“Ideas Don’t Wait: Grab Them Before They Find Another Mind”

"Ideas Don't Wait: Grab Them Before They Find Another Mind"

“Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert

"Ideas Don't Wait: Grab Them Before They Find Another Mind"
Source: Substack

“I’m at work and listening to one of our suppliers. It’s an important meeting. He is highly critical of our performance this year and doesn’t accept that the country’s economic woes hurt purchasing power. Instead, he lays the blame on our structure and personnel. It’s my job to not only appease him but to hold my ground and lower his expectations for the rest of the year’s turnover. This new guy doesn’t seem to understand logic and only recites numbers. However, my mind continues to wander to tonight’s football match. I haven’t been as eager for the English Football season to start for a long time now, when for several hours a week, I go back to my 10-year-old self—nervous before games, biting my nails throughout the matches and bearing extreme mood swings depending on whether we win or not. We, by which I mean Manchester United, the wealthiest, most prominent, and most venerated team, and the team that I’ve supported since I was a 10-year-old.Winning is a feeling of elation that enhances my every word and action for the next 24 hours, while losing could mean breaking a television remote control, sulking for hours on end or being a complete asshole. ”

That was an excerpt from chapter one of my 2018 book idea, Football & Business, Bloody Hell.

I’ve never been as excited to write about anything as I was about intertwining the two passions that have dominated my life. The beloved football team I’ve supported since I was a kid and the Company that I’ve been running since 1994.

I wanted to weave my company’s woes with the turmoil at Manchester United, covering the 2018-19 season in a ‘memoiresque’ prose similar to Karl Ove Knausgaard’s style, where he describes his day in colourful detail, often meandering to the point.

The book would have 38 chapters covering every game Man United played in that Premier League season. It would start with the sacking of the then-celebrated manager of Man United, José Mourinho, and also coincidentally with the firing of both my sales and marketing managers, which all happened in the same week.

Over the next nine months, I’d chronicle the truth of what would unfold in a vulnerable and journalistic manner. I’d reveal my frustrations and deepest feelings about daily events at the company, which echoed that of the Man United hierarchy.

I got to the seventh game and stopped.

Life somehow took over, and I told myself that the company’s woes were too serious to waste valuable time.

Perhaps I was too afraid to reveal all my feelings and anxious about how my family and friends would perceive me.

The idea slowly fizzled out of my mind, and after a few weeks of guilt, I found a way to justify stopping. I told myself it just wasn’t the right time.

Are ideas limited by time?

Do ideas really move on or disappear when we don’t listen and work on them?

Could that same book be written again?

In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert argues that ideas have agency. “Ideas have no ma­teri­al body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will,” she writes. When this idea “finally realizes that you’re oblivious to its message, it will move on to someone else,” but sometimes, “the idea, sensing your openness, will start to do its work on you.”

I’m sure many football journalists wrote better accounts of the 2017/18 Man United season. Probably, someone at my company could detail the events of that year better than I could.

However, with my many years both as a CEO and a Man Utd fanatic, I think I could’ve offered the world an exciting book that revealed true feelings, stories and perspectives not often heard.

Also, I could’ve showcased the similarities between running a football team and a business and the ensuing pressures of being at the head of both of them.

But I bottled it, and the idea died.

So when Ideas don’t manifest, where do they go?

Gilbert tells a story about an idea she had for a novel set in the Amazon that she neglected for so many years that it left her — and took up residence with her friend, the novelist Ann Patchett. Gilbert also suggests that an idea about Ozzy Osbourne and his zany family visited her once, but after she ignored it, it graced MTV instead.

Her explanation may be too New Agey for some. However, like Gilbert, I do believe that life is both mystical and magical.

Ideas do come and go. If we don’t grab it, work on it, and carve it up like Michelangelo would a block of marble, ideas could perhaps linger for a few years, a decade or two, but then disappear.

The good idea wants nothing more than to use us as a vessel. It wants to come out into the world. All we have to do is be strong, patient and tolerant of it—We must quiet the noise around us, listen and surrender to its voice.

And yet, I have not seen a version of Football & Business, Bloody Hell.

Could the idea still be lingering and waiting for me?

2024: The Year of Living Mindfully

2024: The Year of Living Mindfully
2024: The Year of Living Mindfully
Source: Substack

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”― E. B. White

I’ve always been a goal-chaser.

Most years, I set too many goals. I accomplish many of them but end up dissatisfied when they are achieved and tormented with guilt if they are not.

However, in 2024, I want to take it slow, do away with the structure of goal-setting and instead adopt a more casual approach to living.

I’m adopting the US Navy Seals slogan: Slow is Smooth. Smooth is Fast. I will emblazon it in front of my writing desk and in my mind.

The overarching theme of my year will be to lessen the pressure I put on myself. To take things slowly. To reduce the overwhelm, the choices and the anxiety that ensues— “To arise in the morning and savour the world.”

I want to be like the river that meanders slowly through a lush, tranquil forest, taking its time as it navigates around bends and obstacles, but despite its slow pace, its path remains smooth and efficient, eventually leading to a wide, peaceful lake.

The truth is that we exist on earth for only a short while. So why can’t we occasionally treat life as an exciting adventure, trying to make the best out of it while allowing it to unravel its many mysteries?

Not every activity must be a means to an end. Sitting on the sofa does not mean I have to watch TV. Taking a walk does not need to be measured for distance and speed. Watching the birds in nature doesn’t have to be labelled as a mindful exercise to be done on Wednesdays at 5 pm.

During the COVID-19 outbreak and that month when I had to remain at home and isolated, the slowing down was somehow forced onto me. It proved to be a window on how I wanted to live.

However, when the isolation ended and life got back to normal, I quickly went back to my old ways of doing, and everything resumed being urgent.

In order to be able to live this life of Slow is Smooth. Smooth is Fast; there are a few concepts to adopt.

A) Think More Long-Term

To think in ten-year periods, instead of two or three years, means playing a long game that we can both win and enjoy. Doing so means we can focus more on creating systems than setting goals.

With these systems, I’m doing something on a regular basis that makes me better and more content in the long run, regardless of immediate outcomes.

I don’t get the instant gratification that achieving a goal can give, but I also don’t carry the stress of not reaching a goal.

B)Less is More

We burden our lives with too many unnecessary choices, putting ourselves under pressure and not saving the much-needed energy for the bigger things in our lives.

We invite alternatives in our lives, not because we want the best option, but only because we’re bored with what we are doing. We are bored not due to a lack of choices but rather because we are not content with ourselves.

We feel that we are missing out on something. We compare what we are doing with what others are doing and presume it would give us more joy to do the things that they are doing.

Between 2015 and 2020, I read a book a week and averaged about 45-50 books a year. Over the last few years, due to company, family and social needs, I just haven’t been able to maintain that momentum. Not reading that many books has made me feel inadequate and unworthy.

For 2024, I’ve committed to 15 books instead. It’s a more gettable target that sits well with all my other responsibilities.

C)Say No

Whether setting new objectives, taking on new hobbies or adopting new habits, we overestimate how much time we have in a day, week, month and year.

In 2024, I will not attempt to restart my meditation practice. I’ve been on and off my meditation practice for the past five years. Every time I stop, I feel like a loser. So why start and get disappointed when I’m obviously not ready?

I’ve also deleted Twitter(X) as not only does it take much of my time, but it also makes me more anxious and angry.

D) The Sunk Cost Fallacy

We often keep doing something just because we’ve already spent time, money, or effort on it and not because it’s the best choice now. We make decisions based on what we’ve already done, not what’s good for the future.

Last year, my company spent a lot of money, effort, and time studying whether to open another branch in another city, only for me to pull the plug at the last minute.

I thought long and hard about abandoning our efforts, not because it was wise and right to do so (it was) but only because I felt burdened by all the team’s efforts during the feasibility study.

What’s gone is gone. So, there is no point holding onto it when it won’t serve us.

This easy, casual approach works better now that I’m 55 and that I have a good sense of what I truly enjoy and want in my life.

For me, I have redefined what success means to me. It’s not more money, running marathons or getting on the New York Times bestseller list that drives me.

Instead, I just want to enjoy and improve in my areas of focus so that I can:

  • Run my business with surgical efficiency.
  • Write. Improve my writing. Engage with writers and readers.
  • Be as healthy as ever. Eat more protein. Move daily by doing strength exercises, workouts, walking, and playing Padel. Sleep well. Take the right supplements.
  • Travel adventurously.

Hurry Slowly in 2024.

The Daily Practice That Changed My Life

The Daily Practice That Changed My Life
The Daily Practice That Changed My Life
Source: Substack

A few Christmases ago, everyone but me was having a good time.

I was sick in bed, struck by some mysterious virus. I had looked forward to this break after a hard and energy-sapping year, but in the chaos and melee of people that is the holidays, I had somehow lost my bearings, my grounding, and finally, my well-being.

I had stopped doing the things that made me feel good. The things I’d spent the last few years cultivating in my life.

Namely, I’d stopped my daily practice.

Following Annie Dillard’s wisdom, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” I had spent the whole year establishing and formalizing a set of non-negotiables that would underpin my daily life. These practices, when I observed them consistently, filled me with contentment and magic, and a feeling of being enough. They were the culmination of all the work I’d done on myself—all the self-awareness and self-knowledge I gathered—in the past five years.

To follow them meant getting into action, changing my behaviors, and ultimately my outcomes. Each morning, I primed myself for what I would do for the rest of the day—and the rest of my life. I was building small bridges that led to my soul.

However, it’s always easier to follow our habits when we are in our own environment. When we step out of it, and our routine times and places change, it becomes much harder. On my holiday, I missed one habit and then another, and everything snowballed out of control. And without realizing it, I closed the door to my soul.

Within a few days, I became restless, anxious, and then violently sick. My mood transformed from relaxed and fun to a swarm of negative thoughts. I became miserable as doubts and recriminations overtook me. I was now in a deep funk.

Was I reversing all the changes and progress I’d made within a two-week holiday?

Was my practice so fickle as to fail at the first sign of a challenge?

I was now counting the hours and days until I could get back to my physical home and my spiritual abode—my daily practice.

I returned home on the third day of the new year and was relentless in recovering the routines I had so meticulously created. Within a week I was back on track, and my next goal was to continue with my practices during my next two planned trips—one in February for business, and another in March to visit my son.

Because of my Christmas experience, I was extra vigilant this time ‘round. I set an intention for the rest of the year to complete my routines with a minimum of an 80 per cent level of achievement. I also added the caveat that, when I was away, I could lessen the time I spent on my routines. For example, I might journal for two pages instead of three, or substitute walking in the city for my exercise routine.

I wanted to make it as easy and practical as possible to remain connected to my soul. I finally recognized that to persist with my daily practice was to say: I love myself. I value myself. I fill myself with enough love and self-esteem that I can give back to others.

It’s like what they always say on the plane. When there is an emergency, we must put on our own oxygen mask first and then help others, including our own children.

These six non-negotiable rituals are my spiritual oxygen. They always take priority.

Rising Early

This is the keystone habit upon which all the others rely. There is something magical about waking up before anyone else. It has to be before the sun so that I can glimpse that orange-yellow ball of fire igniting the sky and my being. There is a quiet peace all around, punctuated by the whispers of the birds that grow into a symphony of sounds. It’s as if I’m one with God, residing in the Garden of Eden, albeit only for 30 minutes.

Meditation

I’m no Buddhist monk, and I still struggle with meditation. I often sit for long spells where my mind is active. However, I do notice a cumulative effect on my inner peace when I’m consistent with it. There is something I can’t quantify that makes it work. My meditation practice is a simple one; I follow my breath in and out for 20 minutes. Every time my mind wanders, I gently prod it back without judgement.

Journalling

Every morning, I write three hand-written morning pages as prescribed by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way. In them, I dump everything and anything that comes to mind in a stream of consciousness manner. This has a cathartic effect on me, and I find that I manage to tackle issues that have become urgent in my subconscious mind and are bubbling to the surface. I hardly ever go back and read my journals; they are gone and assimilated.

Exercise

I love exercising in the morning, as it gives me so much energy that overflows into the rest of my day. I’m filled up with endorphins and feel like Alexander the Great going after his next conquest. However, I keep it simple so it’s doable and I don’t arrive tired to work. It could be a light jog, a quick high-intensity interval training routine, or a basic strength workout, but nothing longer than 30-40 minutes. I am not to be Mr Universe or a super athlete but rather to remain healthy and high on endorphins.

Reading

I try to read for an hour a day. That could be in the early morning, evening, or just before I sleep, but I must read. Reading is soul-nourishing and has opened me to new worlds, ideas, and lives I could never have imagined otherwise. Some authors have become virtual mentors and soulmates. I could say I learned how life works solely from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet. I know much about the slums of Mumbai even though I’ve never been there, thanks to Gregory David Roberts’s Shantaram. Reading is also one-half the practice to better writing.

Writing

I write for an hour a day, usually after coming home from work in the early evening or early morning, especially as I awaken very early these days. I’ve found joy in this “systems approach” I hadn’t used before. This daily hour of writing adds up after a week, and if I add some extra ones on the weekend, I can total 10 hours a week.

That’s much more than when I used to binge-write once a week. I’m also now in a constant writing mood. Ideas flow; true to Hemingway’s words, “the well is always overflowing,” and I leave it without emptying it. Writing is the language my soul uses to express itself and share itself with the world—I’ve denied it for far too long to stop now.

The point is not what habits to do, but to do what is relevant and sustainable in our lives, and consistently. I started with one habit, and over five years, it slowly grew to six as I learned what made me come alive. I made the practices easy at the start so that it was hard to fail. What became an hour, or 1,500 words of writing, started out as only 300.

Apart from the blip over Christmas, my daily practice has now been consistent for the past 18 months. I feel this daily practice that I’ve found and enjoy so much is the result of all the work I did to find my authentic self. This daily practice not only grounds me and protects me from negativity all around (especially mine), but also serves to make me receptive to abundance and joy in my life.

These are the rituals that work for me. Some may resonate with you, while others won’t.   I believe everyone should have a core, sacred rituals in their life. For some, reading might be replaced by watching movies or documentaries. Writing could become creating shopfronts or websites. Meditation might instead be some form of prayer.

I encourage you to take some time to carefully develop the rituals that will become the bedrock of your life.

5 Insights That Made 2023 a Year of Growth

5 Insights That Made 2023 a Year of Growth
5 Insights That Made 2023 a Year of Growth
Source: Substack

“The world is the true classroom. The most rewarding and important type of learning is through experience, seeing something with our own eyes.” ~ Jack Hanna.

Approaching the end of the year, I like to review it so that I can reflect and start the new one with a bang. Doing so helps clarify what worked, what didn’t, and the lessons I learned.

We might read a great piece of advice that has the potential to work miracles in our lives, but until we internalise it or relate it to our own experience, we won’t trust it.

The best way to learn is through experience. Unless we absorb an emotion as a lesson, it will never become wisdom, rather remaining as abstract knowledge parked somewhere out in the ether.

These are the five lessons the last year has driven to my core:

1) My Life and Goals won’t end on New Year’s.

I now look at goal-setting not as a mere one-, two- or three-year plan, but rather more like a 20-year life plan. I think more in terms of creating systems than setting goals. With these systems, I’m doing something on a regular basis that makes me better and more content in the long run, regardless of immediate outcomes.

I don’t get the instant gratification that achieving a goal can give, but I also don’t carry the stress of not reaching a goal.

My ultimate aspiration—and one that I will pursue endlessly and ruthlessly—is to become a writer who earns enough money from writing to cover a comfortable lifestyle. I’m giving myself as much time as possible, as I know it’s not something I’ll achieve within the next few years.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying the journey of transitioning from a business owner(and all the stresses it brings) to becoming a full-time writer (and all the stresses it brings) and using its fire to power on in my life.

2) Health is Everything.

If you had told me health matters when I was under 40, I would have nodded politely but shrugged it off the same way most people shrug off global warming—yes, it’s a problem, but not mine, and I have more pressing issues.

However, as I’ve hit my 50s, I get it; it affects me in the now. It’s less about dying early and more about living well until I die. In the past few years, I can’t remember a week where I haven’t had some pain or mild distress, whether it’s from trying some exercise I shouldn’t or not warming up my muscles well enough. Or I’ll have gastrointestinal and digestive problems from eating badly, drinking excessively or binging on sugar.

These minor health issues, though not deadly, wreak havoc on my mind, and I end up spending many hours like a zombie, unable to do any of the things I want to do. They quickly lead me to despair and often take me down the dark road of melancholy. I could swear that every time I’ve suffered such emotions, I could trace them back to a failure in my body—some health issue.

3) Embrace Simplicity.

I can still feel the overwhelm that has overpowered me in the last few years. I took on too many projects. I tried to change too many things in my life, and in the end, I lost my way and often my mind.

If we listen closely to our hearts, there is an inherent urge in us to simplify our lives. Fewer decisions mean less energy spent. And so instead of more, we should choose less to help us focus, engage and enjoy those valuable things.

The more we get rid of anything unnecessary, the better we feel. All that extra is clutter—wasteful—and that stands in the way of our inner peace and contentment. By removing the unnecessary, we make room for what is essential and acquire more focus.

What is “essential” differs considerably for each of us. As such, simplifying our lives is a personal and very much subjective endeavour.

Like Zorba, I want to feel “once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.” (From Nikos Kazantzakis’s Zorba the Greek.)

4) Kaizen and the Power of One Percent Improvement.

Kaizen is a Japanese term that has become famous in the West. It describes continuous improvement through small incremental changes that accumulate over time. It’s used in the corporate world for developing systems and practices, and it’s one of the core principles that Toyota used to become the number one car producer in the world.

We tend to associate change with some large, visible result, like a before-and-after picture of someone who has lost weight in a few months. In reality, however, the greatest shifts occur when we make incremental changes daily. This way, we don’t put too much pressure on ourselves and overload our capacity.

Whether it’s in my business, writing or playing Padle Tennis, I want to remind myself of the power of Kaizen to improve a little every day, every week and every month.

5) We are a Product of our Habits.

Over the last 5-7 years, I set about solidifying the habits I wanted in my life. I called them my “non-negotiables” and committed them to a daily practice. They include rising early, usually just before the sun, meditating for 20 minutes, and journalling for three Julia Cameron morning pages. In the late afternoons, these non-negotiables involve reading for an hour and then writing for at least an hour or a thousand words.

These practices have become the pillars of my daily living—the small bridges to my soul. It’s as if, when I’m doing them consistently, I’m closer to my higher self. I fill up my body with enough soul to be able to live a day in the physical world.

Often, when I’m travelling or on holiday, I somehow manage to stop my daily practice. Without realising it, I close the door to my soul, and my mood transforms from intentions of relaxation and fun to a swarm of negative thoughts.

I then find myself counting the hours to get back to my physical home and my spiritual abode—my daily practices.

These lessons have now entered my subconscious, and I feel I can apply all of them to all aspects of my life. I will do so unconsciously, as they have become part of me. This is what I stand for and how I want to live until I die.

We Can’t Hoard Happiness

We Can't Hoard Happiness
We Can't Hoard Happiness
Source: Elephant Journal

‘The perfect man’, said Chuang-tzu, ’employs his mind as a mirror; it grasps nothing, it refuses nothing, it receives but does not keep.”― Alan W. Watts, The Supreme Identity.

I’m reading The Sun Also Rises (again) while waiting for my turn to collect my passport. A man next to me complains that people are cutting the line. “What takes 30 minutes will take 2 hours,” he says, “This is Lebanon.”

That could easily have been me complaining if not for Hemingway. I’m proud of myself for not getting angry or resentful that my time is being wasted.

Finally, after exactly two hours, I’m ushered into a small room filled with three uniformed men, many folders and large envelopes. After giving my name, I’m handed my new passport.

Walking out to the town square, I feel a sense of joy, an accomplishment done with grace—none of my usual tantrums. Doing these small obligatory errands makes me not sleep the night before. I know I sound ridiculous, but that’s the truth. I often find ways not to do or persuade others to do them.

With the passport in hand, it feels like a big win. And yet, instead of staying with that triumphant feeling, I’m thinking about how I should act in this same manner when faced with similar things to do in the future.

Do I always carry a book with me? Perhaps I was feeling sorry for the Lebanese officials who earn less than $200 a month and are doing their best that I remain serene. Setting the right expectations before leaving for the passport office is crucial.

A white dove flies by, and as I stop analysing and admire the bird’s flight, I realise I’m ruining my special moment. I’m turning a win into a loss. I’m killing the goose, the golden egg and whatever else comes next.

That’s me in a nutshell. I hardly dwell in the present. I’m always thinking ahead, what’s next, and how to be strategic.

It’s tiring. It’s unmindful. It’s ruining the small pockets of joy in my life.

It isn’t enough that I usually beat myself up when things don’t go my way. I also find ways to do so when something does go right.

Other situations come to mind. Like when I’ve just finished a good writing session, my mind doesn’t say well done; instead, how can I set the right conditions to write the same way tomorrow as I did today?

I regularly turn potential sources of happiness into a source of stress.

Buddhism has a concept known as taṇhā, defined as the craving to hold onto pleasurable experiences and be separated from painful or unpleasant experiences.

This longing comes from our underlying fear of facing our finitude.

Our evolutionary biology means that we want certainty. We want to control our environment and look for ways to predict the future to remain safe and survive.

But we end up standing outside our present experiences without ever getting into them.

Instead of processing these joyful moments, we kill them.

No matter how much we plan, we can’t always have the same outcomes. There’s always a different agenda at play.

Experiences are meant to be had.

We can’t hoard happy experiences to use for later.

I’ve learned to control my outcomes since I was very young. I had to survive in a new country after a sudden departure from home without much support at 11. That mindset helped me then, but it has outlived its usefulness today.

During the COVID-19 outbreak and that month when I had to remain at home and isolated, something strange happened; I found myself letting go and being more present.

In slowing down and not drowning in the noise of my own life—troubles at work, societal pressures, meetings and/or deadlines—I became calmer and more content without any expectations or responsibilities. It’s like I pressed pause but without any consequences in doing so.

Throughout that month, my phone hardly rang. There were few urgent emails to respond to and even fewer people to deal with.

There was a sense of freedom that I hadn’t had for many years.

I felt light, more mindful of the world and me in the world. I was reminded that I’m nothing but a speck of cosmic dust. All these shadows I chased weren’t that important.

Suddenly, what seemed urgent became less so. Instead, what became important was family, friendships, health, and being happy.

Everything was so uncertain that I didn’t have to face the future. I didn’t care about what happened tomorrow. I was freed from the responsibility of thinking about what could happen in the future.

I started to live in the now and savour what I was doing. Blissful afternoon walks, having good conversations with friends in the evening while red wine flowed, and reading for at least an hour every morning.

However, the challenge is remaining present while living my everyday life despite all the pressures it provides. How can I treat my mind as a mirror? Savouring small bouts of happiness instead of saving them.

Awareness helps. But so does practice. I’ve got to battle my 11-year-old, who still lives in me. To explain to him that control up to a point becomes unnecessary and, instead, letting go is the key to happiness.

I’ve now made it a point to write at least one win every morning, no matter how small. For example, in the past week, I took a few minutes to appreciate how Hemingway introduced a new writing method in The Sun Also Rises. The early morning workout focused on my legs on Tuesday, which left me feeling the testosterone rise in my body.

Then there was having a Kanafeh sandwich—a traditional dessert(to be eaten at breakfast) made with fine semolina dough, soaked in sweet, sugar-based syrup, and typically layered with cheese, all fitted into a Lebanese street “Kaak” bread.

I’ve set up our company meetings to start with the week’s wins. I’ve also asked people around to remind me to celebrate my successes constantly.

The more I celebrate my wins, the less control I’d deem necessary.

Enjoying, savouring, and dwelling in my joyful moments is what I hope to do.

What other ways can we celebrate our wins and let go of our analysing mind?

To Want What You Already Have

To Want What You Already Have
To Want What You Already Have
Source: Elephant Journal

“Type-A personalities have goal pursuit as default hardwiring. This is excellent for producing achievement, but also anxiety, as you’re constantly future-focused. I’ve personally decided that achievement is no more than a passing grade in life. It’s a C+ that gets you limping along to the next grade. For anything more, and certainly for anything approaching happiness, you have to want what you already have.—Tim Ferriss.

Last week, I was in New York visiting my daughter. The first few days were great as the city’s energy buoyed me. I would walk for hours, wandering through skyscrapers and enjoying the hustle and bustle of Manhattan. I ate good food, didn’t have great coffee (I never do in the USA), and marvelled at the oddity of it all.

But then, on the fourth day, I started feeling anxious and depleted. I felt as if my soul was slowly leaving me. It told me it would go to sleep until I could awaken it. It said, you know I’m not the one for bright lights, big city. My energy levels went down, and I got a cold and felt miserable.

I could not cope with the general scrambling: restaurant bookings, museum lines, choosing broadway seats, standing in queues for a cupcake, and anything else I wanted to buy. Then there was the constricted space, the suffocation I felt whether in my hotel room, lobby, or restaurant or just out in the busyness of the city.

New York is a beautiful city for aspiring and desiring 20-30-year-olds. But not for me. Not for someone who is in midlife and seeks quiet, inner peace and mindfulness. Not for someone leaving the striving behind and moving on to the second part of his life, that of acceptance.

When I started thinking and writing, inner peace and not chasing achievement would lead to happiness. And that moving towards acceptance and loving what you already have is the start of our journey to be happier. I got a lot of pushback from many around me. Worse, I started to doubt my thoughts.

So, Ferriss, the author of the seminal book The 4-hour Workweek, affirmed my thoughts when he said that wanting what you already have is the way to happiness.

If the Guru of productivity and achievement was tired of striving, then surely all of us must.

Over the past decade or so, during my midlife renaissance, I’ve found that the contentment I seek starts only when I stop striving for things that don’t really matter to me. When I stop rushing around like a headless chicken or when I stop giving a shit about what others think of me.

It all looks simple enough in my journal. It’s also quite doable when I’m in my comfort zone and during the first few magical morning hours. But it is much more complicated when life slowly takes over from the morning and starts directing you like how New York’s energy overwhelmed me.

However, to want what you have also means that we are crystal clear in what we have in the first place.

Twentieth-century French anthropologist René Girard said, “We would like our desires to come from our deepest selves, our personal depths. But if it did, it would not be desire. Desire is always for something we feel we lack.”

What if our desires were not ours—not something that was under our control or something we manufactured? Instead, desire was a social process—it was mimetic. In other words, we want what other people want—This assumption that our desires are all our own and the stories we tell ourselves is what Gerard calls “The Romantic Lie.”

What makes it worse is that we are not always aware that our mimetic desires run below our conscious thoughts and that they rule our thinking and goal-setting. We become concerned with what Girard calls the metaphysical desire: the desire of another’s desire and not the object itself.

Only when we listen to the music of our soul’s whispers can we know what we want. Only when we are satisfied that our longings are right for us can we proceed to the next step of acceptance or wanting what we have.

There is a thin line between doing nothing and being nothing. Between living true to yourself and being passive, allowing life and others to direct you.

There are often bigger themes that we can’t control, but we can’t deny that we all wish to co-create our lives instead of waiting on others or divine intervention.

Oprah Winfrey accepted that she didn’t have the energy or the desire to continue being the world’s biggest TV talk show star and instead settled on moving away from the limelight but still doing what she wanted: running OWN, her recently launched television network. She was not being nothing but doing more of what she loved and less of what didn’t interest her anymore.

This week, I’m staying with my ailing father in the south of Lebanon, where I’m away from work and its pressures, staying in a serene villa with help around me and secluded from the outer world—the kind of break I’d prescribe for myself if I were coaching me.

I know I want that quiet. I know I want to sit on a verandah overlooking the garden with a chilled wind striking my face and neck, smoking a cigar and writing.

During this week, I’ve decided to do nothing. I rise early, read, journal and write. I walk daily and go to the gym. I do some work in the afternoon, but it’s all very casual.

Here, there is no need for action or their impending reactions. No judgements and conclusions. No desiring and striving. When there is no wanting, then there is both quiet and happiness.

During those magical morning hours, I can feel my soul sit beside me, converse and even laugh with me. I definitely want what I have right now: a blueprint for how I want to live my life.

I know I’m in a privileged position to be able to do so. However, we can all design our lives to be what we want if we stop being on that hamster wheel.

” Most talk is just noise. The English word “noise” comes from “nausea”. Say nothing unless it must be said. People will appreciate your silence and know that when you speak, it must be important. Shallow rivers are noisy. Deep lakes are silent. Silence is precious.”—Derek Sivers. 

This quiet is a stark contrast to my stay in New York or even when I’m back home and inundated with work, family and society, where I get sucked into the life of striving and running. And that’s when I become annoying, self-centred and miserable.

Now, my challenge is to design my present life with what I want to have when I’m actually in the arena with the pressures of my business, family, and societal life. How can I find that inner peace and yet remain effective? How can I be accepting yet strive for the elements I want?

First, I must clarify all the things that I really want to have.

Wisdom comes from removing the junk, falsehoods, and impediments to clear thinking. Less business, more writing. Less spending, more saving. Less internet and social media, more reading fiction and poetry. Less distractedness and more noticing.

Then, with a less cluttered and more tranquil mind, I can start to want and love what I have.

9 Quotes That Make Me Sit up & Think

9 Quotes That Make Me Sit up & Think
9 Quotes That Make Me Sit up & Think
Source: Elephant Journal

1. Spiritual Minimalism

“In order to change skins, evolve into new cycles, I feel one has to learn to discard. If one changes internally, one should not continue to live with the same objects. They reflect one’s mind and psyche of yesterday. I throw away what has no dynamic, living use.”

—Anaïs Nin

2. The Essence of Self-Help

To a disciple who was forever complaining about others, the Master said, ‘If it is peace you want, seek to change yourself, not other people. It is easier to protect your feet with slippers than to carpet the whole of the earth.’”

—Anthony de Mello

3. Happiness is…

I do not like the idea of happiness — it is too momentary. I would say that I was always busy and interested in something — interest has more meaning to me than the idea of happiness. 

—Georgia O’Keeffe

4. Midlife and Beyond

The second half of life is not a chronological moment but a psychological moment that some people, however old, however accomplished, however self-satisfied in life, never reach. The second half of life occurs when people, for whatever reason — death of partner, end of marriage, illness, retirement, whatever — are obliged to radically consider who they are apart from their history, their roles, and their commitments. Every young person “escapes” home and then goes out to repeat it, to be owned by it in overcompensation, or to attempt to “treat” it unconsciously through an addiction, a fugitive life, or some form of distraction. Given that the farther away one gets from those primal influences, the more these spectral influences still call the shots, most people sooner or later hit a wall. What they do then makes all the difference in their life.”

—James Hollis (from “Living an Examined Life: Wisdom for the Second Half of the Journey”)

5. Everybody Worships

Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

—David Foster Wallace

6. It’s Okay to be Alone

“It is beautiful to be alone. To be alone does not mean to be lonely. It means the minds is not influenced and contaminated by society.”

—Jiddu Krishnamurti

7. Why Writing Makes Me Come Alive

“You can’t replace reading with other sources of information like videos, because you need to read in order to write well, and you need to write in order to think well.”

—Paul Graham

8. On Purpose

“Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. It’s time for that to end.” 

― Sebastian Junger, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

9. Purposelessness

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

―E. B. White

Write Like F*cking Bukowski

charles_bukowski
Charles Bukowski | Photo: Bukowski.net

“If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose”― Charles Bukowski.

Lately, I’ve felt most of what I write is okay. It’s good, polished, but too vanilla. It’s like I’m writing for the audience. I’m preaching to the choir—I’m not vulnerable, intimate, or curious enough.

Yes, I’m getting nice pats on the back, but no awe-inspiring hugs. I’m getting bored with my own writing, as probably are my readers. I’ve stopped using words like serendipity, synchronicity, archetypical and all those intriguing words that Carl Jung would use.

I think it all stems from the fact that I’ve become too blasé. I stopped saying: “What the f*ck, anymore?”

Like when you watch a sunset, large birds flying in a ‘V’ formation or taste that baked cheesecake, and you say: “What the f*ck?”

Like when you read Bukowski and say: “What the f*ck?”

When I started writing almost 7 years ago, I’d sit in front of my laptop with classical music playing in the background and smoke a cigar, as I’m doing so right now.

I’d spend an hour producing short prose poetry inspired by my favourite poets: Charles Bukowski, Rumi and Gibran. They spoke to me like assassins sent from another world to destroy my ego.

After that hour or so, I’d produce something like this poem below:

The Lost Seagull 

I sit alone facing the sun

far away from the din

and all that plastic that

life has conjured behind me.

The mix of orange, yellow and red blinds my vision, taking me 

to another world.

A world where sunsets are long 

Conversations flow

Smiles are real

And so are the tears that fall.

The roar of the Mediterranean Sea

and the sight of the waves crashing down

onto the sea

is deafening.

It envelops me

further into that other world 

A lone seagull hovers down and sits next to me

 a beautiful bird,

 pure white with a few 

grey strands under its neck. It too has left its flock searching for that

other world. 

It looks at me—I look back at it. 

It flies off. 

Or when I went for a walk a few days ago, listened to Gelong Thubten (a Buddhist Monk) on a podcast with Dr Chatterjee and came up with this:

Be Fearless

Two fear-based feelings dominate us. 

One is fear of not getting what we want. Like not being invited to their 50th birthday, no padle court at 5 pm on a Tuesday, 

not the life we promised ourselves.

The other is fear of getting what you don’t want. Like being invited to their 50th birthday, 

a leg injury, so you can’t play padle,

or when life is being sucked out of you.

There are no other emotions. 

They all evolve from these two fears.

Learn to let go of them.

Master them. 

Live happily ever after.

But what about love, you ask? 

Love is not an emotion but our state of being. 

We are love when we overcome our fears. 

We are love when we remove obstacles

that stand in its way.

I know my poems won’t win the Pulitzer, but they came from my heart. When I was done, it left me feeling like I’d just met Rumi in that ‘field, the one beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing.’  Trust me, that’s a good place.

Back then, when I wrote from my heart, I allowed my soul to speak. To question my actions, where I’m going in life, why I’m unhappy, and why I am enslaved to society’s well-drawn-out path. To remind me that I could always stop to say, “What the f*ck?”

And when my soul did speak, I’d spend the rest of the day on a high that is hard to explain. I’d say to myself, f*ck you all. Did you allow your soul a few words today? Probably not. Well, I did. So f*ck you all. ( I’m still a young soul, so allow me a bit of obnoxiousness.)

Things changed when people started praising me and following my work; I began to take myself too seriously. I slowly started writing for them. Not for me. I learned to write better, polish, and rewrite my essays, so everything was very good.

There were publications, plaudits and ego glorification. I then pursued an MFA, only to give up halfway after a snowmobile accident made it hard for me to travel. Perhaps my soul was trying to scream: “Please don’t become so good that you ignore me. ”

A few weeks ago, I spent nearly every day reading Bukowski. Yesterday, I printed, blew up and pinned the words: “Write Like F*cking Bukowski,” so it’s visible whenever I write on my desk.

There is something about Bukowski that invokes the primal in me. Maybe it is how he looks: ugly, rough, and dirty, as if he’s a poster boy for Skid Row or met him leaving a bar absolutely drunk. This guy just doesn’t give a f*ck, you’d yourself.

But at the same time, he’s a beautiful soul, and nothing is ugly about what he writes. He is unhinged. He is vulnerable. His clear thinking and words reach places that few of us dare.

Look at this excerpt from his book Factotum below:


“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.”


His whole life was an argument for saying: “What the f*ck?”

But to write like him means to be like him. It means getting off that f*cking hamster wheel of success, status and more. It means allowing your heart to show up even when it’s hurting. It means allowing your soul to express itself even when others would want to look away or downright laugh at you.

To write like Bukowski means not following the rules, not being afraid of writing crap, and not fearing missing out on being published. It means not giving a shit what anyone thinks. It means taking off that suit and tie and donning a peasant’s beret instead.

So today, I’m saying, what the f*ck. I’m gonna write from pain. I’m gonna write from my heart.

I’m gonna write like F*cking Bukowski.

Big Change is Hard

Photo: le vy|Pexel..com

“Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead, let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?” ―Rumi

“For someone who keeps talking about positive change, you haven’t changed much,” she said.

“Well, change is not what you see happen in a movie,” I said.

People love to judge, compartmentalise and condemn. It makes them feel better and stronger as if your failure is their gain. However, it was also true that often, ‘who I am’ was not aligned with ‘who I want to be.’

Evolutionary biology has explained that conserving energy is part of our survival mechanism. We seek comfort, routines and certainty, which all make change hard.

If the pain we’re going through does not exceed the suffering we’re willing to put ourselves to change, it won’t happen.

If we don’t want it bad enough, it won’t happen.

My goal isn’t to write a book, create a writing habit and be at peace and harmony with the world. I’ve written several books, write consistently and have many moments of peace in my life.

Instead, I want to be a happy, mindful, contemplative author/thinker, away from affluence and society’s microscope.

From where I’m coming, the transformation I’m seeking is massive. I want to become a new person.

Instead of chasing success, status and money, something I have done most of my life, I crave to be this spiritual warrior who wants less but to be more.

On some days, I feel aligned with that goal, but not on many other days.

This means that I need to question the underlying transformation I desire. To look at it from the big ‘Why’ perspective. Using James Clear’s terminology, the change I seek is not only about changing my outcomes and systems but also my identity, beliefs and worldview.

That is huge.

For most of my 55 years, I have been brought up and lived on a formula that does not fit what I want to be. Success, money, and affluence were the only markers of how to live a good life.

And here is the new me, wanting to do a complete 360-degree change and become the next Rumi, someone who writes, speaks and lives love, compassion and everything that’s good about humanity.

Rumi didn’t start as the 13th-century Persian poet we all cherish today. He was a wealthy nobleman, theologian, and sober Islamic scholar until he met the wandering dervish monk Shams Al Tabriz.

Rumi knew he had met his soul mate as soon as Shams spoke. And Shams knew he had found the star pupil he’d been seeking for 17 years. They retreated to Rumi’s house for almost three months. There, they both touched a godly and inexplicable light source. Each man, with the help of the other, discovered the grace and truth he sought.

After his introduction to the world of mysticism, Rumi awakened and learned everything he could about love — unbounded, compassionate and universal. He would become the most famous son of Sufism and the most-read poet of all time.

Was living like Rumi truly what my soul desired?

I recalled what my psychologist sister once told me: many of her patients came not to change. They wanted her to make them feel better as they continued their old behaviour, nuanced with cosmetic changes masquerading as new behaviour. That’s when she told them the harsh truth that change means you must do the work—a deep excavation to know yourself and what you really want.

Perhaps I was doing just that. Is it true that I want a simple life of peace and harmony? Or was it just something I sought due to the last turbulent years of my life?

Author Parker Palmer has a different way of looking at the question of living truthfully: the central question is not, “Am I living the life I want?” but, as Parker says, “Is the life I am living the same as the life that wants to live in me?”

Shams didn’t come into my life, but writing somehow did. It released the tension in and around my heart, allowing me to dig deep into my psyche and to ‘know myself’ much better.

It made me notice the world around me, empathise with the people in it, and, most importantly, taught me new ways of being with the heart being central to how I thought.

I’m learning that it’s less about getting this or that and going after the shiny goals like publishing a book, getting 100K subscribers, going on a 10-day meditation retreat and more about adopting new behaviours that align with the new ‘Mo’ that I want to be:

To do more of what I love. (Let’s start with writing.)

To live more mindfully and enjoy the ‘now.’

To live more vulnerably.

To become more intimate with people.

To be more loving and compassionate.

To appreciate and participate in the power of community.

I’m not saying I’m healed or won’t fail again and fall back on chasing numbers and status. By being brave and consistent in all of the above, I’m replacing despair with hope.

When I accept that changing my identity is the biggest fight of my life, that means I’ll reclaim the power within me and bring back my dignity.

It means I’m giving myself permission to live the life I want first and foremost, accepting that it will be messy and that I won’t always feel good.

I will stop waiting for anything or anyone and instead start today with small actions, staying with them long enough so that my new behaviour becomes embedded within me.

That’s when the magic happens.

That’s when I’d feel life pulsing through my veins.

Perhaps it won’t satisfy the naysayers or be exactly Rumi-esque, but it will be the life that wants to live in me.

 

 

 

Why It’s Important To Have The Right Idea At The Top Of Your Mind.

I think most people have one top idea in their mind at any given time. That’s the idea their thoughts will drift toward when they’re allowed to drift freely. And this idea will thus tend to get all the benefit of that type of thinking, while others are starved of it. Which means it’s a disaster to let the wrong idea become the top one in your mind.

—Paul Graham

Sometimes when I’m in the shower, I get a brilliant idea. Other times it’s when I’m walking while listening to a podcast. My friend, an avid swimmer, told me of a similar eureka moment he had after an intense swim.

A week ago, after a hard run, a vision of a new sales strategy I could implement came to me. The idea was simple, and afterwards, I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before.

Many problem solvers know that after working hard for hours on solving a problem, they get no solutions until suddenly, when they stop and do something else, an idea pops up.

However, we can’t seem to be able to control these insightful thoughts. We can’t think our way into getting that particular thought. It’s all rather indirect and often not under our control.

The trick is in calming the chattering mind. True, it’s easier said than done. For example, when I’m under a strong shower, with water falling forcefully onto my head and body, I can only focus on the water jets striking me. I get so absorbed in that feeling that I forget to think. Boom! An idea comes out.

Or half an hour into a hard run, my mind is too tired to think about anything else. It can only focus on moving my legs that an idea escapes reaching my awareness.

The subconscious sends us messages when the conscious mind is still and bereft of activity.

Another obstacle is that these illuminating moments happened when my mind was focused on that ‘one thing’ before the illumination. So, for example, I can’t expect an aha moment on an innovative sales strategy for my business if personal issues have preoccupied my mind for the past hours, days and weeks.

Sometimes, I struggle with having one foot in the writing world and another running my company. This is because my focused thoughts are fragmented, and no insight arrives whether I’m showering or running.

However, whenever I was focused on one aspect of my business or writing life for weeks prior, I’d get that illumination.

In marketing, there is a concept known as TOMA, or “top-of-mind awareness”, which refers to a brand or specific product being first in customers’ minds when thinking of a particular industry or category. So, for example, when I think of cars, BMW stands out for me. Or when I think of chocolate, I can’t but envision myself opening and unwrapping a ‘Toblerone’ bar.

Likewise, what is at the top of our minds will always get the most focus and thus insights. We can’t control where our thoughts drift, but we can control where we put ourselves and our minds.

A writer solely focused on his writing process, with a pure and unpolluted mind, would be able to immerse themselves deep into the book’s craft, structure, and ideas. Here, they would get a helping hand from the mysterious muse, and an aha moment arrives via a shower, run or swim.

However, if that same writer is troubled by how to market themselves and get more followers, they have already tainted their minds.

I’ve been in both situations and have seen both the positive effect of total focus and the negative one polluting my mind with thoughts about not having enough people on my mailing list.

Though it’s not always easy to know what dominates our thoughts, the best way to indirectly control these illuminating moments is to make sure what is at the top of our minds is where we want to be.

Sometimes, I think it’s my company, only to meditate for ten minutes and find that instead, it’s the sense of injustice I’m feeling towards someone or something.

I then clear my mind of the conflicts within, refocus on where I want my thoughts to go and hope for the best.

Now and then, I get a brilliant idea.