Non-negotiables

Last year, I established some clear values and clarified some defective thought patterns. My perfectionism, in particular. I realise now that perfection isn't about the finished product, or beating yourself up about failure.

Rather, it's a commitment. A commitment to disciplining yourself to do what you value, and embrace and take joy in repetition. Repetition is everything. Practise makes perfect.

To fail means you are challenging yourself. I used to avoid facing up to my failures, because I felt ashamed of not living up to my standards.

But standards are subjective. They are a perception we create for ourselves, to strive towards. As I grow to understand my practise of something, be it dance, writing, or being a a better Christian, I find myself constantly reevaluating and redefining my perception of perfect.

The real perfect, the real product is the process. The process of repetition and practice.

I embrace failure now, because I know that it reflects taking a risk. Failure, not success, enables you to learn and grow.

Over the next couple of years, I shall strive to establish habits. Non-negotiable disciplines and practises that I will retain for the rest of my life.

Some surprising non-negotiables emerged over the past couple of years, and they include needing to dance and write several times a week.

Last year, I experimented. I realised that five basics are essential.

The first four are meditation/prayer, adequate sleep, exercise, and eating.

I need a lot of exercise; in the ballpark of a minimum of ten hours a week. I need an average of seven and a half hours of sleep, and preferably earlier in the night and earlier in the morning, probably waking up around seven every day. To that end, I try to switch off screens after eleven, although sometimes important communication with family or friends trumps that desire.

I endeavour to eat slowly and mindfully, and luxuriate in conversation.

I avoid sugar.

I used to love all things chocolate and ice-cream, but I realised that I am addicted to sugar. The penny dropped when I ate almost an entire packet of cookies one night, and woke up the next day, head full of what I needed to do that day, and could not bring myself out of bed. Then the thought of a chunky cookie dunked in the foam of a cappuccino came to mind, and suddenly I was out of bed like a shot.

Last year,  I attempted to quit sugar. I tried cutting it down, but it usually ended in a rebound day. So I tried abstinence, the way alcoholics do.

That worked.

It was quite possibly the best change, but also the hardest change I made. The first few days I was tired and craved it. I drank cider and bubble tea, which didn't count. But over time, I realised that my energy, cognitive clarity, moods and impulse control had drastically improved, and my belly fat had reduced.

The past quarter, I experimented with relaxing the abstinence in view of increased travel, Christmas and the social nature of having dessert and sweet things. But in those two months, I gained weight, developed acne, became more lethargic, moody and impulsive. I know that just as alcoholics must avoid alcohol, I too must avoid sugar.

The final is the most important constant of all, which is being able to let go of everything, and prioritise relationships. Family. The family I have by blood, the family I have in Christ, and the family I will have by marriage. The real center of my life.

Fabled to win

One thing I've learnt is that you can't hope to win if you're afraid to lose.

In Aesop's fable of the tortoise and the hare, we are meant to learn the value of perseverance. But what we don't often think about was that even though the tortoise wins, he was still taking a risk in even running the race. He wasn't playing it safe. Imagine how all the animals must have laughed at him for being stupid enough to take on the hare! But fear of losing didn't stop him.

He had something much more powerful than speed, he had strategy. He understood the psychology of the individual.

Meditation on mindfulness

Some time ago, I came across a happiness social science experiment by Killingsworth and Gilbert. They developed an app to ping at random times during the day. At that point the participants were to input what activity they were doing, whether their mind was wandering, and whether they were happy. As expected, people were happiest when they were doing what they loved (e.g. sex). But interestingly, and perhaps unexpectedly, they found that when the participants were doing an unpleasurable task and paying attention to it, they were happier than when they were doing the same task whilst mind wandering, even if they were engaged in a pleasurable daydream. People are happiest when they pay attention to whatever they are doing, when they are mindful and living in the moment, rather than forward planning, reminiscing, or daydreaming.

Learning how to maintain a state of attention and presence, in the age of distraction we live in today, is especially challenging. One way it can be cultivated is through meditation. Meditating has powerful protective effects on age-related cortical thinning. In fact, meditation has been shown to actually develop grey matter in areas associated with memory, learning, attention and emotional regulation. Meditation was associated with the development of the left prefrontal cortex, an area associated with feelings of well-being and happiness.

No one is born unhappy. Our brains have not developed yet. But we become unhappy. Whether we become wired to be happy or unhappy in disposition depends very much on our experience of the external environment. For instance, whether we are loved and supported as children, or whether we are traumatised by violence, bullying, abandonment, neglect or abuse.

Traumatised minds tend to be fearful, anxious, depressed, and riddled with insecurities and perceptions that lead us into a negative spiral that limits our social functioning. Traumatised minds are trapped. Mired by their past and the thinking patterns they have developed, they cannot change, and instead bring their traumatic past into their present and future.

Resilient minds are open to change, and adopt mindsets that help us deal. As we develop our minds, we also develop coping mechanisms and resilience, and we all have, to some extent, a choice as to how we want to respond to our external environment, and how we want to shape and change our brains. It is not an easy task, but it is one that we are constantly engaged in, whether consciously or unconsciously. Mindful awareness of our moment to moment existence creates a space for us to recognise the moment we are making choices to feel or think in a certain way and take more conscious control of shaping the way we want our brains to grow.

Fragile on the bow

As the rain pours down
And the moon waxes and wanes
A blossom falling