Tag: happiness

Inside Out

When I hang the clothes on my clothes horse, much to the disdain of any casual observers, they go on the line, like, well they just go there. Often inside out. When it’s all done and dried, then they are sorted and folded. They’re pretty and neat then, you’ll be pleased to know. Ordered.

Being someone how leaves the possibilities open it can mean last minute activities to get ready. Like having slightly wet socks drying on my car’s parcel shelf on the way out to Waitakere Estate yesterday. So at least now I look okay on the outside – well no-one has told me otherwise yet!

Eckhart Tolle tells us about life having an inner purpose and an outer purpose. Outer purpose concerns doing, and is secondary. Inner purpose, on the other hand concerns our Being and is primary. He says  “No matter how active we are, how much effort we make, out state of consciousness creates our world, and if there is no change on that inner lever, no amount of action will make any difference.”

It’s a year today that we started the first Authentic Leadership Course in the same room I am writing this blog. Even more than then, I believe that our authenticity is the key to leadership, organisational and business strength. And happiness. We have well-developed processes, great exercises and exceptional people that work with me. Our participants, like those before them want to make changes. Sometimes quickly. Identification of opportunities and issues early is fantastic and 24 hours into the programme, we’re seeing this already.

But changes happen from the Inside. Start there and change your being. Otherwise, it’s inside out. And you’ll have action, but it’ll be temporary.

We’ll spend the week feeling a bit mixed up at times, a bit disordered and the participants will feel at times that there’s lots to do in such a short time.  But a week of it and we’ll be clean and dry and suddenly, sometime unexpectedly, we’ll crinkle it all out and be ready for action.  

Stephen

Letting go to make it stronger

My son Tim has just turned 18, like one minute ago. So I went downstairs and wished him “Happy Birthday” and a big man kiss on the cheek. He’s still young in many respects and lovely with it. When he went to bed he said “I’m just going to play on the computer for a bit ok?”.  I said that was okay, but only until midnight, at which time it will be your choice. We laughed.

It’s been a really big year – he’s grown from boy to man, nearly done with school, worked at a cattery and now accepted into Unitec. It was a proud Dad that wrote on his card this evening.

And you know what, with all that he’s happier than ever. You can feel the hope, anticipation and satisfaction of achieving what seemed like the impossible even only a year ago. And there will be many more challenges, and I hope there will be. That’s how we grow and remain happy.

I let go a little bit in the early hours of this morning. And he grew a little more for it. He’s stronger and we’re stronger.

Dad

 

Time and Space

It just seems like the other day that I wrote my last blog here – it’s not that long ago – 14 days to be precise, but some of the content seems decidedly out-of-date. The joys of politics. One day it’s incredibly important, now we can’t even remember what it’s about or why it mattered. Soon we’ll have a new super-city mayor. Let’s call him Mr B. Mr B will be in a hurry. You can see him now rushing around the region, shaking hands, promising this and that, smiling at babies. Time will be of the essence.

Three years from now he’ll be giving it another shot so the first two years will seem important. Build this, make that work, fix that. Where will we be? Probably working, enjoying our families, working out. I’ll be running still, I hope and reading lots of books. I’ll enter my sixth decade (that’s a frightening way to say you’ll be 50!).  If you start now, you could finish an MBA or some undergraduate degrees. You could learn to play the piano, learn to fly (no, not that, an aeroplane) or train to run a marathon. If I keep up doing this, I should have about 200 blog entries under the belt.

Quite a few new humans will be born and most of them will be walking by the time comes for Mr B. to put himself up for re-election. A few less of us will die and be remembered, mostly for a relatively short period by a relatively few number of people.

When I look back over the last three years, they’ve been big. Huge even. Maybe I should have taken up the violin again and learned to play it again. I watched the movie The Concert on Tuesday and pondered the thought, and that I still own my violin from decades ago. If I’d started three years ago, then I might be not too bad. But there was never time – family, work, running, movies, my house blah blah. If I started now, then I could play a tune for Mr B. next time around. Or the other Mr B. Or both even.

So time, yesterday it was David Garrett, this morning it’s Paul Henry, this afternoon Chris Carter and tomorrow it’ll be Mr B. Time will drag us through space while stuff goes on around us. The time will pass whatever we do. Where we are now is millions of miles from where we will be in three years. Will it feel different? Possibly not, the universe has lots of space that we can fit in ,and not feel it’s any different than the last space. So if we don’t notice the space, will we notice the time?

I hope so. In the time it took to read this blog you’re in a different space, hurtling through the universe. Look back in what you did in that space. Well actually thanks for spending it here. What about the space over the next three years. Infinite. Time too. Enjoy.

Stephen

A life lived – be happy

Mum texted me on Sunday a week ago to say that Aunty Laurel had died at 4 o’clock. Her passing had been expected but not quite that soon. As we know cancer is unpredictable but in any case once we’ve done about 650,000 hours for many of us, that’s it, and that’s almost exactly what she did do.

Laurel was a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and friend to many. It’s a strange thing that when you go to a funeral it’s often the only time that all the person’s family and friends from all their life come together. One of my running mentors Gordon Jackson turned out to be an old friend. I had no idea.

Knowing she was dying, Laurel requested her funeral be non-religious and simple. Family and friends spoke of a woman who always got stuck in, who was creative with cake making and teddy bears (sensational ones!) and was always there for her family. I remember Laurel mainly from family holidays to Stanmore Bay where generous barbeques seemed never to run short of food for us and all our cousins.

The sadness of losing a mother is not something I have experienced. But it is plain to see. What I also saw was a collection and distilling of happy memories and focus on what Laurel had given to her family. It can’t compensate, but it surely is a wonderful thing to reflect on.

Actually, that Laurel knew she was dying isn’t that unique. We all know we’re dying. We don’t know when but we can take a pretty good estimate of when the molecules will have had enough. I’ve been challenging myself recently “Am I happy?” I’ve done over 410,000 of my hours so I hope so! And I am.

Are you doing right now what you want to do? Or is the happiness at some “when I’ve done this” point in the future? What is that point? What is the point in waiting for that point?

Make it happen. Whatever works will do I say. Laurel didn’t wait to make her teddy bears. She made scores of them, bringing joy and happiness to many people, but most importantly, to herself. Be happy. Now.


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