Life's Too F***ing Short

You’ve got to admire someone who manages to find a title for their book by recycling a cliché with added profanity – it’s the ultimate in literary laziness. Quite frankly, life probably is too short to find a smartass title for your book, so well done Janet Street-Porter for the marvellously unimpressive title of her latest tome! Dull by name, though, is not necessarily dull by nature. Ms Street-Porter is famously direct of speech and doesn’t stint on her opinions in print either.

Talking about celebs who obsess about their looks and who look “profoundly miserable”, she recounts “I’ve met Madonna a few times and she’s highly intelligent, driven and lacking in humour. They don’t have Christmas at her house, they don’t have presents and she’s banned the children from watching television. Now I think that sounds pretty f***ing cheerless. Every woman in the country, bar Madonna, must sit around at some point in their tracksuit bottoms and a pair of slippers – but she doesn’t look as though she does, does she?”.

Indeed. Not much point in being a global superstar and living miserably, is there? Of course, Janet’s view is only that of an outsider and perhaps Madonna does find great joy in life, but my money’s on Janet. Who wants a rigid, cheerless existence?

She adds “Victoria Beckham, whom I’ve met a few times, is similar – they’ve achieved, want to achieve more and have never achieved enough. Victoria’s obviously decided to exercise and not to eat and the result is that her clothes wear here rather than the other way around. They both need to lighten up a bit – but I do wonder what would make them happy.”

Good old Janet’s making a lot of sense – in her usual forthright manner. It’s the rigidity that’s the problem. To be happy is to be relaxed with yourself, your life and with other people. It’s the opposite of control and rigidity. When you’re happy you can let go of how things ‘should’ be and get comfortable with how things are. That doesn’t mean you don’t have goals or ambitions, but that you learn to go with the flow and take life more easily and less seriously. Some of the best things in life can arise spontaneously, if you make space for them.

For a more laid-back sense of living, letting go of long-held ‘rules’ is the number one priority. These are the ‘life’s too short’ kinds of behaviours that we really need to set aside if we want to create an authentic life. Often these are habits or standards that we’ve assumed from others without ever really considering how important they are to us. The biggest clue that they’re ‘shoulds’ is that they tend to be things we struggle with, that feel like an effort or are standards we think we should live up to.

Socrates said that “an unexamined life is not worth living” – what he didn’t say was how painful it could be to continue to live a life where you don’t examine the values that are driving you. It’s impossible to be happy when you’re living a life that’s driven by other people’s ideas of success or decorum, that’s out of integrity with your own values. Only when you’re living by your own lights can you truly be happy – and that means letting go of all those beliefs and habits that life is really too short to pursue.

In Janet’s world, life is too short to …

Try to be a size zero
Talk to people who are boring
Spend it in the same dreary job
Be a slave to fashion
Have a set of rules you can’t live up to
Spend a fortune on face cream
Be on a permanent diet
Worry whether you’re clutching the latest bag

What would be on your ‘life’s too short’ list? Start with the mundane stuff – it’s liberating to get rid of the day-to-day dross first and then work up to the big stuff like your entire personal value system. Personally, ironing is at the top of my day-to-day ‘life’s too short’ list. I haven’t touched an iron since the early 80s, after a particularly sweaty episode when I was steam-ironing New Romantic frilly shirts in 40 degrees of heat. If it needs ironing, it goes to the dry cleaners. Period. I will never spend a single moment of my life sweating over a shirt again – and that feels good!

Then pay attention to the rules you set for yourself. Do you make commitments you don’t enjoy? Do you sacrifice yourself for others? Do you know when to draw the line at work? Is your schedule more driven by the demands of others than by what you’d prefer to do?

Finally, take a look at what’s really important to you. What are the major beliefs that run your life and are they genuinely of value to you or ideas you’ve taken on from others? What’s your personal definition of success? Are you pursuing a career or a promotion that isn’t actually what you want?

This week, your mantra should be ‘life’s too short to…’ and then just fill in the blanks. Say it when you’re brushing your teeth, when you’re having a coffee or when you’re watching TV. Use every opportunity to examine what you can let go of to create a fabulous, authentic life for yourself.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link inthe Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material © 2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 14 Jan 08)

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

This week I have mostly been having way too much fun to think seriously about anything, so I’m just going to cut myself some slack and pass on a brief few words on the subject of happiness before I head out again …

· Get the balance right in your life between structure and freedom. Part of what I’m loving most about this time in my life is that there’s plenty of room for spontaneity, but an empty canvas can often lead to boredom if you’re not self-motivated. Find out what you need to make your life interesting and make room for it.

· You know you’re in the flow when coincidences are commonplace and magical things begin to happen. You get there by appreciating every moment you can and expecting a positive outcome, whatever you’re doing.

· Positive belief in yourself begets confidence, but it can take a lot of repetition to break down old, ingrained thoughts. Keep slogging at it even when you’re not seeing results, because suddenly you just might get a breakthrough. Consistency is what counts.

· Watch your energy. When you feel it drop, pay attention to your thoughts. If you’ve slipped into a pattern of self-defeating thinking, deliberately focus on something uplifting. Your mood will follow your thoughts.

· Never underestimate the power of laughter. Sheer, unmitigated silliness is a vital key to keeping your energy high and reminding you never to take anything too seriously. Play a lot and laugh out loud.

Now, in the interests of giving you the best ever toy to keep you entertained for hours, I hereby introduce you to my current fave wheeze … Bombay TV!

Using this link, http://www.grapheine.com/bombaytv/index.php, you can create your very own silly sub-titled Bollywood film clips. All you need is a Monty Python-esque sense of humour and you’re ready to play film director. The site gives you a selection of clips to choose from and when you’ve picked one, it plays the clip to show you where the sub-titles fit. Type in the words you want the actors to say and play it back to make sure you’re happy with your masterpiece. When you are, give it a name and send it to yourself and all your friends. It does come with a health warning, though – it’s seriously addictive!

Here’s one I made earlier, to get you in the groove …

http://www.grapheine.com/bombaytv/index.php?module=see&lang=fr&code=8dc42a622e8c2b6d23045a5c0c7851c8

Have a fabulous week with your own private Bollywood fringe festival!

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material © 2007 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 15 Oct 07)

The Pursuit Of Happiness

This one’s been percolating in my mind for a few weeks. It was only just a passing comment by someone at a party, but for some reason the way it was phrased rang alarm bells like Big Ben on acid. Along with the general chit-chat that goes with the canapés, we were discussing the meaning of life, the universe and everything when my cocktail companion said “I’m just trying to find what will make me happy”.

That probably doesn’t sound like a lot to you, but what rang clear and loud to me was just how fundamentally that concept is flawed. So its outcome, like the fruit of the poisoned tree, must be doomed to failure. If you’re on a quest to find your happiness, the underlying assumption is that the answer exists outside yourself, as something to be found in the world. Equally, if you need to search for your happiness, then something must be wrong with you and, again, the cure is expected to come from an external source. Both of these assumptions force you into a position of helplessness, of being at the mercy of unhappiness until the remedy is found. They’re ultimately very self-destructive, because they imply that who we are is not enough, that we’re damaged goods and that only something that arises from outside of us can save us.

This is a classically Western psychological malaise that is at odds with Eastern spiritual perspectives. In the Dzogchen Tibetan lineage, as described by Lama Surya Das, we are already whole and complete and life is our journey back to that awareness. He says “Dzogchen means the innate great completeness. It points to our own innate wholeness, our own true Buddha nature, our untrammelled spirit, perfect and pure from the beginningless beginning. It is what we call the Buddha within – not an oriental Buddha, not an historical Buddha, not one of stone, not male or female, but the Buddha nature within each of us, true and wise, loving and compassionate. We want to come back to that, awaken it, cultivate it – that is what the path is about. We don't get it from outside, from someone or somewhere else, or even from our own ideas of what we are. The Havajra Tantra says we are all Buddhas by nature but must, through our own spiritual work, awaken to ourselves.”

In Dzogchen, as indeed in the Christian-inspired teachings of A Course In Miracles, who we are at essence is loving, peaceful and joyful. What stands in the way of knowing the truth about ourselves are the illusions we carry about who we are and how we see the world. Our lack of self-worth and the belief that a change of circumstances will make us happy drive us into the outer world to seek a fulfilment that paradoxically cannot ultimately be found there, because it is already within. That’s not to say that you won’t have fun with the shoes and the cars and the holidays along the way, just that these are incidental to true happiness, not the actual cause of it.

As you’re probably aware by now, I’m hardly an advocate of the ascetic lifestyle. In fact, if shopping were an Olympic sport, let’s just say I’d have a fine little collection of gold medallions. What I have come to know, though, is that collecting stuff is entertainment, not the main event. It’s like indulging in a serious sugar hit – you know you’re going to get a temporary lift in energy, but after that it’ll leave you feeling even more like you’re running on empty than before. What’s required for sustained energy is something a little more substantial and that applies equally to the art of happiness.

When you discover that wellspring of joy, peace and fulfilment within, then the outer stuff is still fun, but it’s not what drives your life. The focus then becomes on how to live in alignment with who you really are and life can become an experiment in creativity, of finding ways in which to express yourself, rather than a treasure hunt for an external form of happiness. Everything can become a form of joyful exploration, instead of desperate pursuit.

As a Zen Buddhist text puts it, “The person who is a master in the art of living makes little distinction between their work and their play, their labour and their leisure, their mind and their body, their education and their recreation, their love and their religion. They hardly know which is which. They simply pursue their vision of excellence and grace in whatever they do, leaving others to decide whether they are working or playing. To them, they are always doing both.”
This joyful vision of a life lived in integrity with the true self has much in common with the views expressed by two figures who were totally polarised in their religious beliefs – or lack of them: the deeply spiritual Mahatma Gandhi and the existentialist writer, Albert Camus. For Gandhi, “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” Camus wrote “But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads”. Clearly no religious belief is required, but a sense of integrity between the self and the way that life is lived is essential.

This week, spend a little quiet time so that you can pay attention to what arises from within you that makes you happy. It can be as simple as just being peaceful for a few minutes or stopping long enough to let a creative idea pop up in your normally over-occupied mind. Take a look at how well your life reflects your values. We tend to think that our purpose in life is a job, but it's actually the totatlity of how we live. Where are you in alignment with what you value and where are you way out of whack? What are you doing that you feel uncomfortable about? If something feels unfulfilling to you, what's missing? If it feels right, what about it is in alignment with who you are? What qualities are the people around you expressing and how well does that sit with you?

The key to becoming aware of your own essence of completeness and joy is to know yourself and to live in alignment with what is true for you. Happiness is an inside job and that’s always going to be impossible to achieve without some good old-fashioned introspection. I’ll give the philosopher, Aristotle, the final word on this one. As he put it, “To live happily is an inward power of the soul”. If you want real happiness, it’s time to drop the outer search and start looking on the inside. Know your happiness – don’t try to find it!

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material © 2007 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 19 Feb 07)