Category: Self-Help

Given The Choice, Would You Rather Be A Good Person Or A Dangerous Person?

This Is Your Quest - Author Joanne Reed
The most dangerous person - Photo by user 14901510 via freepik.com

Given the choice would you rather be a good person or a dangerous person? What an odd question to ask, you may say, of course, I’d rather be a good person! For those of you who know me and have read my work before, you would know that one of my favorite things is to tackle difficult subjects, look under the surface, lift the veil, and shake things up a little. This article definitely falls into this category, it is not for the faint-hearted. What if I tell you, that if I was given the choice to be a good person or a dangerous person, I will choose to be a dangerous person. Before you give up on me and react in shock and disbelief, bear with me a little because my whole thinking on this subject was inspired by Bruce Lee and Jordan Peterson.

“The most dangerous man is the one who observes, listens, thinks.”

Bruce Lee

“A harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very dangerous man who voluntarily put this dangerous side of him under control.”

Jordan Peterson

The most dangerous person is the one who observes

The most dangerous person is the one who observes – Photo by user 14901510 Studio via freepik.com

According to the Oxford dictionary, “observation is the action or process of observing something or someone in order to gain information.” Our observation skills inform us about objects, events, attitudes, and phenomena using one or more senses. Improving your observation skills allows you to “listen” with more than your ears and make better decisions. We all have eyes but a lot of us don’t really use them to observe; we look at think without really observing them. Just looking at something produces nothing.

Observing produces insights. When we observe we are able to take a step back to peer into ourselves and others. Observing ourselves is essential, but observing others provides another angle. When you combine the two, the observation of ourselves and others you get valuable insights that you can use to better connect and communicate with people. Developing our observation skills is critically important.

Get into the habit of observing the world as it is, in all its variety, learning from it, and put what you learned into use in your decision-making process, in improving your intuition, in building your relationships.

The most dangerous person is the one who observes.

The most dangerous person is the one who listens.

The most dangerous person is the one who listens – Photo by kuzmich Studio via freepik.com

“When you talk you are only repeating something you already know. But if you listen you may learn something new.”

Dalai Lama

Before you assume, learn the fact. Before you judge, understand why. Before you hurt someone, feel. Before you speak, think. Before you talk, listen. Listening is the key to all effective communication. Without the ability to listen effectively, messages are easily misunderstood. As a result, communication breaks down and the sender of the message can easily become frustrated or irritated.

Effective communication also starts with the understanding that people are not mind-readers. Expecting people to guess your wishes and aspirations is only going to bring you frustration and resentment. If you want something from someone, express yourself clearly. If you use the right words, the right tone of voice, and the right body language, you are increasing your chance of having your wishes and aspirations in reality. Listening requires more than hearing; it requires focus and concentrated effort. Listening means paying attention not only to the story but how it is told. The use of language, the tone of voice, and how the person uses his or her body. It means being aware of both verbal and non-verbal messages.

Every problem big or small starts with bad communication. Someone is not communicating their message clearly and/or someone is not listening. Did you know that only 7% of communication is verbal, 38% is tone and infliction of voice and a staggering 55% is body language? Your facial expression, hand movements, gestures, eye contact, attitude, tone of voice, the way you look, listen, react, speak far more about your feelings than words will ever be able. The way you feel about a particular subject matter will affect your non-verbal expression; if you feel angry, sorrow or fear those feelings will transpire in your facial expression and tone of voice.

This is why listening is an important aspect of communication. Effective listening is not just the understanding of spoken or written information, but also an understanding of how the speaker feels during communication, it is the ability to listen with empathy. Empathy is the ability to share and understand the feeling of another regardless of whether we agree with it or not.

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it”

Aristotle

The most dangerous person is the one who listens.

The most dangerous person is the one who thinks.

The most dangerous person is the one who thinks – Photo by Jnemchinova Studio via freepik.com

We all like to think of ourselves as rational, strategic creatures, but in reality, humans are deeply irrational and are often governed by emotion rather than logic. Moreover, we have a tendency to operate within our own echo chamber, where the only information that goes through our brain is information that validates our prior knowledge, vindicates our prior decisions, or sustains our existing beliefs.

“The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Jonny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling”.

Thomas Sowell

Critical thinking means many things, but at heart, it is a search for the truth. Critical thinking helps us determine what is real and what it is not. But before we are able to exercise our cognitive ability to think critically, we need to have a certain base of knowledge as a starting point. We can only think critically about things we have knowledge of. Critical thinking can be understood as a deep activity, one that requires the development of new habits of mind. It is not something that comes to us naturally, it requires extensive study and practice.

When we have our critical thinking hat on, we develop our problem-solving capabilities and our ability to look at the strengths and weaknesses of an argument; the result is that we are more able to see things clearly and this can help us make better decisions. We should get into the habit from time to time of walking down the road less traveled, the one taken by critical thinkers. If you decide to walk down that road it will require that you possess a certain fluidity of mind, some discipline, and be driven by the will to get to the truth of the matter rather than the urge to be righteous no matter what.

We live in a world of double standards, flagrant contradictions, and intolerance. It seems that people these days are incapable of having adults’ discussions with someone with who they strongly disagree, and have a civilized exchange based on reason rather than rage. It is a very sorry state of affairs. Preaching intolerance in the name of tolerance is a frightening contradiction that doesn’t seem to faze some people.

The most dangerous person is the one who thinks critically.

Coming back to Bruce Lee’s quote “The most dangerous man is the one who observes, listens, thinks” I would like to tweak it a little bit: ‘” The most dangerous person is the one who observes, listens, thinks and then acts accordingly” because knowing without doing is like not knowing at all.

Joanne Reed

And this my dear friend is Your Quest

If you wish to support my work you can purchase my book This is Your Quest online at BookLocker, from Amazon, or from Barnes & Noble. The Ebook version is available on Amazon (Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Nook), Apple (iBooks) & Kobo. Check out my Amazon Author Page here or my listing on Booksradar.com.  

You can also follow me on my  FaceBook Page and sign up for a  Free Guide that I wrote for women to remind them that they should give themselves permission to be all that they can be.

Stop Asking for Permission When You Don’t Have To.

Stop asking for permission when you don't have to. Photo by Wayhome studio via freepik.com

To seek or not to seek permission? I say, stop asking for permission when you don’t have to.

From the day we are born, we spend our life asking permission for everything. It starts with our parents, our teachers, our boss, our spouse, or our leader, and it goes on and on. I say, stop asking for permission when you don’t have to. We grow up with a host of ingrained ideas about what we’re permitted to do or not do. As a child, we have to ask permission from our parents to ride our bikes to town. When in school, we have to raise our hands and ask the teacher permission to speak or to go to the toilet. At work, we have to ask our boss and HR department permission to go on sick leave when we are feeling unwell.

Being compliant, obedient, and asking for permission might serve us well in a civilized society as we learn how to control our wants and desires; but the irony and eventual quiet tragedy of that is that in some instances, our wants and desires might not have a possessor, a licensor or a permit giver. It may lie outside the realms of ownership. There may be broad indifference to whether we act in some way or not. There may be no law and no one to be upset by our move. The desired thing in question might just belong to whoever dares to step forward and take it. There’s no formal procedure, it’s just the courage to imagine it could be yours. The reason why certain ideas haven’t happened isn’t necessarily because they are silly, but because there is a strong and always surprising lack of originality in human conduct.

We are creatures of tradition, systems, rules, and regulations and we are conditioned to think that we need permission for everything and to act within the confines of what is permitted. For most of human history, it was customary to believe that permission to do anything had to be sought from the gods and superior forces that governed the cosmos. We may assume we don’t share this primitive characteristic, but our underlying attitude – in its essential form – suggests we do. We don’t quite know whom we are asking, and we can’t say precisely what approval looks like, but in an archaic part of our minds, we’re still waiting to be given endorsement for our most cherished plans. I say, stop asking permission when you don’t have to.

We want to know from some potent but undefined source that if we act this way, we’ll still be good people, that we won’t be punished that this is allowed, that we won’t bring retribution on ourselves or trouble from the Universe. Our culture is fascinated by inventors and artists who struck out on their own, went strongly against the tide of current opinion, and was eventually vindicated even if only after their deaths. We get excited by the stories of their lives because we unconsciously find in them something that’s missing in us: a bold indifference to permission, a reminder of our lack of courage and timidity.

Stop asking for permission when you don’t have to. You don’t need permission to think the way you think

Stop asking for permission when you don’t have to. Photo by Wayhome studio via freepik.com

In the Dystopian Novel 1984 written by George Orwell, the Thought Police (Thinkpol) are the secret police of the superstate of Oceania, who discover and punish Though Crime, personal and political thoughts unapproved by the regime. Thinkpol uses criminal psychology and omnipresent surveillance via informers, telescreens cameras, and microphones to monitor the citizens of Oceania and arrest all those who have committed Thought Crime in challenge to the status quo authority of the Party and the regime of Big Brother.

Democratic societies assert unequivocally that freedom of expression is part of our human rights. The First Amendment of the US Constitution largely protects Americans from the creepy authoritarian systems found in 1984 and so does the Human Rights Act; Article 10 of the Human Rights Act protects your right to hold your own opinions and express them freely without government interference. This includes the right to express your views aloud (for example through public protest and demonstrations) or through published articles, books or leaflets, television or radio broadcasting, works of arts, the internet, and social media.

Sadly, the scenario envisaged in Orwell’s book 1984 seems to be more reality than fiction. The new Thought Police are Big Tech and the rise of Cancel Culture. We will have to decide as a collective if seeking conformity of thought or language through public shaming is healthy or suffocating. Condoning the censorship road that is being taken by Big Tech is likely to be the road that takes us straight to that place called Tyranny.

“When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing. When you see, that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favor. When you see that men get richer more easily by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them but protect them against you. When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – You may know that your society is doomed” Extract from Atlas shrugged Ayn Rand (1905 to 1982) – Novelist, philosopher, and screenwriter.

Ayn Rand

History is full of examples of crazy things you won’t believe used to be legal, slavery being one of them. We tend to think of the law as an obvious truth, the reality is that society pretty much makes things up as we go along. Thank goodness, we can rely on Natural Law which is a superior law to the Law of the State to save us from tyranny. Some big thinkers spent time thinking about this concept.

Aristotle is often said to be the father of Natural Law. The Natural Law thesis holds that if a human law fails to be backed up by decisive reason, then it is not a proper law at all. This is captured in the maxim “an unjust law is no law at all”. In his treatise Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes expressed a view of Natural Law as a general rule, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life or takes away the means of preserving the same. According to Emanuel Kant, in a free society, each individual must be able to pursue their goals however they see fit as long as their actions conform to principles governed by reason.

Thomas More’s refusal to acknowledge King Henry VIII as Supreme Head of the Church of England and the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon lead him to be imprisoned and put on trial for treason. During his last remarks to court – defending himself in his trial for treason and knowing in advance his fate of being found guilty for his refusal to assert in writing that the King was the Head of the Church, he made the following arguments to the jury :

“Some men say the Earth is flat and some men say the Earth is round. But if it is flat, could Parliament make it round? And if it is round, could the King’s command flatten it?”

Thomas More

What Thomas More so eloquently expressed during his trial was that the Laws of Nature will force the government to exercise a certain restraint. There is a limit to what a government and/or parliament can legitimately do. That limit is set by Natural Law. Extract from Chapters 7 & 10 of This Is Your Quest.

You don’t need permission to be enlightened or to act with reason

Stop asking for permission when you don’t have to. Photo by Wayhome studio via freepik.com

The 18th century was a period known as the Enlightenment, another term used in the Age of Reason. The concept of a social contract, limited government, consent of the governed, and the separation of power started making an impact on people. New beliefs started spreading such as “all men are created equal” and “a king has no divine rights.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right in 1762. His thinking was that humans are essentially free, but over time they become less and less free because of the mere fact that they live in a society. It is only natural in society to see a ruler emerge and to attract followers, who would happily give up their liberty to be under the ruler’s protection. The question that Jean-Jacques Rousseau asked himself was: “How can we be free and live together without being overpowered by the force and coercion of others? The answer he came up with was: “through a social contract.”

A social contract is a process whereby people will come together and agree to form a new single body called the Sovereign. The Sovereign’s mission is to act for the good of all the people and its critical element is the element of reciprocity. The Sovereign is committed to the good of the individuals who constitute it and each individual is likewise committed to the good of the whole. In the American colonies, more and more people were being influenced by this concept and started to believe that they weren’t receiving their end of the bargain and, gradually started to think that it was their duty to rebel against and disobey laws that were viewed unjustly. The American Revolution began in 1775; the root cause of the revolution can be found in the way Great Britain treated its colony, as some kind of faraway outpost, whose sole purpose was to provide for the needs of Great Britain, and for the American people to be subject to and subservient to the will and power of the Crown.

So, please stop asking for permission when you don’t have to. There is a whole raft of things that fall outside the realms of ownership. Not all our wants and desires need to have a possessor, a licensor, or a permit giver.

And this my dear friend, is Your Quest.

If you wish to support my work you can purchase my book This is Your Quest online at BookLocker, from Amazon, or from Barnes & Noble. The Ebook version is available on Amazon (Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Nook), Apple (iBooks) & Kobo. Check out my Amazon Author Page here or my listing on Booksradar.com.  

You can also follow me on my  FaceBook Page and sign up for a Free Guide that I wrote for women to remind them that they should give themselves permission to be all that they can be.

A Mother’s wish for her daughters

A mother's wish for her daughters . Photo featuring Joanne & Alize Reed. Photo by Thierry Nikolaeff @terydiving. Dress by Nathalie Pezzotta-Davranche @lartisanecouture.

As a mother of two daughters, I was thinking recently about the most precious gifts I could give to them. Something useful and timeless, that they would cherish each and every day. After pondering on the subject for a little bit I came up with 3 gifts ideas in the form of a mother’s wish for her daughters:

1. Learn how to be courageous. You don’t have to be a hero. Just have the courage to be yourself.

2. Have a fighting spirit. When the going gets tough be tougher.

3. Learn to think for yourself.

From the confines of my Island (Ile de la Reunion), my youngest daughter and I had an amazing underwater photoshoot experience thanks to a scuba diver photographer by the name of Thierry Nikolaeff @terydiving and an amazing dressmaker by the name of Nathalie Pezzotta-Davranche @lartisanecouture. Those underwater photoshoots are not easy, Alizé got the gist of it fairly quickly. For me, it took a bit longer to get to grip with the technique of trying to look relaxed and not out of breath at the bottom of a pool, but managed eventually. The results are literally breath-taking. There are no tricks on those pictures, just Alizé and me, two amazing dresses, and a scuba diver photographer.

A mother’s wish for her daughters. Learn how to be courageous.

A mother’s wish for her daughters . Courage is the most important of all the virtues. Photo by Thierry Nikolaeff @terydiving featuring Joanne & Alize Reed. Dress by Nathalie Pezzotta-Davranche @lartisanecouture.

Being courageous doesn’t mean that you have to do bold spectacular acts of bravery and become a hero. You don’t have to be a hero, just have the courage to be yourself. Courage can show up in a very quiet manner and in thousands of unexpected ways. Deciding not to fight can sometimes be as courageous as charging into battle. Forgiveness requires a lot of courage. Learning a new skill, starting a new business venture, stepping outside your comfort zone requires a lot of courage. Standing up to bullies and speaking your mind requires a fair dose of courage. Falling in love, letting your guards down can be an act of courage. Staying positive and upbeat when facing setbacks, ill-health, old age or even death requires a lot of courage.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues because, without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.

Maya Angelou

The word courage originates from the Latin word Cor (Coeur in French and cuore in Italian) which means heart; in essence, it means ‘to act from one’s heart’. The etymology of the word indicates that when we act courageously, we are activating our inner power and strength which surfaces through our heart’s desire. Courage is the mental preparedness and ability to deal with difficulty, challenges, and sometimes seemingly impossible circumstances. It is the ability to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty, intimidation, and other threats.

Courage is not a quality that you are born with. It is one that has to be cultivated and honed. Today we typically associate courage with heroic and brave deeds but being courageous does not necessarily entail doing something dramatic or astoundingly heroic, everyday living requires courage. So what is courage? There are many definitions of what courage is. Below are my favorite ones.

A mother’s wish for her daughters . Courage is not the absence of fear but the triumph over it. Photo featuring Joanne & Alize Reed. Photo by Thierry Nikolaeff @terydiving. Dress by Nathalie Pezzotta-Davranche @lartisanecouture.

Courage is not the absence of fear but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel fear, but he who conquers that fear.

Nelson Mandela

Success is never final failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.

John Wooden

The opposite of courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.

Jim Hightower
A mother’s wish for her daughters . Every day living requires courage. Photo by Thierry Nikolaeff @terydiving featuring Joanne & Alize Reed. Dress by Nathalie Pezzotta-Davranche @lartisanecouture.

We all have varying degrees of courage. Finding courage can be the choice we make every day, often in the quietest of ways. There is great courage in living life to the fullest, living with authenticity and a sense of alignment with one’s most deeply held values. And sometimes, simply getting up every day and putting a foot in front of another is an act of immense courage.

Barbara Bonner

As Maya Angelou rightly said courage is a virtue and it is the most important one to cultivate because without it you cannot practice any of the other virtues consistently. When we work to develop courage, we both empower ourselves with the ability to confront problems head-on, as well as acquire the skills required to deal with life’s inevitable challenges.

And this my dear daughters is Your Quest. Be courageous.

A mother’s wish for her daughters. Have a fighting spirit. When the going gets tough, be tougher.

We live every day with the knowledge of our staggering fragility, and we know how physiologically vulnerable our body and mind can be. We are aware that terrible outcomes are always possible and often probable. Your Quest as a human being is to protect yourself against the danger of losing your life but also against the danger of losing your mind. When the going gets tough, be tougher. Have a fighting spirit but choose your battles carefully. Some fights are worth fighting and others aren’t.

A mother’s wish for her daughters . Have a fighting spirit. Focus on your goal quietly and silently. Photo by Thierry Nikolaeff @terydiving featuring Alize Reed. Dress by Nathalie Pezzotta-Davranche @lartisanecouture.

Choose wisely which pursuits you spend your energies on. Do not waste your efforts on those that will not give you something positive in return. Be determined and independent. If at first, you don’t succeed, try again until you make it. It’s OK not to get it right the first time, so don’t let your failures prevent you from achieving your dreams. Focus on your goals, quietly and silently. And then when the time is right, trust your instincts, take action with swiftness and confidence. Be observant of people and your surroundings. Balance all the possibilities before you make a huge decision and act swiftly when required.

When the going gets tough, be tougher. Sure thing, but how? You can become tougher by removal. The solution to many problems in life is solved by removal, not by addition. Living a healthy life is more about removing sugar, processed food, and unhealthy snacks from our diet. Similarly, people become wealthy by reducing their exposure to going bust. Professional athletes win games by removing mistakes. You can become tougher by optionality. The more options you have, the more freedom you have to respond to unforeseen circumstances, thus reducing your fragility to unexpected events. If you have optionality you don’t need to be right that often. All you need is the wisdom not to do things that will hurt yourself and to be able to recognize favorable outcomes when they arise. You can become tougher through trials and errors. Try new things and find out through a process of trials and errors what works and what doesn’t. If an idea doesn’t work, make it fail quickly then move on to the next one. Play safe in some areas of your life and take some risks in others.

And this my dear daughters is Your Quest. Have a fighting spirit and when the going gets tough get tougher.

A mother’s wish for her daughters. Think for yourself.

A mother’s wish for her daughters . Think for yourself. Photo by Thierry Nikolaeff @terydiving featuring Joanne & Alize Reed. Dress by Nathalie Pezzotta-Davranche @lartisanecouture.

Thinking is difficult, that is why most people judge.

Carl Jung

Before you assume, learn the fact. Before you judge, understand why. Before you hurt someone, feel. Before you speak, think. Thinking is part of what makes us human. What differentiates humans from animals is our cognitive abilities such as fully developed language, reasoning capabilities, and the ability to make plans for the future. We are all born with the capacity to think, but not everyone is capable of critical thinking, and it is a skill that needs to be learned and practiced with discipline. We all think of ourselves as rational, strategic creatures, but in reality, humans are deeply irrational and are often governed by emotion rather than logic.

Moreover, we have a tendency to operate within our own echo chamber, where the only information that goes through our brain is information that validates our prior knowledge, vindicates our prior decisions, or sustains our existing beliefs. You should get into the habit from time to time of walking down the road less traveled, the one taken by critical thinkers. If you decide to walk down that road, it will require that you possess a certain fluidity of mind, some discipline, and be driven by the will to get to the truth of the matter rather than the urge to be righteous no matter what.

A mother’s wish for her daughters. Critical thinking helps you determine what’s real and what it is not. Photo by Thierry Nikolaeff @terydiving featuring Joanne & Alize Reed. Dress by Nathalie Pezzotta-Davranche @lartisanecouture.

Critical thinking means many things, but at heart, it is a search for the truth. Critical thinking helps you determine what is real and what it is not. But before you are able to exercise your cognitive ability to think critically, you need to have a certain base of knowledge as a starting point. You can only think critically about things you have knowledge of, you can’t really think deeply if you haven’t spent time mastering a body of knowledge related to that thinking.

The problem these days is that we are living in a world of information overload, data about almost everything is available to all who wish to access it at the click of a button. We are constantly bombarded by a steady stream of information (sometimes misinformation, exaggerations, and mischaracterizations) about a whole range of subject matters, making it very difficult to know what and who to believe. Critical thinking is important because you need this skill in order to navigate your way through all the information, misinformation, and disinformation that is being served to all of us on a daily basis on all media platforms.

Do not relinquish your power to think critically on someone else even if that person goes by the name of Expert. It is important to note that society needs experts because those people know a thing or two about their own area of expertise, they are specialized in their field and are being paid to share their knowledge, wisdom, and experience with the world at large. Having said that, whenever you decide to ask an expert for his advice on a particular matter, I suggest you put your critical thinking hat on to ensure that you fully understand the advice you are being given, the scope and limitations of the adviser’s expertise, his or her ability to see the problem in its proper context, the possibility that these experts may be subject to bias and in the worst-case scenario, the possibility that the expert may be wrong. History is full of anecdotes showing that even the experts can be wrong.

Trying to nail down the authenticity of anything and verify our knowledge about the world is a tall order. We expect Facebook, Twitter TikTok, and Google to filter the truth for us rather than putting in the hard work to do some thinking for ourselves. The problem these days is that the media is trying to spin everything you see and everything you hear. White is black and black is white. Use your discernment, look out for inconsistencies, trust your instinct. Don’t accept things at face value, ask questions, look under the surface, lift the veil.

And this my dear daughters is Your Quest. , think for yourself.

If you wish to support my work you can purchase my book This is Your Quest online at BookLocker, from Amazon, or from Barnes & Noble. The Ebook version is available on Amazon (Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Nook), Apple (iBooks) & Kobo. Check out my Amazon Author Page here or my listing on Booksradar.com.  

You can also follow me on my  FaceBook Page and sign up for a Free Guide that I wrote for women to remind them that they should give themselves permission to be all that they can be.

metamorphosis – How does one become a butterfly?

Metamorphosis. Photo by Thierry Nikolaeff featuring Joanne Reed

Metamorphosis. How does one become a butterfly? The butterfly has one of the most fascinating life cycles of all creatures. It starts its life as an egg perched on a leaf. When the egg finally hatches, a caterpillar emerges from the egg. The whole raison d’être of the caterpillar is to eat as much as possible in order to reach its desired growth. During this stage, the caterpillar will outgrow and shed its skin as many as four or five times. As soon as the caterpillar is done growing and it has reached its full length and weight, it takes refuge into a cocoon, also known as the chrysalis, where it can safely rest and digest all the food that has been consumed in the previous stage.

Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly

Unknown Author

Though the chrysalis appears unchanged from the outside, there is a dramatic transformation taking place inside, this process is called metamorphosis, whereby the body of the caterpillar is slowly dissolving to create a brand-new being. At last, in the final stage of its metamorphosis, the fully developed butterfly is ready to emerge from the chrysalis. The butterfly breaks free from the cocoon with wings that are folded and wet, so more rest time is necessary to allow blood to flow into the wings.

Finally, when the wings are fully dry, the butterfly is ready to take flight and share its beauty with the world. If we look closely at the process of the butterfly transformation from one state to another state, we see it is not an easy process. It takes time and each phase is necessary before the next stage can take place.

Metamorphosis. How does one become a butterfly?

Metamorphosis. Photo by Thierry Nikolaeff @ terydiving featuring Joanne Reed in the role of the Butterfly-Mermaid. Dress by Nathalie Pezzotta-Davranche @lartisanecouture – Ile de la Reunion.

From the confines of my Island (Ile de la Reunion), I had an amazing underwater photoshoot experience thanks to a scuba diver photographer by the name of Thierry Nikolaeff @terydiving and an amazing dressmaker by the name of Nathalie Pezzota-Davranche (@lartisanecouture. For a short moment in time, I felt like a butterfly who just came out of the Chrysalis; the result looks (literally) breath-taking but the process was far from easy. I was fairly nervous at the thought of doing those underwater photoshoots, because I have never done this before, and I didn’t know if I could pull it off. Being an island girl, swimming was something that I learned to do from a very young age; I have always been a good swimmer and I always felt comfortable in the water, but it took me a little while to understand the technicalities of posing for pictures underwater in an amazing dress, trying to look light, elegant, not out of breath and above all acting like a butterfly-mermaid who feels totally in her element being underwater. There are no tricks in these pictures just me, an amazing dress, and a scuba diver photographer.

What I learned during that experience of being a butterfly-mermaid is that, when you are ready to display your new you to the world, move forward with courage, while recognizing the fragility of your new wings and when things don’t work out the way you expected, best to let go of your expectation. It is natural for human beings to seek validation; we thrive on being seen and being appreciated for our work and effort. We all want to become a beautiful butterfly admired by the people around us and for the most ambitious admired by the whole world. But the reality is many of our endeavors will turn into tiny moths instead, and that’s OK. We have to resist the temptation to be driven only by the desire to create something grandiose and earth-shattering; it is OK to shoot for the stars, but if you don’t get there, it is also OK to be fully satisfied with whatever emerges from the chrysalis, for nature has a need for moths as well as beautiful butterflies.

Metamorphosis. What I learned being a butterfly for one day?

Metamorphosis. Life is a dance. Photo by Thierry Nikolaeff @terydiving featuring Joanne Reed in the role of the Butterfly-Mermaid. Dress by Nathalie Pezzotta-Davranche @lartisanecouture. Ile de la Reunion.

The butterfly is considered a wonder of nature, it symbolizes personal transformation, changes, rebirth, and the lightness of being. The butterfly as a spirit animal will remind you that life is a dance. You should not take things so seriously. Transformation and changes don’t have to be traumatic. They can be sweet and gentle, so you can accept them with grace and joy. I invite you to emulate the transformation process of the butterfly when you are working on your own transformation and growth.

The caterpillar stage.

In this stage of the butterfly’s life (which follows right after the hatching from an egg) the main task is consumption. For us, we can assimilate this stage with the stage of growth when we are consuming as much knowledge and training as we can about something new that we want to understand and master. This is the stage when we learn how to master our craft, and it is also the occasion for us to keep an open mind about how things were redone and shed old ideas, concepts, and habits that don’t work anymore. Sometimes we have to unlearn the things we learned and take the path less traveled by. This is often a stage of great excitement and energy as we enjoy the flow of creativity and inspiration it brings; but the learning process can also bring with it its fair share of hard work and loneliness.It is important that we do not rush through this stage and have the patience to go through the not-so-glamourous part of the learning process.

A house built on sand won’t last very long. In the olden days, if you wanted to enter a profession you had to find a master who will be willing to take you under his wings and enter into an apprenticeship to learn the craft. The normal length of an apprenticeship was 10 years; learning the craft required patience discipline and dedication. The modern concept of this is the 10,000 hours required to master a skill as described by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers.

Metamorphosis. Photo by Thierry Nikolaeff @terydiving featuring Joanne Reed in the role of the Butterfly-Mermaid. Dress by Nathalie Pezzotta-Davranche @lartisanecouture. Ile de la Reunion.

“Anyone who would spend ten years absorbing the techniques and conventions of their field, trying them out, mastering them, exploring and personalizing them, would inevitably find their authentic voice and give birth to something unique and expressive. Embrace slowness as a virtue in itself.

Robert Greene

We have a tendency to want to take the quickest, easiest path to our goals, we are impatient and want to see results quickly, but remember “there is no elevator to success. You have to take the stairs.” The best way to cultivate our natural impatience is to cultivate a kind of pleasure in pain – like an athlete, you come to enjoy rigorous practice, pushing past your limits, and resisting the easy way out.

The Chrysalis stage.

In this stage, the caterpillar takes refuge in a protective cocoon where they can safely rest and conduct its metamorphosis quietly and privately. Human beings tend to skip that stage or confuse it with a period of a downturn or treat it as a failure. In fact, this stage is a necessary stage where you should learn the art of being still. What does stillness mean? Stillness means to be steady while the world spins around you.

Socrates tells us that philosophy begins with wonder, and wonder is rooted in stillness. Other philosophers from various schools of thought have come to a similar conclusion, namely that the ultimate destination in our life is to master the stillness that is required to become masters of our own life. Stillness is an important tool on our journey to find clarity. The ability to see clearly not only when you are meditating but in the midst of conflict when you are frustrated, angry or scared, will help you find a more logical, less emotional response and give you choices to do things different of do nothing at all.

In your own journey to become a butterfly, don’t forget that the process is never easy and requires much patience, and remember …

Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly

Unknown author

And this my dear friend, is your quest.

If you wish to support my work you can purchase my book This is Your Quest online at BookLocker, from Amazon, or from Barnes & Noble. The Ebook version is available on Amazon (Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Nook), Apple (iBooks) & Kobo. Check out my Amazon Author Page here or my listing on Booksradar.com.  

You can also follow me on my  FaceBook Page and sign up for a Free Guide that I wrote for women to remind them that they should give themselves permission to be all that they can be.

How Contemplating Death Could teach us how to live

How contemplating death can teach us how to live. Photo by Toa 55 via feeepik.com

Death is a difficult topic of conversation. People would rather not think about or talk about death. While we all know that we will die, this is a fact upon which few wish to dwell. Even though, each day countless individuals reach an untimely demise in the prime of their life, rarely do we contemplate that this risk hangs over our head as well. Despite its inevitability, death is one of the least discussed events in our lives. This is the reason why I decided to dwell on this a little, steering clear of the sordid and morbid aspect of death but choosing instead to focus on the positive aspect of death and how contemplating death could teach us how to live.

There are countless reports of people experiencing near-death experiences to come back to the world of the living with a completely new mindset and a will to live their life more intentionally and more intensely. Although those out-of-the-ordinary experiences are interesting, it is not surprising to think that if you were at death’s door, went on the other side, then came back into the world of the living, for sure you will feel ecstatic and motivated to live your life differently. More difficult to tackle is trying to ascertain how contemplating death could teach us how to live without having to travel to the other side.

How contemplating death could teach us how to live

Philosophers spend their days thinking about the meaning of life and you can’t talk about life without having to talk about death. Countless philosophers, theologians, and psychologists did not hesitate to tackle this tricky subject and spent countless hours dwelling on it. Their conclusion: death is inextricably a part of life and lifelong consideration of death enriches rather than impoverishes life. These individuals recognized that far from a morbid practice, periodically thinking about death can be life-enhancing.

How contemplating death could teach us how to live and manage our energy . Photo by Onlyyouqj via freepik.com

Though the physicality of death destroys an individual, the idea of death can save him.

Irvin Yalom

The truth of the matter is that we mortals should be reminded from time to time of our own limitations. To live fully we must be cognizant of our limitations, the most significant of which is the scarcity and uncertain duration of time we are each granted. Failure to recognize this limitation and to live accordingly is one of the most tragic tendencies of mankind. We have a tendency to sacrifice and devalue the present in the false hope that there will always be a future in which to make amends. But the future does not belong to us. Contemplating death forces us to reorient ourselves towards the present moment, and to live life with a renewed sense of urgency.

When we contemplate the possibility of death, we should do it with moderation, like our exposure to the sun. Both are integral components of life but staring at either for too long only leads to debilitation — damaged eyes in the case of the sun and paralyzing anxiety in the case of death. Turning away completely from death, however, can be just as debilitating. For as the rays of the sun are needed to sustain life, periodic reflection on death seems necessary to imbue one’s life with a spark of urgency and an appreciation for the present that so many in the modern-day lack.

Academy of Ideas

How contemplating death could teach us how to manage our energy wisely

Contemplating death also forces us to better appreciate the value of the time we have and how we spend it.

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

Henry David Thoreau

Life is finite. I only have one life. What’s happening after nobody knows. So, if I know that my life is finite, I want to be extremely clear where and towards whom I should expand my energy. The law of thermodynamics tells us that energy cannot be created or destroyed it can only be transferred or transformed from one thing to another. If I have 10% of spare energy to allocate to someone and decide to give it to John, I have to know when I make this allocation that John is worthy of my time. If I give 10% of my energy to John, I have to know that he is going to do something good with it, because if I know that he is going to squander it, I will rather give it to someone else.

How contemplating death could teach us how to live and manage our energy. Photo by Toa 55 via freepik.com

People and things are the biggest consumers of energy. Some people lift you up and give you energy. Other people suck a tremendous amount of energy from you. The greatest impetus to manage your energy is death. Far too many people waste a great deal of time on things that contribute little of positive value to their life — be it unhealthy relations, dead-end jobs, or destructive habits. Often, we know we need to change, to stop wasting our time, and to focus our efforts elsewhere, but we delay and justify our delays with the excuse that in the future conditions will be more ideal. Kind reminder: Life is finite and waiting for ideal conditions to do anything is a dangerous game to play.

When the Dalai Lama was asked in an interview, what surprises him the most; he offered an insightful response: Man, because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as he is never going to die, and then dies never really lived.

Periodically contemplating death can also improve our relationships with others. If we are more cognizant of our own mortality, we will also become more aware that the lives of everyone we care about hang by a similarly thin thread. Never knowing when the final time will be that we see someone can make us more appreciative of the times we do spend with them.

“Limitation in the possibility of an enjoyment raises the value of enjoyment.”

Signmund Freud

How contemplating death could help us with our legacy

According to Ernest Becker, to act in this world with relative composure, human beings should alleviate the fear of death by leaving a legacy after they are gone. The antidote to the terror of death is to live a life that is significant. If one’s legacy lives on, then death is not one’s final destiny. One can keep the fear of death at bay by feeling that one’s life has a significance that will live on after one’s death. Each person needs to be a heroic contributor to the destiny of man.

“What man really fears is not so much extinction, but extinction with insignificance. Man wants to know that his life has somehow counted. If not for himself, then at least in a larger scheme of things, that it has left a trace, a trace that has meaning.”

Ernest Becker

And this my dear friend, is your Quest.

If you wish to support my work you can purchase my book This is Your Quest online at BookLocker, from Amazon, or from Barnes & Noble. The Ebook version is available on Amazon (Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Nook), Apple (iBooks) & Kobo. Check out my Amazon Author Page here or my listing on Booksradar.com.  

You can also follow me on my  FaceBook Page and sign up for a Free Guide that I wrote for women to remind them that they should give themselves permission to be all that they can be.

The Importance of Spaces-in-Between

The importance of the spaces-in-between - Photo by Doomu via freepik.com

“Horror Vacui” — Nature abhors a vacuum. Aristotle coined the phrase that expresses the idea that unfilled spaces go against the laws of nature and physics and that every space needs to be filled with something. But, is this right? I am thinking that applying this concept of horror vacui to our life may not be such a good idea after all. I am thinking that instead of filling up all the available space that we have, we should instead keep those spaces in-between empty to reflect, to pause, to re-energize, to find ourselves. We should not underestimate the importance of the spaces-in-between.

It’s the silence between the notes that makes the music. It is out of the silence of the gap, or that space between our thoughts, that everything is created, including our own bliss .

Wayne Dyer

The spaces-in-between are critical to our physical and mental health

The spaces-in-between are critical for our physical and mental health- Photo by Peter Kai via freepik.com

We should never underestimate the power of the spaces in-between. If I wrote this article without any spaces in between the words and with no spaces in between the paragraphs, it will no doubt turn into an incomprehensible black mass of letters aligned one next to another, that will make no sense to anyone. The spaces in between the words are critical, without those spaces, the whole text will just be gobbledygook.

Spaces- in-Between moments in our life are also vital for our physical and mental state of mind. We all know the benefits of staying active and getting regular exercise, but whether you are training for a competition or making sure that you are keeping up with your fitness regime, more isn’t always better. Rest days are just as important as exercise. Taking regular breaks allows your body to recover and repair, and skipping those rest days may lead you to overtrain or burn out. Rest is essential for muscle growth. Exercise creates microscopic tears in your muscle tissue; during rest, cells called fibroblasts repair the muscle. This helps the tissue heal and grow, resulting in stronger muscle.

Life is busy, there is so much to do and take care of on a day-to-day basis, being this and that and everything in between. As soon as one task is accomplished another one is making its way on our to-do list. The result may be exhaustion and a feeling of discontent. We have to prioritize the space we put in-between moments in our life. We have to learn to press the pause button more often. Life is not an ever-ending checklist or a destination. It is a journey that should be punctuated by pauses and moments of reflection where there is nothing to do but just enjoys the silence, enjoy the quietness and the preciousness of that Space-in-Between moments.

Space-in-Between moments don’t have to be moments of silence or deep meditation, it can be anything that allows you to do something that makes you feel joyful and peaceful such as taking a minute or two to smell a flower, walk barefoot on the grass, walk in the rain without a care in the world.

There is something that is empowering and freeing about spaces-in-between

There is something empowering and freeing about the spaces-in-between – Photo by Peter Kai via freepik.com

Holocaust survivor and world-renowned psychiatrist and author Viktor Frankl taught that the space in between is what differentiates humans from all the other animals. He wrote in his memoir “Man’s Search for Meaning” that between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

When you are intentional, aware, and awake, life is naturally spacious. The next question is how do we cultivate that spaciousness? First, you have to switch off all the noise around you, start with switching off your TV, and all your electronics. The constant stimulus of technology prevents us from discovering the depth, meaning, and substance found in the stillness of the in-between spaces.

“All of humanity’s problems stems from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone” Blaise Pascal.

Too often our minds are caught in a cycle of stimulus and mindless distractions, practicing the art of being still, and experiencing more space-in-between moments will definitely help us unclutter our minds. When we find the time to pause and to observe from a neutral place, we begin to see what is. From that place, you can find your way back from the confusion and chaos of life and you will be able to get a better vantage point about yourself and the world around you. You will get some clarity about who you are, where you want to go, what you want to be and you will be able to connect with the people around you in an optimum manner.

Stillness is an attainable path to enlightenment, excellence, greatness, and happiness, it can inspire new ideas, sharpens perspective, and illuminate the mind. Stillness slows the ball down so we can hit it generates a vision, helps us resist the passion of the mob, and makes space for gratitude and wonder. The Spaces-in-Between moments are where we often find some of the greatest riches of life.

And this my dear friend, is your Quest.

If you wish to support my work you can purchase my book This is Your Quest online at BookLocker, from Amazon, or from Barnes & Noble. The Ebook version is available on Amazon (Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Nook), Apple (iBooks) & Kobo. Check out my Amazon Author Page here or my listing on Booksradar.com.  

You can also follow me on my  FaceBook Page and sign up for a Free Guide that I wrote for women to remind them that they should give themselves permission to be all that they can be.

Back home

Life is a journey. Enjoy the ride. Photo taken by Joanne Reed. Saint Philippe. Ile de la Reunion.

I have always had great difficulties answering the question “Where are you from?” This seemingly innocuous question always throws me back a little because I don’t have a simple answer to give to that question without having to explain my whole life story including giving an impromptu geography lesson to the person asking the question. I was born and raised on Réunion Island, a place that most people on the planet have never heard about. Location: Indian Ocean. Tropic of Capricorn. Coordinates: 21.11 degree South Latitude. 55.53-degree East Longitude. Official language French & Creole. I am a French national married to an English man and I have spent the past 30 years living overseas (England, USA, New Zealand, South Korea.) I recently reentered my homeland to settle back on my island. Coming back to Réunion Island after so many years away has made me think about the concept of Home Sweet Home.

Home sweet home

Home sweet home. Case Creole. L’entre-Deux. Photo by Joanne Reed.

Home is a fluid concept, and it means different things to different people. For a lot of people, home is strongly connected to one particular place where you operate within familiar landscapes, sounds, and smells, a common language, with family and friends around you. It is the place where things are predictable and secure. But home is more than your birthplace; home is the place where you feel comfortable as a family member, as a member of society, as a friend, it is the place where you feel that you belong, and where you feel involved with its surroundings.

My two daughters were a bit confused about this concept of home when they were younger. We were living in South Korea at that time making regular trips to England, Australia, and Reunion to visit family members during school vacation. I remember one particular conversation I had with my eldest daughter, Maya who was 9 or 10 at the time, “Mummy, where is home?”. I knew that she was getting a bit confused with this concept, so I thought carefully about the type of answer I should offer to her and said: “Home is where your family is”. She thought about this a little bit, and I knew when she smiled back, that I somehow managed to clear all the confusion that was running through her head with one simple sentence -“Home is where your family is”. From that day onwards, everything was clear for Maya, our immediate family was living in Korea, where both of her parents were working and where she and her youngest sister were going to school; so, Korea was home. We have family living in England, in Australia, and on Reunion Island, and traveling to those places to meet up with them took us to another one of our homes. All those places were also home to my daughters whenever we visited them.

Away from home

Back Home. Case Creole. Photo by Joanne Reed – L’Entre-Deux, Ile de la Reunion

When I was a child, I dreamed of the day when I would leave my island which felt very small and very insular. I wanted to travel and see the world. Foreign lands like the USA and Europe had an iconic status to me. I wanted to go there and see for myself what it was like to live in those places.

I feel blessed that my studies, my career as a lawyer, and my husband helped make my dream of living and working in foreign lands a reality. I lived and worked in San Francisco (USA), London (UK), Auckland (New Zealand), and Seoul(South Korea.)

Living and working in those countries taught me a lot about the country itself but also about myself. I learned that I have a great capacity to adapt to changes, meet and connect with lots of different people, blend in and operate happily as a stranger in a strange land.

People develop a strong emotional attachment to the places they live because their physical surroundings play an important role in creating a sense of meaning and organization in their lives. The result is that the place where we live is closely tied to who we are as a person. Living in big cities such as San Francisco, London and Seoul fitted perfectly to who I was when I was a young lawyer working hard and trying to find her place in the working environment. Many years later, my aspirations are different. I aspire for peace and quiet, I want to live in a comfortable and close to nature kind of environment.

Back home

Back Home. La Chappelle. Cilaos – Photo by Joanne Reed. Ile de la Reunion

Life events have sent me back home on my island after 30 years of living overseas. I must be honest, I had mixed feelings about this return back home. I wasn’t sure if I could find my place among the locals after so many years away. I am happy to say that my return back home went really well, thanks to the amazing network of family and friends that I have retained here on the island. Managing to keep those connections alive over the years was so worth it. There is a special type of comfort in knowing that your friends and family are here for you, that they will back you up, cheer you up, understand you and take care of you. And it is comforting to know that whether you are near or far love will always hold you close.

After so many years spent overseas, I have learned that there is no such thing as the perfect place. The perfect place to live does not exist, there are advantages and disadvantages everywhere you go. There is always a mixed bag of good and bad. You have to make the most of what your current location is offering you, and you have to make do with the inconveniences and unpleasantness of things that irritate you with the place where you live.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” Marcel Proust.

Island living has plenty of advantages. The beach is never far away, and the mountains are a drive away. Family and friends are plenty and as for opportunities, it is up to you to make them happen. I am having lots of fun re-discovery my island and looking at it with fresh eyes. I appreciate the beauty the island has to offer, its clean air, the amazing sceneries, and the people who inhabit it. When I wake up every morning I am trying to look at my new surroundings with fresh eyes and not through a veil of memory and assumptions.

People have a tendency to take people and places around them for granted. Familiarity makes us forget how blessed we are to be connected to this particular person or to be living in a particular environment. Once things become familiar to us, we no longer see them. We must become more intentional and see those things and those people with a pair of fresh eyes. It is easy for people to put a label on everything and everyone, based on some interactions that happened in the past. When we interact with someone, we should try to put a fresh eye on this particular interaction and resist the temptation to bring our past experience with that person as the only criteria to rely on, thinking that we already know what that person is all about. People changes, a good person can turn into a bad person and a bad person can turn into a good person at any given moment. Don’t make assumptions about people based on your past experience with them. Keep your interaction with them fresh.

Coming back home after many years overseas made me realize that home is where your friends and family are. Home is not a place, it is a feeling. Keep looking at life and people with a fresh pair of eyes.

And this, my dear friend, is your Quest.

If you wish to support my work you can purchase my book This is Your Quest online at BookLocker, from Amazon, or from Barnes & Noble. The Ebook version is available on Amazon (Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Nook), Apple (iBooks) & Kobo. Check out my Amazon Author Page here or my listing on Booksradar.com.  

You can also follow me on my  FaceBook Page and sign up for a Free Guide that I wrote for women to remind them that they should give themselves permission to be all that they can be.

work it.

Work it. Photo by Wayhome via freepik.com

Work is part of our lives, and it starts from the day we are born. As brand-new infants, we have to figure out a way to drink that milk that will keep us alive whether it comes directly from our mother or from a bottle, and for a little person, it requires effort and hard work getting through that bottle. As a toddler, we have to work our way through a nursery. As a child we have to start doing some real hard work going through school to learn A, B, C. As young adults we leave high school with our diploma to walk straight into university. After a few years on Campus, we leave with a degree to walk straight into a job that will keep us busy for the next 30 to 40 years, whilst working on building a family and a home at the same time. Finally, we get to have a break in our olden days to enjoy some peace and quiet time during our retirement, where the only work we have to do is to babysit our grandchildren from time to time.

We can’t escape the fact that work is part of who we are and what we do. Some people say work is a curse, and labor is a misfortune, and for sure if we are given the choice to laze around or to do some work, most people would jump at the chance to laze around. But how long can you stay satisfied laying down on your sofa doing nothing? What if we can make work our passion? I say, work it and let’s make our life a work of art.

Work it.

Hard work is always the baseline of great achievements. Photo by wayhome Studio via freepik.com

Being successful at something requires hard work, sweat, tears, discipline, and patience. In the olden days, if you wanted to enter a profession you had to find a master who was willing to take you under his wings and enter into an apprenticeship to learn the craft. The normal length of an apprenticeship was 10 years; learning the craft required patience, discipline, and dedication. The modern concept of this is the 10,000 hours required to master a skill as described by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. Hard work is always the baseline of great achievements.

Robert Greene called this Mastery. He wrote a whole book about it. “

“Anyone who would spend ten years absorbing the techniques and conventions of their field, trying them out, mastering them, exploring and personalizing them, would inevitably find their authentic voice and give birth to something unique and expressive. Embrace slowness as a virtue in itself.”

Robert Greene

Olympians become at the top of their games by investing years of their lives into training, by getting their body ready to perform at its optimum level, and by building the strength of character and mental toughness that is necessary to become a champion; the same applies to your life as well. There is always work to be done and this is best describe by Maya Angelou who wrote a poem titled Women’s work. Below is a short extract from that poem.

Women’s work by Maya Angelou

I’ve got the children to tend. The clothes to mend

The floor to mop. The food to shop

Then the chicken to fry. The baby to dry

I got company to feed. The garden to weed

I’ve got shirts to press. The tots to dress

I gotta clean up this hut. Then see about the sick

And the cotton to pick…

Work of art.

Make your life a work of art. Photo by Wayhome Studio via freepikc.com

For a lot of people, work is just something they have to do to earn a living, put a roof over their head, pay their bills and put food on the table. For the lucky ones (a small minority) work is their passion. Who wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to turn their passion into their work? For some people finding their passion is easy, they were born knowing what it was; what is less easy is to get started and to do it consistently. For others, finding their passion is not so obvious. The problem is that a lot of people believe that their passion is hiding somewhere, maybe behind a tree or underneath a rock. The truth is that our passion comes first from doing things, and then doing them right.

We should get into the habit of injecting passion, not all the things that we do. If we do this consistently, a time will come when something stands out above all the other things, and that is the very thing that we should devote more time to doing passionately. That’s all there is to it, just do it. Work it! But what if you have no passion to create anything? In that case, the only thing you have to do is to listen to the philosopher Carl Jung.

“If you have nothing at all to create, then perhaps you create yourself. To give style to one’s character is a great and rare art.”

Carl Jung

How about turning yourself into a work of art? Maybe the healthiest person you could be? Or maybe a deep philosophical thinker? And when you got it, flaunt it.

“Consider making your life a work of art. You have yourself to begin with and a time of uncertain duration to work on it. You do not have to be who you are, even though you may be quite content with who and what you are; it will not be hard for you to think of something greater than you might become; it need not be something spectacular or even something that will attract any notice from others. What it will be is a kind of excellence that you project for yourself and then attain. Something you can look at with honest self-appraisal and be proud of. Make your life a work of art!

Richard Taylor

Work-In-Progress

I like to think of myself as Work-In-Progress. I work hard, perspire a lot during the process. I cry many tears along the way, get deflated when the outcome doesn’t match the input of energy I invested in the project, but I made it my quest to make my life a work of art. When you glance over my work, you are catching a glimpse of my soul. I march to my own beat, and wildly dance to my own rhythm, as I turn my passion into my work. Make your life a work of art.

And this my dear friend is your Quest.

If you wish to support my work you can purchase my book This is Your Quest online at BookLocker, from Amazon, or from Barnes & Noble. The Ebook version is available on Amazon (Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Nook), Apple (iBooks) & Kobo. Check out my Amazon Author Page here or my listing on Booksradar.com.  

You can also follow me on my  FaceBook Page and sign up for a Free Guide that I wrote for women to remind them that they should give themselves permission to be all that they can be.

How much is enough?

How much is enough? Photo by Drobotdean via freepik.com

How much is enough? We often want more than we have now. More money, more gadgets, better furniture, a better house, a better car, more clothes, more shoes, more success. We live in a consumer culture, where our needs, want and desire can be satisfied very easily. We don’t even have to get out of bed to get those things, we can just browse the internet, click a few buttons, get our credit card out et voila! The object of your need, want and desire can be delivered to your front door.

As soon as we fulfill one need, another one comes to replace it, as soon as we purchase something we really need or want, we fantasize about owning another item and it goes on and on. We are all suffering to a certain extent from sins of luxury. The more we have the more we want. Where does necessity end and excess begin? How much is enough? There isn’t one answer to the question of How much is enough; there are as many answers as there are people on this planet. And even when you think that you found out the answer to that question, that answer will no doubt change over time as your goals change, unexpected events and challenges may come along your way, that will make you change your definition of how much is enough?

What does enough mean?

Enough is the quality of knowing that you have everything you need and want but nothing in excess, nothing that burdens you. Having enough money will make your life comfortable and easy but having too much money could give you sleepless nights and could bring with it its fair share of stress and worries. Enough doesn’t mean the just bare necessities of life, i.e., food, water, shelter, and enough money to get by. That’s not really enough. Enough means having enough to live, and enough to be happy, and enough to thrive. You don’t want to just survive; you want to thrive. You want to be good at what you do and do what you love.

What does enough mean? Photo by Halayalex via freepik.com

“My mission in life is not just to survive, but to thrive, and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”

Maya Angelou

People who have come to know how much is enough for them display the following qualities:

1. They have a sense of purpose larger than their own needs, wants, and desires. Desires are infinite. Fill one desire and another emerges. A sense of purpose directs your attention to only those things that will really serve your mission, whether your mission is to make money, raising children, or growing a garden.

2. They know the value of money; they know where it comes from and where it goes. If you don’t know how much you have, you can never have enough.

3. They rely on their internal compass to let them know if something is really adding to their happiness or is just more stuff to use for a minute or two, then store, forget and ultimately sell or give away. Their sense of enoughness isn’t based on what others have or don’t have. They have no interest in keeping up with the Joneses.

4. They have a sense of responsibility for themselves, their family, and the world at large, a sense of how their lives and choices fit into the larger social and spiritual scheme of things.

5. They raise their children in an environment where they get enough opportunity to build character, to fail, to contemplate, and pick themselves again.

You are enough

You are enough? Photo by Drobotdean via freepik.com

According to Melissa Camara Wilkins (Author of Permission Granted: Be Who You Were Made to Be and Let Go of the Rest), You are enough does not mean that you have been measured, considered, and judged and that you have finally earned the label of “enough”. It doesn’t mean that you‘ve worked long enough, tried hard enough, presented well enough. It’s simply who you are. You don’t have to be more, or do more, or buy more to be who you are meant to be. You are enough doesn’t mean that you are a final product, complete and finished, all done growing and changing and learning things forevermore. You are enough does not mean that you are all-powerful and perfect either. You are enough does not mean that you are everything.

You are enough does not mean that you have to be self-sufficient. It doesn’t mean that you don’t need anyone or anything. It means that you understand how much you do need, how small you are in the great grand universe – and you don’t need to be bigger than that. You are enough does not mean that you never need help. It doesn’t mean that you are flawless, or that you never make mistakes. Knowing that I am not perfect doesn’t mean that my flaws are the truest, most important thing about me, it just means that I acknowledge them, they are part of me. You are enough as you are, mess and all, beautiful and broken, showing up for life every day. That’s all you have to be and all you have to do.

You are enough doesn’t mean that you have to stay stagnant. Of course, there are things you might want to be more of. More open. More true. More authentic. More free. More connected. More intentional. More purposeful. Being enough means that you acknowledge your strengths and weaknesses, and move forward with purpose, at your own rhythm. Life does not need to be an endless treadmill. The truth is, we – especially women, but all of us, really – are swimming in a sea of expectations. And when you decide to let go of those expectations and give yourself permission to be who you really are, that is where freedom begins.

No matter how you feel, get up every day, dress-up, show-up and do the best you can until you know better, and when you know better do better. Maya Angelou… and that’s enough.

I wish you enough

I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright.

I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more.

I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive.

I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger.

I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.

I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess,

I wish you enough “Hellos” to get you through the finale “Goodbye”

Unknown author.

And this, my dear friend, is your Quest.

If you wish to support my work you can purchase my book This is Your Quest online at BookLocker, from Amazon, or from Barnes & Noble. The Ebook version is available on Amazon (Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Nook), Apple (iBooks) & Kobo. Check out my Amazon Author Page here or my listing on Booksradar.com.  

You can also follow me on my  FaceBook Page and sign up for a Free Guide that I wrote for women to remind them that they should give themselves permission to be all that they can be.

What is empathy and why it is important

The term “empathy” is used to describe a wide range of experiences. What is empathy and why it is important? Emotion researchers generally define empathy as the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling. It is the ability to understand another person’s thoughts and feelings in a situation from their point of view, rather than your own.

Why is it important? Because if you learn how to emphasize with your friends, coworkers, and people around you and understand their point of view and where they are coming from you will be able to connect, communicate and interact with people at an optimum level, and use that understanding to guide your actions.

What is empathy?

The history of empathy comes from the German word Einfühlung, which means feeling into. The word was then introduced into the English language and was used initially to describe feelings towards aesthetics rather than human beings. For example, when you felt an emotional connection with a piece of artwork, you would use the word empathy. The work of philosophers and scientists helped expand the use of the word to people; they noticed that emphatic behaviors affect intimate relationships.

Recent experiments showed that physicians who attended communication skills training started showing more empathy. As a consequence, there were improved patient experiences, superior clinical outcomes, fewer medical errors, and higher physicians’ retentions. Empathy is not a born trait and doesn’t happen naturally for a lot of people, it can be taught, and it is an important skill to have when establishing intimate and professional relationships. Empathy is a conscious choice, but it needs practice, the more we practice empathy, the more intuitive and natural we become.

What is empathy and why it is important? Photo from freepik via freepik.com

Another experiment showed interesting results demonstrating how humans do and can feel the pain of someone else. In this experiment, sixteen female volunteers were sent electrical shocks throughout their bodies. Their brain activity was scanned, and the scientists were particularly interested in the activation of the pain matrix, which is a set of brain areas that consistently respond to painful stimuli. The surprising and interesting result of this experiment was that the spouses of these volunteers although unharmed also showed activation of the pain matrix.

This was one of the first studies that demonstrate that we do feel pain for others but in a much less intense form. What is really happening to our brain when we feel empathy for someone else? Magnetic resonance imaging shows that a neural relay mechanism will cause an individual to unconsciously copy another person’s mannerism, posture, or facial expression. This explains how we can relate and be emphatic to someone else.

Why is empathy important?

When you have empathy, you can understand what a person is feeling in a given moment, and you can understand why other people’s actions make sense to them. Empathy is important because it helps us have great social interactions. Some people have fantastic natural empathy and can pick up how someone else is feeling just by looking at them. Some people only have a tiny amount of natural empathy and won’t notice that you are angry until you start yelling. Most people are somewhere in the middle.

In a world where a lot of young people spend a tremendous amount of time playing violent games or watching violent movies, my question is does being exposed to violence decrease your ability to empathize with others? The short answer to this question is Yes, it does. There are plenty of studies that show that exposure to real life and media violence increases aggressive and anti-social behavior, making them less likely to feel empathy for another person.

A 2015 study shows that most 18-year-olds will observe up to 6000 acts of violence in movies and television in just one year; add to this the alarming statistics that 50-70% of 15-year-old have witnessed real-life violence or have been assaulted in one way or another. Experiencing a large amount of violence has been shown to decrease emotional and physiological reactivity. Other studies show that televised violence has both short-term and long-term effects on emotional desensitization.

According to the latest neuroscience research, 98% of people have the ability to feel empathy, we have an in-built capacity for stepping into the shoes of others and understanding their feelings and perspectives. The few exceptions are psychopaths, narcissists, and sociopaths who are people who are unable to understand or relate to other people’s feelings and emotions.

The takeaway from all of this is that we all have the capacity to demonstrate empathy, but not all of us will take the time to do that. Empathy is not a born trait, we have to practice this art.

Blog article written by Alize Reed.

And this, my dear friend, is your Quest.

If you wish to support my work you can purchase my book This is Your Quest online at BookLocker, from Amazon, or from Barnes & Noble. The Ebook version is available on Amazon (Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Nook), Apple (iBooks) & Kobo. Check out my Amazon Author Page here or my listing on Booksradar.com.  

You can also follow me on my  FaceBook Page and sign up for a Free Guide that I wrote for women to remind them that they should give themselves permission to be all that they can be.

Sport Has the Power to Inspire and Unite

Sport has the power to inspire and unite. Photo by Olga Guryanova via Unsplash.com

We are in the full swing of the Tokyo Olympics, athletes from around the world are gathered to compete and show the world what the best of the best can do. Sport has the power to inspire and unite. Behind every Olympic athlete, there is an incredible story of hard work, perseverance, discipline, pain, successes, and failures.

When you watch those athletes perform you are witnessing something very special; you see a special breed of humans who are passionate, dedicated, and on top of their game physically and mentally. When you experience the energy and anticipation that exist in a stadium full of fans and supporters cheering for their favorite teams and players, you can see that sport has the power to inspire and unite and it matters a great deal.

“Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand. Sport can create hope where once there was only despair. It is more powerful than government in breaking down racial barriers.” Nelson Mandela.

Nelson Mandela

Sports has the power to inspire and unite

In February 2018, the World Economic Forum posted an article entitled, The uniquely unifying power of sports, and why it matters. The author, Mark Ein, stated: “Any discussion of the power of sport has finally to include its importance as a vehicle to teach our youth – and the rest of us – the lessons of leadership, good health, teamwork, fair play, self-reliance, and continuous improvement.”

The world is a fractured place. There are conflicts between countries all over the globe, and also conflicts between people from the same country. Sport has the power to inspire and unite. Throughout history, people who otherwise have little in common have come together on neighborhood pitches and in packed stadiums, as fans and as players, and put those differences aside for the sake of their teams. Sport has the potential to unite people in times of extreme chaos and violence. Even in the most tumultuous of circumstances, sport gives people from all sides a respite from the endless conflict and violence and allows combatants to see each other once again as human beings instead of merely enemies.

The Olympic Truce can trace its origins back to 776 BC where the rulers of the time agreed to end any conflict for a week before and after the Olympic games in the spirit of sportsmanship and universal peace. The truce ensured that the host city was not attacked, and athletes and spectators could travel safely to the Games and peacefully return to their respective countries.

Sports has the power to inspire and unite in times of peace and war – Flashback

Sport has the power to inspire and unite. It has the power to inspire and unite Invictus. Photo by Olga Guryanova via unsplash.com

The 2009 movie Invictus starring Morgan Freeman who played President Nelson Mandela and Matt Damon who played Francois Pienaar, directed by Clint Eastwood tells the inspiring and true story of how Nelson Mandela joined forces with the Captain of South Africa’s rugby team, Francois Pienaar to help unite their country. Newly elected President Mandela knows his nation remains racially and economically divided in the wake of Apartheid. Believing he can bring his people together through the universal language of sport, Mandela gives his full support to South Africa’s rugby team (the Springboks) as they make their run to the 1995 Rugby World Cup Championship match.

South Africa is hosting the 1995 Rugby World Cup, that being the only reason the Springboks are even competing in the tournament as its years on the sideline of world rugby events has not made it world ranked. The Springboks were previously considered the team of white South Africa and had no support from the black section of the population. Mandela decides to place his support behind the Springboks; he reached out to captain Francois Pienaar to ask him to help him unite the country by achieving the unrealistic goal of the Springboks winning the World Cup. Carried by a wave of unwavering support from the population, the South African team progresses throughout the competition reaching the final and having as opponents the all-blacks from New Zealand (no need here to introduce the all blacks as their reputation as rugby powerhouse precedes them). Against all odds Springboks wins 15-12! Never underestimate the power of sport, this rugby game made a nation.

More recently, in the opening ceremony of the 23rd Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, we saw once again the power of sport, when athletes from North and South Korea marched together at the opening ceremony behind a unified Korean flag. The two nations even entered a combined women’s hockey team in one of the most dramatic gestures of reconciliation between them in decades. The two teams trained together in the lead-up to the Games, and they were supported by fans from both countries; North Korea allowed a delegation of North Korean fans to travel to Seoul to support their team.

Sports has the power to inspire and unite. Photo by Joanne Reed. Seoul, South Korea

Sport has once again proven to be an effective mechanism to break the impasse and get the countries not just talking but working together. l hope that the diplomatic momentum that was built in the Korean mountain community of Pyeongchang during the winter Olympics will continue. The amazing unifying ability of sport to allow individuals to cast aside their differences and come together in the spirit of the games amplify the unique place sports occupy as an instrument for unification that is strong enough to bring people together even during the most divisive times in human history.

Those images of South Korea and North Korea marching together at the Winter Olympics games carries a lot of emotion for me. Seoul holds a very special place in my heart, it was my home for many years, and it is the country where my two daughters were raised. The conflict between the North and the South is something that the Koreans have been living with for decades and seeing the South and North Korean Athletes side by side during the winter Olympic games was a spectacular and historic moment.

Never underestimate the power of sports, it can inspire, unite and heal a nation.

And this, my dear friend, is your Quest.

If you wish to support my work you can purchase my book This is Your Quest online at BookLocker, from Amazon, or from Barnes & Noble. The Ebook version is available on Amazon (Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Nook), Apple (iBooks) & Kobo. Check out my Amazon Author Page here or my listing on Booksradar.com.  

You can also follow me on my  FaceBook Page and sign up for a Free Guide that I wrote for women to remind them that they should give themselves permission to be all that they can be.

What if we are being played?

You can be free in an unfree world. Photo by Nomadsoul1 via Freepik.com

Niccolo Machiavelli was an Italian diplomat, philosopher, politician, historian, and writer who lived during the Renaissance. He is best known for his political treatise The Prince, written in 1513 where he articulated the Divide-and-Conquer policy. Fast forward to the modern era and there is no denying the fact that the world is more divided than ever; everything is politicized and polarized. Sensitivities and emotions are at an all-time high. In this blog article, I am going to ask you to step back a little to look at things from a different angle and to ask yourself the question: what if we are being played?

Machiavelli’s purpose in writing The Prince was twofold: 1) to show a ruler or would-be ruler how best to maintain his political power and influence and 2) to redeem himself in the eyes of the ruler of Florence after his fall from grace, having been imprisoned and banished from the city from the rulers of the time. Reading The Prince will not leave you indifferent, it will no doubt shock you by its bluntness and Machiavellic genius.

Machiavelli argued in this book that a sovereign (who he calls a prince) must from time to time resort to unethical and immoral policies and practices in order to maintain control and maximize their own power and influence. In other words, a ruler should lie, cheat, break promises and so on to strengthen or maintain his control while pretending to promote the welfare of the people. The end justifies the means. Machiavelli formulated his political theory after years of observing corrupt politics close up, having firsthand knowledge of all the dirty tricks and tactics that those rulers were using. This said, he accepts the fact that given the choice it is better to follow established moral and ethical precepts, except that politics is a tainted profession and being moral and ethical in politics can be a tall order.

“Saints passed their lives praying in monasteries or working in leper colonies. City hall was the domain of the devil. To survive in city hall, one had to adopt the tactics of the devil.”

Machiavelli

What if we are being played by a policy of divide and conquer?

What is we are being played? Forget divide and conquer do unite-and-conquer instead.Photo by Copperpie via freepik.com

One of Machiavelli’s key political strategies can be found in the Divide-and-Conquer-Policy. The divide-and-conquer policy allows the leaders to conquer their foes, and reinforce their ability to selfishly keep their positions of power and authority by creating intrigues and conflicts among the people leading them to fight against each other; leaving the ruler sitting comfortably on this throne eating popcorn and enjoying the show.

According to the Collins Dictionary, Divide and Conquer is “a concept that refers to a policy intended to keep someone in a position of power by causing disagreements among people who might otherwise unite against them. Divide and conquer is a strategy that has been used from the beginning of time and is still being used today. Peasants v Aristocrats, Rich v Poor, Black v White, Christian v Muslim, Men v Women, Straight vs Gay, Old v Young, Left v Right, Republicans v Democrats … and you can go on and on and on. Making people fight against each other serves the purpose of the rulers. There is a lot of discontent currently around the world, people are angry. The question is who benefits from it? The world is upside down and a lot of it doesn’t make sense. For more on this, feel free to check out my book “This Is Your Quest”.

The divide-and-conquer policy is widely used but is it really effective? Leaders who seek selfish interest and behave in a divide-and-conquer way, which hinders positive cohesive relationships, may not be rewarded with the respect and trust of their peers as a consequence. People may well realize that they are being played and if they are smart, they may decide to not play this divide-and-conquer game and decide to play unite-and-conquer instead.

What if you are being played and continue to act like two rats in a cage

What if we are being played? Ask yourself where those shocks are coming from. Photo by Ilin Serguey via freepik.com

A fascinating study with rats was conducted in 1966 by Roger Ulrich from the Michigan University in order to figure out if pain could be the cause and trigger of aggressive behavior. In this study, a single rat would be placed in a cage with an electrified metal grid floor. Painful electrical shocks were delivered randomly throughout the floor to the rat’s feet, causing the rat pain and making him utterly miserable. After a while, the experiment showed that the rat would eventually learn to tolerate those shocks, however uncomfortable.

Then the plot thickened, and a second rat was placed into the cage. Now, the 2 rats are being hit with electric shocks at the same time but instead of adjusting and tolerating these shocks, each rat now has a convenient object to blame for their discomfort, i.e. the other rat. The result is that those 2 rats would fight against each other sometimes to the death because of that anger.

This rat experiment can teach us a lot about people’s reactions to what is happening in the world at the moment. The rats fight each other because they can’t comprehend where the shocks are coming from. They don’t understand that there is behind the screen a man in a white lab coat pushing a button triggering those electric shocks. And this is also valid for humans, people fight each other because they are miserable, but more often than not they haven’t taken the time to find out what is really shocking them.

Currently, we are being shocked from all angles, we are shocked every day by the fear of death by a virus. We are shocked by a system that is taking away all our liberties bits by bits. Our ability to move freely to wherever we want is under assault. Our ability to be able to work and earn a living is in jeopardy. Our ability to be able to think the way we think is being questioned. Our ability to be resilient and independent is being hindered. We are shocked every day when we go to the shop and see the prices keep going up. We are shocked every day when our paychecks are being nibbled away by higher and higher taxes. But it is very difficult to understand the why, how, and what on earth of this story. The result is we are suffering from shock-induced aggression that makes us point the finger at someone and direct our anger at that person or group of people.

How about pausing for a minute or two, to look at it from a different angle and take a wider perspective on things and ask ourselves the question: am I being played? Maybe I would be better off being united instead of being divided. How about stopping to participate in the divide-and-conquer game and starting to pay unite-and-conquer instead?

And this, my dear friend, is your Quest.

If you wish to support my work you can purchase my book This is Your Quest online at BookLocker, from Amazon, or from Barnes & Noble. The Ebook version is available on Amazon (Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Nook), Apple (iBooks) & Kobo. Check out my Amazon Author Page here or my listing on Booksradar.com.  

You can also follow me on my  FaceBook Page and sign up for a Free Guide that I wrote for women to remind them that they should give themselves permission to be all that they can be.