly.

Starting from tomorrow I will practice meditation every evening after the kids fell asleep.

Wish me luck and support me in spirit as I personally find this target extremely difficult to achieve. 

Thank you  x

Putting it to the test!

I didn’t give up on the blogging in the past four days. In fact I really missed it! But I wasn’t at home and although with my laptop couldn’t get a moment  for the blog or concentrate properly.

I was away with my family due to plumbing problem that forced us out of the house.  We had to deal with driving 22 miles to and from school each way  instead of the usual 5.5 miles, crumbing a whole family into one bedroom at a relative’s house and trying to get as much information and professional support at the same time.

I wouldn’t lie. It was stressful and very tiring. However, I did my best not to take the stress on the kids and in fact tried to learn from them. They enjoyed the camping like atmosphere. They  lavished on the none limited television viewing hours, that we used a bit as a baby sitter, to get what we wanted done and in general enjoyed being with the family.

So I decided to follow all my advise previously in the blog and first directed myself to being grateful. And truly, I was very grateful to have my close relative whom I get along with very well to accommodate us. She was a great source of support. I was grateful for sleeping together in one massive bed with the kids as we all like that. I was grateful for having such wonderful kids that didn’t make any issues about not living in their home without their toys and teddy bears and I was grateful to have my husband as a solid anchor to my drifting self.

The second thing that I did was to try and smile as much as I can. One of the ways I found to uplift the moral in the car when stuck in traffic on the motorway was singing to the kids. I noticed that my youngest son kept on asking for more and the older one either joined along or, when I made up words, referring to our family, to a familiar tune found it very funny and asked me to repeat it as well.
I functioned on high adrenaline and when Friday arrived I was so exhausted that I went to bed at 9:30 pm and didn’t even put my usual fight with my inner self ☺.

So my general feeling is quite good. I am a little tiered still but I feel great for the way I handled the situation.

Mirror mirror by the wall…

If you ask people how they feel about their look you’ll find that most people are unhappy with one thing or another in their body. It could be their thighs, chest, ears’ shape or even their toes. 
It used to be a ‘woman’s thing’ but not anymore. There are reports that a lot more boys are turning anorectic.
I found a website that its mission is to change women’s attitude toward themselves (http://operationbeautiful.com) which I think is doing a great job. They started by placing post-it notes in public places, like the public toilet mirrors, saying ‘you are beautiful just the way you are’ or ‘own it: you look amazing’ ect.
What we all should remember is that we are very different. No person is like the other and none of us is perfect. It is the way we see ourselves that makes the difference.
A lot of famous people are considered to be good looking or at least above average looking, or pleasantly looking etc. They look good not because they are extremely pretty. They are most probably quite average looking. But they are confident and this trait makes them come across as more attractive.  
But how can we suddenly become confident about the things that haunted us all our lives?   If you don’t feel it just fake it! Like the ‘fake smile’ I was talking about in (http://lifeintransformationuk.blogspot.com/2010/10/you-are-only-smile-away.html) you can fool your brain to feel confident by acting confident. Just stand tall, pull your shoulders back, keep your head up high and change your tone of voice to one that shows confidence. Behave like you have something to add to this world and therefore there is a place for you on this planet.
The more you act like a confident person the faster it will sink into your subconscious mind and you will feel that way.
Exercise is also a good way to make one feel better .The reason is the endorphin that releases in aerobic exercise or the toning that is the outcome. Do it for fun not for weight loss the other side effects will follow naturally.  
It is very important to count your blessing not you blemish. The more you concentrate on the positive things you have to offer, not just externally but as a person, the better you would d feel about yourself.
I once saw an interview with Whoopi Goldberg she said that every mornin when she looks in the mirror see a perfectly beautiful woman. She doesn’t have to perm her hair, add Collagen to her lips or roast herself in the sun for a tan.  It is not the look, it is the way you see yourself that matters!
Be kind to yourself!

Special people along the way

A few blogs ago (http://lifeintransformationuk.blogspot.com/2010/10/healthy-habits-for-better-life.html) I wrote about the sawing hobby I will take upon myself. It seems that nothing in this universe wanted me to do it. But eventually, in the right time it just happened.

After writing my blog, regarding the recycling (http://lifeintransformationuk.blogspot.com/2010/10/charity.html), it nudged me again. About a month ago or so, I got my daily email from a recycling website I am a member off (http://www.freecycle.org/). I wasn’t really looking for it but there it was a Singer 201K sawing machine on offer. I wanted a sawing machine for a long time but as I wasn’t sawing I never did anything about it. I Google the model up and I knew straight away I wanted it. I contacted the person who offered it and arranged to pick it up the next morning. When I rung to say I was on my way a lady said I can come but apologised she wouldn’t be able to help me lifting the machine to the car as her back is troubling her. I came to the house and was received by a lovely, looking like, a middle age lady, who showed me the sawing machine. In fact the sawing machine was so old that it still had the wheel and pedal underneath although it was converted to an electric machine. It was built in a cabinet that was opening up to a working table. In short, a real piece of beauty! Now I realised why she mentioned her back. The machine with the cabinet was extremely heavy and there was no way I could lift it. I suggested I will come later in the afternoon with my husband. We started chatting a little and she told me this sawing machine was belonged to her aunt, whom she was very close to, and that is why she found it difficult to let go of it. But now as she wasn’t sawing anymore she decided to give it away. We chatted about the area she was living in and she tried to engage with my less than two years old son and asked for his name. What threw me was that she told me she was living in that place for the past sixty years. I thought it was her parents’ house, but then she added, since I got married. I was standing next to an eighty two years old lady who talked, looked and behaves at least twenty years younger. Before I left she asked me if I want to see the machine is working but I told her I trusted her. When I came with my husband in the afternoon to pick up the machine she showed me that she took an old handkerchief and saw it up and down (it was still connected to the thread in the machine) just to show me it is still in working order. When she followed us to the car she was talking to my son through the car window and she remembered his name from the morning brief interaction with him.

I was so impressed by this woman I couldn’t stop telling my husband every piece of information she gave me about herself and her family. Her kindness, the way she was easily engaging with me and my son, her openness and honesty were the things that hooked me. I’ve decided to turn her handkerchief into a Lavender sack and post it back to her. This was my first project on the sawing machine. You can see it in the picture above.

There are times in life where you meet people that you know you will never forget. Mrs Derbyshire is one of them.