In Favour of Complexity

Ive just come back from having the first appointment with my new optometrist. As someone who's stuck with the same optometrist for over 20 years, having received overall a pretty descent and smooth service, I hadn't anticipated how tricky it would prove to find a new one.

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So when I moved countries as a young student, I found out exactly how difficult the craft of measuring eyesight is when it came to complex cases like mine. Opticians would even choose me as a case study at times.

It probably didn't help the fact that over the last decade and a while after I moved to the UK, both of the opticians I went to got my measurements wrong. They even tried a few times before getting my new contact lenses right. One time I had to even wait up to 6 months since my first appointment to be able to get lenses that actually enabled me to see. That is half a year of waiting!

So, with those experiences in mind, I ended up delaying my next visit to the optician to about 5 years, when the recommended frequency of appointment is yearly. And having just recently moved cities, I knew that the search for a new optician was going to be inevitable at some point.

So when the time came to finally do it, I did my research and asked around (social media are great for this sort of thing) and a very strong recommendation came forward for a lenses specialist with a real knack for lenses prescriptions. This guy apparently was somewhat of a genius in his field and seemed to nail very complex prescriptions so I had to give him a go. And im very glad that I did.

Fuel For Passion

I spent about 1.5 hrs seeing two specialists, one for a general eye sight and then John for the lenses examination. Both specialists were brilliant and very meticulous. As for John, the thing that impressed me the most about him was not just how great a service he gave me, but even more so what actually fuelled him to deliver a great service to his clients.

John pretty quickly became a great source of inspiration for the obvious love he held for his craft. A love that was shown through his physicality, energy as well as the way he conducted himself with me, his client. Being on the receiving end of that, not only made me feel like a million bucks as a client, it also moved me on a very human level.

               There was a man who absolutely and utterly LOVED his job.
                                          It was like an art form to him.

The Mad Scientist

 In the hour I was being examined by John, he took pen and paper and wrote down tons of mathematics whilst he moved frantically trying different things, speaking to himself, negating his original thoughts only to come back to them and did all this with a real glee in his eyes!

As somebody who enjoys knowing what makes people tick, particularly around choosing and doing work that we love, I asked John what it was about his craft that he loved the most. He told me that for him it is all about problem solving.

Often standard prescriptions don't provide enough challenge for his use of math and science to nail the right curve of a lens that matches that of the eye of the client, or making a detailed measuring when it comes to making the perfect lense fitting, or doing the right mathematical calculation that will translate the prescription taken from an eye test to one for lenses, as they tend to be different type of readings. And so if he doesn’t get as challenged John does not get to problem solve much and won't get to use his toolbox in a way that he would like to.

He was like a mad genius-scientist totally absorbed in his craft, whilst I was being turned into a cyborg testing all these different old school technologies that would provide John with his a-ha moment about my lense prescription.

Exactly why I find this rather endearing and refreshing? It's to do with the fact that I feel that despite all of the consciousness awakening going on on our planet at the moment, we still seem to live at a time when:

               So Many People Still Seem to Look For an Easy Way Out,
                               When it Comes to Choosing Their Work
                                    And Their Ways of Earning Money.

And they do so either through getting into work they loathe but is sort of easy and pays the bills, or by choosing great vocational work they love but want the fast route to money making and success, so much so, that it detracts them from the service they are there to provide and lives they are to change, and instead become engrossed in making a fast buck. What is more, they are left stressed and depleted.

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The Challenge

Yet there was a man who reminded me that there are still people who are NOT looking for the easy way when it comes to doing the work they love. It's not about the easy money or the fame, or ticking the client off the list.

It is all about applying their knowledge. feeling inspired whilst cracking the conundrum of their client's situation and working towards getting them the right results.

More importantly they want to feel positively challenged, so that they take out their toolbox and use what is necessary to solve the problem.

This is what I call, the more “complex” type of motivation that fuels one's life path. This is good old school mentality of loving work that challenges us rather than one that dampens us. And I love it.

                                         John did not shy away from complexity.
                                          In fact it was what made him
                                                 get up in the morning
                                        and feel excited about his work.

                                        It was what gave him meaning,
                                            inspiration and motivation.
                                               It's what made him grow.

The Cop Out

Similarly to looking for an easy way out in our work and personal life, we are also often guided by a similar principle when it comes to our intentions & choosing our spiritual and self development practices. As spirituality is linked with creating a simpler and more peaceful life, we often end up using its tools and practices as a way of preventing facing ourselves and instead enjoy the pretense of our "seeming" spiritualisation.

The Fear

Why do we do that? You see when modern life gets out of control, we can end up becoming quite fearful that our goal of finding happiness might never be achieved. So much so, that any solutions that seem to promote the eradication of the waves that create the upheavals in the first place, become an attractive possibility, especially under the label of spirituality or the name of religion. But do not be confused..

                           A quiet life is not necessarily a peaceful life.
                   And to eradicate life's waves is to eradicate life itself.

And as life is non eradicable, what ends up happening is that we end up eradicating ourselves, as a way of suppressing our life force, and with suppressing our life force, we end up killing our capacity for living a good life, or as I call it, a life of true greatness.

I find this to be rather unfortunate simply because it is a distorted understanding of cultivating peace and tranquility.

It might initially feel like eradicating life's turbulent waves is a great solution, but it soon becomes apparent that unless we are willing to go down the rabbit hole and try to understand the vibrations that trigger the waves within us, we are never to understand the real cause and therefore access a solution to our upheavals in the first place. And so we are never to find real peace.

                                            I do not believe in nor do I desire
                                              this kind of simple life.
                                    It holds nothing of value for me.

Choosing The Right Ingredients

It is like using sugar to take the acidity off a certain food we are preparing, rather than cooking it with the right mix of spice and salt to make the food nutritious and taste good. There is a more wholesome way of taking the acidity off our food and out of our lives and it doesn’t tend to result to a quick fix.

The nutritious and truly effective way to cook something that truly delivers in all levels, requires time and patience, takes some skill and a good knowledge of ingredients, requires some good will, a good sense of timing, application of our best personal strengths not to mention a basic understanding of the alchemical laws available for us to play with. In other words, it's a complex affair. And it's the handling of that complexity that delivers a finger licking good yet balanced meal.

It is similar with life. It needs to be full bodied and created with some clever use of its ingredients to deliver in richness, taste and nutrition. Even when we make something with minimal ingredients. It's the spice that makes it what it is, and its the spice that we all like in different levels of course.

A Full Life Vs a Life of Drama

We also need to understand that living a full human life is dramatically different to living a life full of drama when it is essentially driven by a conscious will to understand ourselves and undo our shackles.
A life of drama is self perpetuating and often stuck in its self imposed limitation, constantly stifling our growth; it seeks the thrill for the sake of the thrill rather than for the desire to expand our consciousness through experience and therefore evolve into something greater.


                             A Life Well Lived Comes With a Sense of Awe,
                                         an Appreciation and Exploration
                                      of its Curves and Textures Where we
                                Delve Fearlessly into the Soul of the Being.


These kind of experiences show us who we really are as human beings (and if awe feels far fetched for some, at least whilst feeling the fear and doing it anyway as Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron has written is just as good).

A life of humanness that chooses to surf and enjoy the waves is guided by a love and desire for freedom, whilst a life full of drama is ONLY lead by pain and fear.

Taking easy work that doesn’t fulfill us will only make us slowly die on the inside. Whereas work that asks us to stretch and test our strengths will help us grow as well as show us the parameters of our potential. Then we are less likely to choose to play small in our personal lives. We are less likely to settle for second best or take the easy way out of things.

We are more likely however to keep overcoming our challenges and move beyond them to new places of self actualization and strength, the very steps that pave our life of greatness.

                                                  So I Wish to Suggest Rather
                                     Than Taking the Easy Way out,
                            Choose to Take the Complex Way Instead.

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What one thing can you do today that will have you say yes to the complex and more elaborate?

When the Complex Way is Not the Right Way

However there are some occasions where the complex way is not the best way for all.

For instance the complex way might not be for you:

• If problem solving is not for you and you are fine with that,
• When growing into your potential is not your ambition and
  you are equally happy with that,
• When your desire to live a simple life is NOT guided by fear,

         boredom, procrastination, or lack of self belief and motivation,

• When you have a genuine desire to live a wonderfully simple life

         because you REALLY and truly see the blessing in it and you feel fulfilled by it.

In the above cases, living the simple life is much more zen and more aligned with our authentic value and can therefore make for a good life choice.

The Excavation

In other ways we need to do some excavation and look deep at the root of our motives that guide our choices in our work and personal life. Coaching can be a wonderful way to explore that, either with myself or with another coach that you resonate with.

In the meantime I want to wish you a wonderful new year, and I hope this year you find the courage to take a big leap towards YOUR very own life of greatness!

Samaya

ps. For those of you that wish to make a transition to a more authentic life of work I am working on a new e-course on 'finding our passion and turning it into our life's work'. This e-course will address all the things that hold us back from embracing our true purpose in life and will clear the way to making it a reality. It will also teach you some kick ass strategies to ground your passion into a business or vocational career that you actually love.

I would love to have your thoughts on the following 2 questions, please leave a comment with your answers below this blog if they are relevant to you:

1. What is the main challenge that holds you back from moving into vocational work
    that you love?
2. What do you feel you would need to have/know that would help you make the
    transition into work that you love?

Thanks for reading and submitting your answers below!

This e-course will come for FREE for those that purchase my “Learn to Meditate in 6 Weeks E-Course” which is a perfect way to set the right conditions/ foundations for your next creation.

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