Tag Archives: Brene Brown

If this is Sunday, I must be in Sydney….

I left the Hill on Wednesday and will visit four cities before returning to Adelaide and leaving for Nepal.  A lovely, albeit busy time, of reconnecting and sharing.DSCN0121

And while journeys have allowed significant time for reflecting, there’s not so much time for writing. So….some favourite quotes and a photo or two – some flowers made using soothing Placid Blue and lotus buds to give the Samunnat ladies.

Over the last few days travel, I couldn’t believe how many women had obviously had plastic surgery. There is such a sameness about them all, a homogenised look, and (IMHO) it isn’t beautiful.  Ursula Le Guin so wisely says:

Beauty always has rules. It’s a game. I resent the beauty game when I see it controlled by people who grab fortunes from it and don’t care who they hurt. I hate it when I see it making people so self-dissatisfied that they starve and deform DSCN0118and poison themselves. Most of the time I just play the game myself in a very small way, buying a new lipstick, feeling happy about a pretty new silk shirt…[or wearing really fabulous jewellery. Ed]

Maybe it was because I was going to a school reunion that this resonated:

…I look at men and women my age and older, and their scalps and knuckles and spots and bulges, though various and interesting, don’t affect what I think of them. Some of these people I consider to be very beautiful, and others I don’t. For old people, beauty doesn’t come free with the hormones, the way it does for the young. It has to do with bones. It has to do with who the person is. More and moreDSCN0115 clearly it has to do with what shines through those gnarly faces and bodies.

Resilience, authenticity, courage in a face is more beautiful to me than a fine nose or full lips.

As Brene Brown says in The Gifts of Imperfection, authenticity is letting go of who we think we are supposed to be and embracing who we are right now.

Last week, when I tentatively practised embracing who I am right now (instead of the me I thought I was supposed to be) I could finish a task that had being hanging accusingly over my head for months.  Embracing the fact that I was a passionately enthusiastic volunteer who could ask for help (yup! revolutionary idea that one!) and not waiting until I was the fabulously computer literate graphic artist I thought I should be allowed me to get the job done.  It was good enough!

There is less evidence of plastic surgery in Nepal but the phenomenal sales of Fair and Lovely whitening cream suggests that the pursuit of idealised perfection is just as strong. Oh that my grand daughter could live in society where true inner beauty is valued, diversity celebrated, the weathering of age seen as signs of a long life well lived.

PS See Zed Nelson’s Love Me for more food for thought.  And Brainpickings for a cracker read every Sunday!

 

 

Lower Your Expectations

Many years ago at the start of a live performance by the gifted comedians Lano and Woodley, the audience was instructed to do something that we were told would magnify our enjoyment of the evening enormously. We were told to join hands, close our eyes and…lower our expectations.

IMG_0921My husband adopted this very quickly as a bit of a mantra for life but I resisted for years, not really understanding the real meaning, the profound truth that was contained in this seemingly comic act. It was only after years of suffering because I didn’t conform to my own exacting standards, or not attempting stuff because it would never be good enough, that I understood how lowering my expectations makes a difference.

In a recent post,  Jen Louden (and more of her later this week) explained what she means by lowering expectations and as I couldn’t do it any better myself, I am quoting her here:

Lowering your standards might sound like I’m saying “go ahead, do sloppy work” or “sure, watch another five episodes of House of Cards.” …That’s not lowering your standards. That’s resignation. Or collapsing.

Lowering your standards means removing the deadly weight of perfectionism, of standards so impossibly high you never meet them or, if you do, you raise the bar and keep going. No rest, no recognition, and forget celebration or satisfaction.

Lowering your standards is remembering that to be human means to be flawed. It is to learn to grow down into the truer shape of your real life, not the glossy fantasy life you keep thinking will arrive… someday. Nor is it to live a stunted life of less than true, less than what you desire.

Lowering your standards fosters progress in a human-scaled, mindful way. “This is what I can do right now and I’m doing it.”

She writes here about Conditions of Enoughness which is closely related.  I also relate it to Brene Brown’s wise counsel to embrace self compassion rather than setting ridiculous standards of perfection.  And my experience has been that practising more compassion towards myself has really helped me to be more genuinely compassionate to others.

It’s hard to know how to pictorially illustrate lowering your expectations so I am just including this photo of something that totally exceeded my expectations – our wonderful Lake Mungo National Park!

 

Something to remember #2

There is no such thing as creative people and non creative people. There are only people who use their creativity and people who don’t…the only unique contribution that we will ever make in this world will be born of our creativity…If we want to make meaning, we need to make art. Cook, write, draw, doodle, paint, scrapbook, take pictures, collage, knit, rebuild an engine, sculpt, dance, decorate, act, sing – it doesn’t matter.  As long as we’re creating, we’re cultivating meaning…

Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

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Beautiful pieces from Thimi Ceramics, Nepal.

Thank you darling Tony!

In her wonderful book The Gifts of Imperfection (which I reread regularly and refer to often!) , Brene Brown says:

Without exception, every person …who described themselves as joyful, actively practised gratitude and attributed their joyfulness to their gratitude practice.

She defines joy as being different to happiness: Happiness is tied to circumstances and joyfulness is tied to spirit and gratitude.

I try to incorporate gratitude into every day and to do that, I have a gratitude practice.  And often my gratitude is for the people in my life. Today I am particularly grateful for the presence in my life of gorgeous Tony Byrt who took the joy filled wedding photo that I posted here the other day.  For me, a central part of gratitude is connection and these photos of Tony’s seem to me to celebrate moments of connection.  I like that.  Several friends took great photos which we are all eagerly looking at, wondering how the professional ones could be much better!

I did add a thank you to the actual post but no-one will be seeing that…yesterday’s news.  And the observant reader will note that I mentioned Tony here in this website. Here is one more of his wedding photos-the other set of proud parents.  Truly, that’s it now.

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Brain Pickings

pbifxlx94sbrainThe magnificent Maria Popova describes herself as an interestingness hunter-gatherer and, in words that I relate to oh so well to, a Sherpa of curiosities. Her website Brainpickings is one of the highlights of my reading week! It is one of the few I actually subscribe to and the newsletter that comes each Sunday provides a week worth of interesting reading and links.  She says,

The core ethos behind Brain Pickings is that creativity is a combinatorial force: It’s our ability to tap into the mental pool of resources — ideas, insights, knowledge, inspiration — that we’ve accumulated over the years just by being present and alive and awake to the world, and to combine them in extraordinary new ways. In order for us to truly create and contribute to culture, we have to be able to connect countless dots, to cross-pollinate ideas from a wealth of disciplines, to combine and recombine these ideas and build new ideas — like LEGOs. The more of these building blocks we have, and the more diverse their shapes and colors, the more interesting our creations will be.

I loved reading about the seven lessons Maria has learnt in the seven years of reading, writing and living Brain Pickings.

She constantly turns up interesting writings, thoughts and observations on living the creative life and an absolute cracker is here.

She didn’t get me onto Brene but loves her too and that’s a good endorsement in my eyes. Read here where she introduces one of the books that has had a truly profound effect on every single day of my life and how I live it.

She finds fabulous writing about living a meaningful life, the kind of stuff that makes you want to stop reading and go out and live it. So…stop reading, go!