Just Seven Things

Exploring why and how we do what we do, and how we can do it better

Archive for the tag “Mindfulness”

My Pursuit of Happiness – A Happiness Framework

I can’t shake my pursuit of happiness.  I referenced my Happiness System posts yesterday, and my challenges with the balance between being feeling led and thought led.

I entitled this post A Happiness Framework because I am going to explore in future Pursuit of Happiness posts, whether it’s a framework to work within rather than a system to comply with that is the answer (for me, at least)

So why and how is a framework different to a system in my thinking?

Read more…

The Balance between Listening to Thoughts vs. Feelings

This is very much a catch-up post. A statement of current feelings on a set of issues that have historically vexed, and continue to, vex me.

A series of thoughts captured in my Happiness System posts concerned a simple ‘brain-led’ set of principles to increasing happiness for me. Things that if I could set into habit, in my mind would make me happier. The problem – the resistance between head and heart. The failure to enter routine or habit. The lack of ‘draw-to’ the thing that I intellectually flag as being good for my happiness.

Read more…

The Growing of the Conscious Mind in Children

To celebrate the birth of my third child yesterday, a brief (bottles/ baby and child #1 & 2 to focus on at this time…) couple of thoughts as the seed of something bigger.

What struck me was: is it any wonder that we have a constant challenge with concepts of ‘ourself’ or ‘me’. Why is it a surprise to us that we find it hard to ‘manage’ ourselves (if that is what we try and do)?

I sit and see a homosapien offspring aged 1 day. A beautiful bundle of potential; at this stage though just a bundle of nerve endings and other-than-conscious reactions. Initial genetic pre-set programmes around food and reaction (crying) to more extreme sensory inputs (noise/ light) – I’m sure there are a lot more listed by experts.

And then the conscious overlay begins. Thoughts and knowledge. Habits, beliefs, states and behaviours. Sets of reactions and responses based on our map of the territory.

I can’t shake an image of layers of ‘material’. Like strata in a rock; residues from the ‘time and tide’ of life compacted by the heat and pressure of the moment/ that moment.

And then initially apparently so hard to mine out those conditioned layers in order to change.

Post Navigation