Photo by*Zara

Are you kind? Kindness is closely linked to happiness: the kinder you are to others, the happier you will be. So, how can we learn to be kinder? Maybe you think that kindness is just feeling warm fuzzies? Well, it’s more than that.

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Kindness means action.
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Yesterday I was standing in line in the supermarket checkout. It was a long queue. I looked behind me and noticed an elderly who looked exhausted.

I said to her, “Oh, you’ve been waiting a long time. Why don’t you go in front of me?”

Her eyes lit up.

“How did you guess my feet were hurting?” she said.
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It’s sometimes easier to be kind to strangers than to one’s own partner. Do you find that too? Perhaps we take the person closest to us for granted. Or may be we’re preoccupied. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by malias

Has this ever happened to you? You start thinking about someone you haven’t seen in years. Next moment you see them walking towards you. Or you remember a long-lost friend.  Then the phone rings and you find that it’s her or him on the line!
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Carl Jung called such experiences synchronicity. In his research he noticed that some occurences were connected in such a meaningful way that they seemed to defy the laws of probability. There are many different explanations for synchronicity. Most theories one of three explanations:
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1. Synchronicity is connected to our psychic abilities. This means that we can intuit when a certain person is going to ring us, or is walking towards us. This is why we start thinking about them.
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2.  Mysterious affinity: Certain people, objects and happenings are connected to each other. Sychronicity make these connections visible.
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3. The mind can manifest objects and happenings. This theory has been expanded into the ‘Law of Attraction”. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by Nexus

Some of us lack a couple of gears; it’s either full power ahead or nothing. Do you suffer from that? I do. My All or Nothing mode was forged a long ago. I come from a family of high achievers and my mother’s way of responding to achievement was — well, see for yourself. Here is an interchange that happened when I was about 11 years old:

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I bounced home from school after Sports Day, “Mummy, Mummy - I got second place in the 100 metre sprints today!!”
My mother looked at me in concern, “Second place? Oh, what went wrong?”

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You get the picture? No wonder I’m an All or Nothing girl!

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I’ve tried hard not to pass it on to my son. But it must have leaked out somehow. I gave a wry smile when I heard Sebastian say recently, after I suggested taking up kite-surfing: “No. I’m not going to take up a new sport. I haven’t got time to devote to a new one. And I’m not interested in being mediocre at things.”
Oh dear. All or Nothing - here we come!

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I’ve been trying to modify my All or Nothing pattern recently. With mixed success. I’ll give you an example: I’m focussing on becoming fitter and more flexible in the next 8 weeks. For starters I’m trying an experiment to see what happens to my body if I go to a yoga class each day for 4 weeks. (That’s maybe in the ALL basket??) Today I also resumed some uphill running for cardio-vascular fitness. Instead of jogging right to the top of a hill nearby, I decided to just run to the first bend and then add a bend each day until I get to the top easily. (Maybe that’s a bit more modulated?).

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All or Nothing is a mode that creates perfectionists. It has a bad rap. Here is an example from a delightful blog by singer/writer Christine Kane

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All or Nothing thinking says, “You either do this perfectly, or you don’t even bother.” It’s one of the biggest blocks to making positive changes in your life. It’s one of the biggest blocks to making your life work at all.

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But is it really all bad?

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Let’s take a look at the Pro’s and Con’s of the All or Nothing mindset: Read the rest of this entry »