Miss Mandie

If this is true, how can success and happiness co-exist?

Is there a difference between doing something we don’t want to do because it makes us feel anxious or it’s boring or it requires energy and effort, to doing something that doesn’t resonate with our core essence/truth/soul?

How do we know the difference?

This has been an interesting conversation in my head lately.

Particularly as I watch myself procrastinate the shit out of completing my studies.

It’s as though I have to drag myself kicking and screaming through the last remaining modules of this course.

A course I have been doing for twelve months.

A course where most of the work has already been done.

A course I could have finished months ago.

A course I wished I had finished months ago.

So what’s my problem?

Albert Gray wrote a speech about his search for the common denominator of successful people. His discovery?

“Successful people formed the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do”.

Read the rest of this entry →

I came across an email from a few years ago.

I was searching for my mum’s pumpkin soup recipe and somehow found an old email from a school friend. Says a lot for the apparent “organised” filing of my inbox.

It was an email thread that transported me back to my life in 2006.

At the time I was selling my house, tackling a Masters course, on the verge of exiting the full-time working caper, entangled in an on-again-off-again-aint-no-hope-of-really-going-anywhere relationship, drinking myself silly with friends, financially strapped waiting impatiently for said house sale, and dreaming of future possibilities with that expectant feeling that something big was about to happen.

What struck me the most was the hyperactive tone of my email reply.

“Could Mandie be abusing amphetamines?” would have been a completely acceptable response to reading such an overuse of the humble exclamation mark and repeated reassurance of just how full and amazing life was at the time.

I wasn’t taking many drugs back then, but I was busy.

Busy worrying, busy working, busy studying, busy socialising, busy creating “house sale dramas and nightmares”, busy drinking, busy pining, busy trying to work out the answers, busy gossiping, busy reassuring, busy dieting, busy story telling, busy arguing, busy complaining, busy planning, busy getting ahead.

Our society is great at helping people who want to be busy.

Read the rest of this entry →

My fellow inhabitants at The Forest

I have an ant problem in my place. Well, not so much a problem, more like a fully fledged, army-style invasion of the little creatures.

Usually I can live in harmony with them, but in all honesty, my Buddhist aspirations are challenged when there are so many of them as its rather easy to kill them with a mere swipe of the cloth on the bench. I don’t mean to…I just want to clean the kitchen bench and it’s so hard to avoid them.

Read the rest of this entry →

It’s not often that I repost things from YouTube on the site, but this one caught my attention. Of all things – it’s an ad to get more people to wear their seatbelt. Not the most exciting topics I realise, nor the most uplifting. I haven’t watched a lot of television this past year, given I don’t have one, so forgive me if the Australian state governments have changed their strategy for raising awareness about road safety. But last I was aware, seatbelt ads in this country would have involved a lot of dramatic footage, death, carnage, fake blood and distressing wailing. Seriously, I often wondered how they could be allowed to put such graphic ads on when kids could still be watching.

Then enter the ad below, from Sussex Safer Roads in England. This epitomises what I believe all campaigns should be – a positive call to what they want, rather than focusing on what they don’t want to happen. Think about it – how many times do you see governments and non-profit organisations putting energy into advertisements and campaigns that focus more on what they don’t want, rather than what they do wish for the future?

Can you feel the difference in these opposing statements?

- Stop destructive forest logging/ Preserve our abundant forests

- Prevent child abuse/ Nurture our future generations

- Don’t tolerate domestic violence/ Expect respect (this one is a local Byron Shire campaign in the positive – I love it!)

Or in the case of this advert: Avoid death/ Embrace Life

I believe that one day the understanding of the power of our focused minds in influencing physical reality will be as widely accepted as the fact that the world is round. Just have a read of “The Brain that Changes Itself” by Norman Doidge M.D. as evidence that science is now proving the profound power of our minds in a widely accepted manner.

So if we have the ability to help influence our world to change for better or for worse, wouldn’t it be wiser of us to start focusing our energies into what we DO want? Some will argue that ‘stop logging’ is still focusing on what we do want (i.e. logging to stop so our forests are preserved). But our focus in that simple statement is more aligned with logging, than anything else. And that is the subtle act of us shifting our focus. We need to shift to the end result of what we want. It may not seem like much, but I believe the more we do this shift in focus, the sooner will start to see the changes in the world we’ve been wanting.

Check it out: