Are you a human being or a human doing?

Guilty of too much doing?

Wow, I have just had my first 2 weeks holiday in years and I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed the break.

To be honest I needed a change of scene plus my brain needed to chill from “doing” mode.

It felt amazing to be in the sun and to be really cared for and nurtured with lovely food and great surroundings.

There were no phone calls, no texts, no tweeting, no facebook and only the odd peek at emails. That left good conversation and loads of reading. I love being immersed in a good book that stimulates my imagination and lets me visualise others’ worlds. I read a mixture – thrillers, period drama, some trashy romance and even self help.

For years I have heard of and even listened to interviews with Eckhart Tolle but somehow never managed to read his books – The Power of NOW and A New Earth. For some reason I had built up some kind of major aversion to reading either.

However, it seems Mr Tolle had some powerful concepts that I was ready to hear! Confession – I am guilty of being a bit of a worrier and a planner. Often I am planning too far ahead.

The exercises in “The Power of NOW” challenged me to live in the present moment and to really ask myself was I OK in the “NOW” – in fact I was. If I began to think about the future, which I have no control over, then I have the potential to worry unnecessarily.

Worrying about things I don’t know or can’t predict is a waste of energy. I was instructed to realise, that when I got to a time in the future, it would be the same as being in the “NOW” i.e. I would use my reasoning, logic, intuition and wisdom to deal with whatever came up. It’s the same about the past. I can’t change it and how much will I allow the past patterns to influence my present reality?

I took notice and began to appreciate who I was with, what I was doing and where I was. This was far better than trying to figure out all the things I needed to catch up on when I got back home. At last I had become a human “being”!

When you get home I believe that you are never exactly the same as when you left. You have experienced new things. Important to remember it takes the some time to get back up to full speed again. However, it’s also important to reflect on whether working at the same speed is necessary. If you continue to do this then breaks and holidays need to be factored in.

One final note, it’s hard to avoid reggae music in the Caribbean. Wherever I went I seemed to hear the Bob Marley song “don’t worry about a thing, cause every little thing gonna be all right’! This feels like a really good mantra to adopt!