Life Dreaming

I love the kindness of people who give things away (speaking of which, have you got the Life Dreaming Workbook yet? We’re going to take it off the site shortly, so please grab one if you haven’t got a copy!)… and I love the message in this poster. It’s by Idea Obscura, and she’s put a downloadable pdf version online so you can print it and hang it somewhere that needs a little old-school typographical beauty.

Happy New Year everyone! I’m not sure how you went, but I feel like I came out of 2011 emotionally richer than I went in, and this year I’m a dragon in a dragon year, so I’m expecting some big things (good, bad, who knows? but I feel growth, and I’m excited by that).

I just wanted to share this list from wonderful letterpress-y design site FPO: For Print Only. You can download a PDF there if you like it.

Can’t wait to spend 2012 with you… and promise to write more often.

=)  Marc

I just love this site. Every week They Draw and Cook post 6 recipes, linked in theme, illustrated by people around the world. The sheer diversity and exuberance of them is a joy, and if you sign up for the newsletter, they come right into your mailbox (scroll to the bottom of the site for the link).

Last week was a bit different. They featured recipes for a healthy life, and it just goes to show that one person’s fruit-and-nut mix is another person’s icy cold beer. Here’s 4 of the responses:

A Simple Recipe for a Happy Life by Demie Aas

Recipe for Life by Ashwin C

Kinsfolk Shindig by Maranda Cunningham

Dhyaana – Recipe for Healthy Living by Kamini Raghavan

=) Marc

Life Dreaming Activity
How long has it been since you played with some colored markers or scissors and glue? Go on, I bet you’d have a lot of fun if you gave it a try!

You’ve probably seen the healthy eating pyramid recently remodeled by the US Government as Choose My Plate, and if you’re pitting your will power against food issues then there are some great interactive tools on their site, including planners and trackers and a Foodapedia.

Dr David Rock and Dr Daniel Siegel thought it hadn’t gone far enough though. No-one’s arguing that healthy eating isn’t important, but where’s the information about healthy living? What does it take to have a healthy mind?

So, they’ve put together The Healthy Mind Platter:

Dr Rock touches on each of the 7 elements in a post on Psychology Today and suggests that, like a balanced diet, there are many combinations that might be healthy.

“Make sure that at least every day we are nudging the right ingredients into our mental diet, even for just a little time. Just like you wouldn’t eat only pizza every day for days on end, we shouldn’t just live on focus time and little sleep. Mental wellness is all about giving your brain lots of opportunities to develop in different ways.”

I thought about how I use my time, and it’s not as obvious as it first looks (but it was very revealing). My score was:
Too Low: Time In, Connecting Time, Focus Time
About Right: Sleep Time, Physical Time, Play Time
Too High: Down Time

Unfortunately it’s true. I’ll sheepishly admit I’ve been catching up recently on some books and movies I’ve had saved up, and it’s kept me in the house more than I usually am. The Connecting Time and Focus Time will fix themselves in the next week or so, because I’m about to take a trip home to visit my parents (always very connecting). If I’m honest with myself though, I might actually have to do something to convert some of the Down Time to Time In. I do have a soft spot for mindless entertainment.

=)  Marc

Live Dreaming Activity
If you take Dr Rock’s suggestion, to have some fun mapping an average day and seeing what percentage of time you spend in each area, I’d love to hear how you went. Leave a comment below and let’s chat.

Hi Dreamers

I hadn’t written for a while, so I thought I’d drop in and give Liz a break.

I’m having something of a love/hate relationship with a site called TripAdvisor at the moment. If you haven’t come across it before, it’s the Lonely Planet of the digital age, except they don’t editorialise… it’s all crowdsourced.

I had such a bad experience at a restaurant in Bangkok a while back that I felt the need to vent (or as I like to think of it, give friendly advice to other travellers). While I was there I also posted a few good discoveries I’d made. Then a few months later I started posting some reviews of places in Johor Bahru in Malaysia, because its coverage on the site was so dusty that it made it seem like a sad whistle-stop of two factories and a bus station.

Not only did I give, but I received as well. I discovered the pleasures of crowdsourced travel and the question of “where should we go for dinner?” became an adventure again.

But then I had a crisis of conscience. While I certainly appreciated the sneak insights offered by others, what was I doing giving away my favourite travel secrets? Next time I go to that little cafe I know in JB that does the French Press coffee and the addictive Korean breakfast rolls, will it be over-run with tourists, iPads propped against the centrepiece, ordering the things I ordered and sitting in my chair?

I’m still not sure if it’s just selfishness, perhaps it is, but I like to think that what my crisis was really about was the death of serendipity. I didn’t like Lonely Planet back in my backpacking days (although I’d gratefully sneak at look at one from a fellow traveller whenever I got the chance) and I’m not sure I care for its modern substitute. I can hear its siren call, but I’ve been around the block and I’ve heard the sailor stories.

I wonder to what extent this crowdsourced attempt we make to eliminate accidents from our life makes our lives smaller? Should some things, perhaps, be left to chance?

In an insightful look at exactly that question, Life in Review: Crowdsourced Tastemaking and the Death of Serendipity author Ylajali Hansen quotes Guy Debord, presiding genius of the 1950s artist-revolutionary group The Situationist International. In “Theory of the Dérive, Debord writes:

“Among the various situationists methods is the dérive [literally: drifting], a technique of transient passage through varied ambiances. The dérive entails playful constructive-behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects: which completely distinguishes it from the classical notions of the journey and the stroll.”

Basically, what Debord is recommending is a walk without purpose, embracing randomness and curiosity. He recommends “slipping into houses undergoing demolition, wandering in subterranean catacombs fobidden to the public, starting up conversations with various passerby” and generally embracing the infinite possiblities and experiences open to someone willing to trod untrodden ways.

I don’t advocate not doing a little research or trying to minimise risks, but I worry that as it becomes easier and easier to walk in other people’s footsteps, we settle for the predictable at the cost of the serendipitous. Often it’s accidents that form the tapestry of our memories, making our lives uniquely ours… not to mention the opportunities they might bring.

In the LifeDreaming Expedition, Liz does some fabulous exercises focused on listening to your body and understanding what different parts are telling you about decisions you are trying to make. She uses Heart, Mind, Body and Spirit as indicators. The Mind is a powerful friend, and it’s the one we tend to place the most emphasis on in our Western culture. It’s also the one I think is nurtured the most by crowdsourced reviews. We love to research and analyse, and we see it as the magical doorway to “right” decisions.

But what about “gut feeling”, instinct or just random attraction for no reason that we can understand? What about coincidence, happenstance and serendipity? If we try to push that out of our lives, then are we not only diminishing our own opportunities but also our own personal power?

I remember on the backpacker trail the hoards of travellers with their nose in “the book”, sitting in cafes that had long ago got lazy and let their standards slip, or squeezing into the last room of an overcrowded hostel while equally good or better ones lay empty only a few doors away.

The beaten paths in life are like that. Your risks are reduced, but I wonder at what cost?

=)  Marc

A couple of other great articles about the death of serendipity:

The Dangers of Homogenization. What Flavor is Your Tofu?
Jacques Vallee’s Stating The Obvious: I, Product

Hi Dreamers

Hope you’ve headed into the NY with lots of energy and joie de vivre. Mine are either one way or the other. Either I’m charging into it with lots of schemes and dreams, or I’m crawling over the finishing line waving a little flag that says “at least I made it”. This year I’m excited and I’ve got lots to get on with.

I won’t bore you with talk about resolutions, because Liz wrote a wonderful post earlier that had lots of wise things to say. But, I read something interesting today that I wanted to share, because it resonated as kind of important at this time of the year.

The short version is here, on Peter Rudd’s wonderful Coromandal blog. He excerpts from the much longer article Sons of The Beach on WorldHum, and his comment on the exerpt is:

“In real travel, there is what I think I travel for, and what I really travel for.  In the essay Sons of the Beach, backpackers value independence, frugality and acceptance of locals; but they are really looking for themselves in other like-minded travelers that they meet over there.”

I think there’s something in that for all of us. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that what we think should be our motivation, actually is. The answer that is politically correct or reflects well on us is the one we want to voice.

And it’s complicated by this era of self-constructed social media identity, because we’re doing a lot of broadcasting of ourselves now, making public our lives and our motivations. We can all be guilty of editing that information to tailor the impression we want to make.

But there’s a fine line between saying things and believing them. No-one really believes that old saying “if you repeat things often enough, then they become true”. Maybe they’re true, maybe they’re not.

So, for me personally, Peter’s observation reminded me to be careful during this time of possible life-tweaks to listen carefully to my self-talk and make sure I’m being truly honest with myself. Not to just assume that I’m telling myself the truth, but to question myself a bit. Are the reasons I’m saying I’m doing things really the reasons I’m doing them?

Like computer programming (and some of my more disastrous efforts in the kitchen last year), it’s the principle of Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Happy new year everyone. Whatever you’ve got planned this year, I hope you’ll share it with us, and I hope you’ll share in the things we’ve got planned too.

=)  Marc

ps Liz likes to end her posts with an activity. The stuff in Liz’s great post on inner chatter The Enemy Within is very timely now though, so you could re-read that if you’ve got a couple of minutes to spare. I don’t really have an activity today, but if I could jokingly give you one I’d say “use the extra free time… get started on something you told yourself you were going to do”. I always think getting started on something is 50% of the battle.