“There is more to life than increasing its speed” Gandhi

Why have we bought in to convenience?

In theory, convenience is supposed to offer us less effort, less responsibility, less time and personal energy used and feelings of being in control. Convenience, or rather the efficiency and ease that we believe it gives us, has become part of our conditioning and we have wound up believing that if we can only attain a particular level of efficiency, through using methods of convenience, then that will give us happiness, security and more leisure time.

So, how is it that, with all the “modern conveniences” we now enjoy – fast food, quick fix pharmaceuticals, personal computers, cars, cells phones, satnav, the internet, white goods and a whole host of other things, most of us still feel over-stretched and over-stressed?

The answer, I believe, is to be found in what we risk surrendering to convenience when we are enticed by it. We risk surrendering our soul, our personal power and relinquishing control of our health and wellbeing. Time saved is often spent on more of the same -earning a living- rather than on leisure, time with friends and loved ones, or attending to our physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing.

Perhaps we are not aware, in the moment, of how our decision making works when we automatically choose convenience. To help bring this into our awareness, I’ve come up with some questions that we can ask ourselves at times when we’re tempted to favour convenient options over and above other benefits.

Here’s my Convenience Decision Checklist:

•    If I save time by doing this, what will I use that time for?

•    How does that serve me?

•    If I save personal energy by doing this, what will I use that energy for?

•    How does that serve me?

•    What is my short term gain from doing this?

•    How does that affect my longer term wellbeing?

•    Am I abdicating responsibility for myself by doing this?

What I’m not suggesting here is that we never opt for convenience. Rather, I’m attempting to distinguish True Convenience, which offers benefits in the short and longer terms, from the type of convenience where we opt for short term gain at the expense of long term advantages.

Let’s take eating a meal and wanting to meet up with friends as an example. An unsustainable,  but convenient, option might be to quickly grab a take-away meal on the way to our meeting, so as to arrive on time. An option of True Convenience (which is more sustainable in the long term for our health, wellbeing and relationships) might be to suggest to the friends that we meet and share a fresh, self-prepared meal together. So, I’m urging us all to make conscious decisions about how we spend our time and energy, rather than unconsciously succumbing to the advertising techniques of those who promote convenience products.

How do we make the most of the opportunities for convenience in our lives in a sustainable way i.e. in a way that promotes our health, wellbeing and happiness over the longer term?

I would suggest the key elements to aim for are:

•    Simplicity – reduce the number of tasks we are committed to doing.

•    Reclaiming responsibility for ourselves – through healthy eating, exercising our minds and our bodies, addressing our face to face social needs.

•    Rediscovering self-trust – faith in our ability to do what’s right, rather than attempting to do everything on offer in the hope that one of those choices will turn out to be ok.

In the old “business as usual” paradigm it’s ok to exploit others for your own gains. Ethical, sustainable business seeks to challenge this perspective and to encourage a more responsible, caring and sharing attitude to those with whom we work and collaborate.

Anil Gupta is on a mission:  to support grassroots innovators, who are rich in knowledge but not in resources, who would normally have their ideas exploited by others. He began this venture when he came to the realisation that he himself was guilty of making a living from writing about social justice, but was not practising it.

Anil Gupta has since resolved to seek out indigenous entrepreneurs from around the world. He asserts that their ingenuity, hidden by poverty, has the potential to change the world. “Minds on the margin are not marginal minds” he says and “Scaleability should not be the enemy of sustainability.” He uses the example of cellphones, which for many people are over engineered and therefore wasteful of valuable resources.

I have a feeling that this type of product/solution localisation, and the recognition and appropriate nurturing  of grassroots innovators, will yield significant and important solutions for a post industrial, low energy economy.

What is sustainable change?

I believe it’s when we are able to cultivate a new habit, a novel way of being or doing, and maintain that long term. We might find this very easy to do for some habits, for example finding an alternative route to work and sticking to it, or deciding to wake up 15 minutes earlier each day. However, larger changes, those that test our beliefs and conditioning at a much deeper level, can be far more challenging.

One of the methods that I encourage coaching clients to follow is called “Foresight, Midsight, Hindsight”. Although the way in which this is used can vary considerably from one person to another, here are some general guidelines:

Hindsight

We begin with Hindsight first in order to understand what our usual pattern is and how we’d like it to be different.
Let’s use the example of Greg, who wanted to reduce his car use.

Reflection and Contemplation – At first, Greg realised that he hadn’t really given his car use much thought, that it was a habit that was well established and ingrained. He found it quite painful to tot up his petrol bills and his carbon emissions for a typical month. However, this exercise gave him the opportunity to formulate a goal to work towards and he decided on a 50% reduction of both within 3 months.

Forgiveness – Initially, Greg was quite self-critical at not having tackled this issue before and at having put on weight due to using his car rather than walking. However, simply through expressing his disappointments, he soon turned this attitude around to forgiveness for himself and a resolve to make his plan work.

Wisdom and Insight – Greg became more aware of the alternatives to using his car, or indeed of taking some journeys at all. We discussed his reasons for using his car and how he’d like to re-prioritise certain aspects of his life, particularly his health.

Celebration and gratitude – Gradually Greg’s attitude towards this change in habit transformed from seeing it as an insurmountable problem over which he had little control, to regarding it as an opportunity for self-empowerment, to express his authenticity and to reclaim respect for his wellbeing.

Foresight

Vision – With Greg’s new found enthusiasm for this project, he allowed himself the freedom of his imagination. He then easily expressed his vision for how and when he wanted to travel.

Planning – He set himself the task of gathering information on walking routes to the bus and train station that took less than 10 minutes, downloading bus and train timetables from the internet for easy access and blocking out extra time in his diary for travelling. There was also a new travel budget to consider, and Greg researched travel passes and train ticket options that reduced his costs. He investigated cycle routes and bike/train/bus combinations.

He also listed useful and enjoyable tasks that he could carry out on a bus or train and gave himself permission to enjoy his walks and to walk leisurely. He identified people with whom he could share lifts for most of the remaining car journeys where other options were not suitable.

Intention – Greg wanted to find a way of reminding himself to set an intention for travel on each day. He felt this was important to prevent him slipping back towards his old car-dominated habits. He found an image that conveyed the concept well for him and put copies of it where he did most of his planning – by his computer and in the shower room!

Midsight

Presence – Awareness of our actions, in the moment, is a crucial step in embracing and maintaining a new habit. This was the part that Greg found most challenging.  With encouragement and support in the coaching, he began to understand how his thoughts preceded his actions and how he sometimes sabotaged his efforts by thinking that what he was trying to do was crazy or impossible. As time went by, he cultivated the ability to watch his thoughts and to develop more constructive ways of talking to himself that supported his efforts to change his travel habits.

Acceptance – Some of Greg’s journeys did not go at all according to his plans! He was filled with anger and despair at times, mainly aimed at other road users, local authorities, bus and train companies. It could be a very frustrating business! However, he soon realised that he could start to accept some situations as they arose and that the mental calm that resulted helped him to make wiser decisions in the moment.

Enjoyment – There were some journeys that Greg found totally delightful, very enjoyable and a fruitful contribution to his day.

Enthusiasm – And some walks and cycle rides came to light that Greg decided to indulge in for pure pleasure and relaxation.

I’ve presented the concept of Foresight, Midsight, Hindsight as a linear process here when actually it’s cyclical. For best effect, we repeat this cycle many times over in order to refine and embed our new habit. To begin with, Greg viewed each day using Hindsight, forgiving himself for his transgressions and using the lessons learned to tweak his planning. As his new travel habit became embedded, he quietly celebrated his successes and expressed his gratitude for his renewed self-confidence and sense of wellbeing.

There are plenty of examples from herbalism, both the Eastern herbal tradition of Ayurveda  and Western herbalism, of home remedies that we can use to keep ourselves in tip top condition.

During my annual spring clean of our bathroom cabinet last week, I noticed how very different the contents had become. No longer is it packed with painkillers and other over the counter pharmaceuticals.  In my bid to use mostly foods and herbs as home remedies, the bathroom cabinet has started looking sparser and sparser. We keep a First Aid kit, some herbal ointments, essential oils, plasters and a few homeopathic remedies.

The contents of the kitchen cupboard also lend themselves to concocting some useful home remedies for our most common ailments and the occasional unusual one too, with spices forming a particularly useful complement to the herbs. In addition, we are now growing a lot of our own food and many medicinal herbs and foods, such as mint, sage, rosemary, thyme, bergamot, basil, comfrey, calendula, valerian, camomile, guilder rose, rose, dandelion, raspberry leaf, rhubarb, nettle, aloe vera, hawthorn, feverfew, fennel and lavender.

Whilst chronic conditions might call for something more man-made, for those who are are mostly in good health, nature’s pharmacy seems to be all that is needed.

Home remedies, for me, form an integral part of a sustainable approach to wellbeing that prioritises optimum health and preventive medicine. What I love about this is the self-empowerment that comes from spotting when we’re off balance and acting promptly to restore bodily harmony using the abundance of nature. I also enjoy the simplicity and beauty in the fact that much of what grows around us, whether in our back gardens, in parks and public spaces or in the countryside, has nutritional and healing qualities, if we only know what to look for.

How do we know what to use, when and how to prepare remedies? Here are some favourite books that we refer to regularly:

Natural Home Pharmacy. Keith and Linda Scott.
The Complete Book of Ayurvedic Home Remedies. Vasant Lad.
Food For Free.  Richard Mabey.
Nature’s Pharmacy. Deborah Fowler.

And I’m particularly fond of my wall charts, purchased from Lemonburst.

I’ve been on the lookout for some informative (rather than sales based) blogs on home remedies, to no avail. If you are a Herbalist or Nutritional Therapist who writes such a blog, do get in touch. Equally, if you subscribe to a home remedies blog that you think might benefit others, let us know all about it.

“When you are competent, you can do your work at high standards. When you are a master, you invent the next level of your work, craft or business, which is a lot more attractive, especially to better clients and customers.” Thomas Leonard.

Autonomy: the opportunity to choose for ourselves a form of employment that suits our personal strengths, aptitudes and passions.

Authenticity: work as an expression of who we really are, our honest, open and beautifully unique selves.

Cooperation: encompassing teamwork, mutual support, beneficial and wholesome associations, genuine community.

Creativity: in a traditional arts and crafts sense, or creative with ideas, co-creative with others/the universe/God (depending on your personal beliefs), allowing what wants to come forth through us to arise.

Growth: a vehicle for personal and spiritual growth, an opportunity to learn from our mistakes, from others and from our relationships , from our interpretation of the world around us and our unique expression in and of it.

Happiness: facilitating happiness, choosing to be happy in our work.

Mindfulness: working in the moment, being open to intuitive and insightful input, being aware.

Path: knowing the direction and the essence of our journey, using our values as our compass.

Service: primarily focussed on giving to others, remaining non-attached to outcomes whilst committed to a path.

Simplicity: in planning, communicating, relating, organising.

Space: to reflect, to plan, to explore, to have lunch, to care.