I am thankful for...Your 3 minutes begins

I have been trying a new thing. Mindful journaling. Mindful journaling is essentially setting aside a few minutes each day (I do three minutes) to write exactly whatever arises in your mind. Whatever crops up you write it. You set a timer (in this case for three minutes) and you can't stop writing until it buzzes. If you can't think of anything to write and your mind goes blank, then the object would be to write "I can't think of anything to write". I have done that. It's quite funny. There are no rules about what you can/can't write about - just keep writing! You can even let your grammar go to pot if you like. I do. In fact, I'll let you in on a little secret. I'm a stickler for good grammar. Your when it should be you're, it's when it should be its. Tut tut. But actually (and please don't tell anyone this), I find it quite liberating to let it all go for a few moments.

Anyway, I've just finished today's writing and the topic I chose was "I am thankful for....". Here is the unedited result. I thought I would share it. Just because.

I wonder what experiences your neurons might give to you if you try this. Let me know?

"I am thankful for giving myself better mental habits to engage in. I'm thankful for supportive friends. I'm thankful to the efforts of the IAPT team. I'm thankful for the invention of electricity, for broadband, and the internet and Google and laptops and mousepads and mobile phones and texting, and taps with clean running water, and twitter and freedom of speech and snooker and the snooker coverage and radio 4, and shoes, and insoles and science."

So there you have it. In those three minutes I wanted to be thankful for those things. I suppose raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens are pretty cool too, but they didn't crop up during those three minutes.

I wish you well.

Looking Lovely

I just like this, so I wanted to share it :)

Please take from this whatever happiness you feel comfortable taking.

Hope...

Whether you're interesting in politics, whether you were eligible to vote in US elections, whether you wanted Mitt Romney or Barack Obama to win, now doesn't really matter because Barack Obama has won this one. This short post is not about political persuasion.

So, to put all those factors to one side and look simply at the words, I wanted to share a very small portion of Obama's victory speech from last night. It is just one sentence about hope. Whether you like him or not, I think that this is a very powerful statement and so true as to what hope really is.

Please allow this to inspire you.

"I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us, so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting."
A full transcript of the speech is available on the The White House website.

It's All Over...

Here is a photograph that I took today of the flypast over central London to mark the end of London 2012.


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Thames Festival Fireworks

So, here's a few photographs that I took tonight of the Thames Festival Fireworks.


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In Memory of Neil Armstrong

This is a photograph that I took of the moon a couple of months ago. After hearing about the very sad passing of Neil Armstrong, I researched the location of the Apollo 11 landing sites to see if I could see that part of the moon in the photo. I could, so Neil, this is for you. Thank you.


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A Perfect Geographical Tribute

This is just so poignant.

Discovered recently by a passing hot air balloonist, this heart shaped feature emerges as a vision from the surrounding woods.



The story behind it which I saw in the Daily Mail is a real tearjerker though.

A man who's wife passed away 17 years ago wished to create a lasting tribute to the woman he had loved for so many years.

"The farmer planted thousands of oak saplings in a six-acre field – but left a heart-shaped area in the middle, with the point facing towards his wife’s childhood home."
-- from the Mail Online

You can actually see this in Google Earth.



Or if you don't have Google Earth, you can see it upside down in Google Maps.