Blogroll

More normal thinking.

| Mairead

2

(Library pictures….. meat….)

I have always been a carnivore. My normal thinking around it would be: To survive a human needs to eat meat (almost) every day. While I have often considered eating less meat, my normal thinking told me I would not survive. Eating less meat is a fine aspiration but hardly worth my survival!

1

(… possibly salmon….)

To be clear, I wasn’t exactly conscious of my normal thinking around survival and meat – I know it’s incorrect. I’m related to at least four vegetarians (hello Kate, Liam, Aidan and Rory!) and they have survived life without meat, two of them for their entire lives. That’s the thing about normal thinking – even when we know it’s incorrect we still believe it…..

3

(… prawns?)

So, I thought I might give it a try – life without meat. And it’s going remarkably well. For one thing, I am surviving – useful. For another, I do not miss meat, even a little. For another, I love chopping vegetables, and I use the same chopping board with raw and cooked! For another, I’m packing more fibre into my day. All in all, it’s been fun.

Go vegetables, Mairead.

Crows are birds too.

| Mairead

4

(The old Greystones harbour)

I noticed a sign out on the motorway yesterday saying that Mount User gardens were open again after the winter. That is definitely a sign of spring. So, I’m going to take my camera there and bring back some colour. I have been taking nature for granted most of the winter.

1

(The old harbour from a distance)

One day last week I noticed a crow looking a little unbalanced because he was carrying a very long branch in his beak. As birds go, I find crows very dull. They can fly but other than that…. And they make a horrible cawing noise and they lack colourful feathers. Seeing the crow with the long branch was the fist time I thought of crows as cute. They’re birds too, just bigger. That particular crow was collecting branches for his nest, big nest.

Greystones

(The old harbour from very far away!)

So that got me thinking… what else am I missing/ignoring/taking for granted? And what am I judging by the colour of its feathers? The things we miss or ignore or take for granted can be related to our normal thinking. The same is true of our judgements. What we judge as wrong or bad or even good might just be something we grew up believing was wrong or bad or good.

What’s wrong? Mairead.

What is normal?

| Mairead

1

(The Sugar Loaf and the sea)

I went for a walk today. It was early, before the rush crowd so it was easy to hear the birds, the nice song birds. The sun was shining and I was feeling good. It brought back a really strong, beautiful memory of being with my Dad on a frosty sunny morning, out in the countryside by the edge of a big field. I was about ten. There were lots of other people around, mostly men, talking and joking and I was happy.

2

(Beautiful beach somewhere in Wexford)

We were at a coursing meet. For those of you who had a different childhood reality to mine, coursing is dog racing with real live wild hares. A hare is let out of a pen first and then two dogs run after it. The winning dog goes onto the next round and the overall winner gets a trophy. The hares either escape or die.

3

(Sand and stones on Greystones beach)

In my reality that behaviour was normal. We have all grown up with behaviours that are normal for us and our childhoods. We have also grown up with thinking that is normal for us…. Thinking like, life is hard, it’s impossible to get a job, I couldn’t succeed in that, there’s not enough time, you’re dreaming! It’s probably unlikely that my coursing memories will have a negative impact on the quality of my life, but my normal thinking might….

Think abnormal, Mairead.

Hello Little Self!

| Mairead

1

(Calm seas)

I’m tired today and I’ve left writing this post too late for the amount of energy available. But instead of getting a little annoyed with myself I’ve decided to be kind to myself. Ok little self what can I do to help you? No answer but that really feels nice, soft and squishy. It’s the opposite of the way I usually feel when I get annoyed with myself.

2

(Dense undergrowth)

But just to experiment lets try the other way… Ok lazy, get that post done now, you’re always leaving things to the last minute, you’re lazy and you procrastinate! Ok that’s not so nice, it’s feels like a huge dollop of concrete poured into my torso and limbs – I really don’t feel like doing anything now.

3

(Raindrops and flowers)

Why do we think that being annoyed or angry with ourselves we’ll get things done. Why do we think that when we call ourselves stupid we’ll be able to behave smarter? Why do we treat ourselves harshly in order to get the best out of ourselves?  Is there another way?

Ok little self, rest, Mairead.

The Dream…. and the obstacle.

| Mairead
2
(French sunset)
This weekend I had to make the difficult decision not to run my Dream Reality Workshop in April. We didn’t get enough people signing up to make it financially viable. So….. it won’t go ahead this year. This isn’t the end of workshops in France. And it’s not the end of my dream.
3
(French food)
It’s an obstacle….. a helpful tool that increases determination and creative solution solving! (I suppose it’s only right that I read my own posts.) It’s a normal part of the journey to the dream and it requires lots of creative ideas. So that should keep me busy for a while.
4
(Sunshine and Shadow)
In the meantime I’ve started to put together my Creative Morning Workshop (in Greystones), there’ll be details of that soon.
Be well, Mairead.

Fibre is Filling.

| Mairead

1

(Beautiful mushroom)

I’m learning about fibre this week. It’s spring time and I have noticed some of my clothes are a little snug around the middle. So…. it’s time to look into healthy eating… again. When I was clearing out the book shelves I came across a book I had bought a few years ago, Breaking the Food Seduction by Neal Barnard M.D. It explains very simply why I love to fill up on sweet things and how I can help myself to stop.

2

(Shadows and sunshine)

Turns out fibre has a major role. I know that fibre is important and we should get more of it in our diets, but it just always sounded so boring. Beans, vegetables, fruit , grains like oats and bran, brown rice. Except for the fruit and vegetables, it’s all brown and it’s not sweet, it’s actually very bland. (Ok I know fruits are sweet but not sweet like chocolate or biscuits!) Who could blame me for switching off?

3

(Up-close to moss)

Well that’s all changed, I’m won over by fibre! The secret I didn’t know… fibre makes it easier to stop eating the sweet things because it fills you up. It’s like using scrunched up brown paper around something fragile to protect it in the post. So I’ve started packing all the good foods I eat with fibre to protect them from my sweet habit. So far my favourite part of the book is fibre but there are loads of other interesting things to help a sugar lover.

Learn to love your fibre, Mairead.

Make the sandwichs early.

| Mairead

 

(Close-up detail of a rusty gate)

Back in 2001 I read the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. It’s a creativity workbook with exercises to do and questions to answer. Highly recommended. One of the exercises is called Morning Pages. It works like this, you keep an A4 copybook by your bedside and when you awake in the morning you pick up your copy and write three pages. You write every thought that comes into your head and when there’s nothing in your head you write “I can’t think of anything to write”, until, like magic another thought comes along. You do this every day.

3

(Close-up of a rock with old Irish carvings)

I’m working on a new project and as part of it I gathered up those copy books and have just started to read them. For the first six weeks of writing you are not supposed to read any of your words. I think it’s because until you have a habit going you’ll give up if you see what rubbish you’re producing! It’s not really rubbish, just mixed up and out of sync and hopping from one topic to the other. I did read mine at six weeks but never felt the need again, so it’s mainly new to me.

1

(Close-up of a spider’s web)

What I am finding amazing is the little things. How tired I was. How I missed my husband when he went away to Japan for a week. How I worried about everything, everything. How pleased I was when I learn something new. How much I wanted to help others and how guilty I felt when I couldn’t. How much I loved to write each morning. How important  making the sandwiches the night before was, to the smooth running of a life with school children. How everything I worried about worked out fine in the end.

The little things that make up a life, Mairead.

Inspiring Spring

| Mairead

1

(Soon….)

The sun is shining through the window as I write and I think this could be spring… or it may be summer. Whichever, it has certainly imbued me with a sense of possibilities, of renewal, of regrowth, of starting again. I had to look that up. Imbued, is defined as, inspire or permeate with a feeling or quality. I love the word inspire, so as I’m on a roll with the dictionary I looked that up too. To fill (someone) with the urge or ability to do or feel something, esp. to do something creative. How lovely is that?

2

(Forest floor)

But inspire also means, to breathe in or inhale! So that reminded me of a CD I’ve been listening to in the car. Finding your Life’s Purpose by Echart Tolle. He’s the one who wrote The Power of Now. Anyway, he says our primary purpose is to be present here and now to whatever we are experiencing in this moment. He uses an example of drinking a glass of water. When we lift the glass of water to take a drink we are usually not experiencing the glass of water but experiencing some thoughts about the glass of water or thoughts about finishing the glass of water or thoughts about what we have to do next.

3

(Wild mushrooms)

Instead, we could just feel the glass, see the water. Taste the water. Swallow the water. As this might be too difficult to begin with he offers a small step –  check to see if you’re breathing. Just noticing our breathing (without changing it or slowing it down or speeding it up) brings our attention to the present and we inspire!

Have you inspired today? Mairead.

Pattern Dancing is So Yesterday!

| Mairead

Pattern 2

(Material Pattern)

I’ve talked about my love of patterns before – I love patterns – it’s one of the reasons I like material. Material always has a pattern. So does wallpaper. So do we. In fact we have many patterns. Not the patterns on our clothes (although we have them there too) or the freckles on our skin. Our patterns are to do with behaviour, our behaviour. A simple pattern of behaviour would be…. when a particular thing occurs you always do something, the same something.

Pattern

(Light Pattern)

One example: when someone (anyone) shows displeasure you (always) feel you’ve disappointed them and you attack yourself internally. To complicate matters the displeasure might not even be real, but that’s another topic. So, the someone may have a look on their face or they may be saying the word No or they may be disagreeing with your opinion. Whatever sign they are showing of their displeasure is irrelevant to your next step…. a feeling of disappointment and internal attack.

Tiles

(Tile Pattern)

It’s a bit like a dance. The someone takes a step, then, you take your step. You, me, all of us learned this dance early in our lives and it worked really well then. It got us what we wanted, comfort and attention. We danced it so much we forgot we were dancing, so that even when it doesn’t work we dance. The only one who can stop the dance is you… but first you have to notice it.

What’s your pattern? Mairead.