Our Two Selves

Who/What is the stronger our Want-Self or our Should-Self?

How often do you find when decisions are being made, our want-selves take over and we do things that ignore the ethical implications of our actions.

Psychologists say we have different systems for wanting things and liking things. So some of the stuff we really want, and spend a lot of time pursuing, doesn't give us as much satisfaction as we thought it would once we've got it.

This explains why children will spend weeks nagging parents to buy them a guitar or a pet but quickly lose interest once they have it.

One of the most ubiquitous problems in daily life is achieving self-control.

We need to control our natural urges to eat too much, to smoke, to drink too much, to gamble too much, spend too much, watch too much television, get too little exercise and even to work too much.

Here, again, we seem to have two selves at work: an unconscious self that's emotional and shortsighted and a conscious self that's reasoning and farsighted.

We have trouble controlling ourselves in circumstances where the benefits are immediate and certain, whereas the costs are longer-term and uncertain.

When we come home tired from work, for instance, the benefits of slumping in front of the telly are immediate, whereas the costs - feeling tired the next day; looking back on our life and realising we could have done a lot better if we had got off our backside and played a bit of sport, sought a further qualification at tech, spent more time talking to our partner/children/friends etc - are not so clear-cut.

Similarly, the reward from eating food is instant whereas the costs of overeating are uncertain and far off: being regarded as physically unattractive, becoming obese, becoming a diabetic, dying younger, etc.

As everyone who has tried to diet, give up smoking, control their drinking, save or get on top of their credit card debt knows, it's hard to achieve the self-control our conscious, future-selves want us to achieve.

"The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn."
~~ David Russell

These are a few of my small treasures on the window sill in my kitchen.

2015 International Year of Light

What a wonderful resolution by the United Nations to declare 2015 as the International Year of Light.

They want to raise global awareness by focusing on the topic of light science and its applications and how light-based technologies promote sustainable development and provide solutions to global challenges in energy, education, agriculture and health.

It is the year for thoughts and discussion around light to fill minds with bright opportunities and ‘light-bulb moments’.

Well that is quite a statement isn't it!

Light plays a very important role in my life.

My life hasn't always been as happy as it is now.  Many years ago I was caught in a very dark tunnel, all consumed with sadness and fearing I would never see the light at the end of the tunnel again.

I was struggling with a mental illness, my heart had been broken and I was ready to give up......it seemed like an endless state of despair.

Hitting rock bottom and surviving gave me the jolt I needed to ask for help from counsellors and anti-depressant drugs and also volunteering played a big role in my recovery.  Finally I had to find a way to remove myself from the people who upset me and take some control back.

Ever so slowly I regained my self-worth and that all important light returned to my life.

Light now fills my soul, as I hope it does yours, my dear blog friends.

"Mental illness is the last frontier.  The gay thing is part of everyday life now on a show like 'Modern Family', but mental illness is still full of stigma.  Maybe it it time for that to change"
~~ Eric McCormack

"Don't you know yet? It is your Light that lights the worlds" ~~ Rumi

Slow Down and Focus

The world most of us live in is hectic, fast-paced, fractured, hurried.
What’s more, most of us are conditioned to think this is the way life should be.

Life should be lived at break-neck speed, we believe. We risk our lives in cars and we break the speed limit, rushing from one place to another. We do one thing after another, multi-tasking and switching between tasks as fast as we can blink.

All in the name of productivity, of having more, of appearing busy, to ourselves and to others.

But life doesn't have to be this way. In fact, I’d argue that it’s counterproductive.

If our goal is to create, to produce amazing things, to go for quality over quantity, then rushing is not the most effective way to work. Slowing down and focusing is always more effective.

Rushing produces errors. It’s distracting to flit from one thing to the next, with our attention never on one thing long enough to give it any thought or create anything of worth.

Hurrying produces too much noise to be able to find the quiet the mind needs for true creativity and profound thinking.

So yes, moving quickly will get more done. But it won’t get the right things done.

The most important step is a realization that life is better when you move at a slower, more relaxed pace, instead of hurrying and rushing and trying to cram too much into every day. Instead, get the most out of every moment.

Is a book better if you speed read it, or if you take your time and get lost in it?

Is a song better if you skim through it, or if you take the time to really listen?

Is food better if you cram it down your throat, or if you savour every bite and really appreciate the flavour?

Life is better when unrushed. And given the fleeting nature of this life, why waste even a moment by rushing through it?

"Slow down and enjoy life.  It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast - you also miss the sense of where you are going and why"
~~ Eddie Cantor

View for the Cahill Expressway, Sydney Australia. Walking with a friend last September, I stopped and took this photo after climbing the stairs. I love my city!

Paradoxes of Life

It's one of the great paradoxes of human psyche.....we want to be left in our comfort zones and yet we thrive on the experience of being taken out of them!

Our intuitive understanding of that is why, even among the most settled and comfortable of us, there's a lurking desire for something to happen.

Perhaps that helps explain a fundamental contradiction in our attitudes to this thing called "peace of mind". We claim to be yearning for it, yet we often act as if that's a mere fantasy. We say we want to slow down, de-stress and learn how to relax. We pay a fortune to massage therapists, yoga teachers, acupuncturists and other practitioners in our search for relief.

We seek counselling; we attend meditation classes; we swallow tranquillisers; we drink too much; we cling desperately to "the short break" as a kind of high-octane holiday, or the furious weekly work-out at the gym to compensate for the lack of gentler more integrated exercise every day. We push ourselves to extremes, high on endorphins, mistaking exhaustion for contentment. The struggle to find ways of reducing our stress often looks stressful in itself.

Are we fooling ourselves with all this talk about de-stressing, simplifying and slowing down? Some people have found personal pathways to peace yet many more act as if stillness is tantamount to death! Most of us seem addicted to stimulation and find silence hard to cope with, even in small doses - like a pause in the conversation. Yet even the most restless souls occasionally claim to hanker after "peace of mind".

Observing these swirling contradictions, I'm tempted to ask: is the buzz, the rush, the stimulation generated by our busy-ness, something we crave - and perhaps even need - more that the stability and calm we often say we want? Most of us would say we SHOULD be trying to strike a balance between the two but why does the achievement of that balance seem so elusive?

I suspect it's because many of us actually welcome distractions from questioning the meaning and purpose of our lives. We half-know that, if deeply examined in a contemplative moment, such questions might lead us to a radical rethink about the way we live.

If we were all preoccupied with the quest for personal peace, perhaps nothing would get done - too much om and not enough oomph doesn't sound like the right balance either. After all, it's the irritating grain of sand in the oyster that creates the pearl; it's the itch that gets the book written, or the picture painted, or the deal closed.

The world needs souls to be restless sometimes!

"Paradoxically though it may seem, it it none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life"
~~ Oscar Wilde

The Jacaranda tree and the tall building in Circular Quay, Sydney, Australia
(The Yin and the Yang!)

Blessings of Small Things

Why are we so hungry for bad news? Why do we spend so much time contemplating one moment of horror and so little time thinking about what is right with the world?

Fear is entangled in our DNA. The tribe with high levels of anxiety, perpetually scanning the horizon for signs of trouble, was more likely to survive. Many thousands of generations later, we stare at a car crash with a mixture of pity and empathy, together with an urge to avoid the same fate.

When Alfred Hitchcock was asked, ''How long can you show a couple kissing on a bed?'', his answer was: ''As long as you like, providing there's a bomb ticking under it.'' In other words, fear is an easy emotion to arouse and then maintain.

Fear may be useful, but it can also produce self-fulfilling prophesies. Fear of crime, however unjustified, makes people avoid walking the streets at night, creating neighbourhood streets that really are less safe. Fear of an economic downturn means we stop spending, which then causes the very economic downturn we feared.

When people say ''count your blessings'', or invite you to hum along to ''accentuate the positive'', it can sound inane - a turning away from the world and its problems. Yet sometimes those problems grow larger because of thinking that is too negative, too fear-filled, too pessimistic.

Here's my point: there's nothing soft-minded about ''counting your blessings''.

Contemplating the good in the world is part of giving yourself an accurate grip on reality. This, in turn, is the only way to make good decisions and live a contented, successful life.

We shouldn't be shy about demanding a mix of news that is both good and bad. We also shouldn't fall for the idea that grim news is somehow more rigorous, or truthful, or serious, than news that captures the world in all its richness. (The same, incidentally, is true in the world of literature and film where ''the grimmer the better'' has become one of the more fatuous calling cards of our age).

So, let's say it out loud. We live a third longer than 50 years ago. Famine is much less common. In the fight against malaria, the humans are winning.

It's far, far better to be gay than was once the case. Sydney's air pollution is much lower than it was a generation ago. We decided to stop building our homes from asbestos sheeting.

And let's also give thanks to the Blessings of Small Things:

Most stains come out in the wash.

Snow falls on mountains, which are perfectly shaped for skiing.

The best-tasting drink in the world - water - is also the cheapest.

Deciduous trees grow leaves, and make shade, at just the right time of year.

Socks are designed to fit either the left foot or the right.

A beer tastes best after hard work.

And the more in love with someone you are, the better looking they become.

Actually, you know, it's a wonderful world.

“This is the only advice I offer you. Pick the small thing, and carry it on. Let it change your life.”

~~ Anna White

My friend Marja gave me this petite flower box for Christmas, isn't it lovely with the Christmas Bush.