Making it meaningful

"Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend -- or a meaningful day."

~Dalai Lama~

I arrived at work a little grumpy today, after having missed a ferry, then running to a bus, then missing a train, and finally arriving late at work. I was grumpy, because I was missing my car, which is in repair and would take me to work in lightning speed. Not that I don’t like public transport, but for the hours I work, a car is essential and gives me 30 minutes more sleep in the morning.

I arrived at work, tuned into my phone which has a handy ‘Buddhist quotes’ app, and read the above quote by Dalai Lama. Suddenly I realised something; why am I complaining? Apart from the slight inconvenience of taking 90 minutes to get to work (instead of 30), nothing is wrong.

That’s it, nothing is wrong.

The key in this quote for me was “…make it meaningful”. No matter what is happening in life, just make it meaningful. This quote also hinges on the subject of impermanence. Nothing stays the same, everything changes. New friends become old friends, new days become old days, so we just have to roll with what we have and ‘make it meaningful’.

Honestly, I snapped out of my bad mood straight away. I sat down and decided to make everything I did that day meaningful. From the emails I wrote to customers, to the computer work I did, to my interactions with others. Meaningful. Meaningful, so that if I were to look back on any space of time today, I could say there would be nothing I could have done better. Meaningful, means you have invested yourself truly in what you do, and the action, thought, feeling or interaction is genuine and uniquely you. If we consider meaningful friendships or meaningful events, they have inspired us in some way, so as to create the person we are today. Routine, problems, stress and ignorance dim the ‘meaningfulness’ of life, so that we begin to perceive everyday as the same. As a famous quote from Paulo Coelho goes:

“When each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.”

Meaningfulness, is perceiving that each day is different; that even though the sun rises each morning, we through our choice have the power to make each day different. Perception is everything. What we infuse our minds with, we begin to see in our surroundings. By beginning the day with a commitment to creating meaningfulness we can create the correct thought, which in turn creates the correct reality around us.

Reality is a reflection of our mind; how meaningful our reality is depends on how meaningful our perception is.

Copyright © SoulSurfer 11 December 2012 at 2.13pm

A commitment to being better...but not 'the best'

It is commitment that makes us appreciate how important our dreams are. We must stay committed to our dreams, even when we believe we know how to do what we love perfectly. When you believe you are good at what you love to do and not ‘the best’, you allow change and improvement to occur. You must stay in the flow of always believing that you are moving towards your goal, but never attaining it. When you attain a goal, or believe you are the best you can be, you can become complacent and bored. Inspiration gets stifled, and ego comes into play.

The only way to keep creativity and inspiration flowing in life is to be committed to being better and improving Self, but never attaining ‘the best’. ‘The best’ does not exist, because there can always be better. This is how life has evolved, because someone has found a better, faster, quicker way of doing things.

Life flows when we don’t think with ego, but with love and inspiration; continually looking for new sources, ideas and insights. Personally, I am committed to believing I am always in the process of being a better surfer. I believe I am a good surfer, but not the best. For there will always be waves that make me better, but none that will make me the best.

Copyright © SoulSurfer 21 November 2011 at 8.44am

Things I have learned about life through surfing…

Fascination – the more time you spend with the ocean, the more you notice things you never saw from the shore. It’s our fascination with life and its many surprises that drives away fear and replaces it with pure passion. Are there sharks that close to the shore? How does the board turn? How do you barrel? The exhilaration of life and truly living leads us to go out and experience. Sometimes it’s just the questions that are complicated and the answers simple. Life, like the waves, is full of surprises.

Perseverance – sometimes there are no waves and nothing to surf, sometimes there are too many to catch! Life is about moving elsewhere to find a better swell, or sometimes just taking random opportunities as they come. Nevertheless we don’t stop surfing; we don’t stop living.

Respect – such a misunderstood word, and no, its “not in-you-face” ghetto type of respect. Respect for the ocean and Mother Nature should be a core value each passionate surfer holds. You need to deeply treasure and admire the force of nature which enables you to practise your passion with grace and flair. Also, holding respect for the fact you are co-existing in an aquatic habitat full of precious life forms is paramount. Similarly in life, we need to respect the environment and people around us. If you give respect, in a true and deep manner, then receiving respect is reciprocal. Life is a journey and we need to respect the time and space we are present in, in order to move forward with our destinies.

Commitment – it’s all too easy believe you are a pro surfer after your first lesson, in which the instructor prompts you when to paddle and stand up. Surfing like life, takes commitment. A commitment to experiencing it for better and for worse; during big swells and not so big swells. But we surfers, soldier on, believing we are a part of something greater, something wonderful; and experiencing this when we meet our match on a wave.

Love – If you commit to and persevere through all the seaweed, tides, swells, rips and random fin sightings, you will arrive at only one conclusion; “I’m in love with surfing.” Yes love, like with all great things, fits nicely with surfing. But to encounter a deeper sense of all-encompassing love and appreciation for the environment, world, universe and Spirit…this only comes through the experience and practise of surfing. Love is usually found in the most profound things, and surfing (even in shallow tides) is deep. Ocean deep.

Love is the experience we all want to partake in and feeling one with a powerful force and harnessing it to create greater good; that is love in its purest form.

 Copyright © SoulSurfer 15 September 2011 @ 11.11pm

HOW SERIOUS ARE WE ABOUT OUR DREAMS?

 

A very powerful question asks “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?”

As I ponder this question in all of its magnitude and opportunity, I immediately am hit with another more reality-based question: “How serious are we about our dreams?”

It seems the word ‘dream’ in today’s world has been replaced with less trivial terms such as goal, ambition, aspiration. But really, as we grow up do we lose sight of our dreams? Are dreams only confined to the realm of children and the young at heart (or slightly kooky)?

Paulo Coelho in his book “The Pilgrimage” describes unfulfilled dreams as ones that initially bring peace from the combativeness of life, but ones which eventually rot within us and infect our whole being. Dreams ignored leave a life unfulfilled.

In order to fulfill our dreams, we must reconnect with them and define them. To some it is an easy task; the dreams have been there, simply repressed by the monotony of life. For others a journey of self-awakening must occur; arousing our strengths and articulating them into solid concepts.

But even after this period of revelation and epiphany, many people go back to the daily chores of life and make no commitment to their dreams. It’s amazing how the most important and potentially life-changing ideas of a person’s life, fall prey to the banal existence they have become accustomed to. We know there is more in life, we know there is a life more exciting and fulfilled, but we lack the strength, conviction and commitment to see our own dreams through. Our own dreams…

Maybe it is because ‘dreams’ are overrated. Maybe they seem like a Disney movie. Maybe they are harder to define and then propel into action than a company project. But they are our projects, our life’s project, and the only people who live with the reality of our unfulfilled dreams are we ourselves.

It’s time to get serious about our dreams. It’s time to commit to making them a reality. It’s time to invest time, money, ideas and resources into the best commodity; your own life. It’s time to grow and believe and become a better person, step by step, dream by dream.

It’s time to be the person who lost 50 pounds on the infomercial.

It’s time to be the next person to climb Mount Everest.

It’s time to leave the job you hate, because there is something more productive and fulfilling you could be doing with your time.

It’s time to be serious about your life and dreams, because you only have one and no one else will live it for you.

Copyright © 13 June 2011 at 9.13pm SoulSurfer

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