Useless criticism

If you have something bad to say about something but have nothing to say when it comes to how it could be better. I think that it’s a useless criticism.

It’s easy to be a critic or to complain about the way that something is but what’s the point if you can’t even offer a solution.

It’s far more useful and far more helpful to say ‘I don’t think this works very well but here’s what I think would work better…’, rather than just saying ‘That’s not a good idea’.

I think what a person says comes down to their intention to speaking up. Do you just enjoy complaining or do you want to try and find a way to make things better?

Writing for the reader

I was recently asked about whether I write for myself or for readers.

It’s something I think about every now and then but it was interesting to be asked.

On one hand I write for myself because I love it but on the other hand I write for my readers too.

I’m thoughtful about what I share and my intention is to always add value in some way.

I don’t expect anyone to read every single post I write but for the posts you do read I’d like it to feel like time well spent.

Whether it’s 100 words on friendship, career development or overcoming fear, I do my best to add some kind of takeaway.

Keeping up with strangers

Social media makes it really easy to keep up with everything going on in the world around us. From crises happening across the globe to personal details about people we’ve never met.

And on an average day for many, I don’t think I’d be wrong in assuming that little thought goes into it.

How often do you find yourself questioning whether you need to know all this information you’re consuming?

I’m guilty of clicking on trending topics out of curiosity but on reflection I know that this information isn’t something I need to know.

The goings on of celebrities (and even just people we’ve never met) has always been a popular form of entertainment which is why gossip magazines were so popular. I guess those magazines have now changed to social media, something that is free and consumed by even more people.

And as much as you control who you follow, you can’t control what they post, tweet, re-tweet, like or share on their stories.

But what you do have control over is your active consumption. As much as knowing certain things might tickle your fancy, upon reflection would you really choose knowing details about a strangers personal life over reading a book, working on your craft, writing, planning ahead etc.

Of course you can make time for both (if you so wish) but this is more about being intentional with what you consume rather than getting swept up in it all.

If you leave the twitter thread, video or post feeling fine that’s great but if you feel like you’ve wasted time then maybe you need to start making some changes.

Establishing an intention

A useful exercise.

Something I would consider worth doing is establishing an intention behind your actions. There are many things that we do in our day to day life without putting much thought into it and so when others perceive your actions in a certain way, you may find yourself wanting to change your intention in order to receive the desired response.

I think establishing intention is helpful because it’s a guide to remind you why you started in the first place.

I think for a lot of people, it’s easy to get caught up in focusing on how you are perceived. By establishing an intention, what you’re actually doing is giving yourself a baseline to come back to, or a north star to guide you, something that comes from yourself instead of other people.

The last thing you want to end up doing is putting too much emphasis on what other people think and then being swayed every which way because you’re so focused on trying to please people.

I think that there are two things that often happen, the first is that you are perceived in a way that is different to what you intended. The second is thing is that you find yourself changing to fit a particular perception that is does not align with your original intentions.

This is because when we don’t hold a clear vision for what we want we’re more likely to give into the short-term attention gained from aligning with a trend or popular perception rather than building a solid foundation.

Sometimes we need a reminder to focus more on ourselves instead of the world around us.

The difference between right and wrong

Right now there are a lot of discussions about what is right and wrong.

More often than not we consider it to be black and white. Of course in some cases it is that clear but there are also many cases where the waters are murky.

Robin Hood was known for stealing from the rich to give to the poor. stealing is considered wrong in society yet Robin Hood was never promoted as the bad guy becuase he had good intentions and was helping people.

I think a key part of figuring out right and wrong is looking at the intention behind the action. It also helps to put yourself in the other persons shoes.

Just because you don’t agree with a persons actions, doesn’t mean you have to bring out the pitchforks.

It might be easy but it’s not helping

Right now is a difficult time for a lot of people.

One of the easiest things you can do is read every article, keep up with live news updates online or on TV, scroll social media and panic.

But the chances are those things aren’t actually helping. Knowing the ever’changing stats of cases in countries across the globe is probably not going to bring you comfort or put your mind at ease.

Most people use social media in excess on a normal day but it’s likely that things have been ramped up even further recently.

Seeing people tell you what they think you should think or how they think you should feel might only add to your frustrations, not soothe them.

And so right now it’s worth being a little more intentional about what you’re consuming.

You don’t need to keep up with everything.

Building habits

I’ve recently developed a new habit that I’d previously had difficulty implementing.

When I initially tried to add this habit to my life, I kept falling flat. I wasn’t doing it as often as I wanted and my commitment to it was half-hearted.

After a short while I gave up on the habit because it clearly wasn’t working. In hindsight I can see that the problem was my approach but I didn’t realise it at the time.

Despite this I still held the intention of the thing I wanted to become a habit but I’d stopped trying.

Weeks later whilst lost in thought I realised that I’d unknowingly implemented the habit I’d previously been working towards. I think it happened because the intention was in my subconscious.

Granted at the time, I was only less than 2 weeks into the habit so it was more of a practice but I couldn’t help but notice that things felt so much easier.

Wellness cynics and setting intentions

There’s something about the word ‘manifestation’ or ‘manifest’ that has me furrowing my brows and more than willing to roll my eyeballs the whole 360. I began to notice the word around the time when everyone got into that book ‘The Secret’ and the law of attraction.

Suddenly people were declaring that you can attract whatever you want or desire by just thinking about it. According to them it was easy, as easy as cherry pie.

Maybe my reluctance to ‘get on board’ had something to do with my personal circumstances at the time, the fact that I can be a little cynical or maybe I just felt like there had to be more to it.

But then years later I started to notice a common thread in the events occurring in my life. Things I had once written down, daydreamed about or visualised started to happen in real life with total ease and no physical effort on my part.

Yet in parallel there were also things happening in my life that were sort of like misinterpretations of what I wanted.

As someone who likes to find a way of understanding things even if there is no scientific evidence to support my idea, I managed to figure out the cause of these ‘misinterpretations’.

These misinterpretations were simply an error in the programming where the output didn’t match the input, except for it did. These misinterpretations were happening in the areas of my life where I was most uncertain or conflicted about what I truly wanted.

At the time I was reading a book and it contained a whole section on setting intentions. It mentioned being clear, describing things though the 5 senses and focusing on what you want instead of what you don’t want.

I suppose to summarise I can say that I believe in visualisation and writing things down. My own life is living proof that it works but if you aren’t clear about what you want you might end up something you’re not quite satisfied with.