ENOUGH

We are bombarded with messages, from outside & within, that we are simply not enough.

No matter what we do, if we are not aware, self-doubt can become second nature. We can develop deep-seated negative perceptions of ourselves that make us more inclined to see the worst in others & treat others with indifference or even contempt.

But if we become more aware of our own self-doubt, we can develop strategies to work with our doubt.

We can use creativity, art, action or movement to get out of our heads as self-doubt becomes an alarm, that reminds us to act, move or get creative.

Self-doubt can remind us of what really matters: to live in the here & now, to let go of fears & worries about the past or future & celebrate life in all its small, beautiful glories. Our doubt can be remedied with the medicine of gratitude, be it via journals or self-talk, freeing us from our negative emotions.

We can take more care of ourselves, what we eat, drink & how we look & move. We can cleanse ourselves from social media. We can slow down, relax & give our brains time to focus & not get distracted or overwhelmed.

A simple mantra, a phrase you repeat when the clouds of self-doubt block your light can make us more grounded, mindful & self-aware.

With awareness, we all can embrace our vulnerability & turn our self-doubt from a foe to a friend & an ally.

#creativity #gratitude #beinghuman

TALK

Even if only silently, to ourselves, we all talk.

But are we really aware of how our words impact us, others & the world? Are our words true, timely, wise & useful? Or do our words abuse, divide, hurt or confuse?

Our words can create harmony or division.

We can choose patience, tolerance & avoid regret & remorse or we can choose anger, sarcasm & to cancel & cause pain.

We can choose our words, treasure our words, love our words & be patient. We can choose not only how but when to talk, when to be silent & when to speak up.

Our feelings & perceptions may be ‘our’ truth but in our divisive, digital world ‘the’ truth is not personal, not based on our feelings & perceptions, it is objective, facts exist & lies, gossip, mean or harsh words hurt us all.

Our words have power, the power to shape our minds, our relationships, our lives & our world.

#beinghuman #power #digital

FIX

We can’t fix the world, really, we can’t.

But we can see the dynamism, the complexity & how deeply interconnected & unfixed everything & everyone is.

We can feel connected, stay open, be clear about our place in the world & respond with tenderness & love.

We can feel big enough to accommodate life, no longer see the world as binary, black & white, get creative & have a plan for when life gets too much.

In a world that is deeply connected, everything we do matters.

Beings are limitless, their problems are limitless & we are limitless too. With generosity, patience, discipline, diligence & concentration we can understand the nature of reality & respond in a realistic way.

We may not be able to fix the world but we can unite wisdom with action & live & love in this world we can’t fix.

#beinghuman #creative #complexity

ARTIFICIAL

In life we usually prefer the real thing over the artificial be it sweeteners, flowers or people so when it comes to intelligence does it really make sense for the human race to embrace the artificial over our natural & innate intelligence?
 
AI is a complex, evolving set of algorithms designed, tried & tested by commercial entities made up of predominately young white male programmers & their older white, male bosses who are driven, mostly, by power & profit. AI is a tool to change human behaviour, a tool to curate our digital lives giving each and every one of us a unique digital view of our world. That view is designed to make us feel we are safe yet also just uneasy, unhappy & unaware enough to ensure we do exactly what those companies want us to do.
 
Pay attention to our screens, constantly.
 
AI is rarely created to better you, your family, friends, colleagues, or your society. AI is rarely a tool to protect diversity, species, the environment, the earth, or the heavens. AI is a complicated, endless myriad of mini, personalised experiments designed to ensure we, AI’s lab rats, keep generating data & buying product, digital or physical.
 
We have moved from a tool-based tech society to an addiction & manipulation-based tech society where human psychology, developed over millions of years to create cohesion & community, a basic human need to connect & be rewarded by dopamine is used against us… users…
 
& remember only two industries call their customers... users….
 
We have evolved to care about what people in our tribe think about us but when our tribe is digital & we are regularly dosed with likes, hearts & thumbs up we lose true, deep, real connection.
 
The artificial impacts real people, real thoughts, real actions, real relationships & real lives without us really noticing as tech companies exploit this psychological vulnerability & our dopamine addiction reaps a money harvest.
 
There is nothing artificial about this real experiment with 5 billion human lab rats. As Gen Z come of age, the first generation to have grown up in a digital world, we are seeing more depression, anxiety, self-harm & suicide than ever before.
 
From the 1960s to today processing power has risen a trillion times. Our brains, humanity’s hardware can simply not evolve fast enough to catch up with that. Yet there is still hope as our hearts, our bodies, & our senses have innate, natural intelligence & like any user we can all stop using & recover.

#ai #data #beinghuman

EQUANIMITY

We are taught from an early age that freedom is somehow inexorably intertwined with choice. So we go through life with a giant, imaginary mental & digital thumb, liking & disliking what confronts us in an attempt to get happy with our thumbs up or down.

But what if we are wrong? What if the real way to get happy is to get off the merry-go-round of choice & develop equanimity?

The word equanimity is little used in modern life. The dictionary tells us equanimity is “a state of psychological stability & composure which is undisturbed by experience of or exposure to emotions, pain, or other phenomena that may cause others to lose the balance of their mind.”

But really equanimity is being willing & able to accept things just as they whether they’re boring, exciting, disappointing, painful, or challenging: what we want or what we don’t want.

Equanimity brings balance to moments of joy & pain, knows everything changes, protects us from overreacting & helping us trust life. Equanimity is the eye of the storm pleasure or pain, praise or blame, success or failure, profit or loss.

Without equanimity, we can get overwhelmed by the world, shut down or turn away or alternatively, the beauty and joy of the world can seduce us & make us lovesick.

Yet equanimity is not indifference, is not gritting your teeth nor is it ignorance. Equanimity is vast & holds life lovingly. Equanimity helps us care deeply but easily, relaxed & safe in the knowledge we don’t have complete control.

#beinghuman #mindfulness #experience

DISAGREE

Yesterday, I watched the live BBC stream as the world waited for Trump, the first former president of the USA to be indicted in a court of law.

As the crowds both pro & anti gathered outside the court, one banner caught my eye, held by an elder, a black male, who calls himself Truth Conductor that simply said STOP HATING EACH OTHER BECAUSE YOU DISAGREE.

He & his banner are right. Many of us seem to have forgotten how healthy disagreement is, how democracy & in fact humanity is built on our ability to find connection, wisdom & shared values despite our disagreements. Many of us have forgotten to let love for our fellow humans rise above hate.

The message is especially critical in a post-technocratic world, where AI, machine learning & technology is evolving faster than any governments, laws or organisations could possibly manage let alone moderate.

So, the responsibility is on us, humans, all of us, to learn to love our disagreements, to see the joy in our differences, to develop diversity & inclusion for all opinions & to stop the hate & embrace the love.

#beinghuman #ai #technology

REALLY

In 1938 Harvard started studying a group of people from differing backgrounds, cultures & genders for their entire lives to find out what really makes humans happy. Now in its 85th year their partners, children & grandchildren have also been studied.

There are two simple yet profound key findings…

One is if you take care of your health, you are happier and not surprisingly you live longer.

The second is the people who had warm, closer connections with other people were not only happier but better relationships actually impacted their bodies and their health.

Many don’t have intimate partners, but it turns out that’s not essential to get these benefits. The study showed that it’s really the experience of being connected to somebody, or even just a couple of people, with whom you feel warm, close connections. Happier, healthier humans took care of their relationships & did not let them wither from neglect.

So, who have you not seen lately? Who do you want to connect with? Who do you want to stay connected with? Reach out as when we are committed to people and things in the world beyond ourselves, we are much happier, much healthier & live longer.

#beinghuman #health #connections

JOIE DE VIVRE

I once directed an arts series called Extreme Africa. It was a co-production for Channel Four & Canal Plus & as part of the deal, I spent a summer editing in a small regional French TV station.
 
On the first day at one o’clock, I went to the canteen, bought a sandwich & returned to the edit suite where I intended to eat my sandwich as we worked. The older, French, male editor looked at me with disdain, threw his arms up in alarm, shouted at me in French, downed tools & went for his leisurely, long, sit-down lunch.
 
The French concept of joie de vivre, the joy of living is central to French culture. The idea that an opportunity to eat, drink, talk & connect with colleagues would be lost to a working lunch, surrendered for a sandwich was, back then, alien to the French.
 
Yet in the last 10 years, 52 'Pret A Manger' shops have opened in France as slowly but surely the cultural concept of a lazy lunch & joie de vivre comes under attack.
 
I was recently in Paris, navigating the power of French workers' collective action... the piles of rubbish on the streets. I saw the protests that have continued & recently exploded with Macron’s use of constitutional executive powers to push through an unpopular rise in the pension age from 62 to 64 without a vote.
 
To me, it seems the pension issue has become symbolic of so many other issues & concerns we all share. The French are revolting not only about the pension age but about the lack of respect for democracy, the widening gaps between rich & poor, respecting worker’s rights, surveillance society & a fundamental right to joie de vivre, to enjoy life & to hold sacred the purpose of life, to be happy.

#beinghuman #france #joiedevivre

TRUE

We can us our minds to destroy humanity, the planet & our lives or we can use our minds to know our true nature & enhance humanity, the planet & our lives.

We can become aware of what we are thinking, what we are feeling & what we are doing, then turn this awareness toward awareness itself. We can explore how our mind creates our reality & is the root of everything that we experience.

Many of us may have glimpsed this nature of mind, in a moment of deep relaxation, meditation, presence… maybe whilst in nature, after exercise, holding a baby, petting a dog or just randomly on the bus …. an open, ungraspable moment when our minds radiate. If we recognise the preciousness of these moments we can become more aware & trust that state is actually always possible.

Our body, our emotions & our experiences seem solid, but if we deeply examine them, we don’t find solidity but a space where everything, emotions & experiences, arises. This helps us not get to attached to our emotions or experiences, good or bad. When we develop this equanimity, we start to understand the quality of our mind & its natural, luminous, clear nature. Then we suffer less, have more compassion for ourselves & others & unlock our true nature which is basically good.

Our minds naturally experience our thoughts, emotions & life, we do not have to stress or force this. We can relax into our life & our experiences, thinking or not thinking, emotions or no emotions… it does not matter to our mind as our mind is aware no matter what is going on.

Space & the luminous nature of our mind are united, inseparable & the basis for everything we think, feel, see or hear. All that we experience, emotions, thoughts all are manifestations of our mind, manifestations that come & go.

When we do not recognize our true nature, we perceive dualistically, ignorantly & do not see things as they truly are & so create endless suffering for ourselves and others by our likes & dislikes, by them & us, by wanting to be there when we are here.

But when we maintain awareness of our true nature at all times, we can bring it into our life walking, talking, eating, dreaming, no matter what we feel or experience.

#beinghuman #experience #mindfulness

CHOICES

It's estimated that the average adult makes about 35,000 decisions each & every day. Some of those decisions are inevitably “right” & some “wrong”. So how can we do less so that we do more things “right” & avoid doing too much so that we don't do too many things “wrong”?
 
Most of us know who we are, where we are going & what we need to do, yet all of us get side-tracked & take our focus away from the things that truly matter. In this minefield of choice, it is no surprise that our minds like to choose the well-worn path & that breaking habits can make us feel lost.
 
But if we embrace our real goals, the goals that align with our values, rather than the goals the world imposes on us, then our choices come from deep within & we feel good. When we know who we truly are & what we believe, the “right” choices are easier to make.

We simply can't decide or do everything alone. When we surround ourselves with the right people, a trusted inner circle of close connections who can help, support & love us, we absorb wisdom from our allies, friends, mentors & sages & our choices feel smarter, kinder & better.

#beinghuman #connections #people

UNWOMEN

Today I am honored to have been invited to attend, Innovators of the Future- #CrackingTheCode at the Roundhouse in London.

The UN Women event is to discuss the digital challenges we women face as the digital gender gap grows. Globally only 63% of women have internet access compared to 69% of men.

Across all areas of digital technology, women and girls remain under-represented, from coding and creating, to accessing services, and drafting regulations and policy. This disparity comes at a considerable cost: UN Women that, if the digital exclusion ended $1 trillion could be added to the GDP of low & middle-income countries.
Women & girls are often put off by an actively hostile environment in the sector; on average, women are paid 21% less than men, they face considerably lower rates of promotion & nearly half report workplace harassment.

I am passionate about inclusion, equality & social justice for women & despite resistance from men in power to my latest project TIME, am using my Createch skills to do what I can to help.

We are looking for female ambassadors for TIME, to help us test v2.0 of the TIME app & spread the word. Creative women who care, connect & DM me if you want to get involved.

#unwomenuk #unwomen #beinghuman

TRANSFORM

We can transform our state of mind at anytime, anywhere & with anyone.
 
But in our day-to-day lives with day-to-day responsibilities & overwhelm, appreciating what is good in us, others & the planet can be challenging.
 
But though we are not in control of what happens we are in control of how we react.
 
We can choose to be more present, relax & use gratitude, wisdom & compassion as tools to transform our lives.

When we begin to open up to feeling everything around us, our relationship with everything around us changes.
 
Being good & connecting with our innate, original goodness is not some distant state we can only hope for, but a state of being that’s available to all of us here, now.

Our happiness, the happiness of humans & the future of the planet depends on our collective ability to transform.

#happiness #beinghuman #gratitude

300

I am honored to have been selected, as a UN Women UK delegate to the Commission on the Status of women.

However, I am learning a lot about women’s issues.

Global crises from COVID-19 to conflict, climate change and a backlash against women’s sexual and reproductive rights are worsening gender disparities.

A recent UN report cites that without investment, gender equality will take nearly 300 years. It will take 286 years to close gaps in legal protection and remove discriminatory laws. 140 years for women to achieve equal representation in leadership positions in the workplace and 40 years for the same to happen in parliaments.

Meanwhile, to eradicate child marriage by 2030, progress will have to be 17 times faster than in the last decade. By the end of 2023, roughly 383 million women and girls will live in extreme poverty.

As a woman and a mother and a creative worker, I am proud of the work I am doing even if it sometimes feels no one is listening. Money is important but so are the stories we tell and until more creative women are telling more stories, and their stories are heard, this sad, tragic story will not end.

#beinghuman #unwomen #leadership

AGE

From the moment we are born we start to age.
 
Aging is completely & utterly unavoidable, a mysterious, magical & mighty one-way trip, yet in a culture that worships at the altar of youth we all seem to have replaced growing old gracefully with growing old disgracefully.

Our bodies, minds and lives evolve, change & grow constantly yet we seem blind to the beauty in growing older, wiser, and more aware.

At the root of our collective inability to deal with age, is an inability to deal with change and of course the ultimate change, death. Despite this, moment to moment I change, you change and our relationships, our lives and our world changes with us.

We are touched, moved and respond as our thoughts, feelings and sensations like waves, return to the ocean to shimmer and glisten as something else happens, and something else happens, and something else…

Appearance is passing, experience is passing, life is passing...

Age is like a lightning flash, a baby's smile or a rainbow there’s nothing to grasp. When we get this and stop trying to grasp, to hold onto our past and surrender to age, to the passing of time, age gives us a great gift, a gift we have had since we were born….

The ability to simply be open to what is here...now...

Then no matter what age, age is a beautiful thing

#beinghuman #culture #change

GOOD

We are all basically good.

No matter what we have thought, said or done in our lives, we have a basic goodness at our core and the potential to make any moment good no matter how bad we feel.

But when our heart, our inner space is filled with pain, what we see, hear and feel is filtered through that pain and it's hard to be kind to ourselves and others.

To alleviate our pain, we simply need to give access to the camera, location and microphone on our inner smart phone and give ourselves permission to open to our inner goodness, inner wisdom and infinite possibility,

Then let go of trying to control, manipulate and simply take a moment to let life be. Then even if we are in pain if we are aware, we can find the lesson, the good in any situation.

And there is always something good at anytime, anyplace or with anybody no matter how bad it seems in the school of life.

#beinghuman #selfawareness #psychology

POLITICAL

The lack of politicians to use technology for good is one of the greatest failures of modern times.

From Obama to Putin, Xi Jiping to Trump, politicians seem to be able to understand and leverage technology when it suits them be it for votes, invasion of privacy, supporting business allies, war, espionage or simply controlling us, the masses.

But when it comes to using technology to make the world a better place, to address poverty, extinction, climate, racism, sexism, and education and unite us, then they seem to act like senile geriatrics, who find the brave new world of technology all a bit too big, difficult and noisy to manage.

I listened to Tony Blair and William Hague, the most bizarre coupling in a long time, on BBC Radio 4’s Today show yesterday, they have united to produce a paper about politicians’ lack of vision when it comes to tech. Yes, I know...

It was like listening to confused middle-aged parents waking up and realising they need to do something about their out-of-control teenager when he is already in rehab and heading for prison.

The fact a case still needs to be made for more pace, scale and investment in technology blows my mind. The lack of politicians and the media to see how all our lives are now deeply woven into technology with issues from Ukraine to the cost-of-living crisis, climate change to fake news and societal extremes deeply interconnected to technology is frankly tragic. The clue is in the name, the world wide web!

Politicians need to be educated not only in the science of technology but the business of technology and how it impacts our behavior and society. This education then needs to form part of the world's "Global Curriculum" and all our adult learning as we all need to learn about our minds and communities on tech.

Politicians seem to forget not everyone can afford wifi, a phone, tablet or laptop and until everyone has access to affordable wi-fi, and tech tools we will see more and more people having to choose between food, warmth, water or data creating a technological underclass.

Tech is here and does not right now seem to be going anywhere, so in our brave new technology-driven world we must ensure we do not create more poverty, more pain, more struggle and more division and use tech to help people and help the planet.

We can not rely on tech to control tech and we cannot rely on politicians to control tech and though we all can manage our own tech habits we need to find a way to collectively control tech.

#Beinghuman #technology #politics

DAYDREAM

Human beings spend 30-50% of all waking hours daydreaming.

We all love to let our minds wander and disconnect from where we are and what we are doing.

Yet something so natural, that consumes so much of our time and offers humanity an evolutionary advantage, needs more love and respect.

Freud believed in the power of daydreams, stating they represent “the human desire to alter the existing and often unsatisfactory or unpleasant world of reality”.

Daydreaming helps us focus and is essential to achieve our goals. Our fantasies help us stay motivated and committed. Daydreaming helps us plan a strategy for our future and prepares us for the steps we need to take to reach our goals. When we dream about our desires, our future, we prepare and then are driven to act.

So daydreaming is not procrastination but improves creativity, productivity, make us more patient, helps us focus and make better decisions.

So be weird, let your mind wander and find your wisdom.

#beinghuman #creativity #neuroscience

DISTANT

Around 2010 social media became part of humanity’s daily routine, affecting all of us whether we used it or not as humanity developed digital tribes and searched for digital identity.

A digital pandemic started social distancing well before the COVID pandemic, removing the need to be face-to-face...

And when humans don’t see each other’s faces, humans don’t behave well.

Socials have become contentious containers that can breed and feed resentful, extreme humans as humanity is more narcissistic, self-serving, self-aggrandising when we no longer look into each other’s eyes.

Humans high in narcissism have more “friends”, as negativity and extremes are pushed, hyped and rewarded ruining it for the rest of us. Bullying is now subtler, continuous and actions and reactions are never digitally forgotten. Competition, comparison and the lack of emotional connection may get engagement but also disturbs and disrupts humanity’s true wealth and health.

We need to generate and be accountable to a new collective, digital morality. We need to decide where freedom of speech ends and hate speech starts. Social accounts, like bank accounts, need i-D as humanity needs to be named and if need be, shamed. We need controls, laws and collective morals around privacy, data and the monetisation of the attention economy. We need to educate ourselves and decide if being right or being popular is more important than being human.

Socials and the technology, business models and activity that drive them are a reflection of our humanity so let’s ensure, together that social distancing, the digital kind, does not become the real pandemic of our time.

#beinghuman #technology #socialmedia

MMM…

I was recently asked if I had any thoughts on Madonna’s Grammy ‘controversy’. My immediate reaction was a personal, post-pop, punk, posturizing... NO!
 
But my reaction interested me.
 
My next project TIME is about creative women, maidens, mothers or matriarchs, being seen and heard, and here is a woman, a creative woman, an older creative woman who is seen and heard and here’s me, a less famous woman, yet a creative woman, an older creative woman wanting women to be seen and heard and I am not interested?
 
Really…
 
In reaction to the recent Grammy ‘controversy’, Madonna cited ageism and misogyny seeing herself as a “subversive”, who “pushes boundaries”.
 
We do live in an ageist, misogynistic world and women do have a right to push, subvert and do whatever they like to their own body, including self-harm but her desire to defy life’s natural aging process does not defy ageism but perpetuates ageist agendas and the myth of eternal maidenhood.
 
Seeing a woman’s life and her experience in her face and in her body is for me an expression of female creativity, power and love or the abuse of it.
 
Sadly, no matter how “good” a face Madonna “puts on”, what I see is her denial, her disconnect and her disassociation from her inner matriarch.
 
I see a woman, a queen of pop culture, abusing herself, abusing her power and abusing her time.
 
How we women, maidens, mothers or matriarchs, want to be seen and heard is complex yet even if we don’t like what we see and hear, we still do need to be seen and heard.

#beinghuman #feminism #creative

URGENT

Life is urgent, more urgent than any one task, it really is.
 
But day to day our never-ending to-do list can gang up on us.
 
Rowdy, resilient and robust our tasks can bully us and become our life…
 
But only if we let them.
 
Our only true urgent task is... life....

#beinghuman #life #urgent