Hello all! Happy New Year :D
It's been a while but today I'd like to share with you a double response to Matt's blog, in particular his two most recent posts (here and here) which I have really enjoyed mulling over and thinking about. Definitely check it out for daily awesomeness!
So the first blog post I'd like to respond to today talks about the Mind Movie that we all have going on in our minds. It's the childish mind which is separate from ourselves that likes to take us away from where we'd like to go with its wants and needs and complaints. So today, I'd like to give you guys an insight into my mind movie, what it tells me and how I counteract it because more often than not, it is wrong.
My mind movie often has me believing that staying up late is a very good idea and that isn't necessarily good because it means I can't always work at full potential the next day because my mind clouds. I feel like my expectations tend to become harder to tackle because it becomes much more clouded by my need to sleep and feel more well rested. It makes me believe that I don't have the energy or the mindset to do what I'd like to do and this frustrates me immensely because although I do feel better after having slept, I lose time and then it just becomes a vicious circle.
The main thing I'm struggling with is priorities. I have so many things I want to do, especially keeping good relations with friends and doing well in school. It makes it hard to make sure that I realise what I need to do to get where I get to now and not just what feels right in this moment. Because as I've said before, all we have is the present moment and if I can't do the right thing now for the future, what on earth will happen to me? How do I prioritise? Grrrr........
I also then struggle with is keeping my mind out of the movie when in routine and when doing things that I can do as if it's the first time but other times I just lose where I am and get lost in the depths of my imagination.
It loves to tell me that I'm doing enough but also that friends don't believe I matter. That I don't really matter in the peripheral but I know how to combat that thought, remembering that I'm always a contribution and seeing the good that I do and why I do it. Mattering is hard sometimes though because once I realise that I'm a good person, it's sometimes hard to believe why I should matter and why I should expect to matter. I think this comes from the investment of time but expecting something in return is where the problem then lies.
I think another of the things that I face is making sure I don't expect anything from strangers too. Just because you give kindness to the world, doesn't mean it doesn't have to give it to you back with that same person. It comes around for sure but it's so important to remember that you are not yourself to everyone. You are who they perceive you as through their world view and through what they value. You cannot control that. I think it's also important to not expect that from friends but how much of what you see of a person is who they are? Sure, their lack of presence could tell you something about them but does that tell you anything about who they are and who they want to be? Not necessarily.
That isn't to say that not looking deeply into the present can't be joyful but I would have to say your imagination can't provide you the joy that you can get in the reality of the moment. If you're truly present, you can't doubt what you experience because it's full of purpose. That's what matters.
Going onto the second blog post, seeing life as a video game and seeing that there are things you can control and cannot control is such an interesting analogy! Constantly not only accepting reality but seeing it as something that you can affect and not just as something that flies by. But that's only if you ground yourself in reality and you see the story as it happens. TOO COOL!
I think that's probably enough rambling for today ahaha, just making up for lost time, I hope you all have a wonderful time doing what you're doing and who knows, perhaps you'll see me around sometime soon!
Oooooh btw guys, I started youtubing. You might have missed that ahah, here's the channel :)
Showing posts with label Presence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Presence. Show all posts
Tuesday, 5 January 2016
Sunday, 10 May 2015
The Many Roomed House of the Internet
Hey guys! I hope that you're all having wonderfully present days!
This little analogy sprung into my mind when I was considering the phenomenon that is communicating to people all across the internet and how that compares to in real life. The main thing that struck me was the fact that on the internet, it's very possible to be talking to more than two people all at once and to be having completely different conversations. I've done that with around 3-4 people all at once and it can be quite overwhelming at times!
But what really struck me was the fact that we would never be able to do this in real life. You'd never talk to that many people about different things all at once, talking to that many would only work if you were all in one group being a part of the same conversation. This led me to think about how if you were to do this in real life, it'd be almost like each conversation taking place in a different room and how if you wanted to talk to that many people about different things, it would never happen. You'd never be able to up and leave a person in one room to go and continue a conversation from before with another person in another room. It'd be so immensely rude and diabolical in real life and impossible that the fact that this phenomenon is possible with the internet is quite amazing and definitely a big change from how we're used to operating in social situations!
This was brought on because of me trying to get hold of a friend who I usually talk to around the same time everyday. What made me sad was the fact that they felt like they weren't doing very good multi-tasking because they weren't able to switch their attention from the group of people in one room with which they were having a lot of fun, to me, in a completely different room with a different atmosphere altogether. I didn't like the fact that somehow not being able to be in two places at once and give two different sets of people the same amount of presence was somehow bad because it's not really how things are supposed to operate. I just felt bad that they felt like they had to leave the other room to visit the room I was in when really, I didn't really have to be there at all. I could leave the house or had I known they were entertaining others, not come at all and not create that thought in the back of their mind and make it harder to enjoy that social occasion.
All in all, what I gained from this was the fact that if we're going to try and use the internet to communicate, we do also have to understand how much differently we have to operate ourselves and the parameters we set ourselves because of how much differently it works to in real life. We shouldn't feel like we're somehow failing because we've not managed to align our parameters to how much we can handle to the reality of how much presence we can actually realistically give. Multi-tasking in real life is much easier because the tasks are things we can see and are tangible and can be understood. People aren't always the same and having to get your head around that, especially with the phenomenon that is the internet, can be quite a hard balance to strike, especially when you're trying to live your real life reality at the same time!
I hope that this made some sort of sense guys! I'd love to hear what you think on the subject :D I hope that you all have wonderful weeks and I'll speak to you very, very soon indeed!
This little analogy sprung into my mind when I was considering the phenomenon that is communicating to people all across the internet and how that compares to in real life. The main thing that struck me was the fact that on the internet, it's very possible to be talking to more than two people all at once and to be having completely different conversations. I've done that with around 3-4 people all at once and it can be quite overwhelming at times!
But what really struck me was the fact that we would never be able to do this in real life. You'd never talk to that many people about different things all at once, talking to that many would only work if you were all in one group being a part of the same conversation. This led me to think about how if you were to do this in real life, it'd be almost like each conversation taking place in a different room and how if you wanted to talk to that many people about different things, it would never happen. You'd never be able to up and leave a person in one room to go and continue a conversation from before with another person in another room. It'd be so immensely rude and diabolical in real life and impossible that the fact that this phenomenon is possible with the internet is quite amazing and definitely a big change from how we're used to operating in social situations!
This was brought on because of me trying to get hold of a friend who I usually talk to around the same time everyday. What made me sad was the fact that they felt like they weren't doing very good multi-tasking because they weren't able to switch their attention from the group of people in one room with which they were having a lot of fun, to me, in a completely different room with a different atmosphere altogether. I didn't like the fact that somehow not being able to be in two places at once and give two different sets of people the same amount of presence was somehow bad because it's not really how things are supposed to operate. I just felt bad that they felt like they had to leave the other room to visit the room I was in when really, I didn't really have to be there at all. I could leave the house or had I known they were entertaining others, not come at all and not create that thought in the back of their mind and make it harder to enjoy that social occasion.
All in all, what I gained from this was the fact that if we're going to try and use the internet to communicate, we do also have to understand how much differently we have to operate ourselves and the parameters we set ourselves because of how much differently it works to in real life. We shouldn't feel like we're somehow failing because we've not managed to align our parameters to how much we can handle to the reality of how much presence we can actually realistically give. Multi-tasking in real life is much easier because the tasks are things we can see and are tangible and can be understood. People aren't always the same and having to get your head around that, especially with the phenomenon that is the internet, can be quite a hard balance to strike, especially when you're trying to live your real life reality at the same time!
I hope that this made some sort of sense guys! I'd love to hear what you think on the subject :D I hope that you all have wonderful weeks and I'll speak to you very, very soon indeed!
Friday, 8 May 2015
Meditation, ASMR, the Big and the Small, All my mind today!
Hey guys! I hope that you're well!
Today my mind's full of what I believe to be very awesome stuff so I'm just going to spill it all out and I hope that you can take some value from it!
Recently enough, I started using headspace.com after the recommendation from Taylor (ItsRadishTime) during her VEDA videos and honestly, having Andy to be able to talk me through how to meditate and how to be a bystander in the traffic of your thoughts has been immense. I've learnt about how I can just not worry about the thoughts and just not focus on them and just simply be. It's much too awesome. When I'm writing this, I've just finished Day Four of the Take Ten program where you take ten minutes to meditate every day for ten days (not necessarily consecutively) and I end up finishing so refreshed. I've still a while to go to be able to apply that calm to more of my life but it's been the one thing that's really helped me learn what value meditating can have. The combination of the physical relaxation and awareness in order to combat the rush hour that can often be the contents of our minds is too awesome. You can get the app and also use it on your computer. I'd definitely recommend it!
Leading on from that, I really want to become better at just appreciating every single moment. I feel like I'm becoming better at being present but actually being with my being and leaving my mind and my ego behind is something I have yet to crack. To leave expectation, to leave despair, to leave all that the mind believes is true in order to just have the joy of being left. That's something! I honestly think I'd be able to benefit so much more from every day life as well as the relationships I have with people around me if I was able to just take things as they come. Living in the present and not in the future is so much easier said than done but I'm looking forward to the struggle and hopefully overcoming that barrier. Just leaving the noise of my mind behind in favour of silence. Being able to appreciate the loud and the soft and not necessarily feel better or worse for whatever situation I find myself in but just being joyful because I'm being.
On to another little topic - ASMR - which Dodie did a video about yesterday. It's such an odd yet cool concept - how listening to someone whispering can give you tingles and just make you feel really warm and fuzzy. The science of it is something I have yet to understand but the fact that you don't have to necessarily have any rational stimuli to feel relaxed and calm is wonderful! I definitely want to find more people who do that sort of thing but here's her video if you want to give it a go!
I know I've already covered a lot this blog post but one final thing: I realised why quite often I feel almost envy/jealousy towards some of my friends and that's because I don't adopt a growth mindset in many situations. My ego leads me towards believing that the gap between us and our abilities is great and that what they can do is somehow unattainable. No Mr. Ego, that is not the case at all! Adopting a growth mindset opens so many doors to you because you realise that - and here comes one of my favourite things ever - with constant effort comes exponential growth. If you keep putting the work in and keep persevering and if you don't drop the ball, you can only move onwards and upwards. That's the only way you can go. The Only Way.
I hope that you guys enjoyed this post! It went all over the place but there have been so many stimuli in my life at the moment and so much inspiration that there are so many places I want to go and so much I want to achieve. The growth mindset, meditation and truly being in the present and not in the future or the past and persevering. That's what I'm aiming for! Have a great one and I'll speak to you very soon indeed!
Today my mind's full of what I believe to be very awesome stuff so I'm just going to spill it all out and I hope that you can take some value from it!
Recently enough, I started using headspace.com after the recommendation from Taylor (ItsRadishTime) during her VEDA videos and honestly, having Andy to be able to talk me through how to meditate and how to be a bystander in the traffic of your thoughts has been immense. I've learnt about how I can just not worry about the thoughts and just not focus on them and just simply be. It's much too awesome. When I'm writing this, I've just finished Day Four of the Take Ten program where you take ten minutes to meditate every day for ten days (not necessarily consecutively) and I end up finishing so refreshed. I've still a while to go to be able to apply that calm to more of my life but it's been the one thing that's really helped me learn what value meditating can have. The combination of the physical relaxation and awareness in order to combat the rush hour that can often be the contents of our minds is too awesome. You can get the app and also use it on your computer. I'd definitely recommend it!
Leading on from that, I really want to become better at just appreciating every single moment. I feel like I'm becoming better at being present but actually being with my being and leaving my mind and my ego behind is something I have yet to crack. To leave expectation, to leave despair, to leave all that the mind believes is true in order to just have the joy of being left. That's something! I honestly think I'd be able to benefit so much more from every day life as well as the relationships I have with people around me if I was able to just take things as they come. Living in the present and not in the future is so much easier said than done but I'm looking forward to the struggle and hopefully overcoming that barrier. Just leaving the noise of my mind behind in favour of silence. Being able to appreciate the loud and the soft and not necessarily feel better or worse for whatever situation I find myself in but just being joyful because I'm being.
On to another little topic - ASMR - which Dodie did a video about yesterday. It's such an odd yet cool concept - how listening to someone whispering can give you tingles and just make you feel really warm and fuzzy. The science of it is something I have yet to understand but the fact that you don't have to necessarily have any rational stimuli to feel relaxed and calm is wonderful! I definitely want to find more people who do that sort of thing but here's her video if you want to give it a go!
I know I've already covered a lot this blog post but one final thing: I realised why quite often I feel almost envy/jealousy towards some of my friends and that's because I don't adopt a growth mindset in many situations. My ego leads me towards believing that the gap between us and our abilities is great and that what they can do is somehow unattainable. No Mr. Ego, that is not the case at all! Adopting a growth mindset opens so many doors to you because you realise that - and here comes one of my favourite things ever - with constant effort comes exponential growth. If you keep putting the work in and keep persevering and if you don't drop the ball, you can only move onwards and upwards. That's the only way you can go. The Only Way.
I hope that you guys enjoyed this post! It went all over the place but there have been so many stimuli in my life at the moment and so much inspiration that there are so many places I want to go and so much I want to achieve. The growth mindset, meditation and truly being in the present and not in the future or the past and persevering. That's what I'm aiming for! Have a great one and I'll speak to you very soon indeed!
Wednesday, 22 April 2015
BEDA Day Twenty Two - Day Dreaming! :D
Hey guys! I hope that you're well!
I've been thinking about day dreaming lately and whether, in terms of being present and living in the moment or even planning for the future, whether it holds value at all. What I found is, it generally doesn't which was rather thought provoking for me because it feels like I'm a compulsive day dreamer about situations that often have a very small likelihood of ever happening.
However, since I've come to the conclusion that day dreaming isn't really productive at all, I've realised that my life without daydreaming is so much better, simply because of the obvious. I now spend less time thinking about things that could and would've been and this means that it's easier for me to accept what is because I don't spend so much time thinking of all the other possibilities.
It also makes it easier for me in terms of the future because I don't spend so much time letting my imagination turn the normal people around me into horrific or terrific people just because I'm not present. I don't like how often we become inclined to begin labelling other people around us if we're exposed to their flaws. I know that I wouldn't want to be seen in a negative light by other people who I trust or don't know that well when they don't know me well enough to know the values I live by. Letting your ego make assumptions because you're not present isn't a good use of time at all.
Finally, even more evidently, I'm even more present and happier for it! I get to enjoy the moment in all its glory rather than letting the cloud of random unuseful thoughts surround me. It's so much more refreshing and joyful, especially when you're doing something simple to be able to just be joyful rather than allowing your ego to subconsciously swirl unfounded thoughts and feelings around. Enjoy the little, quieter moments because they're everywhere and are such blessings.
I hope that you guys enjoyed this post and are having the bestest days ever! I shall hopefully see you very soon indeed!
I've been thinking about day dreaming lately and whether, in terms of being present and living in the moment or even planning for the future, whether it holds value at all. What I found is, it generally doesn't which was rather thought provoking for me because it feels like I'm a compulsive day dreamer about situations that often have a very small likelihood of ever happening.
However, since I've come to the conclusion that day dreaming isn't really productive at all, I've realised that my life without daydreaming is so much better, simply because of the obvious. I now spend less time thinking about things that could and would've been and this means that it's easier for me to accept what is because I don't spend so much time thinking of all the other possibilities.
It also makes it easier for me in terms of the future because I don't spend so much time letting my imagination turn the normal people around me into horrific or terrific people just because I'm not present. I don't like how often we become inclined to begin labelling other people around us if we're exposed to their flaws. I know that I wouldn't want to be seen in a negative light by other people who I trust or don't know that well when they don't know me well enough to know the values I live by. Letting your ego make assumptions because you're not present isn't a good use of time at all.
Finally, even more evidently, I'm even more present and happier for it! I get to enjoy the moment in all its glory rather than letting the cloud of random unuseful thoughts surround me. It's so much more refreshing and joyful, especially when you're doing something simple to be able to just be joyful rather than allowing your ego to subconsciously swirl unfounded thoughts and feelings around. Enjoy the little, quieter moments because they're everywhere and are such blessings.
I hope that you guys enjoyed this post and are having the bestest days ever! I shall hopefully see you very soon indeed!
Monday, 6 April 2015
BEDA Day Six! 'I'm sorry, I can't be present with you right now'
Hey guys! I hope that you're all as well as ever and Happy Monday to you all! :D
As I was thinking about what I could talk to you about today, I remembered a feeling I had recently when I was talking to a friend of mine and waiting for a reply. I often get this feeling when I'm having a really good conversation or when I have something you really want to talk about, but the reply doesn't always come as fast as I'd like it to. If you're anything like me, this can feel quite disheartening but I was struck one day by a mindset you can have in those sorts of situations which can make you feel a ton better and that's what I'd like to share with you today!
As I was thinking about what I could talk to you about today, I remembered a feeling I had recently when I was talking to a friend of mine and waiting for a reply. I often get this feeling when I'm having a really good conversation or when I have something you really want to talk about, but the reply doesn't always come as fast as I'd like it to. If you're anything like me, this can feel quite disheartening but I was struck one day by a mindset you can have in those sorts of situations which can make you feel a ton better and that's what I'd like to share with you today!
'I'm sorry, I can't be present with you right now.'
Presence is probably one of the biggest gifts you can give anyone and knowing that and being able to recognise the gift when it's given to you is also something to work on within yourself. But that's a gift that can be consciously given and we all know what it's like to be having a conversation with someone who isn't really into it. It's practically like you're drawing blood from them. You can clearly tell they're just trying to not appear to be rude but still giving you the shortest replies and I guess what that made me realise was, a friend who isn't replying is actually being immensely kind.
Instead of having a half hearted conversation, by not replying they're telling you, 'I'm really sorry I can't be present with you right now,' and in that way, they're respecting you even more by only talking to you when they can give you their full attention. That feels pretty magic I'd say! By seeing every interaction you have with other people as exchanges of gifts of presence, you can really appreciate another person's presence. It's a way of not really expecting anything because it's a gift and it can be whatever size. Your return gift can be proportionate but receiving the gift in the first place is amazing and can lead to lots of happiness!
I hope that all of us are able to appreciate the gifts of presence that we can give to one another and not feel so disheartened when we don't get to spend as much time as we'd like with the people we care about the most. All that means is, the time we do get to spend is so much more valuable and that smaller amount of time with the maximum presence is much more worthwhile than half hearted attempts which don't really show what we truly mean to one another at all.
I hope that you guys took something from this post, I'd love to hear what you think in the comments, if you'd like! I hope you have a wonderful day and I'll catch you very, very soon!<2
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