Breaking up is hard to do

Breaking up isn’t easy, but sometimes it just has to be done. Very few people will find their mate with their first boyfriend or girlfriend, so sooner or later, one of you will end it.

That said, I have a friend who married her first boyfriend and she’s still with him after 40 years. Wow!! Not only that but she says she didn’t love him when they married! Sound crazy? She got pregnant at seventeen and their parents forced them to get married – his was back in the sixties – they literally had no choice. She told me that on her wedding day she thought her life was over, but they’ve been happy enough to stay together, so there are exceptions to every rule.

However, generally you’ll be wanting to end a relationship at some stage ( hopefully before you get married, when it’s still relatively simple) and odds are you’ll want to end it long before you actually do. Why? Because it’s hard to tell someone you loved once that you don’t want to be with them anymore. You don’t want to hurt them, but they’re going to get hurt anyway and putting it off doesn’t help.

Some of the reasons people break up are

• They’ve grown apart. This often happens as teens get older, you just outgrow each other.  You discover that you don’t have much in common.
• The relationship isn’t healthy, eg  one person relies on the other too much. This is when you feel like they’re a leech sucking you for emotional sustenance. It could  be an abusive relationship, or one of you might feel under too much pressure from the other to do something or be a certain way that you don’t feel comfortable with.
• One of you has found someone you like better

Sometimes there are ways to fix these things, and if you’re married then it’s a good idea to try to fix them before taking the big step of getting a divorce , but if you’re not married, then you’re going to just want to get out.

So, how do we break up with someone. There’s no easy answer but here’s a few things that might help to remember

• It’s no one’s fault, you’re just not right for each other anymore, so in the long run it’s better that you’re not together
• Be kind and clear
• Don’t tell them when they’re drunk or feeling miserable.
• Be honest, tell them up front, don’t just never return their calls and keep avoiding them. Don’t do it by text.
• You could start by saying – this relationship isn’t working for me anymore…
• You can say you still want to be friends still but take a good break from each other before seeing each other again. Most people find it hard to stay friends after a break up, so don’t be hurt if being around you is too painful for them to want to see you again.

Have you ever had to break up with someone? Do you have any hints for how to do it? I think that if your intention is to help the other person, not harm them, then whatever you do or say should be all right.

Twelve things to remember for a happy life

How meditation helps us see reality

We think we see reality as we go about our day, but do we, really? See that person over there whispering to a friend and looking at you and giggling. Are they talking about you? Are they saying horrible things about you? That’s what it looks like to you, but what if they’re actually looking at the person behind you or they’re planning your surprise birthday party, not talking about what a terrible person you are?

We make assumptions all the time. My mother used to call it ‘jumping to conclusions.’ It means that we perceive what is happening based on what we think, rather than what is. Sometimes it might be the same, but when we get it wrong, we can make a real mess of things. For instance, if we decide to spread bad rumours about the friend who was whispering about us because we’re sure that’s what she was doing to us, that surprise birthday party will probably never happen and we’re likely to lose a friend as well.

As soon as we’ve made a concept about something, we’ve stopped seeing reality and started seeing our version of reality. For example, a dog bounds across the park towards you. Initially you see a moving form and register its colour, texture and other visual details and hear its bark. You recognise it as a dog. In the next instant, your mind associates everything you know about dogs to that dog. You are now seeing a generic dog, rather than the actual dog before you.  The dog you see is now coloured by your past experiences of and opinions on dogs, on whether you like them, don’t like them or don’t care either way. If your concepts about the dog are as far as you look, they’re all you will see. If you have strong feelings of either like, dislike, or disinterest, you are likely not to see anything that doesn’t fit your assumptions, unless it’s glaringly obvious, and even then you may choose to ignore it rather than change a cherished belief.  This is how prejudice is maintained and strengthened.

What you are doing is preventing yourself from seeing the actual dog before you and from reacting to what is actually happening now. Instead you are operating on preconceived notions that you ascribe to the concept of ‘dog.’ It’s a kind if mental processing that happens extremely quickly and by closing our minds, it robs our life of its immediacy, vibrancy and effectiveness.  To counteract it, we need to open our minds. This is where meditation comes in.

In meditation, our mind is open, relaxed and alert. We can see the dog, recognise everything about it, including our preconceptions and thoughts about it, but we are free from automatic reaction.  Meditation takes the knee-jerk out of action. We don’t have to act on what we think. The more we meditate, the more we take this mental freedom into our daily life,  the less likely we are to ‘take things at face value’ and the more likely we are to be able to be present in the moment and act according to what is, not what we think it is.

Can you see the benefits in acting in accordance with what’s happening, rather than our concept of what’s happening?

Be yourself

 

Simplify your life

The last two posts have been about reflecting on and working out what is most important in your life. The next step is to make space for what is important. This means that you need to simplify your life, get rid of all those things you don’t really need to do and make space for the things that will bring you the most satisfaction in the long run.

Look at what you do every day or every week and ask yourself, do you really need to

• buy another dress, shirt, shoes, TV etc
• go out for dinner or to the pub, movies etc
• work late into the night every night
• watch TV as much as you do
• etc

Could you use some of that time to

• spend more time with your family
• meditate
• sit and listen to music, or the  birds, or the sounds of the city.
• take a walk and sit in the park
• help someone out, maybe volunteer for an organisation that helps people
• etc

In my view, the aim of life is to be happy and the purpose of life is to bring benefit to others. I believe that if we follow the purpose of life, we will be happy, and if we do what we need to be happy then we will naturally bring benefit to others. It goes both ways, so we need to make space in our lives for both ourselves and others.

Learning to meditate is the best gift you can give yourself and others, because the mental skills you learn are the basis of being happy and being able to deal with others in a compassionate way. See here for instructions for a simple but profound method of meditation.

How can you simplify your life?

See also Less is More.

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Reorder your priorities

Taking time for deep reflection can be life changing. Perhaps that is why so many of us avoid it. Is it dangerous to ask yourself if you are happy, if your life is how you want it to be? Are you scared that the answer is no and when you reflect on how to fix it you may come up empty handed? If so, it’s quite understandable because popular Western culture has, to a large extent, lost or buried the wisdom that provides the tools to help us be happy and life a satisfying life. But the answers are there if we reflect deeply enough, if we reflect on the very thing that we least want to think about – death, in particular the fact that it is certain that we will die and that we don’t know when.

Chapters 1 – 3 in the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche are a wonderful guide to this kind of contemplation. As it says on page 11, ‘death is the mirror in which the entire meaning of life is reflected.’ So ask yourself; on the day I die when I look back over my life, what will be most important in the way I’ve lived my life, how much money I made or how happy I made others?  And, if you knew you were going to die next week, what would become most important in what you thought about and what you did? Whatever your answer is, consider that you could die next week, or tomorrow, or in five minutes and that even if it’s in twenty years, why shouldn’t you live your life now with those things in mind?

Can you see how such reflection can lead you to reordering your priorities? On  page 28 of the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, the author mentions the results of near-death experiences that researchers have documented, ‘an increased concern for helping others; an enhanced vision of the importance of love; less interest in materialistic pursuits; a growing belief in a spiritual dimension and the spiritual meaning of life; and, of course, a greater openness to belief in the afterlife

What is most important in life? Does the way you live your life reflect this? If not, why not, and how can you change?

Take time for reflection

Let’s face it, for most of us, our modern lives are a mad rush, seemingly endlessly multitasking from one thing to another. Day after day, week after week, month after month we go on doing one thing or another and trying to fit everything we feel we have to do in what seems to be an ever shrinking period of time. How often do we hear the words, there just aren’t enough hours in the day?

But why are we rushing? Why do we have all these things we need to do? Do we need to do them right now? Do we really need to do them at all?  Are they as important as we think they are?  That brings us to the main question of what is really important in life, and is that what you spend the most time on?  Do we ever even stop to consider these things? If you don’t, I suggest that you do for the sake of your health and sanity.

Stress is a dirty word, but one many of us are all too familiar with. We have heard how stress contributes to poor health and we know how unhappy we feel when we are stressed, but still we go on, from one day to the next, contributing to our own stress by the way we live our life.

Try stopping for a moment. Bring yourself into the present and drop the idea that there are things you need to do. Just the act of stopping will break the stress cycle. Stop and look at the sky or take a deep breath or listen to the sounds around you, take a longer break and go for a walk, or have a cup of tea.  Take an even longer break and take a step back and look at your life a different way; spend a weekend reflecting on the questions above, or go on a meditation retreat like I just did and you may completely rearrange your priorities.

At the very least, you learn that you can stop, that life doesn’t disintegrate if you do. If you can stop for long enough, you may discover how wonderful it is to just be, in the moment, without following your thoughts into the past or the future. Taking time to reflect is an important part of life. It helps us to stay on track and not be blown by the fickle winds of our crazy world. Whether it’s as short as a breath or as long as a holiday, take time out to really see the world around you, as it is, now, in this moment. I guarantee it will refresh you.

 

When did you last take a break?

 

Less is more

I have just returned from a 10 day meditation retreat with the Tibetan teacher Sogyal Rinpoche, and the result is that in my life from now on I am determined to have

Actually instead of more reading, I’ll have less TV,  and reading and more meditating.

Having a Holiday

Dear readers

I’ll off on a meditation retreat until the end of January. I’ll have more posts for you again in February.

 

 

Thanks for reading

Best wishes to you all

Tahlia

Do your beliefs limit you?

How often do we sabotage our own efforts? We all have dreams, projects, things we want to achieve, plans we want to bring to fruition, but what if our beliefs about ourselves oppose our efforts? Clearly we’d be making our life harder by cutting down or even preventing the possibility of success.

I want to write well. Hang on, why not want to write really well. Gag! Why not want to write brilliantly? Why am I so modest with my aims? Is it because I find it hard to believe that I might actually be able to write brilliantly? Or am I too scared to hope? Gulp. Both, I guess. Dah!

I want people to buy my book. Wait a minute. I want millions of people to buy it. Why limit myself to ‘people’. Why shouldn’t millions of people buy it if it’s good?  Unfortunately, I find it hard to believe that I might write a book that popular.

We all know that few writers hit the jackpot, so what chance to I have? That’s a reasonable belief, isn’t it? But so long as I think I have no chance, then I’m limiting that possibility. How? Because my mind directs my body and speech, not to mention my writing. If I don’t think I have (or can develop) the skills to write brilliantly, then not only do I sabotage myself with every word, I’ll be happy with less than brilliant. That means that I’ll think my book is finished when it could be better. I’ll stop before I give my brilliance a chance to shine. What a shame.

The factors that come about to create a bestseller are many, and a lot of them have more to do with timing and opportunity than anything else. I do the best I can, then it’s up to the universe. The only way I can help things work out for me on that level is through my mind. Some say pray, some say believe, some say visualize. I say it’s all part of the same thing. I have to know it’s possible and let that knowing cut through all my limiting beliefs. I have to drop my limiting ideas over and over, until all that remains is the knowing that it is possible that I can write a brilliant best seller, even when the odds are against it.

Deep knowing has a certainty about it that cuts through the bullshit that comes from our lack of faith ourselves. On that level of our being anything is possible and we find that depth when we dive into the gaps between our thoughts and emotions (or meditate or stare at the sky or whatever). This is not thinking it’s possible, it’s knowing. And it is possible. Likely? Probably not, but possible? Yes. If I hang onto that sense of possibility and don’t listen to the part of me that says, ‘you’re not good enough’, then I’m not limiting myself.

This is not hope, not the kind that comes with fear hot on its tail. Hope will leave me shattered if that hope isn’t fulfilled. Knowing something is possible leaves the outcome open. It can happen or not happen, either way, I won’t be shattered.

Do you think you have the ability to succeed? If not, why not?  Can you drop those limiting beliefs and see that at the deepest level of your being where you connect with the essence of the universe, everything you want is possible, even if you can’t see how?