Contentment & Mindfulness: Birthdays are for Reflection

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Image taken from and credited to the article: Want to Be Happy? Slow Down

We are not long over the New Year period, with its celebrations and hopes for a new, better year ahead. We set our goals at the start of a year - a calendar one, a business one or a tax one no doubt. This is a good thing, as it keeps us looking forward, lifting the bar higher and maintaining growth.

That's OK of course it is, however if that is all we do...look forward...then we are putting ourselves on a treadmill of some description...with the setting constantly in 'climb mode'.

Today is my Birthday - Happy Birthday to me 🙂

Apart from celebrations, well wishes and even gifts from people that care about me, it is also for me a time to stop and reflect.

Notice how I used two words here: stop and reflect. How often do we do this? How often to we hit pause on the treadmill and just stop? I know that if I do that in the gym it does not keep my heart rate high and that also means that I am not achieving the maximum out of the workout session that I could be. However, life is not a gym session, a gym session can be part of our life and so it follows that maintaining a high heart rate in the gym is only part of the time out of our daily or weekly activities for our heart to exercise at a high rate.

So, stopping now and again is good...imagine a heart rate constantly at 150+ bpm 24/7...that won't be good for you then I imagine. I am not literally suggesting stopping our heart rate either...just slowing down a bit at times that's all.

My Birthday then allows me to plan in some time to just stop and take stock. I use this time of year as a time to reflect on what I have and where I have come from. It allows me to get a perspective on my life's journey and crucially to be grateful, evaluate my well-being as Matthieu Ricard refers to it, or as I prefer to say - experience 'contentment'. This is more an exercise of the mind.

If all I ever do is to look forward then how can I ever know contentment? It's hard to experience contentment when we are striving for the next level all of the time, as that could imply some sort of dissatisfaction with where we are now. I know that in reality I only gave half of the story when I talked about new years and goal-setting. In reality, anyone setting goals should take stock of how they did last time, where they came from and where they landed. It's a kind of feedback system if you like and so I was a little unfair in suggesting reflection does not take place at that time. However, I did it to make a point. The point is to deliberately set aside some dedicated time to reflect, to evaluate, to take stock and allow ourselves to be grateful...and experience contentment with our lot. This could be on our Birthday, or it could be through other times, such as a daily meditation for example.

Here is a TED Talk by Matthieu Ricard on the Habits of Happiness:

As I grow older, I am learning more and more about the power of the mind and how our thoughts can direct our lives. I heard Matthieu Ricard use the phrase "our minds can be our best friend or our worst enemy" in another of his TED Talks 'How to Let Altruism Be Your Guide' and I guess a Bhuddist monk living in the Tibetan Himalayas might know a thing or two about 'mindfulness'. This talk is all about selfishness vs. altruism, which I guess is the opposite of selfishness. It is also about a collective consciousness but how this can be changed one person at a time. I am still on my own journey in this respect and am not claiming to be truly altruistic just yet!

I digress perhaps but in a way not, as for genuine contentment to exist we need to get rid of our ego to some extent. We need to look at our lives as a whole, how we sit within it and how we allow our thoughts to view and interpret our life's experiences for good or for bad. At this stage it would be easy to slip into a 'poor me' type of thinking, particularly if we have experienced suffering in our lives to any degree. One of my top book recommendations, even if it is a tough rather than 'enjoyable' read is Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. This is a man that experienced suffering by surviving a concentration camp and yet found true purpose despite that suffering. My own 'suffering' is dwarfed when I consider what this man and others in history or even right around me have suffered - a useful reminder of how blessed my own life really is I think.

My personal reflections on this day are that - personal. I can say this though: that I truly have contentment in my life. And even though I can point to some bad experiences, tough times and challenging events, I can look back at these and take some good out of each of them somehow. I have more good than bad in my life and that really is something to feel grateful for. Life is a journey through the valleys and the mountain tops...we cannot only climb the peaks.

I know this is a rather personal and 'off the wall' type of post today but I share it as a reminder to each of us, myself included, that if we can take a moment to stop and reflect now and again, then we allow ourselves to see our lives and indeed ourselves in a new way. We can choose to be grateful and contented or we can choose to feel sorry for ourselves, or strive for more and more instead.

If we really are blessed and fortunate enough to have enough and more than enough even; then perhaps we can also do some good with that for the benefit of other people too? This is as much a question for myself, as one for you dear reader...I realise that.

For now though, I hope that you also experience contentment with your lot. The next time you have a Birthday, perhaps take an hour or so and just stop and reflect...as the years go by our life's film script offers much for us to review and learn from.

Philosophical meanderings over for today...thank you for indulging me if you made it this far 🙂