Earlier this week, I heard something on the radio that I found interesting: it was about how young people nowadays believe you can learn more about how a person really is from the books they own than from their social media profile. What do you think of that?
I´m not well-versed in social media, so on that side, I prefer not to give an opinion, beyond repeating the usual argument that says that social media only shows us a minuscule portion of a person´s life, often carefully selected, and never telling the whole story, not even remotely.
On the topic of books, I can comment a bit more. As I´ve probably told you already, I grew up in a family with many, many books at home, and throughout my life, I´ve spent countless hours reading; it´s a habit I´ve been progressively losing, unfortunately, and that I want to resume... But anyway, we could say I also inherited that soft spot for reading, and I´ve done my best to pass it on to my daughters as well.
(Sign seen in a well-known department store in Madrid, El Corte Inglés: "Each book is a window to the world. Come and have a look.")
This summer, I spent time decluttering some of my father´s books, and it is true that they reflected many of his interests: politics, history, art... But I think the key is not that they were his books, precisely, but simply that they were his things, the things he chose to have in his home, because he liked them and used them regularly. For my father, reading was a really important part of daily life; for others, it will be other things.
So maybe I would slightly rephrase that comment to say that you can learn more about how a person really is by visiting their home, or their room: the place they consider theirs and that they make their own, inadvertently making it reflect their character and preferences. In our house, there are many books, yes, but there are also games and many other things that reflect the way we are and what is important to us.
They say a book is a window to the world; perhaps the window to a person is not their social media, but the place where they live and are allowed to be themselves.
OK, first week of September done! How did it go for you?
If you remember, last week I set up a 30 day challenge for myself, and I committed to giving you updates on my progress (which is an amazing trick to increase the chances of success).
Well, I realised it was enough of a challenge just to get back to a full week of our daily routine, including full-time schedules at school (primary and secondary) and in the office, plus welcoming guests over the weekend (thanks to my cousins for coming!) Even with all that, I got off to a really good start (as it´s often the case), dedicating time to different kinds of exercise every day: walking, yoga, rowing machine... It was all going swimmingly, and then on Thursday I got swamped and didn´t have the chance to make time for exercising.
If you´ve ever done a challenge of this type, or you´ve established (or tried to establish) a new habit, you´ve probably bumped into this problem as well: what happens if, for whatever reason, you skip a day? Is it time to throw it all away?
We may have a natural tendency to think this way, in absolute terms (or we could also say, honouring this blog´s title, in binary terms): all or nothing, black or white. If you haven´t managed to finish the whole thing, then it´s as if you hadn´t done anything at all... Our brain makes these simplifications in order to save energy,, and also because it doesn´t like uncertainty at all, so it looks for a categorical response (and if it can´t find one, it makes it up). According to this supersimplified reasoning, skipping one day equates to failing; there´s nothing more you can do, the 30-day streak is broken, so you´d better throw in the towel.
But there are other ways to think about the same situation that are equally valid and way more productive, encouraging us to continue to make progress instead of pulling us down into shame:
For example, I could choose to remember the fact that I´ve been able to exercise intentionally on six days out of seven, which is much much higher than what I would have been able to achieve if I hadn´t been participating in the challenge.
I could also give myself at least some credit for staying more active in general, going up and down the stairs in the office, going outdoors for walks more often, etc.
I could even congratulate myself for at least having started a several-day streak, and for resuming it after the day I skipped.
If you think about it, even Duolingo forgives you when you skip a day of practice! Basically, because they know that us humans are not perfect, and that these things happen; staying constant is quite difficult.
(Sign seen in Dundrum shopping centre last year, with a quote from Seth Godin: "The only thing worse than starting something and faliing... is not starting something.")
We could also go one step further, and take the opportunity to look inside and investigate what may be behind that small "failure": what´s the real reason why I wasn´t able to meet my commitment? Am I aligning my daily priorities with what I consider important in my life? In which way may I be sabotaging myself?
And here is where being familiar with our personality patterns proves to be tremendously helpful, allowing us to hit the nail on the head and find the reasons why we do a lot of the things we do, as well as explain those contradictions that drive us (or our loved ones) crazy sometimes. This is what is going to determine the difference between continuing to stumble on the same stone again and again or finally getting to understand the path and have an easier journey.
So, are you up for it? Have a look at the services page, contact me , and let´s talk about it.
What are your thoughts on 30-day challenges? Have you ever done one?
Now that September is about to start, it´s a very good time to consider doing one (and I just realised I wrote practically the same thing two years ago, when I was doing the challenge with 30 quotes in 30 days).
(Photo of the September page in my kitchen calendar at home.)
This year, at work, we´ve been encouraged to set a challenge for ourselves in September, somehow including the number 30, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of our company opening its first office in Ireland. I chose something (hopefully) as simple as exercising for a little while every day of the month; let´s see how it goes, I´ll let you know.
By the way, this "I´ll let you know" bit is not trivial at all: now that I´ve made a commitment in front of you all to exercise 30 days in a row, and that I´m going to have to tell you every week whether I´ve done it or not, I´ve just considerably raised the probabilities of me continuing with the challenge and completing it. Being accountable to another person is a fabulous trick to stay motivated.
But why? Because our brain finds it really hard to see the possible benefits of a healthy habit, as they´re only noticeable in the long term, and our brain is programmed to help us to survive in the short term. That´s why we would much rather lie on the sofa, conserving energy, than get up and go to the gym...
However, if staying on the sofa is going to bring along the embarrassment of having to admit in front of others that we haven´t kept our promise of going to the gym, then everything changes: the consequence, a punishment in this case, is a lot more immediate and tangible.
So I encourage you to use this trick to your advantage whenever you want to establish a new habit: let everybody know, and you´ll see how you end up doing it, if you don´t want to die of embarrassment! Or if not everybody, then at least let one person know; this is what we call an accountability partner, an English term that doesn´t seem to have a good translation into Spanish (one more for the list of untranslatables); the closest to this idea would be un compañero al que rendirle cuentas. And if your partner is also working on the same challenge, even better; you can hold each other accountable, and both of you will benefit.
So, what´s going to be your challenge for the month of September? And who´s going to be your accountability partner?
It´s been a while since I last dedicated a blog article to a phrase or expression from those that I call untranslatables, not exactly because they´re impossible to translate, but because they lose a lot of their charm (let´s say, their elegance) when translated from English into Spanish or vice versa.
Today´s expression is to pack light, and the problem here is not the word light, which directly translates as "ligero/a", but with the verb to pack, which in this context has a translation that´s long and clumsy, at least in the version of Spanish we use in Spain: "hacer las maletas" (in other versions of Spanish there´s the word empacar, which is shorter, yes, but sounds super weird to me).
In my opinion, the translation that best conveys the idea behind to pack light is "ligero de equipaje", and in both languages, the meaning goes beyond the mere act of packing: it refers to a way of travelling, and ultimately, to a philosophy of life.
(Picture I once hurriedly took of a person I saw in the street, or rather, of their bag. I loved that little drawing of the line going all over the place, anywhere but straight ahead, as a metaphor of the journey of life; it reminded me of the image I used a few years ago in this article.)
I admit I have never been a person who packs light, and I profoundly admire those who are able to. Even though I´d like to think I´ve improved slightly over the years, deep down I´m still the queen of "just-in-case"... So when it´s time to pack, I´m inevitably assaulted by doubts, and I lean too much towards the side of caution, which almost always results in me packing a lot more stuff than I actually need, with the corresponding extra load (both physical and emotional) associated to it.
All of this is coming to my head now because this weekend I´m travelling with the girls, one last little escapade before going back to school, and unsurprisingly, I filled up my suitcase almost to the top, while they had tons of free space in theirs! They could even have shared suitcases. I have A LOT to learn from them.
But there´s also another way to think about the concept of "packing light", and it´s in relation to our emotional baggage: all that weight we carry around, consciously or unconsciously (judgement, guilt, resentment...) that we would really benefit from getting rid of. That weight is not going to magically disappear, no matter how much we try to cover it or look the other way. But it can be lightened quite a lot through deep work involving awareness and personal growth.
What are your thoughts on this? Are you already travelling light? Or are you carrying a lot more than what you need?
It´s mid-August, and in Ireland (as I´m guessing is happening in Spain as well), there are "back to school" signs and ads everywhere.
I remember that, when I was younger, I really hated seeing them; I found it hard to accept that the summer was coming to an end, and that it was time to start thinking about getting back into the school year routine.
(Photo of a page in my square-gridded notebook.)
I guess nowadays I tend to be more philosophical with these kind of things; I find I can adapt more easily to the various cycles that life goes through (and that we go through as well). As they used to say in that old song, to everything there is a season... So, let´s focus on doing whatever it´s time to do at any given moment, and above all, let´s focus on enjoying it, and learning from it, instead of just resigning ourselves to suffer it.
Now that the beginning of a new school year is approaching, you may be experiencing the same thing that often happens to me: you already have a super long list of tasks, projects and assorted commitments to try and fit in the calendar, and you feel exhausted just by looking at it...
It´s the perfect moment to take a step back and go back to basics: make sure we´re taking proper care of ourselves, so that we can start the new school year with our batteries fullly charged, and armed with good habits that will help us to maintain our energy and enthusiasm.
How about you? Are you still in holiday mode, or in the process of coming back? What is it the time to do right now?
P.S.- "That old song", in case you´d like to look it up, is from the sixties; I remember it from the TV series The wonder years. The title is Turn, turn, turn, from a band called The Byrds:
To everything (turn, turn, turn), there is a season (turn, turn, turn)...
I´m writing these lines from Barajas airport, getting ready to fly back to Dublin after a two-week holiday in Spain.
I´m coming back tired, but also happy: it´s been time really well spent. The holidays have been slightly chaotic, having to change plans a couple of times, but in the end, it has all turned out really well.
And the best part, no doubt, has been meeting Mar, the first baby of my family´s next generation, in person, in a place where the memory of her great-grandparents Ángel and Mari Carmen is always very present.
One more generation... I often have a feeling I find very interesting when I meet with friends, or even my siblings: that it seems time hasn´t passed and we are the same as always... Until we look at our children, at the next generation, and then we realise!
As usual, here are a few quotes to reflect on this topic:
Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
George Orwell
We need to remember across generations that there is as much to learn as there is to teach.
Gloria Steinem
What one generation sees as a luxury, the next sees as a necessity.
Anthony Crosland
And one that I found very funny:
From the earliest time, the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was, they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture. - W. Somerset Maugham
As it´s already tradition in this blog, I´m writing my vacation post from my happy place, where I´ve been very lucky to return once again this summer (you can read articles from previous years here and here).
(Photo taken today at sunset, from the "rock-house" where I used to play so often as a child.)
Once again, the old and the new get intertwined as I reacquaint myself with certain places and people: memories living alongside the here and now, creating a feeling of continuity. In a way, it´s always the same, but at the same time, it´s never the same.
Heraclitus said that you cannot swim twice in the same river, because neither you nor the river will be the same, with everything being in constant change. And this other quote goes along the same lines:
You won't find the same person twice, not even in the same person.
Mahmud Darwish
I think this is a good reminder of the fact that we all change over time (whether we like it or not), and that we must give ourselves (and others) permission to grow, learn and evolve as a person, each of us in our own style and at our own pace, even if that implies not fulfilling certain expectations (I will tell you about "growth guilt" later on, in a future article).
But I also have to say that, similarly to what happens with certain places, even though people progressively change, there´s a certain continuity to them that stays over the years. A good analogy that can help with understanding this is a tree: a cherry tree can grow very tall or stay small; it can become quite leafy or barely have leaves, depending on different factors like the weather, sunlight, water, soil nutrients... But what it´s never ever going to do is become a pine tree, an oak tree or a palm tree.
Similarly, each person has a certain way to be, to show up,, which of course can mature and stabilise over time, but, save for cases like serious trauma and the like, broadly speaking, it´s going to continue the same. Our brain finds it really difficult to change, and it does so very slowly, bit by bit; that´s why it´s so important to have tools to help us make the most of that continuity (instead of fighting against it) and progressively become the best version of ourselves.
What about you? What particular places and people do you find simultaneously familiar and different?
It´s almost mid-July; how´s your summer going? Is it too hot where you are? (If you´re in the Northern hemisphere, of course... I don´t know whether I have many readers from the Southern hemisphere, but I like to mention it, just in case.)
This weekend I´ve been taking it very easy, no rush at all, enjoying the feeling of being almost on holidays, though it´s still going to be a while until my real holiday begins. And, as one of the things my mind associates with summer holidays is reading, I took the opportunity to read a book, which is something I love to do and I´m striving to take up again, on the one hand, because I find it both entertaining and relaxing, it truly recharges my batteries, and on the other hand, because it´s a very beneficial exercise for the brain, enhancing our imagination, ability to focus, memory and many other cognitive functions, as well as helping to improve our language abilities.
Usually, I would also point out that an added benefit of reading is that it gives us a break from the ever-present screens, but paradoxically, as it turns out, this particular book I ended up reading on my phone, because my Kindle is ancient and can no longer connect to the wifi to download new books. Sigh.
Thinking about this whole topic of screens and how much we depend on them nowadays, a memory came up from when I used to watch TV as a child. If you were also a child in Spain during the eighties, maybe you will remember this as well.
It was a segment in TVE´s legendary programme the crystal ball (la bola de cristal), and it went like this:
"You have fifteen seconds to imagine..."
(For fifteen seconds, a blurry image was shown on screen, along with a sound similar to a clock ticking)
"If nothing came to your mind... Maybe you should watch less TV"
Astounding. Even back then, the adults were concerned that us children spent many hours watching the "dumb box", as some people called it. And their concern was probably justified.
(Picture of "Bibothy", proof that in my house, at least for the moment, we don´t need to worry about a lack of imagination...)
But nowadays, far from improving, the situation has worsened. There´s no longer just one "dumb box" per household; you can find all kinds of devices, often several per person, constantly fighting for our attention. And not only at home: in the street, in the car, in shops, bars, restaurants... It´s a constant bombardment of information, a never-ending source of stimulation, and our brain is not prepared for such volumes.
The mind needs a break every now and then. A break from screens, and also from other sources of stimulation, like, for example, a pair of earbuds playing music or podcasts hour after hour. Our brain needs periods of silence in order to be able to function properly. To be able to process the information it receives, and also to be able to move from a more passive and consumerist mode to a more active mode, the one that allows us to create, imagine, solve problems, etc.
But, of course, those silent periods don´t just happen magically; we have to create them ourselves, and that´s not easy, not even remotely. Because the screens provide bursts of short-term satisfaction that our brain loves, making it crave more. And almost any other thing we set out to do, in comparison, will seem plain and boring, at least at the beginning; that´s why it´s so easy to get carried away by the screens, and so much willpower is needed to break the habit and set out to do other things.
This is the same that happens, by the way, with diet and exercise: our brain is optimised to help us to survive in the short term, and following this logic, it prefers foods that are rich in fats and sugars, and prioritises saving energy by reducing effort to the bare minimum. This way, our own brain sabotages us; it plays against us because it understands very little about long-term decisions.. But we do understand it; we understand that, in order to have good health in the long term, we need to make a different kind of decisions and acquire a different kind of habits, even if it´s tough at first.
So, today, I encourage you, if you´re not doing it already, to start creating an oasis of silence at some point in your day, or, even better, at several moments. Your future self will be grateful for it.
Mar, the first great-niece in our family, was born earlier this week, and today we´ve been lucky enough to see her via videoconference. She´s a gorgeous baby, with a lovely name ("mar" means "sea" in Spanish). Welcome!
(Photo of the sea, of course. Or rather, the ocean, at Monterey beach, in California)
Seeing Mar today and talking to her parents and grandparents reminded me of my own first few days as a novice mother, when Irene was a newborn. That was... almost twenty years ago! OMG. Some of you may remember reading my adventures and misadventures as a new mum in a predecessor to this blog.
Then, two years later, after a little sibling who was never born, Alicia arrived, and five years later, Eva, who´s been the youngest on our side of the family until now. The experience was different with each of them; even the deliveries were different (although the three of them were born in the same hospital, and on the same day of the week!)
But all three of them, each one in her own style, brought us lots of love and joy, and also lots of learning. Each baby is unique, irreplaceable, and the family changes and adapts to each new member as they arrive.
To be honest, I think this is a beautiful season in life, becoming a mum or a dad (especially, I have to say, a mum), but it also tends to be a somewhat complicated time, as emotions bubble to the surface. There´s a lot of joy, of course, but also fears, confusion, tiredness... A true emotional rollercoaster, and it gets you no matter what, even if you try to prepare.
So now it´s the time to exercise patience, lots and lots of it. With the new baby, of course, who has no concept of timetables or social norms, having just arrived in this world. But also the new parents with themselves, with each other, and probably with other people as well (namely, family and friends).
I was looking for a nice quote I could use to congratulate the new parents, and I remembered this phrase/advice; I´m not sure where it comes from (apologies if it has an author and I haven´t been able to find it), but I think it´s very appropriate: Ana and Javi, congratulations!! Enjoy every moment, every phase, for the days are long, but the years are short.
I´m speaking from experience: one day you´re changing nappies, and the following day, the girl is having a sleepover with her friends, or looking for a job to get some extra money, or studying for her driving license...
What about you? Do you have children, nephews/nieces or grandchildren? What advice would you give to new parents?
Today, my daughter Eva and I participated in an activity organised by the Spanish Language and Culture classes (ALCE) in Ireland: we walked a section of the Camino de Santiago (St. James´s Way).
(Photo of the St. James´s Way milestone located in Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland.)
Camino de Santiago? In Ireland? Yes! It turns out that one of the many "Camino ways" scattered around Europe (and the world, for today we learned even Brazil has one) is here in Ireland; it´s called the Celtic Camino, and today we walked the portion that stretches between Bray and Dún Laoghaire, along the coast. So beautiful!
We were a good few Spanish families, taking our chances with the rain, which, thankfully, never showed up, and we had a really nice time: walking, chatting and sharing. Reliving the spirit of the Camino, including several stops to stamp our passports and some well-deserved rest with light refreshments at the end. I´ll most probably be sore tomorrow morning (I´m no longer used to these long walks), but today, my day has been filled with great memories, conversations, encounters, re-encounters, pride at our achievement, and spectacular views despite an overcast sky:
(Photo of the beach and the DART tracks from a viewpoint near Killiney.)
Thanks a million to Ester and Beatriz, teachers in ALCE Dublin and organisers of this event, to the Camino Society volunteers who accompanied us today, and to all the families who made the effort to come along. It´s been amazing.
By the way, if you´ve never done the Camino de Santiago (I mean, properly making it to Santiago de Compostela), I strongly recommend it; it´s a wonderful experience. The minimum distance is 100 km, which is not so difficult to achieve, and I can´t describe the immense satisfaction you get when you arrive at the impressive Santiago Cathedral on foot. I did it twice, many years ago; the first time along the French way, and the second time, along the Portuguese way, and I´m looking forward to doing it again (my dream is to do it with my girls, Irene, Alicia and Eva, if I ever get to convince them).
Lastly, I´d like to share here a very well-known Spanish poem by Antonio Machado, referring to the great metaphor of life that is the "camino": the path, the road.
Traveler, your footprints are the only road, nothing else. Traveler, there is no road; you make your own path as you walk. As you walk, you make your own road, and when you look back you see the path you will never travel again. Traveler, there is no road; only a ship’s wake on the sea.
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