Category Archives: Simplicity

One of These Things First

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One of my favorite songs is by the great Nick Drake, called One of These Things First.

It’s a wonderful tune about ‘could haves’ – Nick’s fragile, angelic voice tells us that he could have been many things. The full lyrics are posted below. Hear the song on YouTube

Nick could well have been many of these things. Tall, bright, and good-looking, he got into Cambridge and had huge potential.

Sadly, he became more and more a recluse and finally died of an overdose – whether deliberate, nobody knows. He leaves a magical legacy,  in the form of the three albums released, and the sound of his voice lingers, like a wisp of smoke from a past fire – daily he is still able to add value to peoples’ lives through his melodies, extraordinary finger picking guitar, and haunting lyrics. However, be never saw his success, nor will be the things he could’ve.

As the New Year begins, we turn to resolutions. I have mixed views – part of me believes that resolutions lead to unhappiness and are rarely fulfilled. The other is that they help sharpen the mind and retune.

I’ve also noticed some regret creeping into my thoughts recently. I’m fortunate enough that I could do many things I’ve dreamed of. Yet much of my reminiscing is tinged with regret – that I didn’t continue with the piano, or that I never worked at languages – of the times when I’ve  let fear get in the way of approaching people I’ve fancied.

I could have done so many things better and I have wasted so many situations – when I failed to carpe diem as I wish I had. There have been times when I’ve taken the easy route and let laziness take hold.

Yet regret is a waste, unless we use it. We learn from our experiences and our regrets and try to make small increasing changes. That’s why we make resolutions – to accomplish little changes in our lives to try to regret less, and live more.

The smaller they are and the more we enjoy them, the more likely we will keep them.

For me one of my resolutions is to try not to regret, but to move forward. To try to achieve the readily achievable, and ignore the rest.

Happy 2012

One of These Things First Lyrics   

I could have been a sailor, could have been a cook
A real live lover, could have been a book.
I could have been a signpost, could have been a clock
As simple as a kettle, steady as a rock.
I could be
Here and now
I would be, I should be
But how?
I could have been
One of these things first
I could have been
One of these things first.

I could have been your pillar, could have been your door
I could have stayed beside you, could have stayed for more.
Could have been your statue, could have been your friend,
A whole long lifetime could have been the end.
I could be yours so true
I would be, I should be through and through
I could have been
One of these things first
I could have been
One of these things first.

I could have been a whistle, could have been a flute
A real live giver, could have been a boot.
I could have been a signpost, could have been a clock
As simple as a kettle, steady as a rock.
I could be even here
I would be, I should be so near
I could have been
One of these things first
I could have been
One of these things first.

Simpletom – 100th Birthday

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This my 100th Simpletomian post. A century.

I’ll be checking the post when I get home to see if the Queen remembered.

A little high-five, if you will.

Maybe I’ll have a simple cup of tea to celebrate. Maybe even a hobnob. Alternatively, a nap when I get home, although it’s only the middle of the day.

Forget all of that – maybe we could go out in a limo, drink some fizz, do some lines and get some hookers?

Ahem.

I was thinking I might do a mega 100 reasons that I’m still writing posts. I’ve defied my usual poor record of starting things that I can’t finish. Damn you Esperanto.

Instead, a simple reflection will suffice.

I cannot remember exactly why I started. No Damascene moment occurred. Just a gentle continuing nagging sense that simplicity, rather than complexity, is a truer path to happiness. Moreover, that happiness, which I believe is our fundamental aim, gets lost in the noise and distraction of our modern world.

Just writing as often as I can (not as often as I want, or should) has helped. It is a form of therapy, a reminder to focus, an excuse to think though ideas and to crystallize thought.

I don’t think I’ve changed much since I started writing. A reminder of how far there is to go, and how hard it is to change.

Yet there have been moments. Glimmers of truth that have gleamed through the fog of day-to-day life and helped me establish some kind of direction – or perhaps more than direction – place.

This is extremely appropriate, because as I write this with furrowed brow (on my simple-phone) I’ve just gone the wrong way along the Northern line on the tube and had to turn back.

Now back on track, I’d like to thank those kind people who’ve read, encouraged and commented. It means a huge amount to me.

I’d like to use this milestone as a reminder – a small reminder – that:

100 posts later, and I still have a long way to go.

100 posts later, and I’m not bored…in fact I’m as excited by this journey as ever.

100 posts later, and I’ve just scratched the surface.

I want to use this moment as a small reminder to up the game a bit and try harder. To say it how it is. To be fearless and more focused in my pursuit. To try to go slightly deeper. To take more moments to think. Also not to think but to just feel. Then explain myself honestly. Without the filter, we often use to sugarcoat, or impress.

Since I started this blog, I’ve lost a business and begun to build another. I’ve lived in four countries and built a house. I’ve made new friends, loved old ones slightly more. I’ve had some fun, happy flings. I’ve finally got over an old love forever on my mind for way, way too long (Complextom?) and now feel ready to love again (please send a photo with a SAE). I got within a hair’s breadth of getting a book deal, and then lost it. I’ve made mistakes, been stupid and fucked up. Like normal.

I’m just another little person wiggling about – now a mere one in seven billion.

As the world scales up, I’m trying to scale down. To listen to instinct, to common sense and to remember what’s most important.

It’s not you or I that are important.  Although we mostly forget. It’s not even saving the planet, or stopping suffering.

It’s simply enjoying being, and being simple.

—

Thanks for reading. Now send this to 100 friends.

Alternatively, just have a cup of tea and hobnob it up, or a little midafternoon nap, as I did when I finally got home.

A sunset swim in Watamu, Kenya - a nightly ritual - and one of the best periods of time spent since Simpletom began

Remembering Simplicity

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Now and then, I find it necessary to corral my fundamental simplicity messages – to refocus and try to remember what they are.

Simplicity, cheeky sod that it is, isn’t always simple. Like happiness, there are effortless moments. However, to fundamentally influence both simplicity and happiness, it requires reminding oneself and continually working at it.

Sure, the work should slowly succumb to the pleasure, but as with getting healthy after sickness, or picking up an old instrument you haven’t played for years, at first it is difficult and there are always reasons that your practice might slip awhile.

In both examples – the stiff muscles trying to get healthy, and the bum notes miss-hit – it takes some time and frustration to get over the reinitiating and into the joy.

What can we do each day to try to develop mnemonics, to help us remember? What is the simplicity equivalent of heading out for a jog, or sitting at the piano?

Certainly, at the moment I need them. Unlike most simplicity authors, I do not claim that this path is a one-way ticket in the right direction. The awareness of your goal perhaps makes it seem further away, especially during difficult times.

These should be little things that help us pick up momentum and to ease ourselves back into the frame. We can pick up the bigger items later. Here are some of mine:

1)    Find something you like doing that is entirely different from your normal day-to-day routine and helps you escape. Do it for just five minutes. For me, this does actually involve sitting at the piano, or picking up my guitar and playing and singing.

2)    Throw or give away three things that have been sitting around too long – perhaps a magazine you think you should read, or a book that’s been by your bed pressing into your dreams.

3)    Book at least one midweekly night in at home a week and do nothing, watch a movie, read a novel (not nonfiction) or spend time cooking.

4)    Go for a walk outside, even if it’s raining and it’s just round the block. This includes when you’re at work.

5)    At least once a day, fight the urge to check your phone or email for new messages. At least once a week turn your phone off for at least an hour while you’re still awake. One morning a week, don’t check your emails when you first arrive at your desk.

In one of my next posts, I’ll try to look a little further down the path and see if we can spot where this simplicity is heading. For now, take these baby steps with me and let’s see if we can get back on track.

Simplicity Vs Corporate

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I don’t necessarily let my clients know about this blog.

That leads me to wonder whether there is a fundamental disconnect – a tipple of schizophrenia in my life that I need to address.

If you need to ‘fake it to make it’, does that make you essentially a fraud?

Clearly, this website is in the public domain, as is my company. The more curious clients won’t struggle to find me here. I hope they like what they see. However, my sense is that many people I work with might not understand my simplicity quest.

The fact is that at this early stage of the business, I’d rather not scare anyone away by ‘coming on too strong’. If I’m professional and provide an excellent service, does it help my clients if they know that I am vagabonding and trying to maintain a work-life balance? If you’re talking to CEOs and heads of department, is it OK for them to know that you might be in your boxer shorts at the other end of the phone, living in a foreign city?

Simplicity might suggest to some that I’m not serious about what I do, or that because of my life choices and desire for fewer technological interruptions, that I’ll be less contactable.

Those who’ve followed this journey will know that simplicity should improve one’s professional life. That simplicity is about working better, more authentically and more intelligently.

I’d like to fuse these two streams and be able to demonstrate that taking time off work, being clear-headed, disconnecting and general simplifying all contribute to improving one’s working life and benefits those clients I work with.

Perhaps as things mature and I feel confident about a regular client base, I can be bolder. There’s something to be said for holding things back rather than upsetting people with your views, but there’s also something to be said for going balls out and expressing yourself overtly. Maybe clients would be more attracted to that honesty than the corporate veil that descends into boardrooms and cubicles worldwide that strips us of our personality. Perhaps I would win many more clients by being Simpletom than by being corporatetom.

As I look out at people here in Berlin (this post was written while I was there), I’m continually impressed by the fundamental honesty in their expression, their views and their unwillingness to toe-the-line.

For now, I’ll enjoy my clandestine Simpletoming and work on ways to begin the fuse the two…

My office window when I worked in Madagascar

Simply Loosing It

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Simpletom…?!?

Are you still there?

Is that you?

Oh dear.

This last couple of weeks, it’s just been Tom. Perhaps Stressedtom, Anxioustom or even Corporatetom…but frankly there needs to be some serious ember blowing on the coals of calm to be allowed to write here as Simpletom.

In addition, it’s entirely of my own doing. No external influence has induced this mania. There’s been no health scares, external issues, arguments, loves lost, keys dropped down drains, financial disasters or mishaps. Just a healthy dollop of self-induced pressure, layered-on expectation with a dash of flagellation.

As the cool of autumn creeps into the streets, is there a sense of another year passing that is igniting a sense of inadequate productivity?

Why do we tangle ourselves in these self-made balls of stress?

I’ve written here many times that more seems to get done when you let go of things than when you try to grab at things.

I’m no stranger to the world of hard work, but I lament the modern ideology that we must work faster and harder, despite our technological advances. Are many of our environmental disasters caused not because of basic need, but the hyped sense that we’re only human if we’re continually achieving?

This week I’ve achieved much, and yet nothing. I’ve made connections, sent mails and seen some chinks of light, yet I have nothing physical to show for my many hours spent tap-tapping away at this computer and yak-yacking away on the phone. The whole week I’ve been trying to do things more quickly, while lamenting my tiredness and inability to keep up a continual breakneck pace.

I’ve remembered to ‘manage my energy, not my time’, yet it still remains a concept rather than a reality.

It’s made all the more difficult by the knowledge that I ‘should’ be simplifying and that this momentum runs counter to my instincts, conflicting with the knowledge that building a business is difficult and needs utter focus. Sadly, my new entity isn’t a kinky platform that once built will scale exponentially – instead, it’s very much a ‘you get out what you put in’ type of business. That means every hour spent languishing and laughing could, through the lens of ‘success’, be viewed as a lost hour.

These last weeks I’ve not maintained the balance. When working, I’ve felt stressed at the weight of work to do. When not working I’ve felt guilty about the work I’m not doing. I’m neither here nor there.

Stress isn’t good for me. I feel breathless. No matter how long I sleep, I still feel exhausted. I just cannot enjoy myself.

Time for some self-medication (of the simple kind):

Please Stressedtom; remember that that one’s work is never…can never be done, because there is always more. You need to expect less, enjoy more.

You need to remember never, ever to compare yourself with others. They are exactly that – others – who have an entirely different physical, emotional and circumstantial makeup, which means that many of the things you covet in others are realistic, or would damage your own existence.

You need to remember that you’re all right sometimes. Flagellation isn’t constructive for growth.

You need to remember that Rome, or even Milton Keynes for that matter, wasn’t built in a day.

You need to remember what makes you happy.

‘Tis BE – not TO BE – that is the answer.

A reminder of less stressful times - an 'average' evening spent on the beach in Goa

Simply Getting Used

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I’ve been working reasonably hard recently. My body, not used to such unfair punishment, has been complaining.

After a day in front of the computer and on the phone, my neck, my back, my throat and my free-spiritedness hurts. Yet after a couple of weeks, I’ve noticed the pain, or perhaps the realisation of the pain, slowly diminishing.

A gentle reminder that we get accustomed to things.

Our ability to adapt is powerful. With attention in mind as this month’s theme (which when I attend to it again, I realise I have not been doing very well) – it’s worth pointing out that we stop noticing things the more we get accustomed to them.

That’s both good and bad – advantageous and disadvantageous.

Patterns help us develop good habits, and bad. Familiarity helps us see new things and ignore old.

It’s useful to bring this into focus.

For example, there are things that I find hard at first, such as work, running, meditation, not planning, being disconnected or simplifying – that become easier the deeper I delve and the harder I try. If these things remained as difficult as when starting, I would fail to persevere (even more than I do).

Yet there are also things that I become accustomed to quickly, like the tiredness London initiates, advertising’s prevalence, routine, the amount that people (myself included) drink when socialising, processed food, the weather, envy, not saying hello to people in the street.

It’s a shame when you begin to accept things that are wrong, just because they’re normal.

Reading back over my previous post about returning from Africa, I realise how quickly I’ve lost some of the wide-eyed-ed-ness.

It’s time to develop good habits, however hard they are to start, in the knowledge that they’ll become easier (while, of course, remembering not to try to pull too many of them off at the same time – Franklin-style)

Meanwhile, I’m trying to be attentive to the pieces of life that are unacceptable yet become normal because of a lack of awareness. I’m trying to imagine what it would be like for a Kenyan to see what I see and experience what I experience – to prevent the negative influences and habits breeding.

Simple Happiness Signs

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When life is good, there are signs. No, I’m not referring to limping parking wardens or free canapés. Instead, I mean the signals that indicate that you are happy.

What are these signs in your case? Can you make a list of them?

  • Perhaps you sleep better, with fewer anxious dreams?
  • Do you laugh until you begin to snort?
  • Does your boss become amusing, rather than tyrannical?
  • Maybe you eat more recklessly, or dance more furiously?
  • As with my friend Tim, sitting a few meters away from me, perhaps you whistle and hum unconsciously as you draw? In my case, when in a good mood, this is an endearing trait, rather than an irritating one.

Perhaps your friends, family or lovers can help you notice these a little more. Here are a smattering of mine:

  • The Moleskine test – I write my ‘to-do’ lists in the front of my moleskine and draw, write and take notes in the back. I’ve noticed that when my molskine is full, sometimes the ‘to-do’ lists are longer than the notes and sometimes it’s the other way round, but there is always an amazing correlation between happy times and periods when the notes section is much longer than the ‘to-do’ section.
  • When I lose track of time, it’s usually a good sign. Things that do that to me: A good book, playing the guitar or piano, a fascinating conversation.
  • When I’m unhappy, I tend to feel tired – therefore, not feeling tired is normally a good sign.
  • I write more often.
  • I don’t start most of my emails with ‘sorry I’ve been a little frantic’, or ‘it’s been crazy these last few weeks’.

It’s good to catch yourself in these moments, or see these indicators. By noticing what makes you happy, you can initiate it, or savour the moment.

Can you correlate these indicators with your actions? Perhaps on holiday you do all of these things far more than usual, or if you’re fortunate, when you are at work. Perhaps some people ignite these traits in you?

It might seem that the signs follow the mood – but could it also be said that if we try to actively cultivate more of these signs, or signals then these influence the moods. That if we force the results, the associated mood improves. If I play the guitar for an hour, and fight the desire to jump up and do something else, I end up happier. If I write more notes in my moleskine, I usually end up more content. If Tim were to start humming when irritated, perhaps he would cheer up more quickly? When I write more often, I end up calmer and feel more at peace.

If we feel more rested and sleep well, life is often more enjoyable – so we should sometimes head to bed early, rather than always waiting for the later hours.

If we consciously laugh more regularly, we might begin to feel happier. If we force ourselves to be more forgiving and more patient, we can feel healthier. If we eat more recklessly or dance more furiously, perhaps the other pieces start to fall into place.

Perhaps sometimes you have to force these things when they don’t quite feel natural – yet even when you start fake-laughing, often real laughter is close behind.

Not So Simple

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Many simplicity bloggers around write so consistently and with such positivity that one wonders whether they are mere mortals.

Usually the better ones amongst them write about some struggles along the way, but nearly all seem to have burst through their difficulties when they write. Many a post’s fundamental sentiment is; ‘I used to…’ or ‘it is difficult when you start then it becomes easier’… or ‘then it all became clear…’ or ‘and when I gave up drinking and meat and breathing that’s when I finally started levitating’.

Damn them for their precocious simplicity ability and know how. What about the rest of us who merely see glimpses of the truth through the barrage of our day to day?

I started writing this blog because simplicity wouldn’t go away and I wanted to explore it more deeply and dutifully. By writing and thinking and writing and thinking (plus some more writing and thinking) in the public domain, I knew I would leave myself open to more criticism, fear and failure. Knowing myself as I do, I knew that at times my discipline would run up against it. Fortunately the blog has mostly coincided with being in Kenya, allowing me significant space to begin this journey. After all, I had more time on my hands than I knew what to do with so the writing and the thinking and the being was easy.

However, in the last month or so as I’ve dived back into the ‘real world’ of London and Europe and began to power up again, I have been reminded how difficult simplicity is to maintain.

Not so difficult that I am in any doubt that it is of vital import. I remain convinced that simplicity is one of the sterling and most powerful tools at our disposal.

But thoughts of success, money, achievement and status have levered their way back into my consciousness. The noise of consumerism shrieks so loudly that it is almost impossible to ignore. The judgement of others much more potent than when you’re hiding, far far away. After a month in London I found myself pacing around and chomping, or is that champing at the bit with the same fervour as everyone else – if not more so to make up for lost time.

Then, thankfully, I had to return to Kenya, where I now sit, and find myself seeing things in perspective once more. I want to try to take some time to digest this roller-coaster in the meagre two weeks I am back – watch this space.

Simplicity, however much time and attention you have given it remains a significant challenge. It is only by continually reminding yourself what is important that you can make any progress. Sometimes, even with these reminders, you slide backwards and things become more difficult.

What these bloggers do is allow gentle reminders. I wonder if they even follow their own advice? Their popularity is perhaps because they turn the reader’s mind back to action – or should that be inaction.

Please don’t leave simplicity to an e-mail read quickly once a week. Help me out by reminding yourself as often as you can to at least think about what you’re doing as you rush around – and whether it is really the path to contentment.

When you see me rushing past doing three things at once, please feel free to remind me also – I need all the help I can get.

Trying To Stay Simple

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It perhaps comes as no surprise, given my regular blathering on the subject, that simplicity is more complicated than its innocent name belies.

On returning to the UK from Africa, I’ve noticed not only how complicated many things are, but also how difficult it is to live simply.

Although many things are ‘easy’ – as I mentioned in my recent post – maintaining simplicity is not one of them.

Yes, that’s somewhat of a contradiction – easy, yet complicated. But bear with me.

Let’s look at keeping myself fed, watered and cleaned, for example.

In Kenya, it was difficult to find much processed food to consume – yet in the UK we need to go to specialist shops to find food that hasn’t been molested.

There was never much worry about being paralysed by having to choose from a plethora of varieties of the same item in Kenya. Here I find myself confusedly wandering along supermarket aisles. Wondering, for example, how it is possible that there are so many variables to think about when wiping my bottom. Obviously I should know that I need pink, chlorine-free, padded, double-quilted, golden-mean designed helical patterns that optimise wipal load bearing, 10:1 removal suck ratio micro-pores and slide saturation avoidance…

I tried to have a cup of coffee the other day and found myself face to face with a Nespresso machine that I might have suspected, had I not fortunately been warned by George Clooney, was a small atomic device. Surely Al Quaeda will take advantage of this similarity and the fact that many airport lounges eagerly stock them for their next attack? You heard it here first.

After first determining that the small metallic mushroom (which looked about as far from a coffee-containing item that it is possible to imagine) contained the coffee I desperately craved, I spent a good five minutes pulling levers and removing water-filling devices and emptying more mushrooms from secreted trays. Nothing worked. It felt as if I had been given an electron microscope and a pair of pliers to remove a splinter.

I finally realised after a few minutes more that, despite looking like it had its own internal power station, the machine needed to be plugged in and on at the mains so, finally, I managed to extract a disappointingly thimble-sized squeeze of coffee at, the marketers would have me believe, ‘the touch of a single button’.

Sadly it was lukewarm because the milk I poured into it was so cold (damn these efficient fridges) that I then had to head to the microwave for a burst of heat. This involved pushing all manner of buttons (in the way you always do with a microwave) that resulted in some elaborate cooking schedule for 3.54 kg of frozen lamb. Fortunately, I terminated the heating process after a few seconds and extracted a scalding cup, hoping the next microwave user was a professional code breaker.

When I discovered I’d made a cup of decaffeinated coffee (as an aside, the red mushrooms should be avoided, as should clouds of the same description) I did some shouting and smashing things inside my head.

Coffee, after all, is needed when one’s brain is not working. That’s precisely the point of the stuff. I have no doubt that Nespresso will be held liable in an American courtroom for some catastrophe caused by a lack of alertness because some desperate soul wasn’t able to get his fix due to overcomplexity.

I tore out an advert from a magazine which is about Siemens’s latest coffee machine which advertises, I kid you not:

A senso flow system, an aroma pressure system, an aroma double shot, a single portion cleaning, an auto whirl plus, a direct whirl, a cream cleaner, a one touch function, an individual cup volume, a cream centre, a cream centre cleaner, an auto valve system, a silent ceram drive and a ceram drive.

Extrodinary. Could I just have a cup of coffee please?

It’s not just food and drink…

If your Internet breaks in Kenya, a representative from your network provider will often stop by within a few hours to give you a hand, then give you their mobile number so you can ring them again in case of difficulty, or perhaps head to their house to meet their children and share some goat.

In the UK, as happened to my exasperated father recently, it took him a few hours on switchboards talking to representatives of dubious intelligence to get an appointment for a few weeks later in order for someone to come and fix the machine. When they finally arrived, he discovered that they knew less about the wireless router in the house than he did so an elaborate dance followed, resulting in calling in a specialist independent consultant, who discovered that the ‘engineer’ had committed the Internet equivalent of making a mud pie at the Chelsea Flower Show.

I certainly wouldn’t be so uncouth as to mention the company by name, but I will inform you that they give young chaste individuals, who have yet to indulge in sexual excesses, a bad name.

Don’t get me wrong. It is easy to get stuff done in the UK and it is, as I also mentioned, so easy to moan.

But there are some things in this land that are so absolutely superfluous that one has to wonder whether all the hard work that has gone into making them is really worth the effort. Cue our toilet paper engineer, or the team further down the production chain who do the experiments. Perhaps they have a huge Nespresso machine to aid their tests – perhaps they can manage to get it to produce coffee in quantities that ensure that they need the very best paper.

I’m moaning I know. In fact, it is wonderful to be back and tip an orange juice, followed by a glass of cold wine, followed by some prawns, a packet of crisps, some nuts, a cake and a coffee down my throat – followed by a few indigestion tablets and then slamming the mess you’ve made into the dishwasher. It’s mind-boggling where all these things have come from.

I’m just saying that I don’t think I’m any happier with all these things. Plus it’s difficult to wiggle one’s way through simply without becoming a-tangled in the fray of other people’s business and inventions all in the name of making it easier to do things that were already easy.

Anyhow, I must go. I’m working on a design for a machine that will help

If you like this – please share…

Simplicity In 10 Simplish Steps

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If I followed all my advice, I would be disgustingly overearnest.

If I never got drunk, the hazy moments skinny-dipping, or sliding in mud at festivals, or midnight boat trips or all the rest of the wonderful semi-memories I have, might never have happened.

If I’d been wholly dedicated to one career, or my businesses had flourished straight away, perhaps I’d have seen less of the world, been on fewer adventures, or spent limited time with my friends.

If I was money-conscious, I could not have done many of the enjoyable, simple things I’ve done.

If I’d kissed all the girls (sorry – young ladies) that I’d set out to kiss, then the times I succeeded wouldn’t have been as wonderful. Plus I’d probably be an arrogant bastard.

I love failure. It teaches as much, if not more, than success.

Yet we’re taught that failure is negative. Bad ‘simpletom’, only got 5 out of 10 in his spelling test. ‘He failed to realise his potential’ was conspicuous by its continuing presence on my school report cards.

I realise that many of my recent posts have repeated a theme – going easy on oneself, removing double binds or conflicting expectations, and not working too hard. Through a specific lens it would be easy to see these proclamations as those of someone battling with self-justification. Well, that is completely the case. Guilty as charged.

Yet there’s an extremely important theme to this continuing repetition, which I cannot be reminded of enough. I’ll try to summarise this with a few key points.

If I could remind myself of a few things daily, these would be:

    1. There’s a chasm between what you think you can do and what you can do. Always. The only way to find peace within oneself is to accept what you do, not what you might have done. Dreams are great until you try to live up to them.
    2. The only route to happiness is by becoming better at failing and accepting failure. The happiest are those who best know themselves, rather than those who are the ‘best’.
    3. Sometimes, you’ll have a really shit day, even if you’re totally aware of #1 & #2 and your overearnest placid self-help mechanism will grind to a halt and you’ll forget all the good lessons you’ve ever learned.
    4. Sometimes you’ll have a brilliant day when you completely ignore #1 & #2, then wonder if #1 & #2 are true and if #3 will ever happen again, because everything’s great and you’ll try to repeat this day as often as possible, ignoring all your experience that tells you that it’s not sustainable, which eventually will mean you end at #3.
    5. #3 & #4 will keep happening, ad nauseum.
    6. You’ll never escape your body, mind or history (except through death, which is inevitable).
    7. If you write too many blog posts about ‘deep shit’, you’ll start to feel disgustingly earnest.
    8. Some days you’ll wonder what on Earth you’re going on about and wonder whether that means you’re having a #3 day or a #4 day.
    9. None of this really matters – at all – so you might as well try to kiss people and get drunk and ignore your advice while you keep one eye on #2.
    10. You’ll forget #9 and repeat from the beginning. The more repetitions you do, the easier it will get – which is why grannies are usually pretty Zen