Following the dharma in the 21st century

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.  Buddha

Firstly let me say that I’m going to revive my blog in the new year and hopefully contribute to it a bit more! I’ve become a bit lax mainly due to competing demands on my time.

I love the ending of the year, not least because it coincides with my birthday (woohoo!) but because it is an opportunity to reflect on the year that has passed and consider how things might be improved, what didn’t go so well, and the bit I always forget, what went well and what I succeeded at!

This practice doesn’t have to necessarily have any kind of religious or spiritual beliefs underpinning it, and in fact it can be a really useful thing to do from a business development and also a personal development perspective.

I tend to put aside some time, usually in the morning before all the New Years Eve madness kicks in, to sit quietly – perhaps with some relaxing music on if this doesn’t distract you, and just sit and think about the year that has gone by and my role in it – sometimes I work through in chronological order but this can be a bit of a struggle unless I have a calendar or diary to remind me, but other times I just wander through my memories – from the last New Years Eve through to New Years Day, going back to work, seeing the spring start to come in, and so forth.

When something comes up which I find unsatisfactory – perhaps the way I spoke to somebody, a piece of work that I didn’t prepare well enough for, maybe something like having put on too much weight, then I try to come up with some strategies to improve this in the coming year.  I also do this for my business – so for projects which didn’t go so well, or for aspects of the business which I would like to improve, I set myself some goals and steps to go through to achieve these goals.

Sometimes this short moment of time can generate some quite profound realisations, and it has certainly made me aware on several occasions of aspects of my life that are far from how I would like to be.

2009 seems to have passed so quickly but when I do this reflective practice tomorrow I am sure I will be suprised by the amount that has happened in this period of time!

Most people believe that following the path of compassion and nonviolence is something related to religion. In fact, these are secular ethics and have nothing to do with religion

HH Dalai Lama