Inflexibility To Change

STUCK IN THEIR WAYS

As we get older, it's a sad fact that we are more likely to become less flexible in body and mind. According to a study made by Virgin Active, people by the age of 25 are already stuck in their ways. Choosing the same routines and even ditching the hobbies they used to enjoy, many people give up on trying new things. 

Change is difficult for everyone. Because we become creatures of habit, preferring our established truths about the things we know and lazily sticking to the same old things rather than looking for something equally as good or better. 

We should all try something new on a regular basis. There's so many new things to experience. If we can keep up these challenges for 30 days in a row, we end up forming new habits and suddenly, we have a new habit or routine. If we can choose positive changes and remove negative ones in the same manner, we will become a much more flexible and constantly evolving individual.

Relying on others

IF YOU WANT A JOB DONE PROPERLY...

Mental note to oneself. Don't rely on others to do a job that you can do better yourself.

This is so true. As I found out today, someone I'd been helping out who is a real stickler for being punctual and for being seen to do the right thing, had, after proving to be such a reliable resource, trusted me with a fairly well-paid but simple job, which I outsourced to a friend of a friend...who let me down.

So for all the hard work I've put in over the last few weeks, I'm now seen as a let down by this client because of someone else's tardiness! 

The advantage is that I've now rectified the situation and benefitted financially from doing it myself, plus learned how to get the job done even quicker and at a lower cost than I realised was possible before. But it really is something worth remembering, the old addage is true - to do something well, we really do need to do it ourselves

Doing It Yourself

UPSKILLING

One of the reasons I wish to get out of the corporate world of advertising, media & marketing is because of all the bullsh*t jargon and word twisting they use. Learning new stuff or finding out how to do something yourself is so much easier these days and if like me you're having to take a big drop in pay, doing it yourself not only means learning a new skill but importantly, not paying someone else saves you money too.

Trusting The Experts
There's a lot of information in the libraries, online ebooks and youtube videos, so why do people pay someone else? Very likely it's the time, inconvenience it takes to learn and do it yourself, possibly some fear of being a Frank Spencer type and of course the ease of passing it on to a 'pro'. Thing is, quite often the pros are trying to get a buck out of you and I, if we're gullible enough to let them. So, a quick example in point: the back break on my bike is jammed. I've spoken to mechanics in three different bike shops and enquired if they can fix it quickly. The result being, that they all said I'd need a new one (££ plus labour), yet, when I take the brake set off, clean it and simply put it back on... 20 minutes later, it's as good as new.

We're in a culture where replacing easily fixable parts for new is also something the so-called experts would rather do. So it stands to reason why we have a general laziness when it comes to fixing things if the so-called experts can't be bothered to give it a go. And why we'll have little confidence trying to fix something ourselves first.

Give It A Go
Take today as an example. I have potentially earned £20 because someone 'can't be bothered' to fit a light switch. Also, I spoke with a valet company about renovating the inside of my classic car. To clean the inside was £100 and it was suggested to replace the mats and recover the seats. So, I bought some leather food and carpet cleaner to spruce up the inside of the car myself instead. It's amazing what a bit of elbow grease can do and yet, I was very close to replacing the mats and getting the seats re-upholstered because I listened to bad advice.

All in, I've potentially saved/earned a few hundred pounds today, just by giving it a go myself. These aren't very time consuming tasks, they weren't even that highly skilled or difficult to learn - plus I've earned that cold pint of beer once again.

Taking A Review Of The Positives

A QUESTION OF PERSONAL TASTES

We all have different tastes in what we like and don't like. For certain open minded people (myself included), trying and experiencing new and different things in life is what's enjoyable and doing the same boring thing all the time, not much fun and hence not enjoyable.

On the whole enjoyment scale, there's many shades of grey. For others who have definite tastes, this means their preferences are very black and white. They either like something or they don't - ie, they have very distinct opinions of things that can make them happy and equally make them unhappy....sometimes even really angry. 

I appreciate that there are certain activities or foods etc. that can bring about feelings of great pleasure but I find it so strange that someone can strongly dislike certain things in their life to the point of rage. We're not talking about injustice or corruption here, we're talking about not replacing the soap or the loo roll in the hotel loos and then to tell everyone else about their long whiney opinions via the internet....it all seems such a waste of valuable time.

Yet, if you read through reviews on sites like Trip Advisor, you can see there's hoards of people expending their time - dragging out their misery even further by leaving long negative reviews - mostly on such trivial matters that it boggles the mind at how these people can enjoy anything at all. Why do they do it and do they realise that nobody really cares? We ideally need a filter to switch off all these types of reviewers so we can read the most helpful of reviews.

Thing is....I really like Trip Advisor, mostly because I can read these sad reviews. Although they offer nothing to me for making a decision on staying at a particular place or not, they are entertaining. And, the madder they are, the better it makes me feel about my own judgements and general positive outlook. I know I shouldn't laugh at some of the ridiculous reviews that people write up on their miserable holiday and I really wish I could help them to see how ridiculous they are being about their loo roll not being replaced, but it seems some people thrive on finding problems with even the greatest things in life.

Visiting some of my quirky and most favourite places a couple of weekends ago, I couldn't help but get swept up in some of these miserable people's lives and get dragged down for a while myself. Thankfully, I was able to move to a spot out of earshot and it was there in that moment that I realised how poor a lot of people's lives are. Having one of the most idyllic views in the UK on a beautiful sunny summer's day, with a cold beverage in my hand and the girl I love at my side, I pulled myself back through after being subjected to the negative energy around me.

It struck me at that moment, that I have a duty to speak up for the sane. I just had to put my first review on Trip Advisor to counter the negative reviews. I now vouch to do more positive reviews - giving credit where it's due - to counter the bad reviews, so others may benefit from hearing how a positive life experience should be. 

Make The Last Moments Special

FINISHING ON AN UP

No matter how good an experience is, the lasting memory will always be based on the latter moments from that experience - be that a night out on the town or a week's summer holiday.

If it's just a night out, the final moments can be marred by simply having a poor experience getting home at the end of the evening. But provided the night's been a success in every other way, having a blip at the end merely diminishes a tiny fraction off of an otherwise brilliant time spent in enjoyment and experienced within just very recent memory. But on longer periods like a week, earlier good points will be already diminished in memory over the days that follow and the period of lasting memory will be built up from the later section of the trip.

So if you're planning on doing something on a final night of a trip - make sure it's something really special to better cement the recollection of the entire trip as something you'd want to remember.

Experience Rules

LEADERSHIP

It takes a certain type of person to be a good leader. Experience is one major factor but confidence in one's ability to lead others in a positive way - in order to bring out the best in less experienced others - that's the mark of being a truly great leader.

No Love Lost
Staying at certain venues over the last week, it was clear where leadership was either the gel in making a successful establishment or absence the failure. Junior, inexperienced staff, left to manage the best they could on their own, with no experienced mentor helping to steer these mostly nice but ineffective youngsters along, meant that I had to give my second review (as positively as I could) on an establishment that promised so much and yet failed to deliver. Not that this had a really negative effect on our stay - it was just a bit disappointing on our 11 year anniversary to have stayed somewhere with love in it's name - that ironically, felt so unloved.

Out Of The Flow

NON CONFORMITY

Going with the flow can be a happy solution - a compromise for getting a group of people together or doing something easy to keep a balanced status quo. This works some of the time - but breaking free from the school and swimming upstream can get us to new places, experiences and allow us to make some amazing discoveries. 

Yesterday, for example, rather than go areas and venues already known and likely get drunk in on the bank holiday, we made a pact to go places not visited before. We walked. Planning out little bars and cafes on the way, we took a route that we'd never experienced on foot before. Stockwell. It's mid way between Balham and London Bridge and cut through by a long and seemingly dull busy road usually travered in a car, bus or bike. 

First discovery was to learn of a strong Portuguese and South American community. The Brazilian cafe on the main road offers a selection of tasty snacks and beverages, entertaining us with lively carnival music to make you feel like you're in Rio! A short detour from the main road revealed a beautiful set of grand houses and small park. Just off the square is a community space called Van Gogh Walk and a placard on one of the houses marks the place Van Gogh lived at in his time spent here working in London! Swtiching on the geocache app - we learned that there's another three regeneration areas in Kennington, all with a GeoCache to find making the experience even more like a treasure hunt. 

Carrying on our walk, the White Bear Theatre is just up from the Oval and has a very intimate space showing some very well received plays - The Pictures of Dorian Gray is now booked. We finished off our little walk with a visit to a quaint little pub called The Old Red Lion - a pub I've passed maybe a thousand times and now realised is a true London gem. It's definitely a pub I'll be visiting again soon. 

All in all, we managed to entertain ourselves with a long walk of discovery right here on the doorstep - and like Vincent Van Gogh, who also professed his love for walking the same route, we took on life from a completely different perspective and through breaking convention/conformity, found some hidden treats away from the usual places in our weekend of adventure.

Trying something new

Yoga, around for millennia, is truly amazing and should definitely be practiced by everyone. It's benefits are felt so much more than purely on the physical level. Yoga is helping me to be a more thoughtful, tolerant and positive person. I initially took yoga up as a way to improve flexibility and movement in injured muscles and joints and since I've starting to practice regularly, have noticed a huge improvement in general health & wellbeing. I will surely continue to practice yoga daily to carry through these benefits throughout the rest of my life.

I have to confess, when starting out, I felt very self conscious about my image, uncomfortable with the chanting and being in a room where I was the only guy. When I'd tell my mates about yoga - they'd recoil. Somehow, it's not seen as something 'men' do. It's crazy but apparently, we're meant to be lifting heavy weights as a show of strength/masculinity or maybe playing football. We definitely don't talk of spirituality or being connected to the earth. Thing is, doing the yoga will help with the weight training and very likely lesson the risk of injury in football too. What guys are really missing out on, are the meditative and focussing benefits that you get. Plus, doing yoga has really helped me deal with how I see myself/my ego and how I present myself or engage with others. Ultimately, practicing yoga, has given me the confidence to try new things that I'd have been afraid of doing because of (in the case of yoga) a stupid idea that it's not something guys do!

I'm fortunate right now to have a bit of a small window in the rat race of life - some time to stop & reflect with an opportunity to recharge/strengthen a battered body and soul. I'm trying out new things as a way to continue developing as a human being. It's all too easy to stay in the comfort zone and never grow as a person. Looking inward and around at life can make us feel uncomfortable & vulnerable - especially when the veil of reality is challenged, but it's better to come to terms rather than hold on to a false reality. I've seen it with older people who do not appear to have learned much for their years and I'm conscious of making sure that will never happen to me.

This week, I will be making the most of this small window to try different yoga, Qigong and meditation techniques at The Life Centre in Islington. They are currently offering a deal of £25 for 14 days unlimited classes. So, I will try Jivamukti - a style of yoga started by David Life and Sharon Gannon. Reading up on the pair, I found a couple of amazing videos of Sharon from the 80's practicing yoga to music. She has incredible flexibility and graceful movement. I also discovered a couple more talking abut veganism. She seems like a decent person who cares about the animals. In all the yoga videos I watched, the women again outnumber the men 20-1 which I still find incredible giving the benefits available for all. Will this balance ever change I wonder...

Whatever we make of the people, the beliefs and their low-grade videos - we shouldn't be judgemental of the things we know little about and practice being more open minded. So although I still feel very self-conscious and a little bit uncomfortable about putting myself in a room full of strangers and especially chanting with them - I will go along all the same. The important thing for me is to go and 'try'. Because, I've learned that it is good to deal with those egotistical and cynical aspects of the personality that potentially hold us all back from experiencing things - mainly because of what we've been previously taught to be the right/wrong way of doing things or placing too much importance on what others may think of us.