Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness — shut down one by one. An astonishing story.
Yes, it’s been a while since anything’s been added to this page. Sometimes I feel like it takes a minute to integrate all the things that happen in a life, and in the lives of those around you, to such a level that it can be understood.
Understanding is key. Especially the understanding that can be gained for what’s going on inside ourselves.
Whether things seem ‘good’ or ‘bad’ they can still change us. And change is powerful.
So powerful is change that it is my belief if one thing changes, even something seemingly small, it will change all that surrounds it.
It follows that in order to lift ourselves up we really need only focus on one small thing at a time to affect all the many things we experience day to day. You know when you get really excited about something, then you talk to someone about something else, you are likely to be more excited about that conversation than usual.
Similarly, when you get that ticket to that concert you really wanted to see, you probably have a good day.
That’s how simple it is. Transform an experience on one small level and all the other experiences most likely will follow. Write a thank you note, and you feel gratitude. Make someone a cake and you get to have a piece with them. Play a guitar and you love music all the more.
To sum it up, do something that makes you feel great and inspired and your life becomes more great and inspired. You never know what effect this might have on the people you meet and those you love.
Try it and see.
The Morning Benders \”Excuses\”
Yours Truly Presents: The Morning Benders “Excuses” from Yours Truly on Vimeo.
This past few days it’s been jumping out at me – when did we all forget how to trust?
Americans in the 1950s with their post-war optimism seem to epitomise a kind of blind and all-encompassing trust.
You know how that was, when all technology was good and jobs were never lost.
We’re talking about a time, in popular culture at least, when anything that threatened a positive world-view was pretty much just ignored by the masses.
Please understand, however, I’m not suggesting a return to this kind of blatant ignorance, only that we pick-up on the trusting part.
Here’s how this works: trust is an essence of hope which in turn is a basis of risk.
Without trust, we can’t afford to risk success.
When, at the Copenhagen Summit last year in ‘09 a cube of images and statistics was placed floating on the water as an installation, some media noted the way these lofty and dire predictions tend to desensitise us and make us less likely to act.
Put simply, fear begets more fear and ultimately leads to inaction and a brand of futility.
Hope however, which involves no small element of trust inherently, rarely leads to less hope.
By this rationale, if we trust in the future and trust in ourselves, things will naturally improve.
If we consider the environment to be like our primary relationship, we want to talk less about our insecurities and spend more time in bed with it.
Trust the change and the change will come as long as we’re willing to do whatever it takes.
As usual, I’ll be honest with you.
The title of this post is an irresistable play on words which is otherwise quite irrelevant… this is really just a gratuitous chance to give you a small tour of my world so I’m less of a faceless and nameless person and more of a real one.
Hope you like it.
Now is the time to put your skepticism aside, just a for a second.
It’s okay, it will still be there when you get back. Buy it a hot chocolate, give it a magazine and tell it you’ll be just be a moment.
There are a million and one blogs, articles, tv shows and books out there to tell us how to care for the environment. What many do not address is the fundamental shift in consciousness required before anyone cares to begin with.
Undeniably there is a groundswell in interest and attention on global change around environmental issues and living in a “green” or “eco” way. For this I am so grateful. What this means is that when I talk to the stranger at the cafe about my garden, or no longer using plastic bags or bottles, they don’t necessarily look at me like I’m a radical militant greenie. Great.
The thing that is often overlooked is the simple principle of love. We are what we love, not what loves us. This message comes clearly through so many life-altering films and books and parables. When someone close to us dies, we often remark about how we wished we’d said we loved them more often, spent more time, had more fun.
It’s the same with being green and caring for the environment. If we don’t love our garden, it literally will not bear fruit.
So today, for me, green means love (as it happens to also mean in many spiritual modalities and colour therapies).
I love my garden, I love trees and native animals and nice weather. It is out of that love that I can be bothered to read about how to care for the environment.
So my advice to anyone that asks would definitely be to get out there and get into it, find joy in your garden, your bushwalk, the tree outside your house and local birds, whatever tickles you pinky-green.
If we start to love the environment we live in, we will naturally want to take care of it – much as we take care of the people and things we already love in our lives.
Enough scaremongering and de-sensitising, let’s really feel the natural world and fall in love again.
Because we are what we love, tell the environment you love it, spend more time with it, and have more fun being green.
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