You and your solitude

How will you get to know yourself if you never spend time with yourself. No noise. No any body. Alone.

Solitude is not loneliness. Just the opposite. Solitude is being with yourself. Fully. Totally.

Yourself unmasked. Uninterrupted. Profoundly complex, profoundly interesting, profoundly you.

Knowing yourself is difficult. Making time to know yourself is essential.

Why not make time to do a little of that today?

You will probably not regret it. You will probably feel nourished at the end of it, connected to source. You will probably feel whole. Which you already are, it’s just you may be too busy to see it.

So stop. Do little. You needs you.

Much Love,

Eliza Do Little

The Thing

There are some things in life which go deep. Really deep. Really really deep.

They are The Things.

It is not quite clear and linear how they got to be The Things, but they are, and there is nothing you can change about that.

The Things work magic on you. They elate you to a different dimension. It is doing The Things that deliver you to a state which some call “Happiness”.

 

When you find The Thing that goes deep, really really deep, to the core of love deep – you’ve got to do it.

A little bit every day or every week or every month or every year. Ideally as often as you can. But you’ve got to do it.

You don’t have to do it all in one go in case it runs out. It wouldn’t. And you don’t have to do it perfectly. It needn’t be. You can be a novice, and an amateur, and you can be imperfect at it and it doesn’t matter, and who cares.

The only thing that counts for something is that you do it. A little bit of it at least. Often. Today. With all your heart.

That’s how at the end of day you will know that today, for sure, you held Happiness by the hand and Happiness held your hand back. And that’s The Thing: there is nothing little about that at all.

 

Much Love,

Eliza Do Little (except The Thing; ideally you do The Thing any chance you get)

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Leaving job

So what this week served up was an invitation to a “leaving jobs” house party by two old friends, who are, quite obviously, and for different reasons, leaving their jobs. I’ve had these friends since university, so basically – many years. In this last year pre- “leaving jobs” we have met up and spent time together zero times. There are probably complex reasons behind that but ultimately one of them is that jobs get in the way of meeting up with friends. My job, their jobs, all the jobs. Jobs get in the way of meeting up with people. Jobs take up time and effort and energy and often we are depleted when we are done with our jobs for the day/week/month and as a result – very selective about the bit that happens in the time cracks around our jobs. Which is how friends fizzle out sometimes.

It also got me thinking about the actual “leaving jobs” bit. I have no intentions of leaving mine, I love it too much. But I remember leaving the previous job. I think it was a Friday when I handed in my notice. I then spent the afternoon in an establishment called “Walkabout” (aptly named on the day I announced my “walk out”) with a G&T and two guys (soon to be ex-colleagues) in front of me, talking about The Future. None of the details remain in my memory beyond that but all I can tell you is that I remember the utter elation around my “leaving a job” and the relief at not having to carry what felt like a burden any more. I felt light. I felt joyous. I felt happy. It was the day I coined the belief that: “Everybody should leave a job at least once in their life and experience what that feels like because it feels so awesome”. I still think that.

There are jobs that sap you and your energy up. There are aspects of jobs that sap you and your energy up. So much so that you can end up normalising that and be left with a blurred vision of the alternatives.

Ultimately, you don’t have to keep carrying the burden. If that’s how a job feels, the choice of saying “enough” and moving on, in my experience, is entirely yours. You don’t have to do that job and you certainly don’t have to do it all in the job of your choice. It’s important, I think, to always know that. Choice rests with you.

The other good thing about it is that the space after “leaving a job” is full of possibilities:

if you’ve got another one already lined up to go to soon it’s a lush opportunity for doing little and for “time out” while you wait.

If the “leaving job” was a surprise and not your choice it’s an opportunity for reflection and life course-correction  We don’t get many chances in life to start afresh, change trains, change direction. That’s priceless.

Either way it also opens up time for morning coffees and evening house parties with friends.

All in all, “leaving job” is often what dreams are made of. So if that’s where you are at, live the dream.

Much Love,

Eliza Do Little (which you have to, since, let’s face it – you’ve “left job”)

The writing on the wall

Not working on a “working day” (when most people are doing “the working”) is slightly surreal.

On such a day, in my limited experience, what happens is:

• you sleep a little bit longer,
• you eat a little bit better,
• you walk a little bit further,
• you hang out or talk with people a little bit deeper,
• your home gets a little bit tidier,
• you read a little,
• you have a little time for Nature,
• you have a little time for Art,
• and you have a little more time to spend with Yourself to get a little bit more clarity, or a little bit more peace, or both.

All of the above read to me like the cornerstones of a good day.

Overall not working on a “working day”, I can report, is a gem.

If the above was not enough, and because I had the time and capacity to, I also went to see some cool architectural drawings and models. The guy is called Piano, which adds a whole new dimension of “cool” to that for me.

I was not prepared that en route through the galleries I will also see this:

It did feel like The Universe speaking to me directly, in no uncertain terms, in a “are-you-getting-the-message-here” kind of way. Two days in a row I go out with the intention of buying a really funky pencil. Two days in a row I get diverted and I forget. So finally I went through the drawers at home. The pencil was already there. It has been waiting to be found for years. Now it has been found.

So in summary, this is what not working on a “working day” can throw at you: you may get to see the writing on the wall; and you may get to find that what you were looking for was in the drawer all along. I like where this is going.

Much Love,

Eliza Do Little – a little bit of this and a little bit of that, because they are the things that make for a good life. Evidently.