Quirky Reads - Essentialism:The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

I’m on annual leave today, I’m not actually away on holiday anywhere, just taking a few days to chill and relax.  My original plan was to make use of Netflix, binge watch something, do some online shopping seeing as it’s pay day………today had other plans for me.   The internet was down, the television was down and my xbox game collection consists of games that are far more appealing to my 12-year-old nephew than myself – so I decided to read one of the mountain of books lying on my bedroom floor.

In a moment of amusement given my lack of technological stimulation, I picked up Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown.

This book was recommended to me by my colleague Chelsea, she had read one of my blogs last year about my inability to say no to things I don’t want to do (you can read that here if you wish) and recommended to me that I read this book.

I’d be lying if I said that I’ll go through the rest of my life suddenly starting to throw out no’s all over the place in my pursuit of becoming an essentialist, for a start that’s not the purpose of the book, but I recognised a few of my traits in the pages of this book.

I absolutely try to take on everything and do it all, I definitely try to take on other people’s problems or try to please them and I certainly look for the quick fix.

I do need to start looking at all of the things I take on and start thinking about what is actually necessary, what can I make the best job of, what is actually becoming a hindrance to my productivity as a person and a worker.

I need to start identifying the right things to say no to and why it is the right decision to say no.  

I need to recognise when my answer is no and stop saying yes.

Rather than allowing myself to become unproductive because my brain is too scattered between too many different things or because I can’t find the time or the space, I can start looking for what my obstacles actually are rather than just allowing them to put up a great big road block.

Finding some time to switch off from certain things like social media and needless noise is something I could be doing.I can’t remember who said it but I do remember hearing someone say

‘If you are connected everywhere, you are present nowhere’

It struck a chord with me and every once in a while it pops back into my head. I don’t think I’d manage to block everything out every day but I could make small steps by finding time once a week or a few times a month.

I deliberately avoid going into too much detail on my book musings because I don’t want to take away from someone what they could take from the books I've read.  

I’ve tried to do the same with this one and purely focused on what I am taking from it.

I’d highly recommend it to anyone, I didn’t realise before I read it how much my compulsive need to please others is preventing me from achieving the best results I could be achieving.
That won’t change overnight, but it will light a fire under my butt to become more of an essentialist.

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Laughing at me, not with me.

I’m far from being the perfect human being, I’m deeply flawed, make silly choices sometimes and I’m often annoying but I like to think that for the most part I’m an okay person.

  

I have some traits that I like and hate about myself in equal measure.

One is my ability to let things go and another is my reluctance to make a fuss.

I like that I can let very little bother me but it also means that I let others away with things that I shouldn’t. My reluctance to make a fuss kind of goes hand in hand with this. 

This week I let both of those take over. I visited a restaurant - I won’t mention which one - where the person serving me clearly found something amusing about my appearance. I am all kinds of quirky but for me I was dressed very tame, this wasn’t a 'what is she wearing’ or ‘she looks odd’, this was just straight up finding amusement 
at the way I look. 

I felt very uncomfortable as whilst I couldn’t hear what was being said it was blatantly obvious I was being mocked.
Making fun of your customers is bad enough, but to make it obvious is worse. 

In hindsight I should have cancelled my order and left but I decided to let it go and not make a fuss, but spent the entirety of my visit feeling insecure and sad.  I later felt guilty for complaining, as I always do when I complain about something as I don’t want to cause a fuss.

As someone who embraces all things quirky and individual, I’ve learned to care less about what others think and let a lot of my insecurities go, but I guess no one likes to be mocked when it’s obvious it’s happening. 

Although I will choose to let this experience go and not dwell on it, I will make a vow from here on in not to put up with unkindness or bullying towards myself or others. I’ve always had that general approach but I never seize too many opportunities it into practice unless I have a duty of care to others.   

That changes from today. 

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Lunchtime Ramblings: So Long Summer

Hello! It's me! I've been wondering if after all these days you'd like to read. 

Sorry, Adele is playing on the radio and I got a bit carried away! 

I've been thinking this week about how summer is starting to wind down, I say summer, the rain trickling down the window in front of me as if to mock my notions of a Scottish summer isn't much fun! 

I know summer as I know it is coming to an end because all of my extra curricular activities are beginning to reappear in my week, my music rehearsals are already back in the diary, the children's club I volunteer with is back on next week, my park group are meeting again soon and soon all those free and lazy nights and weekends will disappear.  

I don't actually mind that though, I like having those things to keep me busy and help my brain to focus on other things other wise I'd come home from work, I'd eat and I'd sleep. It's healthy for me to have other things to stimulate my mind. 

The season of summer doesn't end until late September but the period of time that I've conditioned myself to recognise as proper summer is about to reach its natural conclusion. 

Even though I'm 28 and have been out of education for a few years now, my brain still recognises time in a similar routine to when I was learning and studying.  

I'm slowly training my brain to be a bit more adult in a lot of ways, but primarily in the way I view my year, instead of in pre determined chunks but as a whole.

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Lunchtime Ramblings: Creating my own path

It's exam result day in Scotland, where school and higher education students alike are either anxiously awaiting their result, celebrating or wondering what to do if they didn't get the result they needed, wanted or expected. 

I've been there, longer ago than I'd like (this whole ageing thing is a bit rubbish), I was never as good as my  school friends at exams or school really, I didn't struggle but I didn't excel either so my results came along and they weren't terrible but I'd compare them to my friends results and feel like crap.   For the majority of my time at school, I just assumed I was stupid and I'd never really find my path, not like my friends who had it all mapped out and were on their way to skipping down their respective yellow brick roads to their respective wizards in search of careers. 

That wasn't for me. Or so I thought. 

I found a college course nearby, applied, got in and suddenly a light bulb went on in my head, this is what I was meant to be doing. College became uni, uni became a first class honours degree and I'm now working in a marketing role, using my strongest skills and my favourite pastime - writing - to create my own path.

I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do or who I wanted to be, except for my temporary ambitions to be either an actress or a giraffe.  

Even when I'd started on my current path, I went through periods of unemployment and uncertainty on the way but rather than let it put me off, I just channelled it into creating my own content, writing stories, poetry, blogs, letters to myself and learning to be my own critic and eventually I found my way onto the next stage of my path. 

I am still learning and growing as I follow my path and enjoying the journey.  The best thing about it is, it wasn't pre determined.  A planned path works for some, and I do thrive on some planning and organisation but I get a kick from navigating my own way down my path and seeing where it takes me.

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Lunchtime Ramblings: Time is flying by

It's been about a week since I did any blogging, I've been trying to shift this pesky summer cold, I'm not quite 100% but I have just a lovely barking seal cough remaining. 

I decided today was the day to get back in the swing of things. 

This morning past quite quickly, which seems a silly thing to say because time is a measured thing that doesn't usually change.  I quite often find self thinking that time has gone slowly or quickly when what's really happening is I'm paying too much attention to the time and not enough attention to what I'm doing.

When that happens I usually need to have a bit of a word with myself to assess why I'm paying too much attention to the minutes ticking away and not on getting things done. 

The second the first of August came by this year, I did my usual how on earth is is August this year is disappearing thing.  Coupled with the fact I started my new passion planner this week, I had a bit of an internal panic about how quickly the years are rolling by and when I can start achieving all these ideas and goals I have in my head. 

I've since taken a deep breath, calmed down and remembered I don't need to have everything in life figured out right this very minute.  I'm 28, not 78, I have time, no matter how quickly or slowly it passes by.  

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Lunchtime Ramblings: An apology to a former teacher

This is an apology to one of my science teachers at high school, I've changed his name, not for any real reason other than to be mysterious 

Dear Mr Tuna, (for context I've just eaten tuna and that's what my brain decided cling to) 

I owe you an apology.  

I just thought you were a Grumpasaurus who felt you were teaching a class of idiots and giving them a lecture because you hated us.  All of the above may well be true but I think I get it now. 

We'd often get a bit of a telling off for collectively getting things wrong or failing to understand why we were wrong. Sounds standard for school, but occasionally we'd get a bit of a rant going beyond the here and now, you'd start talking about our potential futures and how we'd have to change our approach to succeed or how we may get conned by electricians or plumbers in the future if we didn't think more for ourselves.  I used to think you were making a mountain out a molehill but I think I get it now. 

You weren't telling us we were stupid, you weren't telling us that we'd never handle household repair situations, you were trying to instil in us the need to develop problem solving skills, the need to understand the problem, the need to have an approach to understanding how we would go about identifying a solution. 

I missed the point. Question 7 on a homework sheet about rocks wasn't the important thing.  It was that we didn't look into it, we didn't look at the ways we could find out the answer, we just decided we didn't know and that was that.

I've been putting it into practise for a while  it didn't quite hit me until now.  It's not that we can't ask for help or that not knowing the answer isn't okay, but I need to know how to find the answer. I need to know what information is available to me, I need to know what is within my skill set and what will require assistance. 

I'm sorry, you were right.  

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Lunchtime Ramblings: Out of Mind Experience

It's been a whole week since I did any rambling of the written kind. I've had a really horrible cold over the last week that still hasn't quite faded yet and my head just felt like a huge foggy abyss - not the best mindset for a blog post! 

It's been a strange sort of week where I've been functional but felt like I wasn't quite present.  I've never had an out of body experience but I think this week I may have experienced a few out of mind experiences, if that makes any sort of sense!! 

There's been times this week when I've completed tasks or activities and while I know I've done them, experienced it and remember it clearly, it feels like my body was doing things on auto pilot, keeping me going while I mentally checked out. 

There are plenty of times when I'm not ill and I mentally check out and do things on autopilot, which probably isn't very healthy.  Sometimes I can go along with a normal pattern of routine without really thinking about it, most of the time that's fine, but sometimes it can be a bit of a hinderance.   

I remember hearing someone say in relation to social media that if your are connected everywhere you run the risk of being present nowhere. It's a slightly different topic but I sometimes find that I can be the opposite and be present everywhere and connected nowhere.  

Maybe that's something I need to work on more when I'm germ free and switched on. 

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