Tag: creating a new habit

6 perfect reasons to pick up random trash

Posted on by Leontien Reedijk

 

 

I pick up trash. Not for a living, but just because it’s there. And because I can. Because I want to. Because I have to. Let me explain.

I live on this beautiful tropical island in the Caribbean, Little Corn Island, off the coast of Nicaragua. It’s tiny, so everything (and everybody) is right in your face. You cannot avoid walking past trash, because there are only a few paths that take you around the island. And there is trash everywhere. 

I bet your first thought is: why do people throw their trash around in such a beautiful place? Well, there are many reasons. First of all, this is a developing country, with a lack of funds, logistics and poor education. Basically, here we have no system in place that takes care of our trash the way you are used to have your trash taken care of. All you have to do is put it at the curb, and a truck will come and pick it up. Out of sight, out of mind. You pay for the service, they take care of it. Not here. We have no municipal facility or officer here. We have no roads, no cars, so no garbage trucks. We have no central dump or incinerator. Apart from a handful of recycling bins, we have no general garbage bins along our walkways, because emptying them causes a problem: where to take it? So better not have the bins, head in the sand-strategy. Basically, we’re on our own, when it comes to trash. We DO have trash, lots of it. 

 

A lot of the people living on this island have not grown up with the same concepts about trash in nature as you and I have. It’s a cultural thing: I have learned that trash does not belong in nature, and I have learned why it is bad that it is there. So I know. I cannot walk past trash sitting in nature without feeling bad about it. A lot of the people here have not learned that (yet). And let’s be honest, our developed countries took ages to establish this attitude towards trash. I remember I was tiny, when we had only one black and white channel on TV, seeing a government campaign about taking care of the environment. So it was barely 1970 when they started educating us about the environment in the Netherlands. It took us well into the 90’s before there was a firmly established system of recycling and diminishing our trash, which now has become second nature to most Dutch people. So if a well-developed, rich country with a good education system, municipal services and government campaigns needs a whole generation to get this environmental attitude in place, we cannot expect that a poor country without all that is going to get on top of their trash problem in a couple of years. I let go of that dream a while ago.

Here reality is that a lot of people throw their trash wherever they go. Because they don’t know any better. And because there is no real option to put it anywhere anyway, apart from plastic bottles and aluminium cans that are collected and shipped off the island for recycling. At their own homes they may burn their trash, but when it rains (and this is the tropics), that is not an option either. So then it is the bush. Where the chickens will scratch through it, and neatly distribute it all over the place. Dogs will scrounge and find the edibles (including disposable diapers). So what’s left is plastic, loads of it, and cans, everywhere.

Then I walk by. I see the trash. I used to get angry at the people for throwing it there, even though I didn’t know who had done it, a pretty senseless waste of my emotional energy. When I started to understand the complexity of this problem better I managed to stop blaming them, and I also tried to stop thinking that the local government should do something about it. Because they won’t, because they can’t. The person who throws plastic in nature is guilty of a crime against Mother Earth, and in a way that is a crime against every organism on this planet, which includes me. So that could give me a good reason to be angry and upset. But when I walk by and I see that trash sitting there, KNOWING THAT IT IS HARMFUL TO MOTHER EARTH and then not picking it up, I become as guilty of a crime against nature as that person who threw it there in the first place. I should be mad at myself then too! Once you know, you cannot leave it there, can you? That is the most important reason to pick it up: I do not want to be guilty of leaving it there, passively condoning these crimes against nature, which are also crimes against me. So I pick it up, and take it to the recycling bins. I throw the non-recyclables in there too, that is my silent protest to the municipality  and government for not providing some kind of trash-bins and a system to take care of that street trash.

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Monkey Mind Meditation

Posted on by Leontien Reedijk

 

For all you people who have aspirations to meditate, or who are already doing it for some time and still find it impossible to tame that monkey mind, I have some good news and some bad news. 

Let’s start with the bad news: after years of meditating, mostly on a daily basis, and often for at least 30 minutes or more, yours truly still has a VERY LOUD MONKEY MIND. Well, I must admit it isn’t too bad in my case, because I do not have a very stressful life, plus I don’t have a partner and a family, which always cause a million worried, stressed or anxious thoughts a minute. My monkey mind does keep going endlessly though, but it is mostly story telling that goes on during my meditation or just a lot of remembering. It is mildly entertaining, so I often just get totally lost in thought. But in all these years of regular practice the moments of true stillness are hardly ever longer than 30 seconds, and few and far between. It took me a while to stop seeing that as a personal failure, and it took me even longer to stop finding it frustrating and unfulfilling. But that monkey does never put a lid on its chatter, EVER. So far the bad news. (Did I just crush all your hopes or motivation to even try and start meditating? Sorry for that, but keep reading…the good news will perk you up).

The good news is that I found a way of working with that monkey mind, and tame it in a different way. I’m happy to share it here. 

I am not a fan of one particular type of meditation, so I switch around between techniques now and then, and one of the things I regularly do is a combination of deep breathing with mantras (not out loud, just in my head) or positive affirmations. When I start such a meditation, I think I got the right phrases ready, but then when I get into it, I keep fiddling with the words for a bit, trying to find the perfect mantra for myself. One day it seemed that no phrase was the right one, so I kept fiddling for quite a while (what do you mean monkey mind in disguise?).

 

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The 1 thing you need to say to yourself to keep your New Year’s Resolutions

Posted on by Leontien Reedijk

palm tree fireworksWho didn’t ever make a New Years’ resolution to start running, eat healthier, stop smoking or drinking, cut back on sugar and wheat, meditate, or even just regularly floss your teeth? Right? And how many of us actually kept that resolution and made it into a proper habit for a lifetime? Right, count me in on that failure, more than once!

 

Healthy habits….you hear these words so often, and usually they produce a little pang of guilt in us……We know we should create a few more of them, or we have tried them on and then dropped out of the habit before it stuck.

I will talk about how to start new habits in another post. Here we are just going to look into how we can motivate ourselves to even start and then keep that motivation. The very first steps……

First of all ask yourself how motivated you are to take on this challenge of creating a new habit (yes we are making a big deal of it, because it often seems to be so difficult for people to just do it, so let’s get to the bottom of all its aspects). Your motivation is what it all starts with. 

You do not want to try and create a healthy habit just because everybody else is raving about it (fads blow over, people drop out, and then who is going to motivate you?), because your mom has always said that you should eat your vegetables (your mom probably doesn’t live with you anymore to kick your butt every day) or because Oprah talked about it. These are some of the worst motivators you can come up with, because they are factors outside of yourself. 

You can only create a new habit when you and only you are completely convinced that it is going to make you feel better, physically and mentally. 

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Without that motivation, it is going to be very hard to create a new habit. So make sure that you know everything about it that there is to know: what exactly will it do to and for your body? Is that what your body really needs? How often do you have to do it for the optimal results? Do you have that much time? How soon will you notice a difference? What possible side-effects or difficulties might you encounter? Are there any contra-indications? How much money will it cost you? Do you need special equipment? Are there certain brands that are better than others? And once you have all these facts clear, there is a couple more questions that you have to ask yourself: 

 

 

How difficult will I find it to start this and do this every day/every week? 

And why? 

 

First and for all you have to win the argument with your lazy ego, that rather stays at home watching tv. Ego doesn’t want to give up its spot in the centre of your comfort zone. Lend your resisting ego a willing ear for a moment, and notice all the arguments against your plan that it comes up with (there will be many!). Maybe you can write the long list on a piece of paper, stare them down for a while in silent battle and then just burn the paper. Or take some time to think about all these arguments, and then give reason a chance to come up not only with a whole bunch of strong counter-arguments in favour of your new habit but also a bunch of simple solutions for all of ego’s major problems with it. Ego’s resistance is just based on a fear of change. And wasn’t it change that you were looking for in the first place? If you still have the feeling that you will fail at starting and keeping up your new habit, you will. The power of thought is so strong, that whatever you think will become a belief that will grow an attitude that produces a behaviour which will be the not-doing of your new habit. So make sure that you change your ego’s mind, convincing it that you will be successful. Then you will.

watch-your-thoughts-lao-tzu-quotes

Now you finally have your motivation in place: you know exactly why you want to create this healthy habit, what you need to implement it, and are convinced that you want to do it and will do it for the rest of your life. It is meant to improve your physical and/or mental well-being. Let us look at that mental and emotional aspect a little closer. What does actually happen to you, when you start to make one small healthy change in your life? 

First of all, there is a boost of confidence and feeling achieved, because hey, you’re keeping a promise to yourself, and you’re keeping up this healthy habit! 

A for effort! 

You may not really notice any physical changes yet, but pat yourself on the shoulder anyway for showing up every day! You worked through the phase of fear and resistance and are doing it! Again: the power of thought!

If you happen to be stuck in a rut in your life, in whichever way, taking this first little step of creating a new habit that is good for you and keeping it up could well become the seed of change for some of the bigger stuff like changing jobs or ending a suffocating relationship. 

Apart from this confidence boost that can get you kickstarted into creating more change, there is a much more subtle, but sometimes even more important emotional effect to keeping up a healthy habit: the message that you are sending to your body, and to your self: ‘I am making time for you and taking care of you, I love you enough to do something that will make you feel better, and I will do this for you every day’. 

Basically you are saying to yourself: ‘I am worthy of love. I LOVE MYSELF’. 

Wow. That is quite the powerful message. I bet there are plenty of you out there that do not really say that to themselves very often. And by becoming aware of this gesture of self-love that you are making every day, your practice gets exponentially more powerful! Loving yourself is where happiness begins.

Once you get into the swing of a healthy habit, the mental impact is just as powerful for your general well-being as the actual lowered blood pressure or the better digestion. That’s what I would call a great motivator! Put that one at the top of your list: “I want to create this healthy habit because I love myself”. Now go make your New Year’s resolution(s), and make them happen. Happy New Year!

 

PS: if you write your New year’s resolutions in the comments below, it will give you some extra accountability-support! (I promised on Facebook that I was going to make this website and start a blog, and I definitely felt more motivated to keep my promise once I had made it public!)