HUMAN HIBERNATION

I was wondering, recently, if we humans actually go into kind of hibernation or something like that.

Not properly, I mean, but I sure have the feeling that I myself and my body and spirit are kind of preparing for hibernation in some very awkward way.

With the temperatures dropping into the minus degrees (-4 currently) I feel my energy and mood dropping with it, accordingly.

Apart from the fact that I am constantly freezing, even with wearing 2 jackets, I have a heavy craving for very warm and very rich and savoury foods.

I feel like a squirrel, trying to conserve as much energy as I can and with the fluctuation of my body temperature my motivation to be active sinks into the minus degrees, alongside the temperature outside.

By the time the clock on the wall says 4pm and the sun has set my body says: “Gosh, gimme a break, lets have snooze…for about 12 hours, please!”

Sometimes, I have a siesta, but waking up after 4 hours I realise this wasn’t a bloody siesta, this was a proper sleep! And the worst is: I really could do with even more!

Now, Hibernation is a state of inactivity and metabolic depression in order to conserve life.

Conserving energy in times when food is scarce and winters are cold is what saves the life of mammals and rodents who fall into hibernation for a certain time, until the climate and environmental changes allow a more active and vivid life with plenty of food.

To do so, they eat more in autumn, store fat and then find a safe place where to fall into a deep sleep which they cannot be woken up from easily.

But I don’t understand my own hibernation issue here at all.

I am human.

My food isn’t scarce.

Co-op and Tesco’s just around the corner and open every day from 7am – 10pm, in order to supply my human fellows and me with any kind of food desired.

And why the heck would I wanna sleep 20 hours every day?

Why would I wanna bury myself in the house next to the fire place, rather than socialise but just stay with myself? How could one possibly to socialise when asleep anyways?

I don’t know WHY this all is, but sure it IS.

I want to sleep, I want to rest and I don’t want to move until its warm outside again.

My energy level is low, my body temperature is dropping and even my mind is resting and not as open and vivid as usual, as you can see with this very post here, where I have to search and cram for words at the very bottom of my word pouch.

I sure have come to the conclusion that I need an absolute different rhythm for the winter months.

A vivid monkey like me…what could I wish for?

20h sleep

2h food

1h grooming

1h spacing out and staring at the ceiling

Sometimes though, its just too bad I am a human being, having to go to work and fulfilling ordinary duties, but being at the mercy of deeper, natural instincts at the same time.

It makes me wonder.

If we all followed our hibernation rhythms, wouldn’t winter be just merely peaceful?

:D

FOR or AGAINST all odds?

I currently have thought about fighting a lot.

For some reason, looking back my whole last year now looks like it’s been a battlefield.

Not from the outside, it’s all clean and smooth but rather from the inside.

From inside of me.

And there I am, sitting in a lovely coffee shop; snow is falling outside in big soft flakes and I am wondering, what is fighting actually all about?

Have I been fighting for my dreams?

Have I been fighting for my needs?

And there comes the strangest conclusion I have come to in a loooong time.

Could it be I haven’t been fighting FOR but rather fighting AGAINST something?

Yeah, you should just wait a second and let that sink it, coz I tell you, we are talking about two different pair of shoes here.

To fight FOR something is different to fighting AGAINST something!

It’s about the point of view, the way we are looking at things and this shifts all our energy at every moment.

I tell you what I mean.

Think of something that you would like to do or you would like to have.

Let’s say, you would soooo love to have a new computer. Your old laptop is pretty crap and takes aeons to upload a picture and the system is crashing all the time. It annoys you, so you would soooo much love to have a new one.

Now, you don’t earn that much so you have to save up for the better computer for another 3 months.

Now, just take a second and think about two things and compare the feelings that arouse inside of you.

The first thing I want you to think of is: FOR a new computer!

Can you picture what the new computer looks like? You might have a model already in your mind, which you like. Focus on that and say to yourself: FOR this computer!

FOR this computer!

See how that feels?

Now, try to focus on your shitty computer and all the struggles you have with it.

And then you say: AGAINST this computer!

AGAINST you! AGAINST!

Do you realise the difference of emotions it is creating inside of you?

To me, it does make perfect sense at the moment, because its one of the main things I have been doing wrong the whole last year.

I have been fighting against everything I DIDN’T want, rather than focusing on WHAT I wanted!

And for some reason, I don’t know why, I ended up having all I DIDN’T want! All I have been fighting AGAINST!

Isn’t that crazy? Now I realise, that fighting FOR something creates a very powerful energy and motivation inside of me, underlined by creativity and freedom of fear.

Fighting AGAINST something creates emotions of frustration, fear and a subtle hint of angry tension. This would have never gotten me anywhere near where I wanted to be!

What I was focusing on was, that I DIDN’T want to live in Leeds. I DIDN’T want a 9-5 job! I DIDN’T want the socialisations in PUBs and I also DIDN’T want to live where it’s cold and where I CANNOT go surfing or windsurfing every day.

To find out WHAT I want rather than focusing on what I DON’T want is not an easy task, as most of us haven’t been brought up this way.

But sure, we can learn it and all it takes is just a little self-love, compassion, patience and practise.

I mean, no one ever has learned how to swim just by listening to our trainers’ words, right?

“Gotta jump in and practise,” my trainer told me in the summer camp when I was 8 years old.

So I did…and I won the gold medal in the competition!

MIRROR MIRROR ON THE WALL

Every now and then we come across criticism, accusations and other people judging us. Especially in friendships and relationships and mostly when we fight.

Sometimes, we don’t realise, that most of these accusations and judgements don’t even have got to do anything with us. They are reflecting the accuser, rather than ourselves as when we are in contact with others, we are acting like a mirror. Every person we meet is acting like a mirror to us, they reflect us, the way we are and the way we behave.

And sometimes, when we don’t like what we see about ourselves, we project it onto our friends, partners or work colleagues, by criticising and accusing them in exactly these points.

I give you an example.

Whilst sorting out my emotional backpack in order to travel light and get rid of things and feelings I don’t need, I came across a little box.

I remembered it very well; it was one of the heaviest things in my bag, which had been weighting me down for some time now. In that box, there were 4 accusations:

1.   You are a coward

2.   You have back-up plans in order to run away

3.   You never trust

4.   You never commit

These were the things my ex-boyfriend gave to me some months ago and now I was sat there, wondering what to do with this.

I remember, when he gave them to me he made me cry. It hurt me, I thought he was right but now I was here, sitting calmly and centred and I am confused as all I could see here, was not him talking to me.

It was he who was projecting these things onto me, and it took me some time to realise this.

Everyone who knows me as a person knows that I am not a coward. I am very ‘fightful’, maybe sometimes way too much for the sake of good, but I would never run away from anything. Since I was born I had been facing a lot of challenges in my life, most of them I could have ran away from but I never did. I face friends’ anger; I face my fears, my demons and my bad emotions. I face jealousy and I can admit when I was wrong. I face being wrong and I am not scared to alter a course. Neither was I ever scared to go somewhere, move to places I have never been before and to let go of old beliefs and people. I am not perfect, but I am always willing to face my imperfection!

And let me tell you about back-up plans. They are not bad if we don’t cling to them, they only give me options. I never plan to bail out of a situation before I go in there. I am a very optimistic person and I never expect bad things to happen anyways (although they happen, no doubt) but I always play around with my mind. I play around with options and things, life is colourful, but that is all.

People who know me also know, that sometimes I even trust too much, rather than not all. I think a lot, sometimes I sort my own problems out with myself, but that has got nothing to do with mistrust. I am always open and show my feelings, open to talk about things, even if they are bad and currently, I have to admit, I have trusted way too much. I have trusted the wrong person and got disappointed and badly let down by exactly the person who had called my ‘untrustful’ but still here I was, facing it. Trust comes easy to me, as I don’t expect bad things to happen. And I know, that whenever bad things happen, they will subside again and good things will appear.

And everyone who knows me also knows, that I always commit to what I decide to do! If I start something, I want it to work but sure, if I find myself in the same unfruitful situations over and over again, I am not staying just for the sake of pushing through. When we are realising that we are fighting a battle that doesn’t get us anywhere, that won’t improve our situation or isn’t even OUR battle (but someone else’s), then why not just have the balls to leave the battle, put down the swords and chose! Coz this is when we realise if we are fighting for OUR dreams and of how much importance the victory of the battle is to us. There is no sense in wasting energy and health fighting for dreams that are not our own and for a victory that wouldn’t touch our hearts or at least fighting a battle that would improve our skills. In my mind, only a coward is staying in the wrong battles instead of fighting the ones that will lead him to his dreams!

Now looking back, all these 4 things apply very much to my ex-boyfriend, rather than me, and let me tell you something.

Being criticised is not a bad thing. We all should take it in openly, even if it hurts, but as important as it is to accept criticism openhearted, it is inevitable to check back with yourself.

Open your whole mind and heart to it, take it into your hands and look at it from each side and then openly decide, if this really applies to you.

It is important that we all do this, whenever we are getting accused or judged by anyone.

We need to check back with ourselves, if the criticism is honestly true or if this is only a misguided projection of our vis-a-vis who feels mostly offended by his own reflections we mirror him through our own behaviour and actions.

A good friend recently told me: “Most people say, it’s hard to be alone. But I find, it’s so much harder to be around people because all of them project all sides of us, also the ones we don’t want to see about us; our fears, our grief, our pain and our jealousy. And by us denying them, we end up hurting the ones we love…”

So everyone, check back whenever you getting criticised and even more important: check back with yourself before YOU criticise, judge or accuse someone close!

Right, JAMIE CATTO (click on the name to find out more), how did that go again?

“You such a bloody coward….like me!”

Now, this week’s gonna be fun :D

HOME

“Do what moves you and connects you to the deepest truth of yourself. Trust prosperity and passion over profit and comfort and the approval of others, because all the approval in the world is empty if it is for something your heart was never really in.“ Jeff Foster

Here is my confession: Looking back the whole last year what I remember mostly, was my deep yearning for home.

“I just wanna go home…” was the thought I had throughout, the words I said constantly but I wouldn’t know where that was.

I did have a plan on my mind and even fulfilling this didn’t make me feel at home at all. How was that possible?

I had a plan about where to settle down, what job to do and who to spend my love life with.

I tried to find myself with things my ‘life-frame’ had to offer. ‘Life-frame’, I use this word as a metaphor, as I think every lifestyle brings things with it. Possibilities it has to offer, like a certain picture. The pictures (lifestyles) are different and so are the boundaries (frames) and within these boundaries of the lifestyle I had chosen this year I tried to find a home.

But it didn’t work.

I started feeling very tired, I was tense and although I woke up every morning with a smile and ready to challenge the day, I couldn’t escape the fact that after a while I started to feel numb and extremely bored.

By the end of this year I felt half dead and wasn’t even really aware of this.

When the whole breakdown came and life hit me with its last resort, blasting me off my feet and bulldozing me with agony, I couldn’t escape but to face the truth:

I WASN’T HAPPY

And I would have never been with the lifestyle I had chosen to live.

I would have never felt at home, no matter how big the house would be we lived in, or how much money I made with the job I had lined up.

No car, no new jacket and no new bike would have made me feel home.

So, what was home? How could I reach it?

I found it, where I didn’t expect to find it at all.

It was right here, with me, all the time!

Home is in my heart and has been there all the time!

And to feel at home means to touch my heart!

To touch my heart means to do things I love! To fill my days with things that are and awaken my passion – make my eyes shine from deep within.

Passion is not collecting big cars, having a new Van or getting the latest fashion clothes. These are only things that create fear as we know they don’t live long and new cars will be out next year, so will be new fashion!

I was very lost for a long time, trying to find a place to call home, but what is a place without all the things that touch my heart?

Without that, it’s just a place… or a prison we build around our dreams – unaware they’re not that far away at all. It just takes some courage to let go.

Breaking out of the known is terrifying but I know it’s worth the risk as I have been there before.

It took me some time to remember what touches me. I had been away from home, from my heart, way too long and the way back home is rocky.

I know I just need to follow the sun, the endless beaches, the blue ocean, its glossy waves and the smell of surf wax, fresh coffee and the laughter of spirited and like-minded people.

It’s where I can do what I love, what my heart needs to express itself.

Where I can write and draw, where creativity awakes and where I am alive!

The idea 1 year ago was: Swapping that freedom for a life of security.

Now, 12 months later I have to admit, it was the most stupid idea in the world J

This time, I will swap a life full of so-called ‘security’ (working in a 9-5 job, becoming a weekend or holiday surfer, chasing a socially accepted career and dealing with the fear of losing all hard earned money) for a life what most people would call a life of ‘insecurity’. But within this ‘insecurity’ I find a security that nothing in this world can shatter.

There is nothing better than being yourself and doing things that touch your heart every day. It’s your rock, its something that takes fear, and fear is the price we pay for living the so-called life of ‘security’.

(By the way, everyone who does water sports knows that there is no way to become a weekend surfer, as nature’s got its own way and only every now and then blesses us with good conditions on our days off…its more like becoming a 3-weeks-off-1-day-on-4-weeks-off-snow-rain-winddead-for-another-2-weeks-but-by-then-ran-out-of-money-surfer)

I am going back into the water. I am going back into the sun, to the beach and going back into the waves.

One has to be happy! Truly happy and true happiness can only reside where we do things we love.

HOME IS WHERE WE CAN BE HAPPY BY DOING WHAT WE LOVE!!!!

LISTEN TO YOUR HEARTS, LIVE YOUR DREAMS, FOLLOW YOUR PASSIONS AND MOST OF ALL, CONQUER YOUR FEARS!

IF YOU SCARED OF SOMETHING – DO IT ANYWAYS :D

WE CANNOT BUILD FENCES AROUND OUR LIVES AND WE ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE!

LET GO- LIVE – LOVE – LAUGH – (and surf, hehe)