Mind your references

I read Robin Sharma this morning about the importance of having positive reference points. “Doors you never knew existed will begin to open,” he wrote. On the other hand, he continued “Often, we have weak reference points so we see the limitations of a scenario rather than the opportunities.”

So true, I thought. Right now, I need a positive male reference point who looks slim and athletic. I have been gaining weight over the past weeks, and it’s high time to shed some and return to the shape I feel happy in. Fortunately I know how to do that, and I’ve done it before. I can manage my weight, not by eating less, but by selecting what I eat. Eat yourself slim, à la Michel Montignac. So actually, I could be my own reference point this time around.

Although I have been posting less frequently on this blog, and feeling the poorer for it, I have continued my soul journey and learned a lot. And while I think it should not matter so much where I am, I found that it actually does. Traveling influences my inner journey. Just after returning from holiday with my kids in Holland and England, I flew back to Europe, to Stockholm this time, and stayed there for a week.

The center of Stockholm in summer is a great place for walking, and I did plenty of it, alone and more often with friends. Evenings spent walking in the old city and looking for a place to eat were especially memorable. There were times I wished I had brought my sax to play in the street, with a hat on the floor.

A few days after returning to Manila my next destination brought me forward to Singapore and Jakarta. During this trip, I thought a lot about my work as a passion. I love to see the bigger picture in the work I do, and I discovered that this is my calling. I also mused about “quality” and enjoyed reading how Robert Pirsig discovered its central importance in our lives when he wrote his classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

A friendly Indian professor remarked to me in Singapore that he realized the meaning of “quality” when a variety of smells filled his hotel room after he turned off the aircon which was too cold for him. Quality is about the care given to make things work well. Quality is made behind the scenes, in heart and mind. When it becomes a shared value among people working together, it will show up in the product or service they deliver. If we pay attention, we can observe the importance of quality as Robert Pirsig did, and it gives us new positive reference points to live by.

Sharma mentioned Lance Armstrong, his father and mother, Richard Branson, Madonna and Peter Drucker as some of his positive reference points, and most of all Mick Jagger who still captivates audiences by strutting on stage in live concerts at the mature age of 62. Other people might feel the end of their life approaching at that age. As Sharma said, it all comes down to choosing our reference points.

Photograph: New houses in Jakarta – is walled security or Polly Pocket design their reference point?

Believe the impossible

When Alice said in Wonderland that there is no use in trying to believe impossible things, the Queen responded “I daresay you haven’t had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Self-help bookshelves are full of titles about making dreams come true, and we spend much of our time trying to believe incredible things. In reflection of that, a cartoon movie The Incredibles became a box office hit not long ago. We believe in the fiction, romance, and anime stories we watch and read, and sometimes we get inspired by them. Yet like Alice it is all too easy to shrink back from believing in impossible things taking place in our own lives.

Rhonda Byrne and her friends explain in The Secret that it is not enough to think about what we want in our lives. For the law of attraction to work in our advantage, we need to believe in our dreams, to visualize them, and to feel them. That is more than reading a book or watching a movie, but these can inspire us to make a start and see the dots in our life connecting.

I love to take books with me when I travel, and some of them invariably are about self-enrichment. I get inspired by reading books ― well, some of them ― and it works much faster than seeing a 90 minute film. Just a few pages will do. Books are a source of inspiration to me everyday and wherever I go, and I don’t mind carrying the extra kilos in my bag.

Taking a two-week break in Holland and England helped me to simplify my life and learn to enjoy every moment more. I saw nature’s art in the bark of an oak tree in front of my primary school, enjoyed walking my friend’s South African dog Whiskey in a chilly dark night, raced with dizzying speed through London in a double-decker bus on the way to the theatre, shared my daughter’s thrill to feed a sharp-beaked emu from her open hand, danced to the beat of the Blue Man Group, and marveled at the sight of an English couple taking their new-born baby to the pub.

And, of course, I bought more books, including The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch, his best work according to the critics. I look forward to reading it.

I also received life lessons about friendship, going the extra mile, and about someone’s daily struggle with a fading determination to live when blessed old age seems to come with ever more weakness and fatigue. The time comes when we have to allow the souls of our elders to pass on, with our warmest wishes, and with an assurance that they and we “will be fine.” And yet, every day may bring unforeseen blessings, and who knows when our time of passing will arrive? I was reminded of Jim Paredes’ counsel to live every day as if it were our last.

Life is truly miraculous when we awake to believe the impossible, before or after breakfast!

Photograph: Feeding an Emu.