photo credit: mis­ter­bis­son

“We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walk­ing back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soon­est is the most pro­gres­sive.” ~ C.S. Lewis

Note:  Please help me wel­come Eduard Ezeanu, from Peo­ple Skills Decoded, here today, as our guest writer.

We all want to progress, although some more than oth­ers. I believe that the atti­tudes and per­cep­tions we have about progress deter­mine to a large degree how effec­tive we are in mak­ing progress and how much we enjoy it.

Here is one per­cep­tion which a lot of us have engrained and it sab­o­tages our lives: the per­cep­tion that progress is lin­ear. This means that con­sciously or not, we see progress like a straight road, which goes directly and smoothly to our destination.

So we expect to con­stantly make progress, and to make progress in the same degree in equal peri­ods of time. In a way, apply­ing this per­cep­tion, we see a 10 year old per­son as twice what a 5 year old is and a 20 year old as twice what a 10 year old is.

I think this is a very stiff and unre­al­is­tic view of progress. Not even a tree grows like that, in a lin­ear way. Why should we expect a human being to do so? If we want to truly embrace progress and have fun with it, we need to real­ize that progress is not lin­ear. Progress is organic.

This mean that we may go through long peri­ods with lit­tle progress, fol­lowed by peri­ods of light­ing fast progress, or peri­ods when we regress, in order to cre­ate a con­text which allows even big­ger progress than the pre­vi­ous one.

Here is one exam­ple I meet often in my coach­ing prac­tice: peo­ple who advance in a cer­tain pro­fes­sional field, until they reach a point when they no longer feel ful­filled in that field. Often, what they need to do is find a field which would be even more ful­fill­ing for them, get in that field and grow in it.

The thing is, mov­ing from a pro­fes­sional field in which you are at a very high level to a field which is new for you rep­re­sents ini­tially a form of regres­sion. But it is this regres­sion which allows you to make after­wards progress in this new field and reach heights you couldn’t have reached in the pre­vi­ous one.

In other words, you need to regress before you can progress again and max­i­mize the use of your poten­tial. It still amazes me how few peo­ple under­stand this at a deep level and are will­ing to do it.

Our lin­ear views of progress often keep us stuck in a fear of regress, fear of change which in the end sab­o­tages our progress instead of help­ing us. We try to grow con­stantly and smoothly, but we end up get­ting stuck and feel­ing sorry for our­selves. Unfor­tu­nately, this is the story of many peo­ple in this world.

I believe it’s fun­da­men­tal for us to have a more plas­tic and real­is­tic view of progress. To under­stand that it’s a tan­gled road rather than a straight one; that we some­times need to dis­tance our­selves from our des­ti­na­tion before we can get even closer to it.

It is only with this kind of a view that we can learn to walk the tan­gled road of life, get to where we want and enjoy the jour­ney as well.

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Eduard Ezeanu is a com­mu­ni­ca­tion coach with an attitude-based approach. He helps oth­ers to improve peo­ple skills they find rel­e­vant and get top notch results. He also writes on his blog, Peo­ple Skills Decoded, and you can fol­low him on Twit­ter at @EduardSays.

Your life.  How are you liv­ing that? 

Today I have life coach Laura Neff with us.  Laura is the heart and soul behind “More In You” Life Lead­er­ship Coach­ing.  In this past year, I’ve had the won­der­ful oppor­tu­nity of get­ting to know Laura.  In that time, I’ve come to really see the beauty of her soul shine through.  She comes from a place very much filled with abun­dance — abun­dance in life, in liv­ing, and in the poten­tial in everyone. 

To get a real sense of Laura, check out a recent arti­cle she wrote on start­ing a bliss rev­o­lu­tion.  That sounds pretty great, if you ask me!

Laura also has done a won­der­ful job of cre­at­ing video to sup­port her mes­sage,  and one I found very enlight­en­ing was her dis­cus­sion around how we some­times min­i­mize our­selves by using the word “lit­tle”. 

It is an honor to have Laura here, as she shares her thoughts on how defined bound­aries in cer­tain areas of our life can really help take us to new heights in oth­ers aspects of the life we are cre­at­ing.  Please join me in reading…

Choos­ing Bound­aries For Life Suc­cess

 

photo credit: aka­hodag

“Once we accept our lim­its, we go beyond them.” ~ Bren­dan Fran­cis

Greet­ings, read­ers of The Jun­gle of Life!

First off, can we all just stop and raise a glass/pom pom/pumping fist to Lance? I never, and I mean never, leave his blog with­out inspi­ra­tion, and I’d be sur­prised if the same isn’t true for you. Lance, my friend, you are one of the bright­est lights in our sky!

If you’re a devoted fol­lower of the Jun­gle of Life, then I know you didn’t miss Lance’s recent guest post called Life Is Art, at the Evolv­ing Beings blog. In this cre­ative, spunky, and thought-provoking post, he chal­lenged all of us to think of our lives as an ever-evolving work of art, cre­ated by the myr­iad of choices we make each and every moment of each and every day. As a Life Lead­er­ship coach, I have to admit to a fist-pumping, “Yeaaaah!” moment as I read his words. In short, I wildly con­cur, as that mes­sage is very much akin to the foun­da­tion of this work that I do in the world each day, help­ing peo­ple more pow­er­fully lead their lives toward both who they want to be and what they want to cre­ate by the choices they’re making.

And wow, in that vein, are we off to an amaz­ing start for the new year! Some­how, some­thing has opened up a bit in our col­lec­tive breath with the turn­ing of the new year. The emotional/ financial/spiritual/fear-based grid­lock of 2009 is begin­ning to loosen up, like an ice flow in the early spring when the first warm breezes start blow­ing through. Given the power, tenac­ity, and fierce­ness of the human spirit, all we need is a tiny crack to appear, and POW! We push our way out of what’s been hold­ing us back, eagerly search­ing for what’s next and what’s pos­si­ble. That’s what the begin­ning of 2010 feels like to me as I lis­ten, watch, and expe­ri­ence this fresh start. We have much work to do, and it’s the good work of becom­ing more of who we truly, deeply are. Many of my clients and friends are excit­edly choos­ing their word of the year (mine’s “Vital­ity!”), cre­at­ing goals, set­ting inten­tions, and in the past three weeks have started explor­ing how their choices this year will help them expe­ri­ence those things as real in their lives.

Aaaaand that’s where things tend to get stuck/stalled/stagnated!

Being at choice + crav­ing change = choos­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent to cre­ate the “Life is Art” mas­ter­piece you can see in your mind and feel in your heart. It means say­ing YES, PLEASE! to what will get you closer to that vision and NO, THANK YOU! to what takes you fur­ther away. Sim­ply put, each and every choice we make…and I mean the eeeen­si­est choices all the way to the huge ones…is either mov­ing us toward or fur­ther from the selves and lives that we crave. 

So there’s a vital leap to be made from choos­ing the word/goals/resolutions/intentions to then really choos­ing dif­fer­ently, moment to moment, in order to see those things to fruition…choice by choice, step by step.

One way I’ve been play­ing with that this new year is by har­ness­ing the power of say­ing “yes” and “no” by way of bound­aries. I’ve noticed that unless I cre­ate bound­aries within myself, for myself first, then not much hap­pens dif­fer­ently on the out­side in my life. Here’s an example:

Like many of you, 2009 was the year I dove into social media. Face­book and Twit­ter lit­er­ally seem like a party that never ends, and both my busi­ness and my per­sonal life have flour­ished in ways I couldn’t ever have imag­ined because of the time I spent there in recent months. (I’m writ­ing this blog post because of meet­ing Lance on Twit­ter last year!) Work and play blur into a sparkly gray area in Social Medi­a­land for me, and it’s been both a blast and a boon.

But, I’m also a solo­pre­neur. And I have a lap­top. The good news? I can take my work any­where! The bad news? I can take my work any­where! In 2009, I found myself doing things like cook­ing din­ner, lap­top on the kitchen counter, recipe web­site up, but then check­ing Face­book and Twit­ter while the onions were sautéing. I’d take my lap­top upstairs and while my hus­band read or surfed the net on his own com­puter, I’d don my paja­mas, hop into bed to chat with friends, con­nect with col­leagues, and while I was at it, hop on over and check my email. ‘Cause I could. At 11:00 p.m.

Bot­tom line? I was becom­ing a bit addicted to being on the com­puter but could ratio­nal­ize it to myself because “it was help­ing my busi­ness.” And, it was too much. My bound­aries were non-existent, and work was bleed­ing into everything.

When “Vital­ity” became my key­word for 2010, I knew I had to cre­ate boundaries–by myself, for myself–around my time online. To do that, I’m exper­i­ment­ing in four dif­fer­ent ways…creating time bound­aries about when and how long I’m online, putting a tem­po­rary bound­ary up around Twit­ter, cre­at­ing bound­aries on the fly through “vital­ity checks” dur­ing the day, see­ing if what I’m doing is cre­at­ing or deplet­ing my vital­ity and shift­ing my choices as a result, and finally putting a bound­ary up around my lap­top itself, decid­ing that its pri­mary res­i­dence is my office, and it only comes to visit my home on occasion..

You might notice that each of these bound­aries are self-imposed. That’s the thing about boundaries…most often, no one’s going to set them for us. It’s up to us to har­ness the power of them for good, and I’m work­ing toward with the exam­ple above.

Is it work­ing per­fectly? Not yet. But is it get­ting me closer to where I want to be? Slowly but surely, moment by moment, choice by choice, step by step.

So as you move more fully into this new year of ours, I encour­age you to think about not only what you intend to cre­ate for your­self and in your­self in 2010, but how the choices you’re mak­ing are mov­ing you closer to or fur­ther from those inten­tions. Where might you ben­e­fit from cre­at­ing bound­aries of your own? How will they serve the masterpiece-in-progress that is your life?

Keep up with Laura by sub­scrib­ing to her blog, and fol­low­ing her on Twit­ter and Face­book.

It’s an honor today to share an arti­cle writ­ten by John Anya­sor, from HiLife2B.  John is a reg­u­lar vis­i­tor here, and authors his own blog while also attend­ing col­lege full-time.  He has a real desire to help oth­ers, and much of what he writes focuses on per­sonal growth.  A recent exam­ple of his work include Should I or Should I Not? The Curse of Inde­ci­sion. 

John’s words will make you think more deeply, and lead you down your own road of self dis­cov­ery.  You can fol­low along with him by sub­scrib­ing to his blog, and by fol­low­ing him on Twit­ter. 

We can all make a dif­fer­ence, and today John shares:

How to Make a Dif­fer­ence With­out a Whole Lot of Money

 

photo credit: Shot_by_Cam

“How won­der­ful it is that nobody need wait a sin­gle moment before start­ing to improve the world.” ~ Anne Frank

Have you got the itch? The itch for change? It’s that feel­ing you get when it seems like time is mov­ing at no more than a snail’s pace. You’ve set­tled into the rou­tine of sim­ply liv­ing. As usual, there’s a war going on that nobody really wants to fight. Or there’s some dis­ease that threat­ens our way of life. Same old, same old.

Every­where we go, there are images of pain, fear, and hatred spread across some adver­tise­ment in bold let­ters.  These images seem to ask us, “Is this the world you want to live in? Help these peo­ple fight the good fight! Help us find a cure! Help us make a dif­fer­ence! Do something!”

As a result, we say to our­selves, “Enough wait­ing around. It’s time for change. It’s time to make a difference.”

Okay, now you’re pumped and ready to make your mark on the world. First, maybe to begin your world-changing efforts, you make a com­mit­ment to donate to char­ity (the ones that give to poor third-world coun­tries) at least once a month. That sounds rea­son­able, right?

Alright, it’s been a month, and to your sur­prise, on the news you hear of kids still starv­ing in third world coun­tries. You’re taken aback. “I thought peo­ple were donat­ing money to this cause. And I thought I was giv­ing enough. What’s going on?” you think to yourself.

Then, a great idea strikes you. “Maybe instead of being pas­sive and pay­ing money to some char­ity every week, I’ll hit it where it hurts. I’ll go to those starv­ing coun­tries and fix them myself!”

Fast for­ward a month later:

You real­ize you don’t have any money. You may or may not have kids to feed. You might be a lit­tle biased towards rid­ing on planes, thanks to the media (you know how the ter­ror­ists hijack planes, don’t you?). You believe that it’ll take for­ever to save some­one else’s plight, espe­cially when they’re halfway around the world!

You also have a job that is under the con­trol of your ever-so-grateful boss. You can go save the world on your own time.

With all of these things work­ing against you, you finally resign to just pay­ing your monthly char­ity check and hope things turn out for the best.

Just so you know, the per­son in the above sce­nario isn’t mak­ing a difference.

Now before we get to the meat of this arti­cle, this sce­nario is based on what I think usu­ally hap­pens. I’m not say­ing this is you. I’m just say­ing this is typ­i­cally the sce­nario that plays out amongst the gen­eral population.

Soci­ety keeps telling you to change the world, and yet it forces you into jobs which rob you of the time needed to become skilled enough to do so. Soci­ety wants you to pay to save third world coun­tries from hunger. Soci­ety wants you to keep liv­ing the way you are, while mak­ing you envi­ous of a celebri­ties wealth at the same time.

Have you noticed some­thing? (Because I sure have!) Soci­ety is train­ing us to obsess over money.

Real­ity tv, gos­sip mag­a­zines, jobs, and intern­ships: they all pro­vide the car­rot on the end of the stick — money. We’re sup­posed to have money, but God for­bid we’re sup­posed to accrue enough to actu­ally do any­thing with it!

We’re sup­posed to spend it try­ing to sur­vive so that we can work more. We have to spend it pay­ing off mort­gages on houses we know we can’t afford.

Well, I for one am here to solve this problem.

There’s only one solu­tion to this dilemma and there’s only one way to make a dif­fer­ence: we must give up our obses­sion with money.

Here’s the deal with money — use it or lose it

From now on, all the things you do now will be in prepa­ra­tion for the future. Put money into the things that have the most value. When you want to make a dif­fer­ence, there’s no pur­pose in invest­ing in things that only give you instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion.  Skip that fancy lit­tle red dress you’ll get bored of in two weeks, and use it to pay the phone bill. That big screen you’ve had your eye on can wait; spend the money on main­te­nance to pre­vent your car from break­ing down (or bet­ter yet, save more money and take the bus!).

Work for yourself

Let’s face facts — you can’t make a dif­fer­ence by sit­ting in your office doing your boss’s work. You can use what you make to fund an online ven­ture, but you can’t keep your job and run a prof­itable online busi­ness at the same time. Some­thing has to give. My advice — as soon as it becomes more prof­itable to work for your­self than to work for your boss…quit.

Start an online venture

You don’t need thou­sands of dol­lars to start some­thing that’ll make a dif­fer­ence. Gone are the days when you had to buy land and built a store to sell things. These days, mak­ing the switch to online is bet­ter, more acces­si­ble, and faster than offline ven­tures. Start a blog to get the word out of your attempt to make a dif­fer­ence. Sell mer­chan­dise or ser­vices — maybe both. If you have a Ma and Pop store, make the switch to MaandPop.com.

Man­i­fest good­ness within oth­ers by help­ing them

At this point, you’ve reclaimed your time and are earn­ing your own liv­ing. Now you are ready to save those mil­lions hop­ing and hurt­ing across the world. But don’t make the same mis­take twice by just donat­ing money — actu­ally go to those coun­tries. Wit­ness their plight. Expe­ri­ence the pain. And when you can’t take it any­more, find a solu­tion. Actu­ally teach peo­ple to improve their lives. Don’t depend on their country’s gov­ern­ment to save them, but teach them to save themselves.

You can’t do this alone, of course. But with your newly acquired resources, you can gather like-minded indi­vid­u­als who’ll gladly help them on your quest.

There are peo­ple today who’ve already made the deci­sion to save the world. Tim Fer­riss is seek­ing to built schools in Viet­nam. Steve Pavlina is empow­er­ing the masses by pro­vid­ing work­shops to help peo­ple reach their full poten­tial. Even Lance here is spread­ing aware­ness about breast cancer and moti­vat­ing as many peo­ple as he can.

Think you can’t do it?

So did they once. They once thought they had no chance in mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. But that didn’t stop them from try­ing. And once they saw results, they tried again, and again, and again until…

Well you know the rest.

Just know that your chance to change the world hasn’t left yet. You can take action right now to fight for what you believe in or spread a pas­sion that you have for something.

Go out right now, and think about how you’ve made a dif­fer­ence. And then quadru­ple your efforts.

“There are two types of peo­ple who will tell you that you can­not make a dif­fer­ence n this world: Those who are afraid to try them­selves, and those who are afraid that you will suc­ceed.” — Ray Goforth

 Today it is an honor and a priv­i­lege to have Sami, from Life, Laughs, & Lem­mings here, shar­ing some of her won­der­ful knowl­edge, mixed with that fun and humor­ous side I’ve come to know and love.  Sami calls Aus­tralia “home”, so today we’re trav­el­ing “down under” as this bright young lady shares her wis­dom here.

Sami describes her blog as “seri­ous fun”.  And I think that’s right on the mark!  She’s a sweet­heart of a soul, and cares deeply for the world we live in, all the while hav­ing fun and really liv­ing life.  A per­fect exam­ple of this is her Daisy List (a spin on the Bucket List idea).  And just to see how she’s not afraid to have fun and really let the joy in her heart out, check out the video she shared on this post she did (sorry, Sami, it’s too good not to share!).  Or to see how she val­ues laugh­ter, check out this post.

Sami is one awe­some lady, a great friend, and – she’s sim­ply an awe­some writer!  To keep up with all that she’s doing, sub­scribe to her blog right here!

And with that, Sami, the floor is yours…

Less Stuff, More Mean­ing
 

photo credit: ari­moore

“Sim­plic­ity is the ulti­mate sophis­ti­ca­tion.” ~ Leonardo DaVinci

Damn those Jones’ and their fancy cars, fancy house, fancy TV and fancy clothes. And damn all those com­pa­nies with their fancy ads who know exactly how to make us feel less worthy/cool/successful if we aren’t able to keep up with the Jones’ and prefer­ably out-fancy them.

Funny thing about those Jones’ and all their fancy friends, they tend to have very fancy debt. Fancy that! In other words, it’s often all show.

The mar­keters will have us believe that once you get that lat­est model, spe­cial edi­tion, lim­ited run, fus­cia BMW, THEN you’ll get the girl (or boy). Or if you just get those cur­rent sea­son, bright red, 7 inch Manolo Blah­nik heels, THEN you’ll be sexy (and crip­pled). And God for­bid you should even think about not get­ting the lat­est phone that can give you your GPS co-ordinates, microwave your lunch, trans­late dog lan­guage, crack the Da Vinci code AND would you believe, make phone calls. You can kiss that hap­pi­ness good bye with­out it!

I should know, I used to be in mar­ket­ing (before I saw the light). I know a lot of the tricks like using emo­tive lan­guage in copy, upbeat music in stores, prod­uct place­ment on shelves, loss leader prod­ucts and the lesser known; beau­ti­ful peo­ple specif­i­cally placed at spe­cific bars buy­ing a spe­cific prod­uct so oth­ers will specif­i­cally emu­late them.

Don’t get me wrong, I use to want and strive to buy all the lat­est elec­tron­ics, clothes, car, etc, etc. An unwanted divorce, a sub­se­quent escape relo­ca­tion to another coun­try and leav­ing behind all my worldly pos­ses­sions sans two bags worth of clothes and a few sen­ti­men­tal items took care of that.

It’s really quite hum­bling but also lib­er­at­ing hav­ing your entire mate­r­ial world encased in two bags sit­ting at your feet. What I very quickly learnt through my sit­u­a­tion was who really cares about me and what I really should care about. “Stuff” didn’t really fig­ure in the equation.

Once all that is mate­r­ial was gone, all I was left with was myself and my sur­vival. For some that can be incred­i­bly daunt­ing and have as much appeal as turn­ing up to work butt naked (given I work from home, that would be less of an issue for me but would make for inter­est­ing times should the FedEx guy turn up to the door).

Whilst it can be daunt­ing, when the dis­trac­tions of pos­ses­sions, image, sta­tus and keep­ing up with all of that are no longer there, you are left with free­dom. Free­dom to move, free­dom to dis­cover who you really are, free­dom to be peace­ful and free­dom to uncover what is really impor­tant like your health, your fam­ily and friends and your purpose.

I’m not sug­gest­ing you go out and reduce your mate­r­ial pos­ses­sions to two bags but what I am say­ing is that there is power, free­dom and mean­ing to be had if you live a life with less stuff and less attach­ment to the stuff. Besides, fewer pos­ses­sions means less con­sump­tion, less dam­age to the planet, less cost, less main­tain­ing, less clean­ing and more time, money, fun, free­dom and fulfillment.

And who doesn’t want more of that?

Oh, and by the way, uncool is the new black. So if you want to be in sea­son, you really must go out and get your­self some!

Today, it is an honor to have Daphne as our guest writer.  Daphne is a won­der­ful friend, car­ing lady, and all-around ‘giver of joy’.  A tal­ented writer, Daphne shares thought-provoking and uplift­ing  arti­cles at Joy­ful Days — a blog with a real focus on find­ing hap­pi­ness and abun­dance through per­sonal devel­op­ment.  A recent exam­ple of one of her arti­cles is Back to the Start: Why You Do What You Do, in which she dis­cusses the value in exam­in­ing the deci­sions we make as we work to bet­ter under­stand ourselves.

Daphne’s words will uplift and inspire you.  You can fol­low along with her by vis­it­ing her blog Joy­ful Days.  For reg­u­lar updates, sub­scribe to her RSS feed.

Today, we’re headed into the jun­gle!  Read along, as Daphne talks about…

As Close To Eden As You’ll Get

“Peo­ple travel to won­der at the height of the moun­tains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast com­pass of the ocean, at the cir­cu­lar motion of the stars, and yet they pass by them­selves with­out won­der­ing.” ~ St. Augustine

The name of this blog caught my atten­tion from the begin­ning. A jun­gle to me was a dark fore­bod­ing place, and I won­dered why Lance named his blog “Jun­gle of Life”. Later I found out more about a jun­gle and was amazed at its beauty and what it can teach us about life.

The Orig­i­nal Jungle

The Bialowieza Puszcza is a half-million acre jun­gle strad­dling the bor­der between Poland and Belarus. It is Europe’s last remain­ing frag­ment of old-growth wilder­ness. Trees here reach 150 feet, with moss that’s grown on them for half a millenium.

(The source for all quotes on the Bialowieza are from “The World With­out Us” by Alan Weisman.)

Les­son #1: Life pro­ceeds from Death

In the Bialowieza, the pro­fu­sion of life owes much to all that is dead. Almost a quar­ter of the organic mass above­ground is in assorted stages of decay.

If you have ever walked in a jun­gle, you’ll remem­ber step­ping on the dried and decay­ing leaves that cover the ground. Death and dying are a nat­ural part of the life cycle. In our devel­oped cities, on the other hand, we have tried to sep­a­rate dying from liv­ing. We put the old and dying away in hos­pi­tals or homes, instead of liv­ing among them, keep­ing them part of us, and imbib­ing their wis­dom. This is the oppo­site of nature’s way.

Les­son #2: Life takes care of itself

The Bialoweiza is the only place left with all nine Euro­pean wood­pecker species because some of them only nest in hol­low, dying trees. “They can’t sur­vive in man­aged forests” says forester Andrzej Bobiec, “The Bialowieza Puszcza has man­aged itself per­fectly well for millenia.”

Humans as a species try to man­age every­thing we come into con­tact with. We like things to be clean, orderly, pre­dictable. Our overzeal­ous man­age­ment of peo­ple and places often upsets the nat­ural bal­ance, and causes some­thing to be lost.

We some­times for­get that life on earth man­aged per­fectly well before we came along, and will con­tinue to do so after we leave. Per­haps it is time to stop micro-managing peo­ple and places and trust life to nur­ture its own creations.

Les­son #3: Divi­sions are man-made

An iron cur­tain bisects this par­adise, erected by the Sovi­ets in 1980 along the bor­der to thwart escapees to Poland’s rene­gade Sol­i­dar­ity move­ment. Although wolves dig under it, and roe deer and elk are believed to leap it, the herd of the largest of Europe’s mam­mals (wisent) remains divided, and with it, its gene pool — divided and mor­tally dimin­ished, some zool­o­gists fear.

Nature does not try to own things. We do. We like bound­aries and ter­ri­to­ries. We divide the world we live in into “yours” and “mine”.  We guard our port­fo­lios at work, we want own­er­ship rights for our prop­erty, we even think our chil­dren belong to us.

By claim­ing our ‘ter­ri­tory’, we restrict the flow of ideas, of energy, and of love across bound­aries of nation, race, reli­gion, and socio-economic classes. When we can release the need to own, then maybe we can enjoy all that life has to offer.

Was Eden a jungle?

I don’t know about you, but my men­tal image of Eden was more like a pretty Eng­lish gar­den than a primeval jun­gle. Yet that’s prob­a­bly not what the orig­i­nal Eden was like at all. Per­haps even our con­cept of par­adise is con­trived, land­scaped, managed.

Would you recog­nise Eden if you were walk­ing in it? Could you accept the dis­or­der and the decay with­out want­ing to clean it up and arrange every­thing neatly? Maybe this messy life you have now IS Eden, or as close to Eden as you’ll get. Let’s appre­ci­ate and enjoy the “jun­gle of life”.