Still searching for happiness?

Eli literally stopping to smell the roses

All too often I find myself feeling like life is passing me by, like i'm not enjoying the everyday experience of existence. And sometimes i find myself searching and searching for some secret hidden meaning, some complex reason to explain this sense of imbalance.

Is it the change of the season? The change in my diet, maybe it's the different brand of spirulina? maybe my copper and zinc levels are low and that's throwing my chakras out of line with my spirit animals energy flow........?

Recently I did something that I never thought I'd find myself doing, giving up an addiction. In truth it was only coffee, I didn't get hooked on wheatgrass (largely because it tastes like lawn cuttings!) or anything stronger.

I have over the years done lots of work as a life coach, a personal trainer and also a nutritional mentor, and the subject of coffee has come up a lot with many of my clients. It seems that the natural nutritionist view (which I tend to take), of coffee being really very bad for you, for reasons I won't bore you with now, can be quite a controversial view. It seems that people are so determinedly blinded by their love of their chosen boost that they have sought out evidence to prove that this black elixir does them the world of good, like tincture for the soul.

Anyway, i digress. So, to cut a long story short, at the age of 30, having had a total of about 5 cups of coffee to date,I went to Italy, discovered the wonder that is a proper Italian espresso, enjoyed in the sun, early on a summer morning over looking the ocean. And I thought no harm would come of enjoying a few holiday espresso's. So, this inevitably led to bringing coffee home, purchasing a lovely manual espresso maker and in a short period creating it as a daily habit. Because that little boost, tricked my mind into thinking it was happy.

the kids showing us how to enjoy simple pleasures

After about a month I started to notice some changes, my energy dropped, I woke up everyday feeling like I had gone clubbing til the early hours, drank them out of spirits then aged 70years in my sleep! The headaches came, dehydration, the need for that daily boost started filling my mind. And little by little the black poison started eating away at my mind.... those happiness boosts clearly came at a price.




Not long before this I had been very healthy, fit and lived a very active life, with no side effects, now life started to become overwhelming, I didn't have anything left in my tank at the end of each day, instead of my life being about the bigger picture and using every day to create the context of a life I loved, life was about getting through the days, and then crashing, not sleeping properly, waking up feeling like hell, then starting again. Happiness eluded me in a way I had never before experienced.

lunch in the van, pure heaven

So this feeling got a bit old. I stopped the coffee. That's when  it really hit, the anger, sadness, feeling a bit depressed at some point in the day. I'm past all of that now and feeling like my old self again, but i now have an experience in giving up coffee and completely empathise with those around me that are doing the same.

And this is when it happened, I realised that I had spent those weeks/months lost inside of getting to the end of the day, getting to the end of the week, getting somewhere, anywhere, but not here. Somewhere that the grass was greener, that's where happiness is hiding. And in this fruitless journey to happiness it hit me, happiness is not a thing that one finds at the end of a journey, therefore searching for it is pointless. It's not about the pursuit of happiness, but the happiness of the pursuit. Enjoy now, because this is it, no later, no tomorrow, no someday.

happy family on our travels

The Secret To Happiness

We are all, in some way or another looking for the same thing. Happiness.

And what I have learned through years of listening, learning, living and teaching, is that it's really all very simple. It's about giving.

     
Where are you looking for it?

In the pursuit of happiness all too often we look to acquire knowledge, we think that somewhere out there there is a book, or a teacher or a course that can bring us happiness. But in my experience this is not the case.

Dens in the woods

There is nothing inherently wrong with acquiring knowledge, but knowledge is useless without action. I know many people who have spent a lifetime with their nose in a book in search of the secret key to happiness, and after reading every book out there, they still don't know why they haven't found it. 

It's because happiness isn't found in a book, happiness isn't found in a smartphone app, happiness isn't found in an online seminar.

Happiness is found in the real world.

I have learned more through being a parent than any course could have taught me in the pursuit of happiness. 

As a parent, my happiness is found in watching my children grow into wonderful people, and knowing that I played a part in that. The happiness is found in watching someone else succeed, even if it meant the occasional piece of suffering for myself.

I very rarely spend my time doing what I would consider to be things to make myself happy. Time to myself is scarce and I don't have any unfulfilled wants or desires to fill it when it comes.

What i have learned over the years is that doing things for myself can be fun, but in terms of finding happiness, that is found in bringing happiness to others.

Give it away

I find love in giving it to my children, I find joy in bringing them joy, and I find fulfillment in the knowledge that I am doing everything I can to bring them the best that I think life has to offer.

So if something is missing from your life, don't go looking for it, just give some away, then it will be there, whether it's love, happiness, joy or anything else.

Generosity is the easiest a quickest way to happiness, do something selfless for someone, watch it make their day, and then do it again, for someone else.

Chef at work

Lunch is served.

If you feel the urge to contact me you can do so at okdaly@hotmail.co.uk

Thanks for reading

Oliver

Vote for yourself

I have had very little interest in politics over the years. It's a boring mess of blandly neutral, privately schooled beurocrats, totally disconnected from real society, and afraid of thinking outside the box or rocking the boat, lest it should distance them from voters, in the sickly game of social seduction, where the world is promised, but once the votes have been cast, little is delivered. Leaving the only winners the politicians themselves.

I have not heard a great leaders speech in my lifetime from the mouth of a politician. A speech that talks to our hearts and our beliefs, and inspires something within us. Not one founded in the dreary world of finance, healthcare and statistics about employment. These are all formalities of politics, don't bore us with them and parade them as a sales pitch.

Most of the structures that form society as we know it are crumbling, almost every country in the world is in colossal debt, every day a new huge crisis is reported on the news. The health service can't cope, the road networks are jammed, the financial structure upon which everything is formed is fundamentally flawed, there aren't enough jobs to go around, nobody has any money and the schools are failing the next generation. And yet these people that call themselves leaders don't take a step back, look at this bigger picture, see that a transformation of society is what's needed, and bring it. As far as I can see now is the time to cast off any any safety net, and with nothing to lose, take a risk. Throw out these outdated ideas and bring something new to the table. Because the table is currently straining under the rotting mess that they have been piling up for far too long.

I believe that there is a positive way forward that would work, on every level. It embodies all that i have spoken about in previous blog posts, one of small, local, sustainable action. A life that doesn't depend upon a financial organisation to fund unnecessary change, that then leaves you helplessly indebted and under the power of somebody else. 

I'm talking about each person taking responsibility for their own life and how they live it. And only then would we see the strain ease on all of the national services, as people would take their health and happiness into their own hands. Then we would see a change in society, and a transformation of an entire nation. 

Who knows where we'll end up?

Most of what I see when I look around is people that are confined to their lives, having been led to believe that the way to succeed in life is to spend your days doing whatever it takes to fund a life that they say you should lead. Then the credit card debt talks of everything that has been paid for to try and make this bland existence at least bearable. And what I deal with everyday is people coming to me asking how to find happiness, can they reach it, is it even out there?

It is, it's a lot closer than you think. All it takes is rediscovering what you believe, rekindle the flame of whatever truly lights you up and make it possible, whatever that takes. And in the beginning it's hard, it feels scary, it feels like a big risk. But let me assure you, that feeling of security that you get from the safe life that you lead is actually what is getting in the way of a life you love.

Think of yourself as a boat, the safe life you have formed is the rope that ties you to shore, its stops you from sinking in the storm, but it also stops you from floating away and discovering a whole new world, it confines you. And the safer it feels, i'm afraid the bigger the rope that ties you down.

What I hear from people, especially around this time, pre-election, is how the government is responsible for their happiness, and what they want to know is what are they going to do to rectify that. Well i'm afraid your happiness is something that you are responsible for. 

The happiness of a nation cannot be found in statistics or measurable results of any kind. This world is obsessed with measuring, and nothing can be counted as important unless it can be measured. And politicians seem to only talk in a language of measurement.

Reuben revelling in the opportunity of responsibility

One of my favourite quotes is this: 
"Because we cannot measure the things that have the most meaning, we give the most meaning to the things we can measure." 
And this has never been more true than it is today. We need to stop focussing on the measurable, meaningless things in life, and start to give some time and space to those things that can't be measured. Love, passion, creativity, beauty, integrity and belief.

Right now they are trying to revive a dying plant by cutting off branches. Look at the roots, look down, discover what's missing, and put it there, and in time life will come back to the limbs that you were going to cut off.

So leaders, don't sell me your 20 point plan that eliminates the national debt. Tell me what you are going to do to inspire action from the people, tell me what you believe and what your dreams of a future society look like, and tell me how you see Britain flourish from the ground up. 

Make this one count

This morning I woke up, and the first lines of a poem were going around in my head, so before i gt out of bed, i wrote them down, then out came the whole poem. 

It is about making today count, and living those dreams that have lying dormant for too long. Today is the day to dust them off. Don't let today just pass by like all the rest.



Make This One Count

So, what about today, what will it bring?
As the moon slowly sinks beneath the earths rim,
A new day that's full of hope and surprises,
The sun brings a newly clean slate as it rises.
Will today be the day that you'll never forget
With your dreams dusted off, there's no time for regret.
So many have passed in forgotten monotony,
And they've taken with them not a piece, but a lot of me. 
So now is the time to make this day count
Because of the days left, there's a finite amount,
So stand up, be counted, leave your mark in history,
Don't let your dreams be a sad death bed mystery.
Life deserves beauty, love, risk and grace,
If not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space.
So where you're now standing, leave a mark on the ground,
Something that when you're gone will be found.
Then they will know, that you walked you're own stride,
And you weren't just another one along for the ride.
So make your mark, start building your dreams today,
Then they'll live here forever, when you've faded away.

I hope it provokes some thought.

Oliver

Simple Pleasures

The weekend brought us some incredible weather down in Devon,  Warm spring days, full of sunshine and blue skies. We spent the weekend spotting all the signs of spring, the bank of snowdrops in our garden, the crocusses and primroses, cherry trees in blossom. And although it's not yet technically spring yet, this weekend had us all fooled.

The Family on the gorgeous beach.

We spent Saturday afternoon on the beach, with the moon close to full, the spring tide meant that at low tide the rock pools were uncovered. I don't remember the last time I experienced such a sense of excitement and deep happiness shared with the children, socks and shoes were discarded and we lost track of time as we searched the pools for crabs, fish, shrimps starfish and other amazing creatures. Our joy was so visible that it spread and before we knew it other children joined in.

This was a kind of happiness that can only be experienced when all else is forgotten, and the shared experience of excitement is tangible and all consuming to the point where children show behaviour that many parents think that their children lack. Selflessness, kindness and taking joy in others happiness,

Some of the beautiful treasures from the beach

This experience, is one of life's most important and valuable lessons. Learning that the experience of sharing happiness, means that everyone has it. Learning that putting someone elses experience of life before yours, means that everyone is happy.

Our experiences in childhood shape our lives forever, what we love, what makes us happy. It's when we decide which ways of being are the best to survive the harsh world, and how to use them. It's when we create our happiest memories. And all of our happiest times as an adult will be when we tap into those times as a child when we had the ability to get lost in moments, get taken away by imagination or dream beyond the limiting reasonable-ness that we constrict our lives with as adults. We can all remember a time when life was limitless. And having that memory is such an important part of being alive.

Bobby the butterfish

If we can give our children the opportunity to learn that when they give to others, not only will they bring happiness to others and enhance their experience of life, but they will themselves find happiness in that. Then this will live with them forever. And they will take it into adulthood and spread it across the world. And god knows the world could use it.

I believe that selfless generosity is one of the most powerful tools that we as humans have in our kit. I know from my own experience that the times that my life felt the smallest and I felt most frustrated or unhappy, were times when I was focusing more on making myself happy. These were times when I put myself first, I was taking, and trying to find happiness for myself.

I also know that the best way to expand our experience of the world, find fulfillment and real, lasting happiness is to give, share and spread any kind of love you can. And the most powerful time to give is when you don't think you have enough.

This is the way life works: If there is something missing from your life, give it away, and suddenly, as if by magic, there it is.

If it's missing from your party, bring it!

If you feel that there is no love in your life, give some away, and you will have it. If you feel a lack of trust in your life, give someone your trust, and you will have it. And if you can't find happiness in your life, give some away, make someone else happy, and you will find it.

Be generous, kind and loving. Do it for them, and you'll be doing it for yourself.

Uncover happiness.

"Organisation is the key to happiness!"

Alitza finding happiness in a tree.

This is one of the joke phrases that i preach around our house in the hope that others might take it on board, and while it is a joke, like all jokes there is a little truth in it. Stay with me and i'll run you through it.

In the wake of the whole un-schooling movement in our life we have had a big clear out, everything from the attic to the papers in the filing cabinet, kids toys, clothes, cookware. It was all taken out and put in front of the ruthless jury that asked just one question. Does it have value in our lives?

Something being of value can mean a host of things, do we use it? do we love it? do we need it? and so on. And unless each item serves some purpose or adds something of value to our lives then it has to go. Don't get me wrong, we don't live in a minimalist home with one set of clothes and a dinner set each. But thanks to our recent cleanse, we now live in a home where there is a sense of space, a sense that we can now breathe and enjoy the space that we have.

Watching the children in their newly sorted, tidied and organised playroom made me realise that it actually was true, now that they could see the floor, they could see the set of play stands, cloths, pegs, paper etc. Their imaginations were immediately sparked, and the most elaborate games took place, that involved structures, and travel, adventure and exploration. This game simply wasn't possible when the floor was covered with mess and the things they needed were buried. Something new was now possible.

This playing and dreaming was happiness at it's very purest. And i'm not saying that it was all because of the organising, but the clear room and tidy playthings was the catalyst for a sudden, huge expression of creativity and passion, on a level that i can only dream of.

And it occurred to me that i get the same sense of creativity, space and freedom from seeing a space clear, tidy and open. Suddenly things are possible that weren't before. I especially love the sense of clarity i gain from transforming a space from messy, cluttered and unused into a beautiful haven of possibility. It's like the tangible version of what life coaching creates, clearing away the accumulated debris and mess, to leave a clearing, an open space, within which new things can be created, and things are suddenly possible that weren't before.

Eli, on the tools.

Dreaming is something that i get people to do in a new open space in their lives as part of being coached, when we have cleared away the mess. Often people forget that they can dream, and as soon as they try, immediately they limit their dreams with "reality" or "feasibility".

When you listen to a childs dream, there are no limiting factors. They can dream as big or small as they please. Knowing that a dream is all it is, there is no need to limit your dreams or cut them down unless you are planning on fitting them into a small space, a messy space perhaps.

We all have dreams from childhood, you may not think you do, but you do. But something will have touched you or really spoken to you as a child, and it will have stayed with you. It may not seem huge or even be something specific, and often it's completely illogical or crazy, but it is very real. And it will never leave you, it is why you have that feeling that there is something you still haven't achieved in life.

Reuben dreaming up high

My big childhood dream is one of adventure and vehicles. The freedom and endless possibility of carrying your home with you. I get excited by long drives, new places and even service stations, it takes me back to a place in my childhood that was happy beyond measure. Which is why, when i bought a rusty old van, converted it into a small home and travelled Europe with my children i experienced a deep sense of happiness and peace that i couldn't explain, a tangible sense of knowing that what i was doing was right, and it was fulfilling something deep inside me that knew what life was really all about. And i couldn't logically explain why i did it, or what it would achieve. But what it created was magic, for me and my family.

So my advice today is to do some sorting, clear a space, and you never know what you might find. You might find the clarity, space and freedom to do something you didn't previously think possible, or you may even find, buried deep under things that you haven't moved for a long time. an old dream, and if you take it out and make it happen, then you might just discover the happiness and peace that you have been looking for.

Isaac, just being Isaac.

Loving Life: One step at a time.

I have had a fantastic week. It has been filled with everything that i want my life to be filled with, fun, excitement, children, learning, singing, joy and challenges.

Cooking time

Every day brings something different for me these days, the days and hours i get to spend engaging with the children as part of our un-schooling journey are magical, watching their sense of pride and achievement as they light fires in the woods with just a flint, or watching them enraptured by live music that fills them with joy (kids music by the amazing www.pocodrom.com, check him out!), even my work days are never the same, a mixture of many different things that i love, personal training, life coaching, carpentry........ the list goes on. Needless to say that all of life's important boxes are being ticked.

I have had new clients come to me recently for both personal training and life coaching, and i love engaging with new clients, i love the inspiration i see in their eyes when i open their world to the possibility of them really being able to achieve the goals that they always thought to be far out of reach.

And it really struck me how it is all so simple, people are of course all very different, it has been different journeys that have got us here and we are therefore entirely unique and our own kind of wonderful, but change is very simple, transforming an area of ones life, whether it's health, fitness, relationships or lack thereof, a difficult break up, a change of career, all require the same approach.

Context is decisive, transform the context of your life, and the content will transform itself.

Lighting fires!

It's all about habit. Every day is made up of the choices you make, the little things that you do, whether they are part of a bigger picture or whether they are just what to eat for lunch. When you add them all up, they make up your day, and when you add those up, they make up your life. And all of these little choices will be inside a context, often ones context isn't consciously created and just "happens" over time based on learning from mistakes or unconsciously being a way that you think gets the best results in life, so whether you know it or not, there is a context, and overall story line that runs your life, and is the reference point for your decisions every day.

So to change an area of your life, you must first change the context, create a "why", And with a context for change there will be a reference, or focal point that will make the choices easy. Then with the context in place you can change the little moments, the every day habits. Don't get me wrong, big changes are great, boosts like a juice cleanse, a personal transformation course, a fitness boot camp, they all supply the inspiration and motivation for change, but long term transformation takes commitment, 

And to form new habits inside this new context, don't attempt to change everything at once. Take your existing habits and change them one by one, break life down into bitesize chunks. As humans, we can't sustain big changes, because we are creatures of habit. 

So as an example if you want to transform your health, inside the context of "i believe that optimum health will give me a longer happier life", start with your diet, but don't change everything at once, take one habit, say breakfast, and change that, focus on changing just that until it is a habit, then when it is an unconscious habit, tackle the next habit, say snacking. And keep changing the daily habits until you have changed them all, and hey presto, 6 months later you have transformed your diet, and it is a committed change because you have formed new habits. Six months that could have been spent going from one crash diet to the next, has been spent transforming your health forever.

So if you think about how your life is made up of bitesize habits, that you have the ability to change, you could completely transform everything in your life in a year. A year from now you could have the life you always dreamed of. 

People often comment on how great my life is and how much i seem to love it, and i always tell them that it wasn't luck or magic, and it isn't a secret, I've just shared with you everything it took for me to create a life that I love, that i am living every day.

Just remember, context is decisive, transform the context of your life, and the content will transform itself.

A picnic in the woods

Running, because he can.

New beginnings, Old vans and a dog.

Hello all,

It has been a long time since i was last spotted in the blogosphere, all will become apparent later on in this very blog! However, the dust has settled for long enough for me to write this blog, so lets get started before the next stampede of change gets the dust flying again!!!

So, where to begin, so much has happened since we last spoke, lets start at the beginning: We are now home schooling our four lovely children. This is something that we have done before, when we went travelling (did i mention that we travelled europe in a rusty old van with 4 kids? no? another time.....), and we have always wanted to return to. 

Technically we don't call it home schooling, we call it un-schooling. This un-schooling approach has a very specific way of working, and we have taken the general idea of and tweaked and modified it to work for us. The basic premise or context for the whole approach is that there is no forced learning, learning happens as a by-product of living.

I know for lots of you this will raise many many questions, which i am more than happy to answer by email or other means of communication, in the meantime keep reading......

To understand this approach you must first understand that a for a child the world is a place of endless wonder, limitless possibility, magic and beauty. Once you see this, then it is much easier to believe that a child won't go through life without learning, because they have an insatiable appetite for making sense of the magic in this incredible, proposterous world that surrounds them.

Start them young

And if, when a spark of inspiration and curiosity is glimmering, you fuel it, the learning is inevitable, and the creations are amazing. If you can support a childs mind to unleash it's creativity in whichever direction it needs to go, rather than try and control and harness it's dreaming, then what surfaces are gems.

The overall goal for us in raising our children to adults, is to try and nurture and maintain all of the talents that they were born with, creativity, empathy, ingenuity, the ability dream, and add to them the skills to use these effectively. skills like commitment, following dreams, and leaving the world a better place because you were there. If this is what we see when our children enter the world as adults, then my job as a parent will have been a success. I couldn't care less that my children reach a certain age with qualifications or intellectual knowledge, you can always get an A-Level, you can never re-learn creativity if it has been suppressed and forgotten.

So, the second change in our lives involves a dog. In fact it involves a dog to the point where there is a puppy right now in its bed in our kitchen! The puppy's name is Dylis,and it was Karina's (my wife), birthday present in December. It's a cockerpoo (a blend of cocker spaniel and poodle). And while this may not be a particularly big thing for anyone else, it kind of is for me, as i'm not a dog person. I have managed to put off adding a dog to the family for a while, citing babies and children as my excuse, but i knew it was only a matter of time, so there it is, a dog.

And now on to the most exciting part, I have very recently purchased a new camper van!!!! It is a 1988 ex-ambulance (see photo), and it's a thing of beauty, well if you like small commercial vehicles from the 80's that have been converted to home modern hippies, then it'll be right up your street. It's very advanced, it comes with extras such as an automatic oil cleansing system (oil leak), air conditioning (drafty, bad fitting front doors) and you never have to worry about running out of power steering fluid, because, well, it doesn't have power steering, and parallel parking is intersting, imagine performing brain surgery with a shovel an you'll get some idea.  The front windows were designed to work on friction, however after 27 years of use, now when you release the catch they are way to tight for the first inch, then they promptly fall into the doors.

It's old, slow and rattly, it has everything we need to create wonderful memories, this van has no idea that it will be carrying a crazy family of 6 to the sun, sea, snow and back home. It's our little home from home, and there are many adventures in our future that this van will be taking us on.

See you soon

Oliver