Be nice ... please

Can you change the world by being nice or do nice people finish last?  The longer I live the more important I think it is to be nice.  Not fake, sickly sweet, over the top, drama queen nice but genuinely kind, thoughtful, heartfelt nice.  I am also beginning to realise it takes great courage, a lot of self confidence and commitment to be nice.  As a society a lot of our media and entertainment comes from not being nice, magazines constantly highlight and describe the pain and misfortune in the lives of celebrities, politicians are constantly horrible about each other, the cool kids at school maintain their status by being mean to others and even as adults often we make ourselves feel better, smarter, more important or popular by being not so nice about other people, excluding them and judging them.

However, recently I have been bombarded with encounters with nice people, a nice real estate agent, a nice solicitor, nice teachers, super nice friends, nice check out attendants, nice people to interview and photograph, just nice people everywhere I turn and it has been spectacular.  This got me thinking how much I really like nice people, and by people being nice they actually have a huge influence in their family, social groups, the community and even the world.

I consider myself incredibly blessed to know and be friends with so many truly nice people, they are really thoughtful and I am hoping their nice-ness is rubbing off on me and influencing my life because it is my experience that nice people do not finish last.  So what does it take to actually be nice?  Basically, you just have to make the conscious decision to be nice, each and every day.  Things like answering the phone with a smile on your voice, giving people a wave and saying hello enthusiastically, lending friends something that will make their life easier or happier, letting people with less items go ahead of you in the line, being considerate to elderly people, not getting impatient when things don’t go exactly as you planned, not talking negatively about people, whether they are in the room or not.  The list is endless.

Some of you are probably thinking ‘If I am nice people will just walk all over me’, not true.  If you are nice, people will like you, they will want to help you, they will want to spend time with you, they will want to be friends with you and other nice people will be nice to you.  Trust me, being nice will make your life better, guaranteed.

Being nice sometimes takes courage, you may offer to help someone and they might say no, you might invite a new person to something and they might say no, you may be nice to somebody and they may throw it back in your face.  Remember the Peter Gabriel song from the 80’s ‘ Don’t give up, ‘cos you have friends; don’t give up your not beaten yet; Don’t give up, I know you can make it good ... please don’t give up, you’re not the only one’.  Sing this song in your head and keep being nice. 

Michael Kornfeld famously said “If we all do one random act of kindness daily, we just might set the world in the right direction”.  It is worth a try isn’t it?  Don’t just leave positive social change to our schools, politicians, media moguls, entrepreneurs or world aid agencies each one of us can set the world in the right direction just by being nice.  Try it, you will feel great and you will not finish last.

Time-poor

If I hear one more radio interview or television advertisement that refers to society as being “time-poor” I think I will scream.  I hate the term, it makes me feel like I have been taken hostage by life and it is sucking all my time away against my will.  It makes me feel like a victim of the times, that I am permanently stuck on a tread-mill and I can’t get off. 

Next time somebody asks me how I have been I am going to say “Great, I have been filling my days doing things that I like”.  I do not want to be selfish or lazy but I do want to have control of my life, and I want to spend my precious time on this earth doing what it important to me.

The concept of being time-poor is perpetuated by the desire to make money.  Take-away restaurants want us to be too ‘time-poor’ to cook our own meals, supermarkets want us to be too ‘time-poor’ to grow our own fruit and vegetables, daycare centres want us to be too ‘time-poor’ to be able to look after our children, gyms want us to be too ‘time poor’ to walk to the shops, cleaners, handymen, ironing services all want us to be too ‘time poor’ to take care of our own home, accountants wants us to be too ‘time poor’ to do our own taxes.  The list goes on and on.  It seems being ‘time poor’ makes the world go round.

I am hopeful that rather than just hear and accept this term as a society we can fight back, we can spend time doing what we want, we can be proud to say we are content, happy and peaceful.  I just find it crazy that we have to be seen, and heard, to be busy to justify our existence, being busy seems more important than being happy. 

Two things make me think there is nothing worse than being time poor.  The first is the saying “Where your treasure is, there will be your heart”, which I think means whatever you value, whatever you invest your time doing that is where your heart will be, and this is what will make you truly happy.  If we are time-poor the risk of placing our heart on the wrong treasures is too great.  In the rush the first things that often get left behind are our family, friends, hobbies, faith, all the things that make us laugh, skip with joy and give our life flavour get left behind because we are too busy just being busy.

The second thing is the brevity of life.  There is another saying “You can’t control the length of your life but you can control its depth”.  So if we are so busy being busy what are we doing to give our lives depth.  If I drop off the perch tomorrow I want the days that I had to be meaningful and enjoyable. How devastatingly sad if at your funeral they stand up and say “Well she was always busy”, that is no claim to fame.

I don’t really have the answer to take the busy-ness out of our lives, we do live in hectic times, but maybe if we just try and reclaim our lives a little, if we don’t see it as a competition to be busier than the next person and if we can say we spent the day at home just hanging out without being embarrassed. If we can try and ensure our heart is set on the most important treasures in our lives maybe we can fight the time-poor phenomenon and live a life truly worth living.

Are you normal?

In recent weeks I have observed people participate in their local community in ways they normally wouldn’t.  People have rallied together to help individuals, organisations, businesses and the entire community get back on their feet.  Many people have done so unassumingly and quietly, others have gone about it with a loud and determined manner, others have done things none of us will ever know about.  Each individual should feel proud of their efforts, however big or small, and nobody should assess or judge how, what and why people have done, or not done, things.  How people have responded after the disaster got me thinking about our ability, as a society, to value each individual.

As soon as a child is born we want to be reassured that everything is ok, that they are ‘normal’, the same as every other baby.  However, the other night I saw an interview with Paralympian Kurt Fearnley who was born without the lower portions of his body and he was amazing, the joy that shone from his face was uplifting and he spoke about his life with such affection and fun.  He was raised in the tiny country town of Carcoar in Central West NSW, he was the youngest of five, and he said his family and whole community believed he could do anything, and he has done just that.  He has crawled along the Great Wall of China, completed the Kokoda Trail, is a two time Paralympic Champion and has had lunch with the Queen.  He has done more than most of us will ever do and he only has half a body. 

From the minute a child is born there are milestones they should meet, from when they should sit up, crawl, walk and talk and this only gets exaggerated when they go to school.  The need for children to conform is so great that it is often difficult to appreciate, enjoy and celebrate their uniqueness.  As we grow up we quickly learn that if we want to fit in we should dress like everybody else, sound like everybody else and pretty much just agree with everybody else.  So is conformity the ticket to success or the secret to mediocrity?  As a society we give accolades, congratulations, promotions, praise and awards to those who succeed in and contribute to society in a way that makes us feel safe, that looks normal and that we agree with.  There would be an equal number of people that contribute and succeed by challenging the status quo, constantly pushing the boundaries, pushing us forward as a society but we probably find them more annoying than helpful, even though what they are doing is vital. 

John F. Kennedy said “Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth” and Thomas John Watson, who was the chairman and CEO of IBM and was one of the richest men in the world when he died said “Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of crackpot than the stigma of conformity”.

Now I am not suggesting that we are all independent thinkers, and I am not advocating we have no rules and we all just run around wild and free, there needs to be structure or society will collapse and there needs to be lots of people who think, do and feel similar things otherwise life would just be too complicated.  I am simply suggesting that as individuals and a society we might need to try harder to value each individual, not on their achievements, looks, personality traits, good deeds or financial success, but just for being, because every single one of us is truly special and gifted and sometimes beauty, talent, kindness, brilliance, generosity and fun is overlooked or not seen simply because the individual or group does not conform to what we deem ‘normal’.  Life is too short to limit ourselves to normal.

Restoring hope after the flood

My joy bubble was definitely burst this week.  Watching my community struggle through the devastation of yet another major flood, watching our friends sit tight and wonder how much water was going through their homes, only to return to discover it was worse than they had imagined.  Hearing stories of families fleeing from their home just minutes before the water gushed in, elderly men crying as their home and all their earthly possessions were ruined making a lifetime of work seem meaningless.  The greatest tragedy of all was the death of a beautiful woman who was loved so deeply by so many.

I found it overwhelming and I was unable to cope or contribute in any meaningful way.  I felt sad, deeply, deeply sad; I could physically feel people’s hearts breaking all around me.  I craved for life to be normal, to just turn back one week, when the schools were opened, people had homes and warm beds and there was plenty of food on the supermarket shelves.  As hundreds of people got in and ripped up carpet, disposed of ruined  furniture, scrubbed walls, made food for strangers, washed, disinfected and washed some more, I could not function.  This just added to the feelings of uselessness and despair.  It seemed foolish because my home hadn’t been flooded, but the feelings were real.

As I watched the news footage of my flooded town, and then saw images of the utter destruction left behind once the water had receded, all I could see was shattered dreams, broken spirits, doubting minds and lost hope.  Yes it was wonderful to see the community pull together and help each other but I could still see the sadness and despair in the eyes of those who had been flooded.  Council will come around and pick up all the rubbish, insurers will hopefully pay out so people can rebuild their house and replace their furniture but the emotional carnage seems extreme.  How will people recover emotionally?  When you walked down the street last week you took for granted the easy laugh, the joyful chatter, the casual wave or wink, all the things that make a town warm and joyful.  Has this been lost, washed away with the dirty, cold destructive water?  How will the town regain that easy, carefree way of life?  As well as a Council water truck delivering clean water we need an emotional energy truck to top up everybody’s supplies.  As well as a new lounge and fridge we need rebuilt dreams and mended trust.  While people talk about how to fund the broken bridges and damaged roads left behind by the flood we must also be conscious of how we can fix the families that feel broken and the real trauma and anxiety left in people’s hearts and minds.

For every wonderful individual with their truck, broom, skip bin etc that are volunteering their time and machinery to the disaster recovery effort their needs to be an equal number of people armed with hope, joy, optimism and stillness and silence.  In the rush to return life to normal sometimes the pain, hurt, anguish and fear get swept under the carpet.  However, time needs to be taken to sit still, to feel the emotions, to process what has happened and to reflect on the past.  All these feelings and emotions need to be recognised so hope can be built for the future.  To ignore the pain and grief is just like putting a coat of paint over a leaking ceiling, it looks great for a little while but after the next storm when the roof leaks again the mould and damp will seep through the paint.  Sure you can keep painting the ceiling for the rest of your life, or until the ceiling caves in completely, or you can find the source of the problem and fix that.  It will probably take more time, be more expensive and generally be an inconvenience that you could live with out, but it is an option worth considering.

So, if you wonder how you can help any of the flood affected communities, donating cash to the various flood appeals is always awesome and I encourage you to do so generously, but you can also think of ways to bring hope and joy back to the lives of the whole community.  Maybe do something in the local schools so the kids laugh again, take the time to listen to somebody if they need to talk about the experience, pray for this region that the pain will heal and the hope, love and joy will return in abundance, even just take more time to love and appreciate your own family and friends.  Restoring hope and joy to these flooded communities is going to be as important as fixing homes and roads.

Magic moments

I am constantly astounded by new technology.  We have digital cameras, camcorders, mobile phones, ipads and they all enable us to capture images of our lives, the people we are with and our experiences but nothing can capture the true magic moments of life.  Often you have to be still, you have to be completely in the moment to even experience it.  Like sitting still and stroking your child’s hair, a smile between soul mates, a shared understanding with a close friend, you can actually have a physically reaction to the love, your tummy might summersault, your heart might feel like it will burst, you feel light, your body gets flooded with joy and appreciation.  What makes these magically moments so special is they cannot be replicated, they cannot be captured, they are fleeting, like a butterfly landing on your hand, it cannot be predicted, you have to stop right there and then and experience it, and what a gift it is.

I love photos, I have way too many and want millions more.  I also have a camcorder but rarely use it because I actually want to be in the special moments not just recording them.  It is my New Years resolution to just experience the magic while it is happening, and it happens every day all around us, rather than being determined to capture, analyse, organise, predict or orchestrate.  Let’s see how I go.

My favourite quote of the moment is “One day I will look back and smile, because this is life and I decided to live it”.  This is so powerful.  Everything we do in life, whether it is making a bed, washing the dishes, paying the bills, catching up with friends, going to work it is all life and we can decide how we approach it.  Nothing is so serious that it is worth stress, worry, ulcers or heart attacks because one day you will look back and smile (hopefully).  Don’t get me wrong, I am a stresser, when I have something to organise that I feel very responsible for I get myself into a frenzied state on the inside, and then when it works out I am euphoric, I burn a lot of emotional energy at those times, but it is always my desire to become more at peace at all times, but I have a long way to go (just ask my husband how I responded when driving home from Dubbo after Christmas only to almost run out of fuel at Condamine and the fuel station wasn’t going to be open until the next day, I was not at peace).

When my daughters were outside playing with bubbles it got me daydreaming, bubbles are captivating, as they float through the air reflecting all the beautiful colours of the world.  I would like my life to be like a bubble; light, happy, free and beautiful right up until the day I go ‘pop’ – hopefully not literally.  Just like bubbles, we never know when that day might be so it is so important to make the most of each wonderful day we have here on earth.  I think it also helps to think of our children, spouses, parents, siblings and friends lives as bubbles.  They might not always be here so we should make every effort to appreciate and enjoy them whenever we are with them.  Not grab them and take control of them, because they will pop, but to stop and enjoy them completely.  Bubbles are very much like magic moments, you can not capture them, their beauty is fleeting and can only be enjoyed right there and then.

So here is to 2012, a year of smiles, bubbles and magic moments.  

Do you ever feel like your back lawn?

Over Christmas our back lawn was lush and green, it was soft, like a great big green carpet.  The kids ran around bare foot, laughing, falling, playing and making the most of the soft, cool grass.  This was due to a number of weeks of unprecedented rain and relatively mild temperatures.  It was a luxury. 

Now, only a few days into the New Year the lawn is dry, rough, wilted with tinges of brown.  Long, hot days have quickly sucked the life right out of it – I think this happens to most of us.  We feel inspired, motivated and excited after the festive period, we are rested and bound into the new year with enthusiasm.  Then life can leave us feeling dry, rough and seriously lacking vitality , whether it is the constant bombardment of negative news stories, growing responsibilities, a few disappointments or set-backs or mundane chores and activities, they all can gradually beat us down.

Despite the weather there are still some beautiful lawns, the ones with automatic pop-up sprinklers, the lawns who get enough water regularly, they remain a lush, green oasis, no matter how hot it gets. So if we are to remain lively, enthusiastic and joyful we need the equivalent of a pop-up watering system.  We need to work out what makes us feel refreshed, loved and vibrant and we need to set it on an automatic timer, which means we need to make it a habit.  If you wait for your lawn to die and then decide to put a sprinkler on it takes a lot more water and time than if your lawn gets water regularly.  It is absolutely the same for us.  We shouldn’t wait to feel like death before we decide to become reinvigorated.

So what would your pop-up sprinkler look like, what makes you feel healthy, cool, soft and luxurious?  For me at the moment it working with my husband to renovate our house,  spending time with friends, playing games with my children, talking to my sister and hearing stories about my nieces, it is reading a good book, enjoying a relaxing Chai latte, getting one of my magazines that I subscribe to in the mail, walking bare foot on beautiful grass, hearing music that talks right to my soul.  I am sure we all have different things.  We need to work out how much of each of these we need to incorporate and prioritise so that we remain at our utmost best each day and don’t get caught in a cycle of lush one week, dried out the next.

I am sure if the lawn had its way it would request shorter days, cooler temperatures, regular rainfall and somebody dedicated to mowing it, however, that is unlikely to happen so it goes into survival mode, it does the best with what it gets.  Again our life is exactly the same, most people have to work, have to get groceries and cook tea, and have responsibilities to children, spouse, friends and community.  We all have to live life and for most of us that involves some tasks that are draining, we have to live with most of that, there is not much we can do.  However, just like a regular soaking of cool water keeps the lawn vibrant and beautiful, regular participation in the things that make us happy and satisfied, will also make us vibrant and beautiful.  We owe it to ourselves and everybody around us to install our very own pop-up watering system.

What do you think?

Happy New Year

Twenty-twelve in definitely underway, most people will be back at work, school is about to start, the festive season is all too quickly becoming a distant memory and credit card bills have replaced Christmas cards in the mail.  Many people will have taken some time over the New Year period to assess what they don’t like about themselves, their lives, or others, thought about what they would like to change and maybe set a resolution to deal with it.  Whether it is to quit smoking, lose weight, spend more time with your children, save more money, travel overseas, get a new job or do more exercise, the statistics show that between 50% and 80% of New Years resolutions will be broken by the end of January.  So is there any point to setting them in the first place? 

I have had many resolutions over the years that I never keep, like do more exercise, eat more fruit and veg, drink more water, be more organised, watch less television and on and on they go.   Each time I set them I can’t understand why I can’t keep them.  It seems in a blink of an eye these simple things are quickly forgotten, neglected or compromised as other temptations, priorities and tasks creep into each and every day.  I have some major personality idiosyncrasies, such as the desire to chat to and see my friends and family a lot, the tendency to be a little lazy, procrastinate and get easily distracted, and therefore my New Years resolutions get quickly high jacked. 

It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results so I think it is important to look at why so many New Years Resolutions don’t work.  Most of the literature suggests they don’t work because we set them on the 1^st January and then we actually forget about them pretty quickly until the 1^st January the following year, when we set them again. So we aren’t accountable, we don’t have any milestones, no success indicators, once we set the resolution we need to establish a plan to achieve it.

I have a different philosophy, I believe when most of us set resolutions we focus on the things we don’t like about ourselves or our lives, we bring to mind the things we are told we should do or be or we look at what we think is missing.  What about if we look at what we love to do, what we enjoy about our life and build on that, grow the positive things, build on our strengths and we may slowly shrink or strangle out the weaknesses or the less desirable aspects of our life.  Let me assure you there are plenty of people out there who will notice your shortcomings and comment on your mistakes or failures, so you don’t need to join the bandwagon.  You can take this time to look at what you love about you, what you enjoy, what makes your heart sing and sets your soul free.  Find that thing and resolve to indulge in it more, and I hope, if we can push through the fear, doubt and laziness, we will be able to keep the resolutions.

For me, my mind is constantly consumed with the fact that wealth and greed make us blind to what is really important, our affluence anesthetizes us so we ignore the thirsty, the hungry and the suffering – I want to avoid becoming blind.  So in 2012 I want to dedicate time to counting my blessings, I want to see and celebrate the small beauties in everyday, I want to breath deeply and slowly, often.   Above all I want to love deeply.  So there is my challenge for the year ahead.  Are you going to set a resolution?  If so I hope you can keep it and prove the statistics and sceptics wrong – good luck.