A pretty impressive claim, huh? This is the video my friend Mairead sent on to me the other day. It’s about 20 minutes long so settle down with a cup of tea and prepare to unlock the secret to a longer life.
Enjoy.
Reclaiming Monday!
Urgh. Mondays are the worst. Not content with ruining the start of your week they steal part of your Sunday night filling you with dread at what might already await you in your inbox the following morning. Or in my case what doesn’t await you. What a shitter. Here is a nice picture to sweeten the crappiness of Mo(a)nday:
But what if Mondays didn’t have to signal the beginning of the end? What if they could be the beginning of something great? My friend Mairead is bit of a wise one. We went for coffee yesterday – I drink a lot of coffee! – and she let me pick her brain about moving to London, which she herself did. She asked me a very simple question: What do you want to do? I prattled on about lots of different things and it turns out I want to do EVERYTHING! When I was wee I was the same. My dream jobs varied from hairdresser to astronaut, wildlife camera(wo)man to musician to high powered business owner. Not a lot has changed. However, thanks to a few disastrous hair experiments I carried out on my friends in Uni – sorry Manus… and Jenny… and Laura…and Sophie…ok, you get the picture! – I think it’s safe to say I can put the notion of becoming a hairdresser to bed. As for astronaut, well that’s another sorry tale! Failing astrophysics not once but TWICE at Uni put paid to that. (FYI it was a module for Arts students and I was more captivated by the tutor’s impressive beard than the science of the stars. Incidentally he showed us MANY pictures of the aurora borealis in lectures yet no pictures appeared in the exam. I felt cheated.)
I digress. Stay with me. Here’s another picture to keep you going:
When I was wee I was a real daddy’s girl. My dad was pretty cool. You’ll have to take my word for it. I wanted to be just like him when I grew up. I wanted to do a job that touched my soul and allowed me to be creative. I wanted a career I could be passionate about and proud of. (Don’t we all?!)
What a dude!
My dad was a musician and a composer who chased his dreams and did a job he loved, even though the work wasn’t always in plentiful supply. I postponed the life I wanted to go to Uni – which I loved – thinking that I could pick it back up when I came out the other side. Sadly my lovely dad passed away just before my finals and by the time I graduated the recession hit. Doom and gloom all round. I panicked and took the first job I was lucky to get and put my dreams to one side. A couple of years later I got itchy feet and switched to a career in the charity sector where I’ve stayed ever since. The problem with pushing things to the far corners of your mind is that they always resurface until you deal with them in one way or another. After listening to me prattle on in a million and one directions Mairead told me this: I talk about the things I want to do but I really need to start talking about what I am going to do. I need to stop talking myself down from acting and doing the things I really want: “Be the master of your Universe. Make things happen,” she said. She’s a clever one, that Mairead.
So what has all this got to do with Mondays? Well, what if we made Monday the day to start moving our lives towards the ones we always wanted? Mairead sent me a link to video of a TED talk last night that dealt with the top 5 regrets of the dying. I’ll share it will you here sometime, tomorrow maybe. Among the list people regretted not living the life they wanted, worrying about what other people thought of them and working too hard. Why don’t we use today to take stock while we have the chance? Let’s start a Monday revolution and turn this once loathed day of the week into one to look forward to! Let’s make Monday a day where we promise to do at least one thing that will inch us ever closer to the life we want over the life we have. Today’s post is my first step.
I’d love to hear any tips you have for making Mondays that little bit better! Have you made any changes recently to make your life the way you want it? Feel free to follow and comment on my blog. It’s always nice to hear what other people are up to and since I started my blog back in June I’ve learned about lots of things I would have otherwise missed out on so thank you to everyone who got in touch or liked a post.
For the fallen
For The Fallen
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
-Laurence Binyon, 1914
Escape to the country (in the heart of East Belfast)
Since my friends have started having beautiful, squishy babies we don’t get to catch up as often as we used to so today when I met up with my friend Catherine we were able to kill two birds with one stone. As the nights begin to draw in earlier we are determined to at least try and stay healthy this Winter. With this in mind we ventured to Tommy Patton Park in the heart of East Belfast for a run around and a natter.
The new face of bravery
I’ve been scratching my head a lot today wondering what I was going to write for day 2 of my self-imposed blog challenge. It’s bad news when you’re stumped and you’re only a few hops from the starting blocks. I scanned my Facebook and Twitter feeds for a bit of inspiration to get my creative juices flowing. I met up with a friend and put the world to rights over a cuppa but still nothing got me going. One last log in to Facebook and there it was. Another Upworthy video. I clicked on it anyway.
I encounter this website on an almost daily basis when I log in to my various social media accounts. There it is on my newsfeeds in between pictures of what my friends did at the weekend, what their children ate for lunch and the daily countdown until they can leave the office and head home to their loved ones. I never really paid all that much attention to it before but something told me to click on the link anyway today so I did.
It took me to a video of an American war veteran who had been having a pretty dreadful time of things. A hairdresser gave him a haircut and trimmed his beard and a man gave him a suit to wear. It sounds really superficial and daft but the premise was to make him see himself differently and change how others saw him. It was interesting enough to make me click on a few other videos to see what all the fuss was about this website.
I clicked and I cried and I clicked some more. I laughed. I came across one of the site’s contributors, a man named Joseph Lamour. You can find his page on the site here.
As I watched video after video I began to ask questions, of myself and the world of which I am part. The content of the videos was brave. It dealt with sensitive subject matters like casual racism, homophobia and everyday sexism but it did so through humour. No shouting and screaming or waving placards in your face. It struck me that the site and its contributors have really hit home on something very important. Our generation responds to humour. We use it to break the ice; we use it to disarm. It can help us have honest, frank conversations about real issues affecting our society and how we can make a positive change to the way we live.
I realised that bravery isn’t a warrior on a white horse. It’s having the courage to speak up with only your words in your armoury. To step away from the pack and do your own thing, even if it leads you to unchartered territory. To challenge societal norms and demand a better way of living, for everyone. After all, great discoveries were never made by following the herd.
Tales of adventure 
