Dealing With Infinity

We are living in the age of infinity. Never before have we had so much: so much money, so much opportunity, so much leisure, so many ‘things’, so much to eat. It’s difficult to cope with such abundance. Most of us can’t handle it, we don’t know when we’ve had enough: whether it’s money, status, fun or food, many people feel hopelessly out of control, unaware of where the stop button is. We plan our lives around what we are going to have next rather than what we are going to do, or be, next. Some of us need to invent a feeling of scarcity so that we can feel better, more contained. While we watch the gap widening between the financiers, the celebs, the footballers and the rest of the world we know that there is no longer any reason why we couldn’t be living like that too.

We’re told that the only constraints are our own limitations, our own blinkered perspectives, our inability to think big. It can lead to a state of permanent dissonance, a gnawing discontent or restlessness that’s hard to define. We can always do more, think more, earn more, exercise more, spend more.

Maybe. Or maybe, if you take the time to look at what you want out of life, you’ll find that for you happiness lies in a different direction.

Much of the dissonance we feel is around the way we measure abundance. What does it mean to be fulfilled? We tend to believe that the answer is to have more but the state of our society, where people own and earn more than ever before, doesn’t bear that out. One reason people were happier and healthier during the war because there was an intrinsic comfort in being told what to do, what to eat and how to behave. Many of life’s big decisions were taken away. Self-discipline can be more comfortable than self-indulgence. Having it all may not be the answer we need.

Of course, it’s natural to want more; it’s deeply imbedded in our human nature. But more what?

There is a middle way between self-discipline and self-indulgence; let’s call it self-actualisation. It’s about deciding what you want out of life, working out what ‘more’ means to you. It’s not necessarily easy – you’ll have years of conditioning in seeing yourself through the eyes of others. You may be a complete novice in working out how you feel and how that relates to what you want. You might also have to deal with internal or external resistance as you set your sights elsewhere – higher or lower than people around you think you ‘should’ be aiming for. It’s certain that you will struggle to decide what enough means for you and it will be difficult to stay true to your own definition and ignore the messages all around you to live it larger.

Above all, it’s a decision to enjoy your life. To value your days as much as your holidays. To value your time and the work of your hands as much as the package you’re on. To swap mundane for meaning, to switch from effort to flow, to change from their agenda to your agenda. It’s a decision that silences the cacophony of the more, more, more society and allows you to achieve that rare feeling of ‘enough’ that is so elusive and yet infinitely more comforting than the alternative.

Pay Careful Attention – Your Life Depends on it!

You know this already, but today is my day to remind you.

Your attention span is finite.

You are allowed to choose what you pay attention to… but you probably don’t exercise that choice as much as you want to, or need to.

You can spend all day paying attention to your normal routine, your computer screen, your aching knee, or your plans to spend money (often disguised as the next exciting thing in your life). Or you can spend your day creating a more interesting route, taking the chance to look out of the window, finding a new way to stretch and move your aching knee, or exploring life beyond the constraints of what money can buy.

Some forms of attention are mutually exclusive:

You cannot appreciate your wellbeing while focussing on your poor health.

You cannot be creative while doing what everyone else does.

You cannot be true to yourself while betraying someone else.

You cannot enjoy your wealth while worrying about your poverty.

You cannot be at peace when you are waging war.

You cannot enjoy now while planning what’s next.

You cannot learn until you are willing to now know.

You cannot love yourself while you are hating others.

You cannot win if you are not prepared to lose.

You cannot be unless you are prepared to not do.

The things we focus on and which claim our attention are the most important indicator of the life we experience. It really is that simple.

Nothing else has to change – just the things that we let our mind settle on.

What did you pay attention to in 2011?

It’s traditional at this time of year to look forward but I’d like to suggest you take a minute to look back… as I did the other day.

I’m not good at clearing my email inbox (mainly because I have a nifty system where unread mail pops into a folder all of its own and, once read, disappears never to be seen again) and I realised with a shock the other day that I had over 13 thousand emails in my ‘real’ inbox.

They act like a security blanket. All the time they’re still on the system I can always search for information I’ve missed, appointments I’ve half-remembered and phone numbers or invoice sums that have slipped through the net. So before I deleted them all with a keystroke I had a quick look through to make sure I wasn’t deleting anything I needed.

I say a quick look… by the time I had trawled through it all I had lost about 2 hours and deleted way over 12,000 emails. To make it quicker I ordered my inbox by sender name so I could delete whole blocks of emails at a time.

And then it struck me – this list was a guide to where I had directed my attention in 2011.

I could see blocks of people and organisations: my closest friends and colleagues, the college where I’m studying, my favourite inspirational blogs and email services, quite a few from my husband who only works upstairs :{ , and some from my lovely mum. As my eyes flicked through the lines I was reminded of parties and holidays and major events that were the landmarks of the year. Friends old and new who find writing easier than chatting, people looking for support and those warm, fuzzy emails that come in from clients whose lives have turned a corner.

As I also do most of my shopping online there was a reminder of what a ridiculous bookworm I am, and the weekly churn of the grocery shopping and the escalating bills as food prices have taken off this year.

This is the stuff that makes up my life: the merry-go-round that comprises my weekly, monthly routine, all there in black and white.

After I stripped out the reality emails I was still left with hoards of emails that had also – by their sheer persistence – secured a big chunk of my attention this year. Pressure groups and charities and software providers and hardware stores and shoe shops and clothes shops and department stores and supplement sellers and spurious gurus and miracle cure salesmen and online gift shops and interior design shops… my inbox was stuffed with people trying to get my attention and sell me something. Hundreds – thousands – of seconds, minutes even, of my attention wasted on things I didn’t need or want.

I was really surprised. I had no idea how much my private space had been infiltrated by the email high street and how much I had allowed that to happen. I must have unsubscribed myself from about 20 different lists before I felt my space was my own again.

The big lesson for me was to see how easily we can start a year with great intentions to do great things – but how easy it is to be distracted into paying attention to things that really don’t matter at all. I’m a great believer in supporting brands I love, looking at things that are uplifting, reading words that inspire – but somehow I was also allowing mediocre messages into my personal space and wasting precious time and awareness that could be spent on more productive things.

Next year, I’m going to rule my inbox with a firmer grip and make sure that my attention is directed only towards the messages that I want to give my time and support to.

What did you pay attention to in 2011? And how do you want that to change in 2012?