The Ritual of New Year Reflections: Let’s make every moment count
Last night, a small gathering of friends made wishes before blowing out candles on a cake. We were celebrating another revolution around the sun for planet Earth. The desire for a new year to begin and for 2017 to end seemed an almost unanimous outlook for many friends and family that I had encountered over the past weeks. Resolutions were...
Let your Authentic Self be Front Facing
A TED talk delivered by the masterful David Byrne on how architecture has helped music evolve has sparked deeper cerebral churning. Byrne went on to quote the American author Thomas Frank, regarding the voting process: “Voters (like a lot of us) assume if they hear something that ‘sounds like’ its sincere, that its coming from the gut, that its passionate… that...
Don’t let Digital kill the Art of Conversation
Speed kills. I’m sure you’re familiar with the advertising campaigns that bolstered our road safety regulations. Texting whilst driving has also joined the ranks in securing more consciousness for travel in order to prevent unnecessary deaths or accidents. Whether you agree with this ruling or not, the digital and velocity based elements of these factors play...
Faith: The Forgotten Motivator
Following a recent meeting of family friends, a waver in self-belief resulted in the calming retort: “Have some faith”. This simple statement came from a dear friend of my late parents, with added resonance because he has known me since youth and through to adulthood. It was not a dispersion on my character, more of a...
The Altruist Activist: Why we must learn from each other
In the early hours, the birds by my window drown the skies with their dawn chorus, a daily ritual which regularly lures me from the sanctuary of sleep. Their morning call is an essential part of their existence, which mostly comprise of males who sing to compete and attract partners, as well as stake their territory. Those that sing...
You are not Immortal: Modern Life Mindfulness
It is someone’s birthday today. The fourth of May was cause for celebration of 4 friends and almost every day I get a Facebook reminder of whom to ‘help’ celebrate their day. The overall year of my friendships has October containing the most birthdays and April the least. The more friends I acquire, the more...
Resolutions for Life (and not just at New Years)
As we enter 2015, it seems inevitable that my latest (and overdue) article relates to this existential moment and the thoughts of what it means to have a fresh new year to play with. January 1st is welcomed worldwide through a variety of ways, some of which involve many libations, with many heavier heads the following...
Longing to ‘be’ happy? Just let yourself BE
There are many things to be said about freedom. One of the most resonant for me though is that it is severely underrated. And I do not speak on this occasion of the reasons and wherefores for incarceration. It is more in regards to the personal and work related restrictions that so many of us...
Getting Older & Embracing your Age
How do you react when you are posed with the question “How OLD are you?”… Do you wince, mumbling the wretched number under your breath? Perhaps you state it proudly, with the enquirer following it up with a welcomed “but you don’t look it!”. Or do you simply change the conversation, because you would rather...
The Gift of being Creative (& why you MUST liberate it)
Do you have a ‘rage to create’? I adapted this description from an article I recently read in regards to a ‘rage to master’ within us. I reference one story of a young boy and his incredible artistic abilities, combining colours and shapes on an obsessive level, working on each of his drawings for 1...
Stoicism: The Key to Modern Day Living?
During the throes of modern life, it is easy to lose ourselves in our daily chores, occupations and moments of liberty. The demand for our time as we get older becomes ever more engrossed by what we are expected to do but these expectations are usually projected onto the situation itself. We fret, we become...
Judge Less, Connect More
Do you ever find it difficult to love other human beings? Not in a romantic sense, that would be a whole other subject matter to explore, more inclined for the therapists couch perhaps than my blog posts. I simply mean whether you encounter internal struggles to rationalise the actions of another individual, based on their...