Choose your stones with love

26/12/202126/12/2021 / binarybea / Leave a comment

The year 2021 is about to finish, and very soon we´ll be welcoming 2022.

But that´s still a few days away, so before we start celebrating the New Year, we have some time to reflect a bit on the past twelve months. I propose we use an acronym for this, a few words in Spanish whose initials spell the word AMOR (LOVE):

A for Agradecimiento – THANKFULNESS: What do I feel thankful for this year? What events do I want to give thanks for?
M for Mejorable – IMPROVABLE: What did I set out to achieve and was not able to? What would I do differently now, and how would I do it?
O for Orgulloso – PROUD: What did I achieve this year, that I´m proud of? What obstacles did I overcome?
R for Reflexión – REFLECTION: Which things turned out as I expected, and which ones didn´t? What surprises did I find along the way? And what did I learn?

Now, having looked back for this little review, and knowing where we come from and the path we’ve followed to get where we are, we will find it easier to look ahead and decide where we want to go now, what goals we want to set for ourselves in 2022.

But be warned, I’m not talking about making new year’s resolutions, changes that last only a few days and then fade away, leaving us the same as we were, or even worse… I’m talking about being honest with ourselves and consciously deciding our priorities, the things we consider valuable and important in our life, because once we connect with those things and they´re clear in our mind, motivation and success will come naturally, or at least with a lot less effort than if we tried to change just using our willpower 😊

And speaking of priorities in life, I´d like to share with you a story that you’ve probably watched or read already, but I think there’s no harm in remembering it. Now is the perfect moment for choosing, from a place of love (AMOR), our big stones (or according to this version of the story, our golf balls, although I have to say it doesn’t sound nearly as poetic as the stones…)

Uncertainty

20/12/202115/01/2023 / binarybea / 2 Comments

Christmas is almost upon us, and I don´t know about you, but this year I´m finding it a bit difficult to get into the holiday spirit. In a time of the year when people usually make lots of plans, uncertainty feels heavier than usual... And I mention "than usual" because I would dare say that over the last two years, we have all adapted to a certain level of constantly not knowing what´s going to happen. And we know that at one point or another, we´re going to keep bumping into uncertain situations.

But given that our brain doesn´t like uncertainty at all, what happens is that if we leave it in auto-pilot, it spends loads of energy staying alert and imagining the worst case scenario, causing us unnecessary stress until we end up exhausted. And that´s not sustainable in the long term.

The solution? Learning to feel comfortable with the discomfort of not having absolute certainty, of not knowing how things are going to turn out, of not having everything under control.

And what can be super helpful here? Trusting.

Trusting that everything is going to turn out in the best possible way, in the way it's supposed to turn out, even if it's not the way that we want, or we´re not able to understand why. When we dare to let go and trust life, the story changes. The uncertainty may still be there, but the fear disappears.

Let me copy here a few words from Brené Brown on this, linking with the topic of vulnerability:

I spent a lot of years trying to outrun or outsmart vulnerability by making things certain and definite, black and white, good and bad. My inability to lean into the discomfort of vulnerability limited the fullness of those important experiences that are wrought with uncertainty: Love, belonging, trust, joy, and creativity to name a few.

Happy holidays. May uncertainty not prevent you from living them fully, perhaps this year in a new and different way.

Emotions

13/12/202116/05/2023 / binarybea / Leave a comment

Easy question for Pixar fans: can you name the five characters in this image?

Exactly, they’re the five emotions that appear in the movie Inside Out, which in Spain got translated as Del Revés: Fear, Disgust, Sadness, Joy and Anger.

What you may not know is that it´s not a coincidence that those five emotions were picked for the movie. They´re what experts call the universal emotions, that is, the ones that every human being possesses from birth, regardless of their origin or cultural environment. There are two additional emotions, surprise and contempt, that are considered universal by some experts but not by others; what´s clear is that they all agree on these five.

Cool, right? Even cooler is the fact that each of these emotions goes with a characteristic facial expression that´s also universal: we can all recognize them instinctively, and in fact we do it all the time, interpreting how others feel based on the expression on their face. Focus on the characters in the image for a moment, and you will clearly see the emotions they each represent.

We know all this because Paul Ekman, a psychologist specialized in emotions (and Pixar´s advisor for Inside Out) travelled in the 1960´s to one of the most remote and isolated civilizations on Earth, in Papua New Guinea, where modern advances like photography or television were unknown, to study how the locals managed to express their own emotions and recognize them in others.

Which goes to show that sometimes we may seem very different on the outside, but on the inside, deep down, we´re all made of the same stuff, even after us adding extra layers of personality, cultural references and learned behaviours that sometimes cause us not understand each other very well.

Personally, I think the movie is very funny and really interesting for all ages, worth watching if you haven´t done so yet. My favourite scene is a super cool example of empathy provided by Sadness, one of the main characters, but there are many, many other memorable moments.

If you´ve already watched it, do you have a favourite scene? What would you highlight from the movie?

And if you want to learn more about emotions, have a look at this atlas: http://atlasofemotions.org/

The journey and the destination

05/12/202105/12/2021 / binarybea / Leave a comment

We´ve heard it multiple times: it´s the journey that counts, not the final destination.

But sometimes we need to set a destination, even if it´s not clear to us if we´ll ever arrive, because otherwise we won´t even start the journey...

Does it have to be the perfect destination? No, it doesn´t, what it has to do is get us excited, give us the strength that we need to get started.

And from that point onwards, it´s all an adventure: what will we find along the way? How will we be able to adapt and learn from it? What will we discover that we didn´t know before we started?

Sometimes during the journey, we may feel a bit lost or demotivated, and in those moments it´s a great help to be able to count on someone to walk alongside us for a while, encouraging us to get over that fallen tree trunk that´s blocking the way and doesn´t let us see what´s beyond (sometimes quite literally, thanks Rasmi! 🙂 )

And even after getting over that obstacle, we may not be able to see the whole path, but we don´t really need to. As Martin Luther King said: