Hobbies Schmobbies

 

When I was a kid, I longed to have a proper hobby. Hobbies were fun, helping you develop as a more rounded person and giving you interesting things to talk about at the dinner table. If there was any fun to be had playing piano it passed me by. My teachers were uninspiring and crotchety (geddit?), my practice was lonely, the pieces I played mostly dull, but I trudged my way to Grade 7 nevertheless. To be fair, I did become very rounded!

I briefly liked (licked?) stamp collecting but I only did it to please my Dad who, blessed with 3 daughters, was determined to make me – the youngest –  as much like a nerdy boy as possible. He did pretty well, infusing me with a gift for DIY that makes most men’s knees tremble for all the wrong reasons.

My employed career lasted from 1986 to 1992, during which time I held down a number of interesting and demanding jobs. When updating my CV for the next position I always stumbled over the ‘hobbies’ section. What could I write that made me appear interesting and talented? What little snippets of myself could I reveal that would make them want to employ me more at the paper stage of the process?

Time moves on. Employers are not quite so bothered about whether or not you belong to the local am dram group, Universities, allegedly, only want to know about your passion for your subject. The very idea of hobbies conjures an image of cats and cardigans. But most of us still see extra-occupational activities as an important part of work-life balance.

Typically, you might say, I’d like to challenge that idea. Hobbies are what we do to engage unused sides of our personality, but they frequently become the only channel for the things we love while our work wrings the life out of us.

If you find a job you love, which uses all your talents and all your passion you won’t need a hobby. You’ll be in it up to your eyeballs, loving every minute, thinking about it in the bath, working out your next move, dreaming of how to make it better, boring the knickers off everyone around you with your zeal.

You may think that’s an unrealistic picture, that very few people can be lucky enough to do something they love, that it’s a risky strategy, with no guarantee of success.

I would say that finding a job that doesn’t feel like work, which absorbs you completely and plays to your best suit is the best guarantee of success there is.

Of course, that depends how you are measuring success. If money and status is your only measure we’re talking at cross-purposes. If having enough of the things you need, including stimulation and satisfaction, and a sense of freedom and adventure feels more like success to you them I’m your girl.

Talk to me about Vocation Location. I’m running programmes right now.

I also have a uniquely dull collection of stamps from the early 70s you might like to see.

 

Silence Might Save Your Life

15 years ago this month I was diagnosed with an aggressive breast cancer which had started to spread. As well as being a founding partner in a growing management consultancy, I was also a young mum, pregnant again and juggling an oversized social diary. It looked like success, except I had failed to notice that I was living in a way not conducive to sticking around long enough to bring my children up.

At the time I was diagnosed I was inundated with advice, mostly from friends and family. Do this, try that, take this, avoid that; I was pretty ignorant about complementary medicine, although I had been seeing a homoeopath for a couple of years because of the eczema that covered my hands. When I turned inward for guidance, the strongest message in my head was to slow down and take it easy. That message had been there for a long time, I had simply been telling it I had no choice. I used to tearfully, and sometimes angrily, say the same to my husband when he pleaded with his grumpy and stressed wife to slow down.

Luckily for me, cancer served to take away my choices even more, it was a stark wake up call. I decided to listen and to rein my life in to parameters that would suit my body better.

In the years, the many years, that have followed I continued to struggle to cultivate quietness and silence and a sense of inner calm. It’s not my natural state – I’m noisy to the core – but my brain keeps prompting me to try.

Coincidentally, I was in Oxford last week and wandered into a shop on Broad Street called Innerspace where I was greeted by a wise and wonderful and quietly spoken man with time to talk who pointed me in the direction of some blissful guided meditation pieces on a CD called The Jewel. I’ve managed to listen to it 3 times since then, which is a record for me! Even as I’m writing this, I can feel the pull towards the peace of that experience.

Yesterday, by chance, I came across a ‘new’ publication by Dr David Servan-Schreiber whose book, Anticancer: A New Way of Life, has been a great inspiration to me and many of my clients. I read with great sadness that he died last year as a result of a powerfully malignant return of his original aggressive brain tumour. This amazing man – a psychiatrist and practitioner of integrated medicine – conducted one of the most comprehensive analyses of the cancer literature, looking at nutrition, exercise, psychology and physiology to help himself and his readers. HIs book was an enlightened and empowering plan to save your own life. I used it, along with millions of others.

He freely admits that, in the years following his diagnosis, driven by the enormous success of the book, he pushed his mind and body to the limit – and sometimes beyond, straying from the path of his own findings. In his last, short book, which I bought and read yesterday (Thank you, Kindle), he reflects on what he might have done differently to avoid a recurrence of this particularly aggressive form of cancer. His 18-year survival was remarkable but he mentions a fellow-sufferer and one-rem survivor, Molly, whose disease prompted her to live in almost total isolation. “Every day she takes long walks on the banks of a lake. When you ask her, ‘What is it that helps you most to keep the disease at bay?, she responds: ‘It’s the quiet, The quietness protects me.” Molly is still very much alive and free from recurrence.

In his final analysis of what is the most important element to ensure survival he simply says:

“In the light of my own ordeal, I’m tempted to emphasise the absolute necessity of finding and maintaining inner peace, notably through meditation, cardiac coherence exercises and a balance lifestyle that minimises sources of stress. Next, I would put physical exercise, whose importance cannot be overstated. And on a par with physical activity, I would put nutrition.”

We are in a phase of world development that seems to reward those with stamina and appetite and cast-iron constitutions (and consciences) so much more richly than the gentler members of our species. The temptation is to join them, to push ourselves to achieve in the way that seems to win. When you look at human metabolic typing, however, you realise that the go-getters of this world are just one of the ‘types’. There are at least 4 other metabolic types not designed to live at the limit. When we behave contrary to our type we experience psychological and physiological stress in our bodies that creates the conditions for disease: which explains why some people can live happily at G Force 8 and some of us fail. The trick is knowing which type you are and honouring that.

Like many other people, Dr Servan-Schreiber discovered that the time he managed to spend in quietness paid dividends for his energy and productivity in all the other areas of his life, underlining the fact that we don’t have to find more time to create a quietness practice. On the contrary, it will reward us with a feeling of more time in our lives. And, quite possibly, more years to enjoy.

If you are one of the many people living at a faster pace than you want to, then I can’t urge you enough to start listening to your body and taking some time for silence and renewal.

RIP David, and thanks for all the wisdom.

Create a Thinking Zone…

My old business partner used to get all his best (business) ideas in the bath. I get mine first thing in the morning while I’m getting showered and dressed. If I take the time to go for a walk on my own, they come flooding in.

Where and when do you get yours?

Increasingly, I find that my desk is definitely not a good place to think from. There’s too much going on. I’m not great at keeping my desk clutter free and, looking at it now, I can see a tape measure, a box of matches, my purse, 5 or 6 pens longing to be used, a rubber band, 4 books all wanting to be read, a stack of papers, various bits of technology, an instruction manual that I’m never going to read, and a pot of Vitamin D.  It’s a battle for me to keep the clutter at bay, it clouds my thinking. I spend precious time trying to tidy it all up and then my window for thinking is over and it’s time to help another client.

Just lately I’ve realised that it’s not the clutter, it’s the desk…and the enormous Mac screen that dominates it. When I first started to use a computer, back in the ’80s, I was amazed at the boost in productivity. I continue to bow down to my technology and marvel at all the things it lets me do, but thinking more clearly isn’t one of them

Just lately I’ve treated myself to a hardboard clipboard (£2.69) and I keep it stocked with A4 paper that needs recycling. Whenever I feel the urge to think, I pick up one of my orphaned pens, retire to my chair and start scribbling.

It’s a novel idea, but I’m hoping it will catch on!

Powerful, priceless and rare.

I’ve been a bit quiet for 10 days partly because I’ve been immersing myself in Andrea Maurer’s wonderful 90-Day Revolution. I’ve blogged about it before. It’s a fantastic idea: my fellow 90-Dayers and I have signed up to be reminded that we’re all important, we’re all equal and we’re all connected. You know that already, though, don’t you? I mean, you don’t need to be reminded that everyone is uniquely significant, that prejudice is a BAD thing, and that being nice to everyone is so much more rewarding than being a crabby old bag? That’s what I thought. When I looked at the programme, and the sample worksheets, I thought to myself, ‘I already know all that!’. (Cringe.)

And… I’m a busy lady… We all know that. So I wasn’t sure I had any spare time – certainly not 90 days – to practice being nice when I’ve got a business to run, exams to do and a life to lead. I already think about other people a lot. I don’t need to be told to do that.

So when Andrea’s direct invitation came – ‘I’d love to have you along for the ride’ – I signed up to support a friend and client. Of course I did. That’s what nice people do. Don’t get me wrong, it is a great programme and a world-changing idea, it’s just that I didn’t really need it. I’m already quite nice. Aren’t I?

Funny how we can be so blind to our own dark side. (If you’re reading this thinking you don’t have a dark side, I’m talking to you.) No sooner had I enrolled on this inspirational course, which is all about connecting with others, not the least bit threatening, I started to notice some things about myself. Some old, tired, repeating patterns. Ways that I trip myself up. Things I hold onto and nurse grudgingly. Destructive emotional patterns that get in the way of life and love.

Not just me. All of us. Gently sharing and reflecting and uncovering and moving. All together on a secret Facebook page where it feels like anything can be said and anything might happen.

Things are moving in my life. Ties are coming loose. Habits are being changed. Beliefs are being turned around. 18 days into the 90 I can already feel my load lightening, my outlook lifting, my eyes brightening and my sense that all is well with the world returning.

That’s powerful. It’s priceless. And rare. Just like Andrea.

If enough of us started to experience that it might just change the world.

And, let’s not sully this post by talking about money but in case you’re interested, it only costs $90, of which $81 goes directly to charity.

There’s another one starting on 1st March. Of course, it’s not you who needs to change, it’s the rest of the world,  so why would you sign up?

But here’s the link, just in case you do: http://www.90-dayrevolution.com/

Tiredness kills

We have 2 ways of operating in our family: nice and horrid. The horrid happens when one, two or all three of us are more tired than we can handle. The definition of ‘more tired than we can handle’ differs for each person in our little team. It’s particularly obvious when I’m tired, because I’m the care-giver; the one who notices and fills the gaps and tries to lighten things up. So when I run out of juice it feels like Armageddon. You wouldn’t want to be there. Nor do I!

One of the most destructive and hard-wired habits of the Western world is to push ourselves beyond the point that feels like enough: by a long chalk. It’s ingrained – not only is it an evolutionary drive, it is also part of our Christian culture. The words of my childhood prayer drummed that in to me: Teach us, O Lord, this day… to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to labour and not to ask for any reward… That stoical approach was what was expected of me growing up. And possibly you too.

As an adult,  I consciously rejected the idea that punitive service is the road to spiritual abundance, but there is a brownie-point addicted part of me that just won’t let it go. So I still have a nasty habit of pushing myself too hard and expecting the world to reward me for it. Turns out that the Bonus Scheme of life doesn’t work like that.

We’re lucky in our family to have a very comfortable daily existence. Both my husband and I work from home and normally our working hours are very civilised. On purpose. Lately, for a variety of reasons, the balance has been disturbed and we are all being stretched too thin. At dinner the other night all 3 of use were crabby, scratchy, uncommunicative, unhelpful and just simply out of puff. It was uncomfortable and unpleasant (not to mention the adverse effects on digestion). And I thought to myself, ‘This is what some families go through every night.’

Tiredness is not just a lack of sleep, it’s a lack of energy, a lack of synapse activity, a lack of ATP in your cells. It can be caused by poor nutrition, too much stress, overwork, drugs and stimulants (legal or otherwise). It can be exacerbated by a lack of human interaction, a lack of hope, a lack of self-expression, and  a lack of respect for yourself and others. It interrupts your natural, survival-driven drive to get on with the people around you and be a valuable member of the pack. Its dampening effect on your life makes everything more difficult.

Far from being the inevitable result of a life well-lived, tiredness destroys the quality of your life. It takes its toll on your relationships, your decisions, your career, your holidays, your ideas, your future. It kills the life you are living today in order to propel you towards some imagined, brighter future.

Don’t fall for the hype. If there is something about your life that makes you permanently tired, give yourself a break. Let it go.