A Space to Speak

It's almost conventional wisdom these days that happiness comes from within. External factors such as your job, your social circles, your salary and your relationships at the end of the day won't bring happiness by themselves without a certain level of happiness with one's self. 

Location is another external factor that's relegated to a supporting role in the cast of happiness. Attributing your unhappiness to your location is just dodging deeper issues, which will resurface regardless of where in the world you call home. 

On the face of it, I tend to agree with these arguments. My recent move to London whilst no doubt being a success, (it's kick started my life in many ways) is qualified by my belief that the success has arisen from the actions I've taken since arriving in London, rather than London itself and if I'd undertaken the same actions back home, I would have experienced the same results. This seemingly supports the theory that location and indeed other external factors are by themselves not enough to create happiness. 

However I think to reach that slightly simplistic conclusion ignores one key aspect. I had been at home for years and hadn't taken the actions I needed to take. It took a new location in London to provoke the required actions, so whilst it was no doubt the actions that have resulted in my upturn of fortunes in the happiness game, those actions were dependent on the change in location.

It's almost the old chicken and egg story isn't it! As with most things I think the truth as it were is some what closer to the middle. External factors on their own will struggle to create happiness, you need to take real internal action to do that. But sometimes the external factors are just the tonic you need in order to provoke the required internal action, so we shouldn't be so quick to discount their importance.

What are your thoughts on external factors influencing happiness? I'm curious to know other peoples experiences.

In a world full of distraction, focus becomes an almost invaluable commodity. So how do we drown out the almost ever present noise of our 'always connected' world and focus on taking action on those things that are important? 

That question has been the driving force of a few little experiments of late. Let me share some of them with you.

Cutting back the noise: 

• Restrict Facebook friends & Twitter friends to a maximum of 150 people each - See Dunbar's number
• Cut down the number of blogs in my RSS reader from over 30 to eight. 
• Renewed focus on my 'mindfulness' practice
• Shift all blogging activities to this site
• Move back to one twitter account, rather than three seperate accounts

Working smarter: 

• Check email only twice a day - I'm better at this on my work account than gmail! 
• Utilise the Pomodoro techinque when working on a project
• Use a customised version of GTD to organise my tasks
• Deliver three key things each day - Should be things which progress important projects

Running on the right fuel: 

• Eat Breakfast every day
• Make smarter choices regarding what I eat and when I eat it
• Exercise on a regular basis

I've had varying degress of success with those initiatives. I definitely feel "cutting back the noise" has been a valuable exercise. I feel with social media, you can get caught up in what I call a "that's great" loop. That is bouncing from one cool idea to a next, but never actually taking action on anything. I've certainly been guilty of that in the past! Cutting back, is helping me focus on action.

The "working smarter" and "running on the right fuel" intiatives are still a work in progress. Slowly but surely though I'm building new positive habits and it's all in the name of focus! 

What do you do to maintain focus in this digital, 'always connected' world? I'm keen to hear any great tips you may have, so please share :-)

Mindfulness is something that I've been attempting to cultivate for the best part of three years now. Reflecting on those three years one thing is clear, cultivating mindfulness is bloody hard work!

The analogy that I love best is that cultivating mindfulness is like going to the gym, but for your mind! It's that concept of sustained, regular practice resulting in small, incremental improvements which over time will make a big difference. There is no doubt that makes logical sense, but I think most people can relate to some of the difficulties faced when trying to create a new habit, especially one in which instant gratification isn't forth coming!

I suppose a good question, is why would one want to cultivate mindfulness? Well, there over recent years there has been bucket loads of research supporting the benefits of mindfulness. Research which compliments centuries upon centuries of Eastern philosophical wisdom I might add! To summarise though, here are ten benefits of mindfulness as listed by the website Care2

1. Improve focus, concentration, and precision.

2. Enhance the quality of communications and relationships.

3. Heighten the clarity of our thinking and intentions.

4. Improve efficiency and safety.

5. Deepen peace of mind and sense of flow.

6. Master stress.

7. Deepen insight and intuitive wisdom.

8. Awaken more authenticity, heart, soul, and caring in our lives and work.

9. Increase resilience to change.

10. Strengthen faith and self-confidence.

I think you'll agree that's a pretty appealing list of benefits, despite that it's been a real challenge to try and build the habit of cultivating mindfulness. Infact I'd say at this stage, I'm really no further along the lines of developing the habit!

Meditation has been my mindfulness practice of choice and I've had periods of "success", where after sustained periods of daily practice, I've really started to experience some of the benefits above. What I've struggled to do though, is really consolidate these periods, into a sustained daily practice. As a result, I constantly find myself starting from scratch if you will. 

I've tried a variety of measures such as iPhone apps, twitter hashtags and indeed limited exposure to meditation sessions at local Buddhist centers, but as yet I'm still unable to unlock the secret of daily habit. 

I'm not going to give up though. There is something deep inside of me that tells me to keep on going, that this practice is really important to unlocking the potential within, potential which will enable me to achieve truly great things. Persistence is the key and so far this week I've successfully practiced each day. With any luck I'll be able to keep this up! 

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I'm curious to hear if anyone else has their own stories/experiences about cultivating mindfulness and how you got on with it, so please don't hesitate to share! 

I've been writing blogs for close to three years now. During that time, I've had a travel blog, I've had a football blog and I've had a HR blog. In some respects you could say that I've had a blog for everything that I've wanted to talk about. Sometimes I've wanted to talk about Football, other times I've wanted to talk about travel, the future of work, social change or anything else that has crossed my mind to be honest. 

It's fair to say that I've got a variety of things to say and that collectively it's difficult to fit everything I have to say into a nicely categorised singular theme. This presents a challenge in terms of keeping up the momentum across my collection of blogs. I've always found blogs to be about momentum. The more I post, the easier it becomes. 

At the moment if I'm honest my momentum is flat and I attribute that to two things. Firstly feeling constricted by multiple blogs and trying to work out what to post where. Secondly I'm also at a point where I'm trying to work out what I'm looking to achieve with blogging. For the most part, I think my blogging has served as a medium of reflection, expression and self discovery, but I don't think it's really served as a platform for action and I'd like it to. 

So whilst I ponder the future of my blogging and where it fits in the jigsaw of life, I've created this space. I said earlier that it's difficult to fit everything into a nicely categorised singular theme, well that's actually not true. There is a singular theme and it's me! Which is exactly what this space will be about. It's a space for me to speak.