If you get reversed king Midas touch

What do we do when we feel that we're not living up to expectations?
I have to admit that I little while ago found myself back in the bottomless pit of unreasonably high expectations. It is a place where you might think high expectations would result in perfection. Alas, I find that it is much more like a reversed King Midas touch. No gold. Just crap. It is a place of little or no logic.

 

How do we make sense of it? Well first of all when we find ourselves there we must know that we usually are going about things all wrong. Take a step back and ask yourself:

• In the best of worlds what would I have done? What would the ultimate version of you have done? Then do that next time, or at least take a step in that general direction. 
• How can I make things easier? It is easy to get into negative self talk when experiencing that things aren't going as planned. When you find that happening stop it immediately. And don't blame yourself. Remind yourself as often as you can to be kind until it comes naturally. 
• Will this matter tomorrow? Next week? Next month? Next year? In ten years? Whatever it was it is surely not the end of the world. Honestly it does not serve anyone to worry. It might be helpful to put a restraint to either "ok I will think about this for 5 minutes" or I have thought about this three times, that is enough.
• "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" Our body and mind needs care. When we're stressed and feel we have much to do we might put or needs aside for this oh so important thing. That's a warning sign. Here we must practise restraint, responsibility and above all respect for ourselves. And if you find that warning is coming up often then maybe you need to reevaluate what you're juggling or re-plan your routines.
• Get your mind to a positive place by guided meditation or inspirational talks. It doesn't have to be for a long time. Even a few minutes or a moment can do the trick sometimes.

You can do anything you want.

But you cannot do everything at once.

The worldwide multi-tasking efficiency illusion madness must come to an end. 

And where does change begin?

You know it.

Life.

Life is an incredible thing. Yet with all these horrors of the world fed to us daily by media and the worried feeds reflecting and affecting our minds it's easy to forget the many wonders of the world. For everything bad I believe there is an equivalent opposite wave of fortunate events, of good will, of magic moments... and the vast opportunities provided to us by life to have your breath taken away by that which is truly genuine.
Today was an awakening day in that sense. I was shown something horrifying and then something marvellous came to me. That reminded me that our power to create exceeds the limits we could ever manage to make up. We cannot fully fathom despite our advanced tools, our science or our philosophy. The beauty of it all is too complex. Today was the day I realised a few more of the many dimensions of happiness, this colourful spectre. The rain did it's best to wash this smile off my face in vain. All this energy... I must make something of it! Tonight I will make my grand first test of the 3D software Maya.

As pieces fall together new spaces seem to appear in this beautiful puzzle of life. It will keep challenging, keep growing and forever tend to link humanity together in the strangest ways.

Ego - Join the FIGHT CLUB?

There are things that can trigger insecurities within us, be they external or internal. I found myself stumbling, not tripping on my shoe laces this time, but struck to inner grounds by faults. Sometimes we look for excuses as to why we should sink so low beneath us. We ought to stand up for our choices instead even when we have wronged. Accept the trespass. Ok. That's all right, we might be wrong. Our faults are not a part of our identity.

For the most part when we feel sorry or guilty it means that we got a conscience (or it is echoes of a past etched into our behaviour). A healthy conscience a beautiful mechanism to make us aware of the path we want to go and warn us when we start to stray from it. The reminders can be painful, but when you fall you have the chance to get up and do things a little differently. You don't stay down for days, weeks or even longer when you trip in the real world to wallow in pity and curse yourself. That's only what we might do in our heads and hearts from time to time. How strange that would be if our physical self would do exactly the same as our mental self. Just imagine... what kind of fight club scenes would become a regular part of our everyday life?

 No fear. No distractions. The ability 

to let all that which does not matter slide. 

So what am I beating myself up about? To not get into a specific situation, I got a nasty greed in my heart... It eats the good things and it always craves more. The thing about greed is you can never satisfy it. Atleast not for long. My greed likes to win, get attention, own and get the sensation of new materialistic belongings. Greed likes to think it needs to be heard all the time. Greed thinks the universe revolves around it. Greed is childish, irrational and a goddamned baby that will tear down everything to get it's attention and toys. We must recognize that this destructive habit is a monster which we can choose to adopt but we can also choose to feed it or not. It's not a cute pet, actually it's more of a parasite of the mind. Manipulative and dangerous as it can disguise itself in our voice repeating the disempowering mantras I, I, I, I, I, and me, me, me, me, me.

"Most people do not listen with the intent to understand;

they listen with the intent to reply." - Stephen R Covey (author)

What to do? 
- Notice when the ego and greed is at work. Study it. Take note of what makes it grow.
- When you know what makes it grow try to strangle the source. Either cut down gradually or it off completely. I find Maun Vrat (see earlier post) to be an efficient way of silencing the ego and land in the moment. Of course it can in our society be hard to engage in complete silence but you can choose to try and only say the absolute necessities for a while.
- Meditate on gratitude and the moment.
- Reconnect with your true self. Now you don't have rush off on a quest to know who you are. If you feel you don't know, just know that you are complete in this moment exactly as you are. The basic things are all you really need. Everything else is excess.
- Step out of the self by listening to your surroundings or by keeping your physical or mental training steadily moving forward.
- Discipline is a great tool for mastering the ego. Moderation, self-control and keeping promises and plans. Be honest when you can't follow through. Keep your goals realistic.
- Try to be as humble as you can by admitting your mistakes, practise acceptance, forgivness but above all love.

A time to contemplate.

Photography by Malin Sandhu.

Stop fighting yourself.
Master your mind and you won't have to smack yourself in the face every time to wake up to the actual situation. It is with a gratitude I receive this lesson, although somewhat resisting it at first. I hope that by sharing this I might help fellow souls on their journey.

I might be a bit quiet for a while now. All the best.

The whispering game

It is my belief that we make our own destiny, blessings, coincidence, luck or whatever you choose to call it. We are open to recieve the very moment we start searching for it. You can sometimes precieve it as a chapter, perfectly written just for you. This has been the case as of lately for me. The title of this chapter? Gossip. 

It came to me at work. Someone said something shocking to me about someone else that I never would have guessed and I was at first interested, but refrained from asking anything, just saying "nevermind, let it go". Some started talking badly of someone when they were upset to the point they were painting up a bad picture of this person, which wasn't of course true. This image they were giving was something fuled by their own incapability of actually dealing with the issue. This made me wonder. Are the people here talking about me too? What are they saying?

As these gears were turning I found a poem about gossip in one of my yoga books, then came song after song after song and finally the three monkeys' meditation which was introduced to me at the daoistic yoga class one morning. I think you've seen the monkeys before: One with covered eyes, one with covered ears and one with covered mouth representing see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

Me and two other monkeys!

Anywhere you go you can find gossip. Some find it's fun to talk (because they're bored or boring?) to made verbal charicatures and have a laugh on someone else or spread details that sound like yummy little secrets. Sometimes it's done to intentionally harm others reputation, to bring down, to make someone smaller. Other times it's just "for fun". Even media is all about that trash talk, shaming and connecting the dots completely wrong. 

It's easy to get caught up in the gossip machine and it's fine to talk about others, but chose your words wisely. Everyone remembers the whispering game, right? It teaches us an important lesson already in kindergarden: one says one thing, passes it on and as it moves from mouth to mouth there is always a risk of misinterpretation, exaggeration and sometimes just wild guessing. That's probably how someone in someone could end up a lesbian drug using fart sniffing Jehovas witness and a necrophiliac worshipper of the devil... all at once. WHAT? That's just some things I heard about me once. If people know anything about anything it's that being a Jehovas witness (which my father is, not me) would rule out drug use, homosexuality, any form of worship other than that of the guy in the sky and most definately there would be no necrophiliac business going down. As for fart sniffing... haha you people are gross for just thinking that. What, because my name rhymes with the swedish word for fart? Lovisafisa. Well that's clever and original of you.

We can't stop everyone from talking, that's just what some do. What we can do however is to not help turn the rumor mill by showing ZERO TOLERANCE. Don't shut up or show any signs of agreement, but instead wake them up to the fact that gossip is bad news and something that you're not supporting. Help them realize what they're doing. Real friends appreciate your honesty and you can be yourself around them. Your common interests should be based on other things than downgrading others. If you're afraid they'll start talking about you then that's just a sign they're not true friends, eh? 

Here's things you can say when you end up in a "rumour room":

- What's the purpose of this talk? 

- I'd rather form my own opinion in the matter, thank you very much.

- Why don't you bring it up with the person in question if it's bothering you so much? 

- I would never say anything about someone that I couldn't say to their face.

- Is this true? How do you know it is? Why is this important to you? 

Going back to the three monkeys, seeing, hearing and speaking no evil is not about IGNORING or pretending that there is nothing going on. On the contrary. It's about being aware that there are preconcieved notions, misunderstandings and bad intentions rooted from the seeds of pain, ignorance or fear. It's about being true to yourself, trusting your own ability to decide what's going on, not based on the everyday small talk.

Some songs on the theme for a possible future youtube playlist. 

Son house - Grinnin' in your face
Rudimental - Rumour Mill feat. Anne-Marie & Will Heard

Janelle Monae - Tightrope

Taylor Swift - Shake it off 

What brings you up and out of the mindless talk? Let me know if there are any songs that you would like to see on the list. Cheers!