The Traveller - The Enlightened one?

The past few years have been a journey of self discovery. Sometimes I think I am quite like my beautiful yet silly dog, I watch him in the evenings as he chases his tail relentlessly, going around in circles (till I help him by placing it in his mouth to end his self imposed torture). I have many questions about the meaning of life and I always seem to come full circle to the same starting point every single time. Cambodia was the partial awakening I needed, I always thought that if I could have a job that I enjoyed then I would feel like I achieved something in life and would consequently be a happier person. I used to work as a waitress at the Grand Hyatt Melbourne, then I used to think to myself: “If I get an Office based job, I will be a happier person”, but then I got the office based job and here I am, more money, but still not content with my job. Does this mean that my search for the ultimate job will never end? Or is the truth that we just need to work to live and as a result, we should not look for fulfilment from our jobs? Countless sleepless nights later, I came to the realisation that I was suffering from 1st world syndrome. The sickness for people who can have just about anything they want without performing any act of manual labour (and cannot understand why their bodies feel frustrated by their self imposed immobility).


Part of the Journey of discovery for me has been the result of my need to travel. Having recently travelled to Cambodia, I was blown away by the Temples, the ruins and the amazing scenery around me. Flashes of my childhood dreams of becoming an Archaeologist came flooding back to me. As I was walking though the ruins of Bayon, I was feeling very emotional, its beauty overpowered me and I wanted to cry tears of happiness for all those years that I locked that tiny hopeful dreamer of an Archaeologist away and threw the key never believing that I would find myself at some point in the future. Whilst in Cambodia, I came across so many people who worked so hard for their daily bread and at no point do they talk about Job Satisfaction, they talk about sending money to family in the Village or sending money for the sick Father. It was the cold splash of water I needed to bring my self absorbed head out of my ever-loving behind.

"The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page" - (St. Augustine)

Through my travels this time, I met amazing people who seemed to just waltz through life and enjoy what they were doing. There are people out there who are prepared to work really hard for a few months a year, and travel to exotic destinations for the rest of the year. These people take their time to experience a culture, a place and its people. They know what they want (they want to travel) and they do it. Simple really.  This simplistic concept seems a bit scary and crazy for most people though. I remember a long time ago - when I was twenty-something years old and I was trying to impress a French boy (this was before I met my significant other), it was midnight and it was the middle of winter in Perth, we were all catching up with a friend and having a pool party in this house that she was house sitting for. This story is not about the French boy or the party- it is about the intense feeling of freedom and fearlessness that gripped my soul that night, and as a result I just jumped into the cold water of the pool without thinking twice- head in first. This is the feeling I get when I travel, there is a jungle beast within my heart that fills the soles of my feet with pockets of soft air. There’s Lift off and at some random moment I see the world as I have always wanted to see it, with freedom – freedom from all the chains that society wraps around our consciousness. Freedom from the predictability of day to day existence, freedom from the daily mundane routine that is seen as normal to most of us, but most of all, freedom to express ourselves as we truly are. My ambition for the immediate future is to travel with a free spirit, with a pinch of craziness, mixed with courage and a zest for life, my ambition is to release and realise the beast within.

"It may be that the satisfaction I need depends on my going away, so that when I've gone and come back, I'll find it at home" - (Rumi)

Make a molehill out of the mountain of issues! Mountain #1- The boss

My manager scrutinises my workplan with her invisible magnifying lens. She 'ums' and 'ahs' as she reads on, sweat pours down my forehead in anticipation of the invisible guillotine board. Sure enough, being the perfectionist and the micromanager that she is, she tells me that my workplan (my personal task planner) could and should be improved. She is the 'mountain' currently and I have been seeing every encounter with her as a giant uphill incline with no forward movement. A silent tear trickles down my cheek.

Ever experienced such a moment? Maybe not as dramatic but excruciatingly painful none-the-less? Well, this is not a forum for 'bashing the boss', this is about learning to look for signs of good leadership. Learning to identify whether the "pain" leads to a "gain" or whether you are just hurting yourself for no good reason.

Sun Tzu's THE ART OF WAR (translations by Gary Gagliardi), states that the characteristics of a strategic leadership require one to be smart, trustworthy, caring, brave, and Strict. Does your leader have these qualities?

Intelligent - In a larger system, intelligence is required to know your battle ground. look for intelligent qualities in your manager, a balance of EQ and IQ. Also learn to differentiate the "know it alls" from those who really know. If you feel you cannot learn from your leader, then you have crossed out one big important check box.

Honesty and Self reflection - Honesty is required to create successful strategic methods of working. Whoever said "Honesty is the best policy" knew what they were talking about. An Honest manager is one who will give you honest feedback to help you improve as an individual. An honest individual is also one who can look into the mirror and admit that they are sometimes wrong. If your Manager does not like feedback themselves, then there sits a person who has not self reflected.

Caring -  Caring and compassion are other key philosophical factors of good Management, if your manager is insensitive to your needs, if you do not see compassion in the eyes, he/she will not be able to support you.

Bravery - As Sun Tsu once said, "Bravery is necessary to weather the adversities of climate". We must be able to fail and keep going. Have you ever been given a task that requires work from another Team, and the task fails because the Leaders within the organisation failed to communicate? Is your Leader innovative and creative? Does he/she attempt to find other ways to get the task done till it is completed? The sign of a brave leader is one who will look for alternate means to achieve an outcome. The "Never give up" attitude is a must!

Strict - Last but not the least, it is very important for us to do the unpleasant parts of the jobs as well as the fun parts, if your leader is unreliable (because of shifting objectives on his/her whim) then supporting him/her will be very difficult.

A very beautiful and wise person once told me "Part of the beauty of growing up is in knowing which battles can be fought and which ones to walk away from".

Touching lives: A means to Happiness?

As we were walking along the beach this morning, I noticed a young girl sitting on the rocks and examining some sea shells. Our conversation went something like this:
Me: You look happy, have you found what you are looking for?
She: I like looking at shells, they make me happy. I particularly like the ones that shine on the inside. 
Me: I used to collect a fair few in my younger days but then someone told me one day that every-time we remove shells from the beach a living organism loses its home. 
She: Aaah, that sounds depressing....but maybe some little crab went into the shell and then decided that he/she had 'outgrown' that shell and as a result has discarded that shell and decided to move on. Everytime they move on though, they leave their little 'shell armors' behind, as a result of this, the shells fuse into each other and become thicker and stronger and tougher, with more character!
Me:  Where did you learn this? 
She: I just made it up as we were chatting (smiles sheepishly).
Me: (As I point excitedly towards two shells fused together)I love it! I am going to write about it this morning!

So riddle me this, just like the shells that help each other grow stronger and stronger and more beautiful, how many of you have been touched by different people you have come across? How many of you have been enriched by their touch? How many of you have tried to enrich their lives as well? Have you honored your relationships with those special people? As the wise Stephanie Dowrick once said: "It's impossible to think deeply about yourself without also thinking deeply about your impact on other people - and understanding them better". 


How can we honor our relationships with people? 
We could attempt to spend more quality time with the people around us. What activities can you think of that would bring the touch of quality into your time? Activities like Hiking, roller blading, Indoor (or outdoor) rock climbing, running, walking down the beach, or a relaxed picnic somewhere nice are some of the quality activities I do with my family and friends.


We could learn to love as children do. To love without self-consciousness, without restraint.


Gaining self-knowledge in relation to other people, remember this, other people are never out of the picture, so lets observe our effect on other people and then reflect on the situation and our actions.

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.  

  - Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics (384 BC - 322 BC).

The Pursuit for meaning: The search for happiness begins

The Pursuit for meaning: The search for happiness begins: "Today a friend decided to let all of us know that he has finally taken a bite of the forbidden apple and quit his high paying job to travel ..."

The Pursuit for meaning: The search for happiness begins

The Pursuit for meaning: The search for happiness begins: "Today a friend decided to let all of us know that he has finally taken a bite of the forbidden apple and quit his high paying job to travel ..."

The search for happiness begins

Today a friend decided to let all of us know that he has finally taken a bite of the forbidden apple and quit his high paying job to travel for the next 6 months. Now THAT to me is one form of happiness. To let go of everything you know and dive into the deep unknown...there is no greater feeling than the one that comes from releasing yourself from attachment to a job that you could possibly...well...hate!


I have to admit that I have decided to look for my own form of happiness.I have been contracting for the last few years and in each job I felt like something was lacking in my role/life. Now I have decided that I want to work towards doing my own thing for the next few years. This page is my personal pursuit for meaning in a life that sometimes, does not make much sense to me. The ultimate goal is "Happiness"...how the journey of a thousand miles will begin is anyones' guess.


Look around you...have you ever had a conversation with a close friend, family member, or colleague and talked about happiness? So how can we go about discovering what it means for us? This is not about getting that expensive outfit, or that fancy car, or your dream man/woman or the dream house, this is about your inner happiness, what it means to you to feel complete. Think about things this way, you have arrived at this wonderful buffet called life and you have been savoring a whole lot of different items, some you like a lot, some you like less, and some you cannot be bothered with tasting at all! The trick is in knowing when to stop and feel satisfied and walk away from the buffet before you throw up because you ate too much or you become anorexic because you ate too less.


So lets go back to the example of the friend that has started his journey towards his own happiness, what is one of the essential steps he has taken? He has trusted in himself as a source of his happiness. He has decided to listen to his heart and do what he has always wanted to do -  Travel! Think about this, a "happy" person you know can have just about everything that you might consider as important (perfect job, perfect partner, perfect house,etc), but another person that you know could also have all those things and still not be happy with themselves. What is the difference in their lives? The thing that rings true is this:If you do the things you love, you will love the things you do, you will also love everything around you more. Inner trust in yourself, being optimistic, content and honest enough to discover your needs is one of the steps to discovering happiness.


Happiness, it might seem out of reach, out of sight, and impossible some days, but if you let that little flicker of light called Hope into your life, the dawn will break one day. Take solace in the fact that you are not alone in this search, there are millions of us out there and together, with shared ideas and shared hopes, we will enlighten our lives and bring meaning to it.

One step forward at a time!