A little break

25/03/202425/03/2024 / binarybea / Leave a comment

Once again, Sunday comes along and I sit down to write the article of the week, mentally going over the past seven days. To be honest, this last work week was extremely busy with travelling, going to the office and doing various tasks, plus dealing with a passing virus at home, so I was very much looking forward to Saturday and Sunday, to have the chance to "laze around".

Woman dressed in shorts and spaghetti strap top resting happily on a green and blue hammock, against a sunny garden backdrop

Although, as it happens, there were things to do also during the weekend, starting with a 6 AM trip to the airport on Saturday morning to give my eldest daughter a lift...

Under normal circumstances, I would have taken advantage of the early morning start and continued doing "productive" things all day, but given that I know this often leads me to ending up feeling as tired on weekends as I am on weekdays (if not more), this time I intentionally decided to take breaks throughout the day to rest and relax. And I remembered once again that question my friend Marilyn asked me a couple of years ago, not long after we first met:

Hey, when do you usually stop?

I remember being really surprised by this, as I was completely unaware of this behaviour of mine. But her question was an eye opener; from that moment on, I started watching myself, and I discovered that she was spot on: very often I would go the whole day without stopping. How could I not end up tired? I my head there was always a long list of to-do´s, even if I reduced it to what I considered the bare minimum.

Once we become aware of a certain behaviour, we have the power to change it if we want, for example if it´s going to have damaging consequences in the long term, like working too much, or not resting enough.

And how do we go about changing it? Well, by digging a bit to find out what beliefs are hiding behind that behaviour, based on clues from the language we use, from the way we talk to ourselves.

In the specific example from above, the clue is in the words "laze around". Unconsciously, my mind thinks: if I´m lazying around, it´s because I´m a lazy person. But I don´t want to be a lazy person! I want to be productive, and useful to society. So I mentally kick myself, I tell myself: "do something useful", and then that´s what I do, "productive" and "useful" things, one after the other, one day after another, until I reach my limit.

Does that help me? Not at all, because even though I´m achieving things in the short term, it´s not a sustainable approach in the long term. At some point one has to rest, switch off and enjoy life a little, otherwise there can be very serious consequences. So here´s where I have to change my mindset and realise that rest is not laziness, it´s self-care, and that self-care is absolutely indispensable in order to have a good life.

Furthermore, it´s only when we take care of ourselves (through diet, exercise, rest, connecting to ourselves and others...) that we have enough energy to keep going and help those around us, so my initial goal of being a productive person, useful to society, ends up being achieved in a much better way with this indirect approach, and with the added bonus of enjoyment along the way.

What about you? How good are you at taking a well deserved break every now and then? I hope you find time during this Easter/Spring break to switch off and take care of yourself, in whichever way you see fit.

Irish sayings

17/03/202428/03/2024 / binarybea / Leave a comment

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Today I'm bringing you a selection of sayings and blessings from the vast repertoire of Irish tradition, some of which are better known than others.

Here's the most widely known blessing, to begin with:

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields,
And, until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Given Ireland's religious history, it's not surprising to see God appearing as a recurring theme, in combination with beautiful metaphors and a good dose of humour:

May the Lord keep you in His hand and never close His fist too tight.

If God sends you down a stony path, may He give you strong shoes.

God is good, but never dance in a small boat.

Continuing with the metaphors...

When the roaring flames of your love have burned down to embers, may you find that you’ve married your best friend.

As you slide down the banister of life, may the splinters never point the wrong way.

May the hinges of our friendship never grow rusty.

Friendship is another main theme, highly valued by the Irish:

May your home always be too small to hold all your friends.

May you always find three welcomes in life.
In a garden during summer,
At a hearth during winter,
And in the hearts of friends throughout all your years.

Then there are these sayings I love for their timeless wisdom dressed in simplicity:

May you get all your wishes but one, so you always have something to strive for.

Here's to a fellow who smiles when life runs along like a song.
And here's to the lad who can smile when everything goes dead wrong.

You’ve got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was.

When a twig grows hard it is difficult to twist it. Every beginning is weak.

And my favourite phrase:

I complained that I had no shoes,
until I met a man who had no feet.
Irish saying

Well, I hope that you liked these sayings, and that you enjoyed the most Irish day of the year. Here are two bonus blessings to wrap it all up:

May you always have work for your hands to do.
May your pockets hold always a coin or two.
May the sun shine bright on your windowpane.
May the rainbow be certain to follow each rain.
May the hand of a friend always be near you.
And may God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.

May you have the hindsight to know where you've been,
the foresight to know where you're going
and the insight to know when you're going too far.

Triple celebration

10/03/202410/03/2024 / binarybea / 2 Comments

Today we´ve had a double celebration at home: my birthday and Mother´s day, which here in Ireland is held on the fourth Sunday in Lent. It´s been a lovely day (thanks a million guys!)

Close up of a flowers bouquet with white, pink, lilac and purple tones

How old am I now, you say? Weeeell, they say age is just a number, right? Following this blog´s tradition , I´ll write it in binary: 101110.

Speaking of numbers, BinaryWords is also celebrating today: this is the 150th post! Feel free to take this opportunity and visit the blog´s archive page, to check out the new "highlighted articles" section.

Today I was reflecting on this thing we have with numbers, and how sometimes we pay too much attention to them, age being just an example, and I remembered a passage from The Little Prince that speaks about that:

If I´ve told you these details about Asteroid B-612 and if I´ve given you its number, it is on account of the grown-ups. Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask questions about what really matters. They never ask: "What does his voice sound like?" "What games does he like best?" "Does he collect butterflies?" They ask: "How old is he?" "How many brothers does he have?" "How much does he weigh?" "How much money does his father make?" Only then do they think they know him. If you tell grown-ups, "I saw a beautiful red brick house, with geraniums at the windows and doves on the roof..." they won´t be able to imagine such a house. You have to tell them, "I saw a house worth a hundred thousand francs." Then they exclaim, "What a pretty house!"
Antoine the Saint-Exupéry

What about you? How much do you care about numbers? I´ve realized I care about them less and less...

To be or not to be

04/03/202404/03/2024 / binarybea / Leave a comment

No, this article is not about William Shakespeare, although I may end up writing about him someday...

Todays article is about that question we all ask ourselves (or should) at some point in our lives, and which, depending on the circumstances, can be either really easy or really difficult to answer:

Who are you?

Three white dice with black uppercase letters spelling the word WHO, on a white table

I´ve mentioned before in this blog that each person is like an iceberg; this metaphor is often used to explain the neurological levels model created by Robert Dilts, which I briefly describe in this article.

And it´s at one of the deepest levels, deep down the iceberg, where we find the concept of identity.

Who we are. Or who we believe to be, just like the title of that TV programme (an excellent one, by the way) where different celebrities traced the steps of their ancestors: Who do you think you are?

The truth is that this topic of identity is quite complex. Or I should say identities, plural, because we don´t have only one, we have many, and some of them change over time. For example: I am Beatriz, I´m Galindo and I´m García. I´m BinaryBea, female, forty-something, European, Spanish, Extremaduran (from the Extremadura region), from Cáceres (no translation for "cacereña"!), expat, Spaniard in Ireland, Dublin based, computer engineer, coach, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, niece, friend, workmate, classmate, neighbour, student, homeowner, divorcee, reader, blogger... And so on and so forth.

As you can see, some identities may contain others, overlap with them, or even contradict them, which can originate situations of internal conflict, existential dilemmas and self sabotage. It can also happen that, when one of those identities changes or disappears, we find ourselves lost and disorientated, like for example, going through a divorce or being laid off: if I can no longer define myself as X person´s spouse / Y company´s employee / you name it, then, who am I? It´s as if our chair had become wobbly, having lost one of its supporting legs, and we need to invest time and effort in stabilizing it again.

All of this is on my mind today because last Friday I heard a beautiful poem from Erin Hanson, entitled: Not:

You are not your age, nor the size of clothes you wear,
You are not a weight, or the color of your hair.
You are not your name, or the dimples in your cheeks.
You are all the books you read, and all the words you speak.
You are your croaky morning voice, and the smiles you try to hide.
You’re the sweetness in your laughter, and every tear you’ve cried.
You’re the songs you sing so loudly when you know you’re all alone.
You’re the places that you’ve been to, and the one that you call home.
You’re the things that you believe in, and the people whom you love.
You’re the photos in your bedroom, and the future you dream of.
You’re made of so much beauty, but it seems that you forgot
When you decided that you were defined by all the things you’re not.

And the following day, on Saturday, the Universe played this song for me on the radio, to follow along with the theme: The Logical Songby Supertramp - here it is with subtitles in English and Spanish.