I couldn't sleep last night!

As a child, I couldn't sleep. We didn't have technology like cellphones and laptops to keep us busy all hours of the night, so I sat for hours at the window looking out at the garden. I shared a room with my older sister and sometimes my movement in bed would wake her up. She always thought I was mad, but I feared disturbing my parents and didn't dare to leave the room. Where would I go, anyway? What would be the point of sitting in the dark lounge? 

I was fascinated with the shadows and the movement of wind-affected things, like a wrestling shrub, a swaying tree, or a plastic bag dancing in the street. I watched stray dogs and cats and sometimes caught the glimpse of a bat flying across the dark sky. There was life outside in the garden and I was fascinated by it. Even the night sky with the moon, clouds, and stars kept me intrigued for hours.

Throughout my life, I've climbed into bed with the hope of sleeping until the next morning. Sadly, I always sleep for a while then wake up and lie awake for hours on end. I blame it on my restless mind. I've spent a lot of time wondering about the cause of this restlessness. Specific thoughts wake me up. Thoughts that move through my mind will not affect me, but because I allow myself to dwell on one specific thought, I find no peace of mind. Louisa May Alcott once said, "A man may dwell so long upon a thought that it may take him prisoner." I am more often a prisoner of my thoughts than I wish to admit. I allow a thought to linger. By repeatedly thinking about it, I allow it to settle in my subconscious mind. It takes root and I nourish it with attention. With all the attention it gets, it gains strength and affects me in so many ways.

Thoughts are incredibly powerful and when repeated, these thoughts eventually influence attitude, words, actions, life, and other people. My motto for many years has been: "We are what we constantly think". So, yes, I believe repeated thoughts shape my life. I can waste a lot of energy and time on useless negative thoughts, but I can also control my mind and decide which thoughts to keep and which to reject.

Having control doesn't mean I always apply it. I still spend a lot of time and energy on negative thoughts. Why? The answer is simple. Emotions and feelings energize thoughts and give them power. In my life, one of my greatest motivators is fear. I allow fear to control my heart. This is communicated to my mind and fear filters into my thoughts. Because I constantly fear the negative consequences of certain activities in my life, I end up losing quality sleep. 

Lately, I've been trying to focus all my energy and time on making decisions that are not based on fear. I'm also trying to stop worrying about negative consequences, focusing more on the positive consequences. The outcome is that my sleeping pattern has improved.

You are amazing!

You are amazing. Oh yes, you are. You are made with organs that do awe-inspiring things. 

Take your heart as an example. When you think about your heart, do you ever consider that it is more than just a muscle pumping blood and maintaining circulation? Most people believe that the brain controls the heartbeat. That’s not true. In an unborn fetus, the heart starts to beat before the brain has been formed. 

Your heart has its own independent nervous system and is well supplied with sensory nerve endings. Its nervous system contains around 40,000 neurons, called sensory neuritis. It is also intricately connected to the brain by the nervous system.

Your heart has its own intrinsic nervous system that operates and processes information independently of the brain or nervous system. 

It communicates this information in four ways:

• neurologically (transmissions of nerve impulses);
• biochemically (hormones and neurotransmitters);
• biophysically (pressure waves); and 
• energetically (electromagnetic field interactions).

This communication system shows that your heart has a very important influence on the function of your brain. Your heart communicates with your brain in ways that significantly affect how you perceive and react to the world. 

Your heart sends emotional and intuitive signals to your brain. It is an intelligent force behind your intuitive thoughts and feelings. It helps your brain to arrive at conclusions. All your emotional and motivating capacities are built within it. This means that all the emotions that motivate you come from your heart. 

Your mind gathers information, thinks about it, and processes it through reason and logic. It then reaches conclusions. Knowledge, wisdom, and understanding are achieved. Your mind then feeds your heart with this information, received either from a present moment or from memory. 

Although your heart and mind are separate and distinct, they work together closely. Your mind feeds your heart because, in reality, you see, hear, feel, and receive the effects of your physical senses through the use of your brain. Your heart again feeds your mind. It has the ability to move or motivate your mind. 

From a very young age, your mind exercises a strong influence on your heart. Your mind is like a sponge. It is constantly absorbing information. It also acknowledges all the things that influence you, whether it's at home, at school/work, or in your neighbourhood. Conclusions and impressions are made. These experiences are communicated with the heart. Good conclusions and impressions will have a positive effect. Bad ones will have a negative effect. Your desires and motivation are then either good or bad. Good or bad traits take root in the heart and are reflected in your personality.   

The questions you have to ask yourself are: 

• Is your heart motivating you in the right direction? 
• Are good traits being reflected in your personality?

If there are bad traits, you have the amazing power to renew and strengthen your mind and your heart. Everyone is always talking about a paradigm shift, changing your way of thinking. It's also important to change your heart by paying attention to what you think and feel. You have the physical, mental, and emotional power to change. You alone can determine the quality of your life. Positive thoughts and feelings add energy to your system, while negative thoughts and feelings will only exhaust you. 

The power of motivation lies within reach. You need to feed your mind with positive information so that it communicates this through to your heart. Your heart will respond gradually as you impress good things upon it. 

Fill your heart with love, forgiveness, patience, gratitude, appreciation, compassion, sincerity, courage, and empathy. When you do this your feelings will affect your heart's rhythmic patterns.  

There are three important steps to follow in your daily routine:

1. Learn to do everything slower. Breathe more often. This will help to alleviate stress. Stress has an effect on the rhythm of your heart. If you learn to do things slower and remain focused, you will end up being more productive.

2. Plan your day and stick to your plan. Do everything you can to eliminate distractions and really focus on what you have to do. You will be amazed at how much more productive you can be. Less is more. You have the power to control your daily routine. Make sure that you don’t do more than what is required. 

3. Find time to be still. When you are quiet and on your own, it will not only calm your mind, but it will also calm your heart. When you start to relax, and your mind is clear, your heart will send impressions and ideas to your brain and you will find solutions for many problems. You will be more intuitive.

Do you now see why you are so amazing? Enjoy who you are and live with the purpose of perceiving your world with a healthy heart and mind. Only you can make the difference. The difference not only affects you but everyone in your life. 

Help others to see how amazing they are.

My Bucket List

It's absolutely amazing how difficult this was for me to make. When I close my eyes and consider what I have and what I would like to have, I enter a calm, peaceful state of being with only one realization: I don't want anything. I don't need anything. 

When I close my eyes, the most honest image I can imagine is a beach at sunset, with me and my loved one walking hand in hand. That's it. That's all I need. I live in honest simplicity. My life is not invested in materialism and I'm happy with that. To me, life and health are the most important of all gifts. 

What would I like to do whole-heartedly in my last days? I find myself satisfied. I have lived and I have loved. I have realized my dreams. 

I don't have a desire to achieve anything else, but a list is what I need, so a list is what I give:

1. Resign. Obviously I won't have time to work and do the list. 
2. Visit a few places in SA I've always wanted to go to but never had the opportunity. I'm not BIG on this, so I'd like to get it over and done with! I don't want to do road trips, so I'd like to fly to the places furthest away and hopefully drive short distances and make a lot of pit stops. I don't want to rush everywhere. I want to take my time. 
3. Stand on a mountain and scream as loud as I possibly can, probably the Drakensberg. It's one of the places I want to visit (See # 2). Of course, I can't scream. My voice disappears on me. So, I'm going to do this to the best of my ability when I'm high (literally high), on top of the world, i.e. my top, not the top of any given mountain. 
4. Meet Johnny Depp. Well, I assume this is expected of me to meet someone 'famous'. Then it'll have to be Johnny Depp. Why? Alice in Wonderland, of course. I just loved that story, the nonsense and his movie, and Depp as the Mad Hatter! I just want to hear what his life philosophy is. 
5. Have lunch or dinner with Nigella. Of course, she’s making the food. Yes! I just want to taste if her food is really worth the finger-licking and “ooh-aah” business, or for that matter, worth the effort of stealing down to the fridge in the middle of the night for a midnight snack. We can do this with Johnny Depp. Get it over and done with in one appointment. 
6. Learn to play the piano. I REALLY WANT TO PLAY THE PIANO. 
7. Buy a 6 and 12 stringed guitar and teach my son to play, just because he loves music so much. 
8. Go on a luxury Mediterranean cruise (western and eastern). 
9. Return to Zimbabwe, Bulawayo, Paddonhurst … and cry for my loss, for my dad and for Jennifer. 
10. Move to the coast. I love the sea. I wouldn't mind watching it every day. It not only inspires me, it also makes me humble. 
11. Write a few more books. The sea will be my inspiration. 
12. Paint again. Just one or two beautiful oil paint canvasses. 
13. Drive a powerful car on a highway as fast as I have the nerve to go. If I survive, I'll do #14. If I don't, my daughter will do #14 for me. 
14. Close my Facebook account and get rid of all other evidence of me on the internet. Well, obviously when I'm gone, I'm gone. 

That’s it! That’s the bucket list. I can't think of anything else. I imagine many things can be added to it, but I'm certain that at this age, the less I do, the better it is for me.

The road is long ...

There's no such thing as a road to nowhere. Every road leads somewhere and the experiences along the way are enriching. It should never be about the destination. It should be about the journey ...

It reminds me of the song "Road to Nowhere" by Talking Heads. The lyrics in part are:

We're on a road to nowhere
come on inside.
Takin' that ride to nowhere
we'll take that ride.
I'm feelin' okay this mornin'
and you know.
We're on the road to paradise
here we go
here we go.

People don't have the patience anymore to enjoy travelling. It's all about the destination. Their impatience in itself translates their lack of desire to move in-between. Leaving is effort and arrival is anticipation, but the in-between ... well, that's futile. We would want some kind of quantum teleportation in our homes, "Beam me there." Enter the destination and "POOF", we experience instantaneous departure and arrival.

In effect, the road is important. It's spiritual. It tests us at times when we are most vulnerable. Whether confined in an aeroplane, bus, train or car, we have limited choices of what to do. So, our patience is tested. We learn to wait. Our courage is tested. We learn to face everything we encounter.

Figuratively, we aren't on a road to nowhere. We're heading forward into the unknown. We don't know what obstacles lay ahead, but we push forward because we must. Faith inspires us to focus on the here and now and just believe the future will come.

What is our motivation? Fides, Spes et Caritas (Faith, Hope and Charity). Without these three things, we may feel as if the road is going nowhere.

Life is not just about the literal journey. If our spiritual road is well-maintained, with all the necessary signs of protection and guidance in place, we will travel all literal roads with confidence and patience. Whether or not the road is long, we will enjoy the journey (the in-between).

 

Teachers should strive to do their best

It is so important that teachers strive to be their best in the classroom because the classroom is a place where children develop certain beliefs and are motivated by these beliefs. 

The classroom is a place where children form opinions, make judgments and determine values. Children use their beliefs to assign meaning to the learning situation, to form an opinion of working efficiently and effectively, and to evaluate a teacher and the teaching methods that are used. 

Children have certain expectations. The results that they get for their work, form their beliefs about success or failure. Because the work that is done in the different classrooms varies, children can easily lose interest. This happens mostly when the work is too difficult for them to understand or so boring that they aren't stimulated by it. A teacher can determine whether work is difficult or boring. In determining this, teachers should do everything in their power to help the children to achieve good outcomes.

A child's motivational beliefs are developed through direct learning experiences, observations, verbal statements, and social comparisons. These beliefs guide a child's thoughts, feelings and actions. From one subject to the next, a child will never think, feel or act the same. Whether positive or negative, his beliefs are very resistant to change. A good example to use is mathematics. When a child doesn't make progress in mathematics and his teacher has no patience with him, he will learn to dislike mathematics. He will like it even less if his friends tease him about his results. This negative belief that he has formed about mathematics will not be changed easily.

Teachers spend a lot of time with the same children during a year. It's important that teachers learn to understand their students. A good teacher will know more or less what each student's motivational belief is regarding her subject. This belief (positive or negative) may have been formed in a previous grade. Students usually hide their thoughts and feelings, and so the teacher needs to have more insight into their beliefs. A student's level of participation in a subject, his commitment to classwork, homework and assignments, as well as the results he gets determine his beliefs.

Teachers can help their students by looking at the following basic ideas:

1. The classroom: Make the classroom beautiful and interesting. Learners must be keen to enter the room. They spend a lot of time in the classroom and need to feel comfortable there. The classroom also affects the teacher who spends a lot of time in it. The environment should motivate both the teacher and child, and make them feel happy.
2. Attitude: When children come into a classroom, they need to know that the teacher likes them. They need to feel loved. A warm, kind and considerate teacher will always win hearts. 
3. Discipline: It is good to remember that discipline is just as important as empathy. A firm hand is necessary. A chaotic environment cannot motivate or bring any good. When learners behave in an inappropriate way, it will help to discuss the situation with them. Treating children with the needed respect can help them to change their ways. Of course, some children are very difficult. Taking them to the principal or calling their parents will not necessarily solve the problem. In most cases, however, a good lesson with interesting work will help with the discipline. A well-prepared teacher will always have more discipline in her class than an unprepared teacher.  
4. The work: Try to make tasks and activities meaningful and never give more work than that which is necessary. Giving too much work is ineffective. Teachers shouldn't give work to keep children busy.  When we want a child to practice something, the purpose is not to punish him in the process. If a child says, "It's too much. I'll never finish in time!" it doesn't necessarily mean that he is lazy. Try and find out why he thinks that it is too much. Help him to see that he can cope by adapting the exercises according to his capacity.

There are many other ideas that can help teachers to motivate children. These are basic ideas to work with. The key to success of course is that a motivated teacher will always have a better effect on her students. Teachers, therefore, need to be motivated and enthusiastic about what they're doing in their classrooms.

How to control ourselves

We experience so many different situations every day and, without having to think about each situation, we adjust quite naturally to what we see, hear and feel. The minute we find ourselves in a situation that clashes with our desires, we battle to adjust.

A good example to use is sound. If we don’t like noise, our desire is to have peace and quiet. We want sounds around us that we can actually tolerate. The minute our peace and quiet are disturbed, and any given sound starts to irritate us or make us feel anxious, we are no longer able to adjust to the sound naturally. We become more and more aware of the sound, and it affects our emotional equilibrium.

We are truly amazing! We've been created to be flexible and adaptable. From a very young age, we are able to adjust to the world’s demands. The problem then doesn't lie in the situations we experience. It lies within us. We have different desires (wants and needs). These desires affect how we respond in situations. To be able to cope successfully, we need to control our thoughts, emotions, and actions.

Controlling ourselves is not easy. Life has positive and negative energy and we are strongly influenced by this energy in our daily situations. We've been created to recognize negative energy, and also to make alterations and override our responses. The secret lies in how we react when we realize we are no longer happy within a given situation. In order to maintain balance, we have to learn to constrain our desires and gain control of how we respond.

How can we learn to control ourselves? Here are four steps to consider:

1. Adjusting to meet the standards in life:
   There are different standards in life. We have to humbly comply with the standards that are set, especially if they're standards in a situation that we have no power to change. These standards can be found at work, in our neighbourhood, in relationships, in services, and many other things. We may have higher or lower expectations. In the case of having higher standards than those we have to cope with within a given situation, we need to learn to be less critical, less demanding, less selfish, and certainly less affected by the things that are not as good as we want them to be. We need to learn to be patient. If we can't change and improve a standard, we need to learn to accept it. On the other hand, if the standards are higher than our own, we may feel inadequate. We may feel we have to remove ourselves from the situation, whether it is work-related or a relationship, in order to cope. We should never allow higher standards to make us think less of ourselves. We should rather strive to achieve more. We have the ability to adjust ourselves and improve in order to meet the standard.
2. Understanding ourselves:
   It is important that we understand ourselves. We need to monitor our thoughts, emotions, and reactions. When we fall short of a standard and it makes us feel unhappy, we need to initiate some kind of action to change how we feel. We need to remember what our reaction was to a situation so that we don't repeat unnecessary mistakes. We learn to change the way we think and react by focussing on our emotions. For example, if a dog's constant barking next door irritates us and we find ourselves in a situation where we have to move to a new neighbourhood or town, not because of the dog, but for other reasons, we need to remember that barking dogs irritate us. So, we react to this knowledge by looking for a place to stay where there are no dogs. It's not always easy to find a solution to a problem. Sometimes we can't change the situation, so we change our attitude. Instead of hating the dog, show love. Throw biscuits (not poison) and see if there isn't some sort of initiative that can influence the situation for the better.
3. Applying willpower:
   We need to focus on willpower. It's an inner strength that we can rely on. If we want to see any change in our lives, we need to be willing to make sacrifices. We need the willpower to change ourselves: the way we think, feel, or react. It's an extremely tiring thing, though. When we land in a situation where self-control is necessary, we drain ourselves of energy. Therefore, we need to make sure that we eat healthily and keep fit. A healthy mind and body can cope better with emotional strain. In order to remain strong, we need to be motivated.
4. Applying inner motivation:
   Inner motivation uses all three steps above to achieve its goal. Let's look at the following example to explain this. We are drunk at a party. We do and say whatever we please. The minute our parents or boss walks into the room, we are highly motivated to be in control. We set the standard. We monitor our state of mind and make sure we are in control of our emotions. We focus on our inner strength and manage to speak carefully, even if it is very difficult. Of course, we know that our attempt will only work to a certain point, but we do everything in our power to adjust to the situation. Without motivation, we will not be able to do this.

Yes, we are truly amazing! We've been created to be flexible and adjustable. We can change our minds and our emotions, and effectively cope better with life. The difference lies in what we usually do and what we are capable of doing, what we want to do and the effort we're prepared to put into doing it.  

Well, of course I'm depressed today. Life sucks!

When we feel there's no purpose in life, we're going to feel demotivated. Why get up in the morning if we have no desire to do so?

The best is to stay at home, watch television and eat junk food all day. Occasionally, when there's really nothing to watch on all thousand five hundred and twenty channels (exaggerated number because when we're this down, everything is hyperbolic), we can always spend some time wallowing in self-pity and denial. Then we visit the bathroom, find something else to eat or drink and flop down in front of the telly again. By bedtime, if we're not dead, at least we'll be feeling grottier than ever before. Going to bed and sleeping off the ill health may help, but should we wake up the next day feeling depressed all over again we need not worry. After all, life sucks! So, there's absolutely nothing wrong with living like this. We don't need to feel motivated and even if we're totally out of control, we can always go onto Facebook or Twitter and tell the world how bad it really is.

Keeping this in mind, we may as well ask: What exactly are we doing here on planet Earth? Why are we alive? What is there to live for? 

There’s really more to life than focusing on ourselves. We spend so much time being self-absorbed, we don’t realize that we're sucking the energy out of our own lives. There's the pun: life sucks. Metaphorically speaking, we're doing the sucking. Life in itself is okay. It's what it has always been. I don't think our forefather pioneers went around saying “Life sucks!” as they beat down bushes and fought wild animals to make a happy trail for their families to follow. Do you really think great-great-grandma, who stood up at two in the morning to build the fires for breakfast and bake bread and rusks, preserve jam and milk a cow before five gave a damn about herself? She did it for the family. She never had time to say “life sucks!” because she was too busy. She was focused. She had a purpose, a goal, and a job. She wasn't busy procrastinating or making excuses for her laziness. And there lies the answer.

We are so self-absorbed, pampering our own needs, feeling sorry for ourselves, and sucking the energy out of our own lackluster lives that we have become lazy and have no desire to do anything else. Yet, we have to because if we want to eat, we have to work. Life forces us to do these things. Even the Bible says if we don’t work, we can’t eat. 

So life punishes us to work and the minute we work, we don’t have enough time to be self-absorbed. It’s a vicious cycle.

We want people to feel sorry for us. We want people to drop everything and run to us and empathize. What a terrible life we're having. Never mind if others are having one too. We're too blind to see that!  After all, what does it matter? We're self-absorbed. We don't have to reach out and touch lives. We don't have to make a difference. It's not like we're being paid to do that, right? 

Well, if life really sucks because we suck, and we want things to change, maybe we should consider the following. Life is not just about ourselves. No man is an island.  We are not the only people that are suffering and feeling like this. There are so many people out there that are feeling depressed. If we can heal ourselves from self-absorption and self-pity, and stop looking for attention or approval, perhaps we can step outside and make a difference in another person's life. 

We really have to reach out and touch a life in order to feel alive. There are five relatively easy steps to making a difference:

1. Listen. Learn to listen to other people. Here we need to know that when we listen, we're really listening because we're interested in what others are saying about themselves and their lives. We're not listening with the sole purpose of gaining from it. Drop the attitude: “He says ... so what can I say that will make him think I'm …” Remember, it's not always just about us. It's about them too. What are other people saying and how can we make a difference in their lives for them?
2. Help. Offer to help wherever we can. In doing little things for others, we're focusing our energy on them. We're building relationships. We're learning to care about someone else and not just ourselves.
3. React positively. We shouldn't wait for compliments or people to say thank you. We should compliment and say thank you. We should learn to praise. If we try to be humble and learn not to be jealous or competitive, we can achieve so much in a single day on a positive level.
4. Be loyal. When we listen to others, we realize that they have terrible days and bad experiences too. They suffer too. No one has it easy. The purpose of listening, wanting to help, and reacting positively means that we have to remain as loyal as possible. We can't afford to listen to people and help them, only to judge, gossip, or complain about them at a later stage. Making a positive difference means we have to put effort into it. We can't reach out and touch a life and then later poison it.
5. Involvement. Involve those people in our lives. Invite them to dinner or a sports match over the weekend. Be considerate before we involve them. We can't take a rehabilitated alcoholic to the pub now, can we? Show people that we genuinely care. It shouldn't just be lip service.

Life is what we make of it. It shouldn't make us sweat, but the effort we put into life to make a difference in that horrible job we're doing (just to earn a living) or the relationships we're having with other people, can also make a difference in the way we perceive ourselves and our purpose here on earth. Life is a gift. We should learn to appreciate every minute of it by being focused and being busy.