Self-care

 Hello to my seven followers. It has been quite a long time since I posted my last post but I have still been working on myself and traveling on the same Buddhist / mindfulness journey.

This journey has taken me to bump into the concept of self-care in a fairly detailed way. I think probably most of us have heard the term, self-care. But do we really know what that is? 

As a chaplain (I.E. a professional here to help others)  and as someone who is deliberately on a journey to discover myself; I think I now know quite a lot about self-care. 

But immediately I need to caveat that with self-care is not a singularity. It's not a checklist that's going to suit every single human being, it's not a step by step linear process that you can do and say you've done it and then stop doing. It's much more fluid, complex and individual than that. But once you understand the fluidity, complexity and individuality of self-care it actually does become pretty simple and straightforward. 

I hope that seeming contradiction hasn't confused anybody or made you think that I don't know what I'm talking about. Think of it this way,  there are two layers, one layer (and I'm reluctant to say first or second layer simply one layer), are the individual things you can do and how to do them within this broader concept of self-care. Things like eating well and exercise. The other layer is where the complexity and fluidity enters and this is knowing when to do it, how much to do it, where, why, what you are getting from it (and the reverse is recognizing what you don't currently have and therefore need, and using that technique to gain what you don't have), who should you reach out to, who should you not reach out to. 

So let me start with the simple straight forward layer of the techniques and tools. 

There's many different ways to categorize and group these techniques and tools but the way I categorize them is into the five following areas: 

Mind, body, social, professional and spiritual. 

The mind layer is getting to know how your mind works as in the thought processes you run, ruminating, optimistic or pessimistic, planner, procrastinator, perfectionist etc and also the chemicals that our brain produces and releases such as oxytocin and when and how.

The body layer is all about things such as sleep, exercise, nutrition, dental health, etc.

The social layer is all about connections, who you get energy from, who you give energy to, who you can trust with what information and when. This crosses into body and mind because a good hug with someone you care about is obviously a bodily activity and it releases some great positive chemicals. Do we set and maintain healthy boundaries with the people we interact with.

The professional layer touches on social as well because we nearly always work with somebody else. But it goes further than that by looking at how much of our life do we give to our job, how much do we identify with our profession. Do we set and maintain healthy boundaries.

Finally the spiritual layer and I'm not talking religion here because I firmly believe all human beings have spirituality. Our spirituality is shaped by and also shapes our beliefs, our values the meaning and purpose of life, how we behave, where we give our energy and time and what makes life overall worth living and getting out of bed for every morning.

One element of the complex layer is knowing that all of these things interact and intertwine like the threads of a piece of fabric. For true self-care, resilience,  thriving and flourishing we need a good piece of fabric, with all the threads healthy and strong. We might have great social connections with beautiful people that we interact deeply and insensitively with regularly, but if our job and professional life is profoundly horrible and we don't understand why we are even doing it anymore - are we truly thriving and looking after ourselves?

 Update.

OK, it has been a very long time since I posted anything here. I've been working on my life and learning how I can help others. Since the last post I have undertaken formal studies in Buddhism via Deakin university and also completed the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course (which I would highly recommend to everyone and anyone) and am just about start a masters in counselling at University of Canberra. really looking forward to that.

I have gained a deeper contentment with life, which is still full of suffering. But... I have come to accept this suffering for it is part of life. Anyone wanting to find a life without suffering is just kidding themselves. There is always suffering. Accepting this is half the battle with overcoming it for once you accept that I will get sick, I will grow old and I will die, you stop fighting it. You just start to live for the now and enjoy what you have.   

Time moves us on.

Since the last post in 2016 and throughout the excellent teachings forced on me by the very unskillful boss I just had, I have really come to re-evaluate my life and what I want to do with it.  I want to work with people, on people, for people, about people. Hope that makes sense but I don't want to just work with people anymore, I want my work to be about people. How we think, how we work together and get along - and to try and make all this better.

I know that the Dharma works. I know that meditation works. I know that coaching works. So I have been looking for a way to combine all this into a job. I started my own business call Coaching For Grit.  www.coachingforgrit.com.au. Thinking that I would quit my current job and go to work for all of humanity as a coach. Life Coach!  But then, the universe throws me a fish!!!! A job as a Buddhist Chaplain with the Australian Defence Force presented itself.

I was not going to let this chance get away. I applied the same day. Sat interviews, gained endorsement from my Buddhist community and sat back and waited. A few weeks later I received a letter saying I was accepted - Oh My Buddha!!!!

This job comes with four years of paid training to be a Buddhist Chaplain. A year of fulltime Buddhist Studies, a year of fulltime counselling studies and two years of Chaplaincy studies and work placement. I start in Jan 20.

I will still continue to grow my coaching business on the side and see where that goes. I will also be doing weddings on the side as I will also gain my Celebrant license so I can conduct weddings for work but will be able to do them on the side also. There are so many opportunities here - but the absolutely main things which really has changed my life. This job is exactly what I am now looking for in life, a chance to work with other people about what really matters, themselves. Their feelings, their stories, their behaviour towards themselves and others, how they see themselves and how they see the world has such a profound impact on how they live in the world that nothing is more important.

Thanks for reading and I'll keep you posted on my next huge step in life.  

Another unskillful boss.

Can not believe that it has been three years since I last wrote anything here. A lot has happened since then but I do want to record this post about another unskilful boss I had for two years.

Hindsight is 20/20 as they say and maybe I could have done things differently but at the time it all seemed like the way to go.  I was posted into a position which I hadn't done in a long time. I asked for it because I thought I needed to renew those skills which I had not used in a long time.

I was up front with my boss and informed him that I felt underdone for this role and needed a little more mentoring from him to bring me back up to speed. I guess he took that to mean that I knew nothing; because that's the way he treated me for the next two years until he moved on.

Do you know what micro-management is? Its when your boss gets involved with every single thing you do and wants it done their way. Well he was that. He also only had one setting for his communication style - transmit. There was no receiving happening. I remember he asked for my opinion once in the entire two years and I was so shocked at the time that I didn't know what to say.  I guess that showed him not to ask for my input because he never did again.  Belittling,  degrading, uncaring, he was all of them. I remember telling him about my dyslexia about March of the first year and all he could say in turn was 'why are you telling me this now? I should have been told this from the start.'  There were three other people in the section who all felt the same as I did so again I knew I wasn't going nuts.

Anyway, this post is not about him. It's about how well I survived this very unskillful individual. The two years were not pleasant in any way but I came out of it stronger than before.  I was able to apply the skills I had gained from Buddha and see that his issues were his issues and not mine. I left them with him. Yes the years were stressful but I was able to see that emotion as simply an emotion and know that it didn't define me, or make me less. It was just a physiological response to this situation.

Mindset - Test or Growth

So while it has been a while since I posted anything here, I haven't stopped learning. I've been attending regular Buddhist philosophy classes, doing a lot of reading and also formal study.  One thing I have been reading about lately which I would like to share is about ones mindset.  According to what I have been reading there are two dominate mindsets. Test or Growth.

The test mindset sees the world and life as one big test. Everything we ever do is a test. Work tasks are a test, conversations/interaction with people are tests, driving (especially if there is someone else in the car with us), is a test - EVERYTHING.  You can probably guess how this ends up!  If everything is a test then everyone's opinion/feedback on how you do anything is the result of your test, verdict, or the judgement on your performance.

The test mindset has at its core in the idea that we are fixed and can not change. Even through hard work and education we are the same basic people with the same basic behaviours and personality and level of intelligence.

On the other hand, the growth mindset sees endless growth as the norm, change, evolving is just what happens. How those people are now is more like a pencil sketch and not an oil painting fully framed and hung, never to be rubbed out and redrawn.  Therefore the feedback or information gained from others is good - it is information about where they stand now and what might be something to work on next. Something to be used to growth and not always seen as a personal judgement or test result.

So, I'm thinking that for most people they will be able to see that the test mindset is very demanding, very tiring.  The results of the tests are personal chips at your abilities and qualities. It sort of looks at life from a negative perspective - or at least I think it does.  While the growth mindset looks at life from a positive perspective.

Anyway, this information, be it right or wrong or popular psychology or not mumbo jumbo, rang a bell within me.  I think I was a test mindset person for all of my life until 2010. It was hard work, very hard work. And as I rarely got positive feedback, or probably more accurately perceived anything as positive, I always felt like I was failing these tests. I see now how wrong that view was but this does explain a lot for me about how I was feeling back then and how life seems so dam hard every single day. Just catching the bus to school each day seemed like a test and mostly I passed but it was always clouded by huge amounts of anxiety.

Through the help of meditation, Buddhist Dharma, 2+ years of Psych counselling and most recently, Workplace and Business Coaching (life coaching) training and qualifications I see that these are not tests. If I miss the bus I have not 'failed', just missed the bus. I still feel the sense of failure deep inside me but I can recognise it as a little misplaced.  Not a fully appropriate feeling and most importantly, it is not a verdict on me as a person.

So I wanted to share/record this here as I think it is a good piece of information to know about the mindset and also that it really seemed to be very true for me. The test mindset was exhausting for me and very often I was disappointed with my efforts or didn't even try in the first place as I just didn't want to be tested, judged, evaluated, and fail again.   But I was the only one evaluating me.

Thanks for reading and be kind to yourself.

A little further down the line.

I think I have moved a little further down the line towards something. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a very ordinary man with many issues and problems, (I guess that is what makes me ordinary) but I can see them for what they are now: just things, they don't define me. Some have a nice little label, others have many names.

My dyslexia doesn't bother me too much any more. I know I need to think more carefully about what I write and how I write it. I also need to think about what I read a bit more than others;  that's all. I know I get anxious and sometimes really spiral into a deep blue mood, but who doesn't from time to time. I can now see when this is happening. Sometimes, I can even stop it from happening.

All this, I think, is a big improvement from where I was a few years back.  And just recently, I have turned a corner in my relationship also. I am far more accepting of things that in the past, I would have been unable to get over and would have stewed on for days.

Someone really quite smart said something profound to me the other day. They said that some of us are better than others, at hiding what we don't want the world to see. Meaning that everyone has perceived issues and problems (things that they perceive to be issues or problems but might not be) which they try to hind from the world. Some people hide them well while others do not. They who do not then become the focus and 'out of the norm', when really we are all normal because we all have things we would rather not. They bother some of us a lot while they might bother others only a little. Nonetheless, we all have something.

I had something that I was trying to hide from the world and even myself. I did not want to acknowledge that I had any difficulty and that I was just like what I saw in everyone else. But that is the funny thing isn't it - I could only see in others. what others wanted me to see because they were hiding their issues, and therefore, I could not see what they were/are hiding. And you know why - cause they were/are better than I am at hiding it.  See, we ALL have things we are hiding. That made me realise that I am hiding things and so is everyone else. Therefore, we are all the same.

So, what is the answer?  Stop hiding it and just accept it. It is what it is and trying to make it something other than what it is will drive you nuts.

So now, while I don't go around telling everyone and anyone all about how I work, I don't really try to hide it either.

Samsara

Life is suffering. Life is shit. People are shit. Look at all the bad there is in the world, why do people need to be so bad to each other? Even if people are not bad, there is just suffering all the time. I have been working hard to understand why and to live with all this samsara but I'm just drowning in it at the moment and am just unhappy all the time.

I have been meditating every day and for a little while during and after all seems ok, I can focus on the here and now and be a little at peace, but then the samara leaks into my mind and stays there for the rest of the day. I see all the crap in the world, all the suffering, domestic violence, racism leading to deaths and so many other things. I know that generally the world is getting better, we have more health , more equality, more education etc etc so all the protests and social media outlining all this bad stuff is probably needed so that more people are aware and therefore even more improvements can be made. But holy crap, all this in your face with death, violence, inequality and so much suffering, then there is just everyday life, which generally sucks also. Working every day, cleaning the house, washing clothes, do dishes. No one even cares. Wow, samara, you bet.