Posted on 10 Mar, 2011 -
Our secret dreams and the danger of soya milk
warning about soya milk
How have you got to be where you are in your life right now?
Is there anything about your life you would change if you could?
Dear Reader,
I have been receiving a lot of emails from you all this week which is great. So thank you!
One important message that a number of you have sent me is that there is now a lot of doubt over whether soya milk is good for you - or could actually do you harm.
Having done some Googling on the subject I now realise that I either have to give up all kinds of milk (and possibly all food) - or give up Googling. Both sides of the argument (soya milk is good/soya milk is bad) seem to have ‘scientists’ and strong stories on their side so it is impossible to know who is right.
My conclusion? There is enough scary stuff out there on the dangers of soya milk for me to retract the advice on drinking soya milk that I’d passed onto you last week from the book I’d been reading.
How have you got to be where you are in your life right now?
On a different subject completely, I was sent an interesting email from a reader, Yvonne, about a nugget of advice she’d once received from a friend that has been a great source of help for her through her life.
The nugget she said was this: You are where you are because you choose to be there.
The advice we might get from this, I thought, also depends on who we are and where we are in our lives at the moment.
Many of us, of course, go through periods of our life when we are not sure that we are doing the right thing or living our lives in the right way.
To an extent, perhaps, there is always a little bit of this question in the background. And however well we are living, there is always room for more fulfillment, more joy, more challenges, more serenity, more passion… and perhaps change.
Sometimes, perhaps, this sentence - You are where you are because you choose to be there - can be reassuring because it reminds us that even though it is not perfect, the situation we are in is one we have chosen because of the values we believe in. We can take pride in some of the choices we have made even though some of the consequences they’ve lead to have caused us some degree of doubt, suffering or hardship.
In contemplating this, for example, I was reminded of an article I’d read earlier in the day about the son of the famous Impressionist painter Pissarro who chose to live his life as an impoverished publisher of beautiful books that he lovingly illustrated himself. They lived in a tiny house which some however called “the prettiest house in London”. At times when the family had no money to live on they were forced to move out of it and live on the rent.
When you realise it’s time for a change
There are other times, however, when we perhaps need to remind ourselves that we are not purely the victim of our situation and we have the ability to make many different changes to the different circumstances our lives and the ways in which we think about it.
This sentence - You are where you are because you choose to be there - at such times, can serve to spur us into action, or remind us that we are the creators of our own destiny.
When our lives have fallen out of step with our true being, our inner vision
But then is it always that simple?
If we are feeling unsure about what we are doing, where we are, or what our purpose is in life, it is sometimes because we have become out of step with who we really are and what we really want.
Perhaps we have been prevented by circumstances from living as we would truly like to. Or the things that we’ve been going through mean that we are no longer sufficiently in touch with our true desires, our true values and our ‘inner being’.
We may even be so unsure of being able to satisfy our inner wants and needs and desires that we don’t listen to what our inner self is saying anymore. We may even feel that we do not deserve or have the right to spend time and money in satisfying our personal desires in this way.
The demands of everyday life and the people around us are often so great that we don’t pay enough attention to this sensitive, life-loving, passionate being inside us. It may even feel a little abandoned or under-nourished.
Which of these 5 best fits YOU?
My offering this week, therefore, is a couple of antidotes to the quashing side-effect of everyday life. See which fits you best!
1. Pay attention to your dreams
In the half-term holiday I took my daughters to see the film Tangled in which Rapunzel is locked up in the tower by an evil witch who needs Rapunzel’s magic healing hair to keep her eternal youth.
When Rapunzel finally escapes she ends up in an Inn full of the most frightening-looking criminals and baddies you’ll ever see. When she tells them about her dream, however, they all turn into softies and start telling her about the dreams they have too. There’s one who wants to be a concert pianist, another who wants to be a mime artist, one who dreams of a loving wife… and so on and so on.
Very few of us get to fulfill the dreams we might have had as teenagers where we become famous rock stars, artists or multi-millionaires. But slightly less ambitious dreams are good for us.
“Dreams” said Henry David Thoreau “are the touchstones of our character.”
2. Take time to listen to yourself
In order to live the life we truly want to live, it is important to spend time listening to ourselves. Proper time when that is all we do. Rather than that constant droning half voice we often wish would shut up.
Ask yourself what you would like. What would make you happy? What would make you a fuller person?
Or are you actually already where you want to be right now?
3. Learn to love what is
In Byron Katie’s book, ‘Loving What Is’, she shows how we can gain inner calm by learning to accept and actually enjoy how our life is already - instead of constantly fighting it and wanting it to be other than it is.
As Epicurus once said: “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you have now was once among the things you hoped for.”
Often we are haunted by ‘should’, ‘ought to’, ‘shouldn’t’ or ‘mustn’t’ thoughts that can make us feel a bit bad about where we are and the way we’re living our lives.
Examples might include: ‘I should be earning more money’… ‘I should be doing something more important’… “I should have done what my parents told me’… ‘I shouldn’t enjoy myself like this’… ‘I should work harder’… ‘I shouldn’t have to work’… ‘I ought to be paid more money’… ‘I mustn’t show how upset I am’ and so on and so on.
And for years these punishing thoughts can go unchecked until we eventually turn round and ask of them: ‘But is that really true?’
4. Look carefully at the things you tell yourself about your life
Our lives are rarely as bad as we tell ourselves they are. Things are rarely going as badly as that incessant voice in our head goes on about. We can worry ourselves sick and unhappy over many things that aren’t even true.
“Reality is always kinder than the stories we tell about it.” BK
5. Love what is - but also do not fear change
If you feel that some kind of change would be good in your life then open yourself up to change. Be open to new activities, new possibilities, new attitudes to have towards your life. Explore the options and possibilities you might have. Explore areas you wouldn’t normally explore. Encourage yourself to try things out and see what happens. Dip your toe in the water. Be brave. Or as the book says, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway…
Best wishes
