This morning on the way to work I observed a chicken that had escaped from someone’s garden. It was nervously trying to get back into the garden through the fence by marching up and down the same section of the fence looking for a way in, even though it was very clear that there a was no way in.

Observing this I thought that often this is the way that we approach the solving of our own problems. We try the same approach to a difficulty again and again out of habit even though it may never have worked in the past, like a chicken looking for a hole through a section of fence where there is none. With a little more mindfulness, instead of just repeating old patterns that no longer work (or have never worked) we can re-direct our creative energy to finding a new pattern and approach that may actually solve our issue.

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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This is an interesting quote from Herman Hess’s “Steppenwolf”:

“…his whole life was an example that love of one’s neighbour is not possible without love of oneself, and that self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same isolation and despair.”

I find it very interesting to think of self criticism and self hate as really just being the flip side of egotism. We are very quick to out down ourself and other people for being egotistical, but seem much more tolerant of people (including our own selves) who are overly critical of themselves and have low self esteem.

If we really realize that these two activities are  EQUALLY egotistical, then how would that affect our current view and tolerance of self criticism?

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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My home computer is very slow. Today things reached a bit of a head for me, I was working at home and getting very frustrated by my computers ever increasing slowness, the more I tried to do, the slower it got!

I found the answer after taking a break for 20 minutes. I adopted a strategy of opening no more than one, maximum two programs at a time on the computer, so that it has less to process at any given time. The result is that it worked a treat, the computer started working a lot faster, and I also found that consciously trying to do only one task at a time actually made my time at the keyboard a lot more mindful, spacious and enjoyable.

From now on I am going to adopt this practice with all computer work, not just when I am on a super slow one!

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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