Category: Inner Peace

  • Being Happy With Who You Are

    In the book Presence, Otto Scharmer tells the story of coming home from school at age 16 to find his home in flames. His family had lived in that farmhouse for 200 years and all his belongings were inside, so as he stood there in shock, everything he identified with was going up in smoke. […]

  • Can you have too much happiness?

    George Bernard Shaw wrote: “a lifetime of happiness! No man could bear it: it would be hell on earth.” In contrast, the Dalai Lama said the purpose of life is to be happy. Who is right? I believe both are correct, but they are talking about different kinds of happiness. The simplest kind of happiness is […]

  • Dirt and beauty

    In 1974 Saudi Arabia was a fabulously rich country, yet its streets were piled high with rubbish. There was no garbage disposal system other than the goats that roamed the streets. The reason? “No self-respecting Saudi would ever collect trash.”[i] Being too proud to deal with their garbage meant that effectively the Saudis were left […]

  • Comparisons

    Everything is relative. To answer a question like: “How happy are you with your life?” we cannot answer without comparing our situation with some point of reference. If that point of reference is how much poorer we were three years ago, or our unfortunate friend who has just had heart attack, or the plight of […]

  • Why me?

    When something bad happens, many people’s first reaction is “Why me?” This is not a genuine question but a rhetorical one; it’s a statement that what happened was unfair and undeserved. As long as we stay in this place of complaining that things are not as they should be, we remain stuck and unhappy. However, […]

  • Striving for perfection

    Humans strive for perfection in so many ways; we want the perfect house, body, partner. A mental picture of how something should or could be gives us something to work towards. Yet we all know that perfection is impossible. The word ‘perfect’ comes from Latin roots, meaning ‘completed’ or ‘finished’ (like the perfect tense). Perfection […]

  • Compassion and challenge

    For years I cultivated compassion, not wanting to become desensitised to the suffering in the world. At times I felt overwhelmed by all the suffering around me and wanted to alleviate it wherever possible. A couple of years ago I attended a seminar with Caroline Myss, a spiritual leader whose books I had been reading. […]

  • Power and humility

    In our daily lives there are people who have a certain amount of power over us (our employer, landlady, teacher) and people over whom we hold positions of relative power (our children, employees, students). To maximise social happiness, power must be used wisely and with humility. I remember one work situation where my boss started […]

  • Whose story are you living out?

    As a narrative counsellor, I am very aware that we make sense of our experiences in terms of stories. A bad experience, such as giving a presentation that doesn’t go well, might be interpreted as a turning point in a story of failure – “That was the day my career fell to pieces” – or […]

  • Decisions, decisions!

    There are times in life when you know exactly where you are headed and what to put your energy into. And there are other times when there are so many decisions to be made that you don’t know which to make first, because each one could impact on another. This situation could be experienced as […]