27 Oct 2012

Responsible for My Time

A friend read an inspiring book about getting in command of your own time.  The author had deleted the expression "I don't have time" from his vocabulary. He's so right! When we say that we really mean "I don't feel like it" or "I have other preferences".  Of course you have time, you just have to take responsibility over how to use it.
This inspired me to make a list of the things I really want to spend my time on. There are categories like Keep in Touch, Enjoy Nature, My Body & My Soul, Kitchen Pleasures, Creativity, and Inspiration. A very helpful exercise: I immediately saw where I need to invest more of my precious time to be satisfied with life. So today I spent a fair amount of time with Kitchen Pleasures: baking bread, making a fantastic mushroom soup and roasting butternut pumpkin in the oven :-)
Another list to do is one of the Time Eaters, in order to see them clearly and diminish their effect. Thinks like: internet, shopping, zapping in front of the TV... Doing them is OK, but consciously, and for the amount of time I myrself decide.
I want to take full responsibility over my time. I don't want to throw time away, but instead make a conscious choice on how to use each moment of the precious time I have left.

19 Oct 2012

A True Role Model

With an opulent yellow hibiscus flower (still from my balcony!) I went to the old people's home to visit my friend Mr. Laubi. When I arrived at his room, there was another name on the door...
So Mr. Laubi has left us. For himself, I can only feel relief, his last weeks must have been very difficult. He suffered from an awful sickness called ALS, a progressing muscle atrophy.
Almost a year ago, when I got to know him, he was already in a wheelchair and needed help with eating and smoking his beloved after dinner cigar, and I have followed his deterioration.
Still, every time I visited him, he had a smile on his face, even the last time when he could only lie down and his speech was no longer understandable.
Yet, even with such a cruel illness, Mr. Laubi was always ready for a joke - and always grateful for the little things he still could do or enjoy. What an amazing man! A true role model.

Like the one for Mr. Laubi

14 Oct 2012

My Me Day

In the spiritual tradition that I follow one of the causes for unhappiness is the exaggerated emphasis on "me", the ego. To me this seems very valid, so I always try to let go of the "I", the "me", and the "mine" - or as Tara Brach put it, "undo the personhood". I can really see and feel how complicated and difficult life gets when one is constantly having one's own navel as the center of the universe.
However, once a year I completely indulge in celebrating myself - on my birthday!
I make a special breakfast, dust of the special birthday cup (a family treasure), enjoy opening cards and presents and then start into even a working day with a Very Happy Feeling. Congratulations from my colleagues, text messages from family and friends along the day make me really happy, and in the evening I'm out for an extra nice birthday dinner with a friend (thank you Sofia!).
Why do I do this? Well, one day filled with the happy side of *being me* is lovely, and it lasts for a long time (even though perhaps not for a whole year ;-)

Sei Glücklich!

7 Oct 2012

Dignity & Kindness

When I walk somewhere, I try to remember doing it the mindful way, as Walking meditation.
During the years I have tried out different techniques, connecting the steps with breathing or using mantras. Now I concentrate on binding together my posture with feelings of how I walk through life.
Breathing in I concentrate on head held high, spine nicely erect and I think "Dignity". Dignity, like a lion walking (even in his cage): well measured, not too quickly, knowing his strength.
Breathing out I feel shoulders relaxing, hips softly moving, and a warm smile in my heart and I think "Kindness". Kindness that is needed to balance strength, and to make it - human.
This is how I want to walk. This is how I want to live.