Time – Endurance Free Living

It Might Come In Useful

The 2 litre beer siphon.

Spring has arrived – although you wouldn’t think it from the weather – and with it the fearsome and inevitable spring cleaning.

My wife thinks I’m a terrible hoarder. There are a lot of piles of books and this and that around the house. I counter by asserting that, although there are a lot of things in the house, they are of high quality. The fact remains, however, that when we try to grab one thing, something else, or several other things, usually fall to the ground.

Exasperating.

Sufficiently exasperating for it to be time to do something about it.

So I started to put things up for sale on FB Marketplace.

Let’s be honest here.

If we haven’t used something for five or even ten years, then it’s really time to get rid of it unless there is a high emotional charge attached.

If you too are a hoarder, I can already hear your reply:

“But it might come in useful.”

I’ve often said this to myself.

But what if you change the refrain to this:

“It might come in useful – for someone else.”

Example:

I inherited a large 3-D mounted map of Switzerland from a business I ran with a partner over twenty years ago. That map has been propping up the wall at the end of our bed ever since we moved into the house in 2004. I would get up every morning and look at it and say to myself, “I really should sell that.”

Well, a few weeks ago I finally got around to putting up an advert on Marketplace. I knew perfectly well that otherwise the map would continue to prop up the wall for another ten years and that I would continue to look at it every morning and say to myself, “I really should sell that.”

It was time to allow the map to continue its useful life with someone else.

The person who eventually bought it was a huge fan of 3-D maps and was going to put it up in his home. Great!

When I became a naturalized Swiss citizen in 2017, I received a number of presents including a 2 litre jar of beer. Now this jar has a seal and was meant to be re-usable, but I discovered that as I drank the beer it got progressively flat. So I never re-filled it.

What to do? It seemed too well made (see photo above) to throw out in a glass recycling bin, and I thought it might come in useful – for someone else. At first, I put it up for sale for a derisory price, but still didn’t get any interest. So I decided to give it away for free. Instantly five people were interested, and one came through.

One less object around the house.

And so the process continues….

What I would say, and I’ve talked about this in another post entitled “Mental Clutter,” is that it’s actually not a good idea to wait ten or twenty years to get rid of something that you’re not going to use. Going back to the 3-D map, the fact that I looked at it every morning and thought it would be a good idea to sell it involved not just physical clutter but also mental clutter. The thought itself was clutter. And the longer you wait to get rid of the physical clutter, the longer the effects of the mental clutter will remain.

Now I get out of bed and look at the space where the 3-D map was and think, “What a good thing I managed to sell that!” The relief of having finally done something about it may be more positive than the “I really ought to sell it” thought, but it’s still mental clutter or scarring.

Much better not to be thinking about it at all and have more space in your mind for something useful.

The takeaway from this is that the sooner you make up your mind to get rid of something you don’t use, and act on it, the less physical – and mental – clutter you will have to deal with.

So the next time you look at something at home that you don’t use and say, “It might come in useful,” try changing the refrain to:

“It might come in useful – for someone else.”

It may help you to move on.

May your life never become an endurance test.

Love

Richard

Mental Clutter

Does your mind look something like this?

Well, here’s an exercise for the beginning of this year.

Write down all the recurrent thoughts that you have.

Doesn’t matter what they are about. Just write them down.

I mean the thoughts that keep on coming back over and over and have done for some time.

Let me give you an example.

A long time ago, I bought 10 coupons to go for a sauna at a local fitness gymn. There were 2 coupons left about five years ago.

Now I often drive through the village where the fitness gymn is situated and I’ve often thought that it was high time that I used up the last coupons.

But then I realised that I’d misplaced the coupons.

Now the thought became two:

“I really must find those coupons.”

“We really must use them up.”

More complicated.

I even looked for them once or twice without success.

I don’t know how many times I thought to myself that I must find those coupons or that I must use them up, but quite a few.

Finally, in November a friend came to visit.

As part of a general cleanup in preparation for his visit, I cleared off the piano in the living room.

Amongst the clutter, I came at last upon the coupons.

That got rid of one thought. Now we just had to use the coupons.

A couple of weeks ago, we finally got around to using them.

Great, I thought to myself. One less thing I have to think about.

Does this all sound familiar?

Physical clutter is easier to distinguish because it is physical. Mental and emotional clutter is more insidious and more difficult to eradicate.

Now I’m not suggesting a miracle cure for these thoughts that keep coming back to haunt us. You won’t get rid of them all in five minutes.

But I suggest you take a quiet moment to yourself to write down as many of them as possible.

Choose one that you can do something about.

Then do it.

That will be one less piece of clutter floating around in your mind.

Then try to do something about another one. And so on.

Don’t try to do everything at once. Just choose one at a time.

I guarantee you will feel better and you will have a little more space in your mental house to move around. Maybe even to think about things that you really want to.

Of course, if you’ve hung on to the thought for long enough, this isn’t quite the end of the process. It will leave a trace.

Now I drive through the village and think:

‘Thank God I found those coupons and used them up!’

Which is still a thought which doesn’t need to be there.

But at least it’s a positive one.

And eventually, I’ll be able to drive though the village and only think that occasionally or not at all.

It does, however, underline the importance of getting started.

The quicker you get on to these thoughts and resolve them, the quicker you can move on.

And the shorter the trace time.

I hope that 2019 brings you excellent health and your heart’s desires (as long as that hurts no one else!)

May your life never become an endurance test!

Love

Richard

About Cake

Brigitte, Cake and Kimono (not sure why).

“You can’t have your cake and eat it.”

I heard this a lot growing up.

For Brigitte, who is Swiss, and probably for other non-native speakers of the language of Shakespeare, this is actually a very confusing statement.

“I can’t understand it at all,” Brigitte has said on many occasions.

Which is understandable.

Because we English often use the verb “have” to mean “eat,” as in “have breakfast” or “have a sandwich.”

So for her, it’s like saying, ” You can’t eat your cake and eat it.”

Which doesn’t make much sense.

If we choose another verb, such as “keep” then the idea behind this little gem of popular wisdom becomes clearer.

Now we have, “You can’t keep your cake and eat it.”

But it’s still nonsense.

After all, what are memories but things we have consumed that we keep?

* * * * *

On a visit to England last year, I had lunch with a friend and his mother, who is now well into her eighties.

“You can’t have everything,” she said.

And then she said it again.

And throughout the conversation, it came back again and again, like a kind of limiting mantra.

Eventually, I couldn’t let it pass.

“You can’t have everything,” she said.

“I don’t see why not,” I replied.

And later, when she said it again, I said, “I don’t see why not.”

It became quite funny.

We all chuckled.

* * * * *

These are the kind of limiting beliefs which make up our education and sometimes our lives.

But we can de-mask them.

Of course, if we say, “You can’t have everything,” or “You can’t have your cake and eat it,” enough, then it becomes a kind of truth for us and it’s very unlikely that we will have everything.

It’s important to keep the door open.

It might be difficult to “have everything,” which of course means different things to different people anyway, but it’s not impossible.

There is no objective reason why we shouldn’t have everything.

So what happens if we start to challenge all those unhelpful comments which surround and inhabit us.

“It’s normal that you do less as you get older,” a favourite of my mother’s.

Is it?

“You’ll never be a star.”

Why not?

“I’ll never be rich.”

Why not?

And so on.

I think we can push back the barriers at any age and our world will be brighter for it.

And if our world is brighter, then it will be brighter also for those around us.

May your life never become an endurance test!

Love

Richard

Long Hours and Life or Death

I was talking to my mother on the phone this morning.

She’s just returned from a two night stay in hospital after collapsing in town.

She’s 91.

Fortunately, after undergoing a barrage of tests, there doesn’t seem to be any serious fundamental problem.

But she was talking about the hospital staff and how she couldn’t fault them and what long shifts they have and this has prompted me to write this post.

Because there’s something I can never understand about healthcare.

I think we can all agree that healthcare is one of the most important services available, if not the most important.

If you can think of a more important service, let me know.

So explain to me why, when it’s vital for workers in this field to be at their sharpest, as they are often making life or death decisions, and at their physical best in order to guarantee precision in surgery for example, do doctors and nurses often work ten hour shifts?

Your garagist doesn’t work a ten hour shift, so does that mean that repairing cars is more taxing than repairing humans?

In no other profession are there such long shifts, and yet in none of these professions is it so important not to make a mistake.

This is something I’ve never understood.

It’s an indication of the absurdity and mixed-up values of our modern world.

It seems to me that doctors’ and nurses’ hours ought to be shorter than other people’s in order to ensure that they can provide the best service possible, not longer than for anyone else.

After all, if you have to go to hospital, wouldn’t you like to know that the people overseeing your health are properly rested and in a fit mental and physical state to look after you properly?

I know I would.

But then, as Bob Dylan put it, “People are crazy and times are strange.”

May your life never become an endurance test!

Love

Richard

Start Before You’re Ready

I saw this wonderful video by Marie Forleo on YouTube:

Can’t Seem To Get Started? This One Idea Could Change Your Life

Never a truer piece of advice.

And well worth spending the seven minutes to watch.

I’ve already talked about Marie TV in a previous post:

Performance Tips (No, Not That Kind…)

As I mentioned before, the channel is really targeted at entrepreneurs and business activities, but many of the pieces of advice are relevant to any sphere of activity.

Marie is quite a character, has a big following with her YouTube channel and is fun to watch.

A little personal story here.

Almost exactly a year ago, I brought out my second full album of original music, MY TITANIC.

Now bringing out the first album, THE LESS YOU DO, in 2010, had been somewhat of an uncomfortable experience. I’d gone into the studio with eight musicians and an arranger and it had all got rather complicated.

So for the second album, I wanted to go a different direction and I was thinking about trying to record some tracks on my own, but I didn’t feel ready.

I was wondering what to do when I discovered a remarkable and now unfortunately defunct site called CrowdAudio which allowed artists to run mixing competitions.

As it happened, I’d recorded a ballad with just a piano-voice arrangement a fews days previously, so I decided to put it in and see what happened.

147 mixes and much listening later, I’d discovered the engineer with whom I went on to record the whole album. 3ee happens to live in Romania.

Now I wasn’t at all sure about recording the album on my own at home. But I liked the initial mix and I thought I could maybe try to record a few more songs before getting stuck and hiring session musicians in to a studio. Although I worried that the song arrangements would be too thin and the instrumental playing too weak, I persuaded myself to give it a shot.

So I started recording the album and sending the results off to Romania.

I decided to get each song mixed and mastered before moving on to the next.

Gradually, the number of completed songs built up.

And finally, I reached a tipping point where I said to myself, “What the hell, let’s do the whole thing like this.”

And the interesting thing was that the experience of recording at home generated new songs as I went along, songs that perhaps I would not have written otherwise.

In the end, many of the songs that I had initially wanted to record didn’t get on the album because I was enjoying the process of writing songs from scratch and recording them, all within the space of a few days. Some of them really sped through the “factory.”

Did I feel ready to record the whole album by myself before starting?

Absolutely not.

Is the result perfect?

No.

Could the arrangements be better?

Probably.

But it doesn’t stop me from being proud of the album and grateful for the experience.

And as Marie points out in her video, there’s really only one crime.

Everybody has to begin somewhere. Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody has to change things around.

The only real crime is not starting at all.

Love

Richard

Performance Tips (No, Not That Kind…)

Hi Everybody,

Wow, 2017. Happy New Year.

Seems like the new millenium was only last week.

Anyway, I just had to share this video which I think you’ll enjoy and find useful:

Why Smart People Underperform

Did you make any New Year’s Resolutions?

I’m proud to say I didn’t even think about it this year.

But if you did, we’re in that New Year’s resolution dicey patch, when they’re already starting to fall apart.

While this may have little to do with your NYR, it contains simple practical tips on how to get your life back on track.

Sorry, if you’re looking for tips on how to keep it up for longer, then you’ve come the wrong place. We’re not really talking about that kind of performance.

On the other hand….

And don’t worry about the “smart” or the business blurb in the opening speech by Marie Forleo.

The advice from Dr. Ned Hallowell is valuable for anybody.

Here’s the link again:

Why Smart People Underperform

Enjoy.

Love

Richard

The Dreaded In-Between (continued)

If you read my post a couple of weeks ago about reducing those floating moments (minutes, hours, days?) between actions, then you might be interested in having a look at this video:

3 Signs That You Will Become Rich One Day.

Don’t be put off by the mention of money in the title and the business-inspired aspect of the video.

This advice applies to anybody and anything.

It’s about the importance of time and using it to our best ability.

The remarks at the end about going out and doing things rather than wasting time on social media are spot on (although, I suppose, if you’re reading this, it’s technically a form of social media. Oh well, mummy knows best.)

Hope you find the video useful.

And don’t beat yourself up if you didn’t achieve all you wanted to do today.

Just try again tomorrow.

Love

Richard

The Fragility of Life

I had the misfortune to run over a cat on Friday last whilst driving through a small village on the way to the lake.

Well, strictly speaking I suppose, the misfortune was really the cat’s, mine being only minor in comparison.

Suddenly, there it was without warning, a sandy blur racing across the road only a meter or so in front of the car.

I braked hard but to no avail.

There was a sickening sensation as the right front wheel went over something and then it was in my rear-view mirror, throwing itself in the air and leaping around as if charged with electricity.

I stopped the car off the road and went back to check out the poor beast, dreading what I would find.

Mercifully, for both of us, the cat was dead when I got to it, so it can’t have suffered for more than twenty seconds, thirty at the most.
I had had a vision of it being horribly mutilated but clinging on to life and me sitting with it while waiting for a vet to come and finish it off.

We were both spared that.

Fortune in misfortune.

I picked the cat up and put it gently on the pavement, so it wouldn’t get run over by other cars.

“I’m so sorry,” I said aloud, “I’m so sorry.”

I thought that perhaps someone in the village would know whose cat it was, so that the owner wouldn’t wonder for months what had happened or if it was going to walk through the door at some point.

Closure.

Later, I informed the police of the accident.

*********************************************

I learnt to drive in 1979.

In all the time since, I’ve never run over an animal. No humans either, I should add.

I hit a rabbit in Ireland once.

We were driving along a country round and there were rabbits everywhere, like the terrestrial equivalent of Hitchcock’s “The Birds.” One of them suddenly took it into its head to leap under the car from a bank by the road, but fortunately I was driving so slowly that it was only a little dazed and soon hopped off again.

Only recently, I was thinking how grateful I was that I’d been spared.

And then this.

No warning.

Sometimes, I have inner warnings to slow down while going through a forest, for example.

Once, when I had a premonition, several deer glided like grey shadows in the winter light from the forest and across the road, invisible until the last moment.

But I was ready for them.

Not this time.

No premonition.

No warning.

A hedge at a right angle blocked any vision of the cat until it was in the road.

What could the animal have been thinking? To dash across the road with a car so close.

I shall never know.

The film goes round in my my mind.

There’s that split-second when our eyes met just before it disappeared under the car….

***********************************************************

And what lesson can be taken away from something like that?

First and foremost, such an experience underlines the fragility of life.

One minute here, full of health and energy, the next gone.

It makes you think.

It makes you define your priorities, or it should do.

It could happen to any of us.

***********************************************************

And, rather disturbingly, it also makes you realize how much the colour red is present in food.

I wish you a safe week, wherever you may be and wherever you may drive.

Love

Richard

The Dreaded In-between

I’m trying to cut down on my in-between times these days.

It’s quite a challenge.

But what are ‘in-between’ times?

If you’re looking for a definition of the ‘in-between’ and what to do about it,
check out this video from the ModernHealthMonk:

Feeling lazy? Use the 3 SECOND rule

Much depends, of course, on how you view time and when it’s well-spent or not.

Basically, I think my time would be better spent if I could move seamlessly from one activity to another with little or no down-time in between.

A lot of you probably feel the same way.

The problem is all those moments, minutes and sometimes hours spent vaguely thinking about what to do next.

You may even have something in your sight line that you know you should do, but you think about doing it instead of doing it.

– You check your iPhone for messages, even though you only did this ten minutes ago.
– You look at the BBC News app for the third time that day.
– In fact, you do anything to avoid getting on and doing whatever it is that you’re thinking about.
– And then you think about all the other things you have to do and this makes you feel so exhausted that you can’t raise the enthusiasm to do any of them.

And so on.

I’m a great believer that identifying the problem is 50% of the solution, and this is where Alex’s video is a help.

Giving a name to these in-between times helps you to be more conscious of the process and therefore to do something about all this time wasting and procrastination.

And he suggests that once you have made yourself aware of what you are doing (or rather not doing!), you should count to three and then do whatever it is that you’ve been thinking about or putting off.

This is not to say that you should never daydream.

Daydreaming can be very creative.

But too much in-between time ultimately gives you a sense of frustration with yourself.

You know you could be using your time better.

So try to make a habit of catching yourself when you’re having an ‘in-between’ moment.

And move on.

Have a great week.

Love

Richard

Scandinavian Logic

We’ve just come back from a trip to Stockholm, Sweden.

While there, we coined a new term: Scandinavian logic.

It describes situations where a certain amount of information is given but not enough to be really useful.

Example: The parking at the hotel.

The lady at reception indicated that it was in a red building across the road, that the name of the hotel was marked and then she gave us a code to enter the car park.

We drive across the road.

It is dark, so all colours are relative.

There’s a brick building that seems to be a car park but no mention of the hotel.

We drive around for a bit and eventually come back to the building.

We enter the code in the command box which is accessible from the car.

Nothing happens.

I get out of the car and approach a man working on a lorry nearby. He informs us that there is another command box.

In fact, we discover that there are three in all. For two of them, including the hotel one, you have to get out of the car to punch the code in.

The name of the hotel was taped onto the command box, but not visible anywhere else outside.

A number of similar things happened to us during our stay, hence our coming up with the term.

The problem seems to be an incapacity to put one’s self in another person’s shoes.

People seem increasingly unable to think about anyone else but themselves.

And it’s not because everyone spends a huge portion of their day hunched over a mobile phone that communication is improving.

The opposite is true.

Communication is getting poorer and poorer with every new means of communication that we invent.

It’s important to reverse this trend.

Do not make assumptions.

The situation is not necessarily clear to the other person.

What you are saying is not necessarily clear to the other person either, even if it seems clear to you.

Try to imagine the situation from the other person’s point of view.

And try to use simple and succinct language.

In the example above, a few simple words of explanation could have avoided twenty wasted minutes of searching.

What can you do to improve your communication this week?

Have a great week!

Love

Richard