Tag Archives: stress

by | March 21, 2023 · 5:27 am

Debunking the myths on job burnout

Burnout is a state of complete mental and physical exhaustion after prolonged exposure to emotional or physical stressors. It can affect entire institutions and wreak havoc on personal lives to the extent that individuals in extreme cases are no longer able to cope with the challenges of a normal life.

But there appear to still be many myths around the topic, especially in the corporate world where those affected by job burnout are regarded as lacking in stress resilience.

Chronic burnout can include a high level of stress hormones such as glucocorticoids, catecholamines, and prolactin. These are needed for the body’s natural fight and flight response but if you have too much of them it can lead to serious health problems and even life-threatening diseases because vital organs don’t get the necessary nutrients.

Having spent more than half of my life in an employment capacity in the media industry, I went through the complete cycle of passionately enjoying my job to utter frustration and pulling the plug shortly before burnout.

One of the most common myths is that job burnout is related to work stress caused by short deadlines, overly high productivity demands, and unrealistic management or customer demands.

This is only part of the story. If you are passionate about your job and have a high degree of independence in deciding when to do what and for him, you will not perceive stress as such. Instead, you will feel pumped up, and energetically vibrant. We all know that feeling, of having accomplished something in a game or sporting event. It is the same feeling you will be getting if you truly feel that you are doing something that is aligned with your soul purpose.

The modern-day working place has become essentially dehumanized

Most corporate jobs have been dehumanized to such an extent that individuals find themselves stuck in big offices with several hundred other people. Furnishings are standardized and employees are prohibited from decorating their desk with personal items such as pics of their loved ones. Employees don’t burn out overnight. It is mostly a process lasting several years where employees consistently lose the sense of meaning for what they are doing and their personal value system is in disconnect from the values of the company.

In my case, I became a journalist in apartheid South Africa, feeling the need to give a voice to those suffering discrimination. Later , after joining an international news agency in Germany I was able to write extensively on topics close to my heart such as Third World and environmental issues. Journalism, in some media at least, was tasked with informing, educating and acting as a watchdog over those in power. The disillusion began when more and more media shifted from education to entertainment of the worst kind. Today we witness the absurdity of mass media clouding the minds of millions with information trash and gossip. It is much the same disconnect when a nurse or doctor is prescribed how much time they can spend with a patient or a social worker or a priest spends more time dealing with bureaucracy than with real people in need.

The body tells the truth

At some point your inner soul truth will send out warning signals that you have climbed up the wrong ladder. Your body reacts with sleepless nights, digestive problems or other ailments. But you will ignore those early warning signs and push them away until you can no longer ignore them or you have a life-threatening diagnosis that acts as a wake-up call where you change everything.

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Stress always starts with a thought until the thought gets trapped in the treadmill of the monkey mind in constant fear of what might happen in the future like losing your job. Work should be one of the most enjoyable things you do because you spend most of your life working. It makes an enormous difference to your overall happiness if you are working for a living or really enjoying what you are doing. In some cultures spared from the industrial revolution, people still work sixteen-hour days. But it could also be argued that they never work. Daily chores, family life, and free time are closely intertwined.

According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” the more a job inherently resembles a game – “with variety, appropriate and flexible challenged, clear goals, and immediate feedback – the more enjoyable it will be regardless of the worker’s level of development.”

As human beings we evolve and grow with the challenge, the resistance, the problems and the transmuting thereof.

Mental and physical exhaustion seems to lie more in the employee’s relation to the job, how he/she perceives personal goals in relation to it.

Burnout and shift in consciousness

Burnout can be addressed with a shift in consciousness. Conflict at the workplace often arises when there is poor leadership. Employees are not trusted in doing what they can as best as they can. Better communication, better organization, delegation of responsibility and improved self-care habits can do much to alleviate internal and external stressors.

If you spend most of your leisure time in the passive consumption of negativity on mass media, it will absorb a large portion of your lifeblood and energy. You will be much more happy and content in spending quality time with good friends, family and community.

At the job many people experience the opportunity of using their skillset. They are challenged and validated and this will make them feel happy, strong and satisfied. Paradoxically while spending their free time these same people will feel sad, weak and dull because of the way they are spending their time.

Reino Gevers – Author – Mentor – Speaker

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by | January 24, 2023 · 9:04 am

Things don’t fall apart suddenly

A leak in the roof of a house will drip by drip gradually weaken the structural walls until the foundations give way and the house collapses. When small repairs are not carried out they become big problems. A health crisis is preceded by many small aches and pains. A relationship breakdown will have a long history of hurts, insults, and betrayals. A company’s bankruptcy comes after years of poor management and missed opportunities.

The seeds of the failed nation are sown with the gradual growth of the tentacles of corruption, poor government, and nepotism. Countries such as Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Argentina, and my home country South Africa once had booming economies but are today sad reminders of how fast the rot can set in.

In the 1990s the South African city centers of Johannesburg, Durban, and Pretoria were bustling with excellent restaurants, jazz clubs, theatres, and parks. Visitors from many countries could move around fairly safely. Today these same areas are a sad conglomerate of dilapidated buildings with broken windows and ransacked and gutted interiors. The pot-holed streets are littered with trash and any tourist walking through these areas would be risking their life. It did not come overnight. The rot was gradual after years of mismanagement and corruption by the ruling African National Congress (ANC).

When Vladimir Putin took over from Russian president Boris Yeltsin in the year 1999, several critics warned that the former KGB agent was a dangerous threat to democracy. Western leaders simply failed to see the early warning signs that presaged Russia’s ever-greater slide into authoritarianism as journalists, opposition politicians, and businessmen were poisoned, shot, or imprisoned. Turning a blind eye eventually led to the invasion of the sovereign country Ukraine.

A successful company begins to decline when market signals are ignored and customers are taken for granted or their complaints are ignored. How many successful brand names of the past are today no more. Some iconic brand names that have disappeared are Pan Am, once the world’s largest air carrier, Polaroid, the pioneer of Instamatic cameras, the bookstore Borders which failed to make the transition to a new business or digital business model and many automobile brands such as Pontiac, Saab, Oldsmobile, and Borgward.

The boiling frog syndrome

The phenomenon of the boiling frog syndrome is that the water in the pot is gradually heated so that the frog hardly notices the gradual rise in temperature until it’s too late. Does that not tell us something about the climate debate? Scientists have warned since the late 1980s that we would be seeing extreme weather patterns as the result of the warming of the earth’s atmosphere because of the excessive burning of fossil fuels by the middle of this century. They were off the mark by at least two decades. Nobody could have predicted the ferocity of summer temperatures and storms that we are seeing in many countries at this moment in time.

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Tunnel vision

A hallmark of an entitlement culture is the tunnel vision of the ego mind. When in tunnel vision there is no evolution or progress of mind and spirit. The head-mind or “ego-mind” is caught in a belief. Its mind is made up of what is right and wrong in the world.

Head-Mind is incapable of listening to the alternative argument and will interrupt you before you have finished your sentence. They will tell you that 1+1 = 4. Nothing will persuade them otherwise. Their lives have been taken over by an alternate reality and they will be reaffirming their belief daily with similar believers in social media bubbles. Once entrenched in a tunnel-vision bubble it is virtually impossible to break down the walls the person has surrounded himself with. The person is addicted to a certain belief or thought.

When the human is in puberty you will be warning him with greater urgency of the train ahead. He will nevertheless deny that there is a train coming until it’s too late. It’s what parents all too often painfully have to go through. The child in puberty has to make its own experience, learn its own lessons and draw its own conclusions from the pain it suffers.

An alcoholic will very often only seek help during an epiphany that comes in a “flat on the ground” moment. The person is so disgusted and pained about his own behavior that he will admit finally that he has a problem. It is the first step in the healing process.

Negative and destructive behavior has the habit of sneaking into life in many subtle ways. It is one of the reasons why so many New Year resolutions fail. Typical sabotaging self-talk could be: “It won’t make much of a difference if I skip my workout this morning.” “I need to reward myself with a shopping spree after saving for two months.” “It won’t affect my relationship if I cheat on my partner just this once.”

Creating a life of bliss with positive habits

Transmuting pain and suffering leads to higher consciousness and positive change. Meaning and purpose is found after years of depression. A fulfilling, loving relationship is found after enduring years of abuse in a dysfunctional marriage. A different and more fulfilling work is sought after job burnout. An exercise routine and a healthy diet are followed with passion after overcoming a life-threatening disease.

The underlying reason for procrastination and indecision is often the fear that a change might be worse than the status quo. Starting with small “baby steps” in taking the first doable actions can make all the difference. You don’t have to wait and experience pain. You will know by now in what areas of life you need to make a change.

What can you do today? What can be done that will start the ball rolling? If you enter an untidy room filled with junk, you start by clearing one small area, then the following day the next, and so on. Getting physically fit could start with a walk of 2,000 steps and then gradually increase it day by day to 10,000 steps. Reducing a stressed out and fearful mind can begin with a short meditation lasting three minutes until 15-20 minutes is done with ease because you feel so much better afterward. Training body, mind, and spirit to a new level of consciousness and bliss comes after a reawakening from the shadowlands.

Reino Gevers – Author – Mentor – Speaker

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by | December 13, 2022 · 6:29 pm

Is society fraying at the edges?

Life is a choice. You can see the colour, the nuanced beauty in all, the diversity of creation and the magic.

Or, you see everything in just black and white

Within the walls of a turreted castle in the east German state of Thuringia a disparate group of plotters including a judge, a celebrity cook, a prince, and a former general of an elite army unit planned seizure before Christmas this year of the country’s parliament and replace modern Germany’s political structures with a monarchical Reich with a king at its head.

In the past, the fringe group of “Reichsburger” fanatics was at the receiving end of jokes but the country’s security services were sufficiently concerned that they launched one of the biggest security raids involving several thousand police raids on more than two dozen properties. All the plotters will now be spending Christmas behind bars.

What makes well-educated, upper-middle-class people lose the plot?

Most western countries are having to deal with rising populist movements that question the very foundations of democratic norms and values. Meanwhile in Russia “Tsar” Vladimir Putin decides to invade one of the world’s major breadbaskets plunging much of the Third World into a food crisis, an energy price shock in all the major economies and the largest refugee crisis in central Europe since the end of World War II.

The pandemic and its repercussions have only compounded the underlying currents that come with major economic and social changes that we are seeing in much of western society. Communities, institutions and beliefs that have stood rock solid for centuries are seemingly fraying at the edges.

Family and community

From the end of the 1950s we have seen a growing emphasis on individuation as opposed to community. Personal expression, freedom of movement and living one’s life purpose to the full has come at the expense of the individual being subservient to the needs of the community, the group or the family as a whole. It has come on the tailwinds of the harmonious 1950s family unit being exposed as the myth it always was. Women were largely disempowered and forced to service large babyboomer families. A revolt was inevitable. Young women were at the forefront of the 1960s anti-establishment movement. Divorce, multiple patchwork families, same-sex marriages are on the one hand commonplace but also deeply disoncerting to fundamentalists. Women are mostly the first to end a dysfunctional relationship. It is very often the male part of a relationship that refuses to change from the traditional role model and pursue a path of self-development and reflection.

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The male identity crisis

Young women are far outpacing their male counterparts on all levels starting from school achievement to successful career paths while men form by far the largest group affected by addiction, mental health problems, homelessness and violent crime. Especially during puberty young men are in need of fathers stepping up to their role in providing structure and orientation. Sadly, this is mostly not the case with the “absent father” playing a major role in the mental health problems of young men who seek orientation in the antiquated gun-slinging “heroic” male figureheads that we find in extremist movements and computer war games.

What you feed your mind with you become

The Internet has revolutionised our world and opened up unlimited communication and new job opportunities. The downside is that it has also scuttled many traditional industries including the local and regional newspaper that was a platform of diverse debate and different opinion. Social media, especially Twitter, has become a platform for grievance culture and confirmation bias. Automated Google algorithms feed us with what we want to read, confirming existing views and biased opinion. We live in information silos. What we feed our mind with we become. And what we notice is that a lot of unhappy people are becoming more unhappy and discontented from what they read and hear. A large portion of the daily information intake is designed to appeal to negative emotions of hate, lust, and greed. Good news just doesn’t sell.

The spiritual disconnect and the crisis of religious institutions

For centuries religion has told us how to behave and what to believe, citing divine will. Much of religion and the priesthood suppressed and separated religion from spirituality. Sexual misconduct and abuse has exposed the hypocrisy and alienated millions of faithful from what they perceived as their spiritual home. The spiritual disconnect and the crisis of the religious institutions has led to countless pseudo-religions that compound the mental health crisis.

For so-called “primitive man” God was never part of a religion but part of fundamental daily experience lived every day in interaction with the world of nature. When God is experiential we cannot believe. We can only experience.

The mental health crisis

The opiod crisis, and other addictions only pinpoint a major mental health crisis. How can you become more resilient and aligned in a fast-changing world that seems increasingly frightening to more and more people? Apart from the basic biological needs that make us no different from the animal kingdom, humans have the deep need to be seen and to be heard. We are spiritual beings in need of purpose and a place in community. Some tips:

  • One of the most effective ways of preventing physical and mental job exhaustion is to nurture friends and relationships. Surround yourself with positively-minded people who uplift and support you.
  • Find a spiritual community to practice a religious ritual that is free from dogma and constraint. It has real life-extending and stress-reducing benefits, according to scientific studies.
  • Spend alone time in nature. The green and blue spaces of nature have a real positive effect on boosing your immune system and aligning yourself with a higher sense of Being.
  • Find a personal mentor who acts as a sounding board in refining your goals and sense of purpose.

First and foremost maintain a critical mindset to your own thoughts and beliefs. They might have been influenced by external voices that have little in common with your individual and authentic soul purpose.

Reino Gevers – Author – Mentor – Speaker

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by | November 8, 2022 · 7:23 am

Inner stock-taking

As we near the end of another year it’s time for inner stock-taking: Was it worth doing what I was doing so far this year? Is it worth devoting my life to it? Where do I need to realign with my inner calling?

Daily habits can either lure you into a state of slumber or elevate you into utilizing all your talents and creativity. Setting aside time each day to practice positive habits is one of the most powerful tools in self-development.

The compound effect of daily habits has a huge impact on how your life is today. A daily routine to keep body, mind, and spirit healthy is key. An exercise routine coupled with meditation is extremely powerful.

A morning ritual sets the anchor for the day. What do I need to concentrate on doing today? What do I need to be aware of? What lower vibration, emotion, or energy from the night do I need to release. What is my positive mantra for the day?

But finding a good closure in the evening is just as important. What were my happy moments of the day? What can I truly be grateful for? What was the primary lesson that I need to record in my journal?

A more in-depth stock-taking of accomplishments, failures or even disappointments is recommended at least every quarter. A reflection with a mentor, guide, or coach can provide much clarity. A mentor is a sounding board and will help you refocus on what is truly important and help you remove the clutter that is no longer serving you.

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The biggest obstacles

There can be many obstacles coming your way that easily detract from the bigger picture and the goal-setting that you envisioned at the beginning of the year. Here are my biggest three.

Surroundings:

Are your surroundings in harmony with your calling? Is your room, apartment, or office cluttered with old things or stale energy from the past? The landscape of the house, village, town, city, or country you live in influences you in many subtle ways. The community, associations, and social conditions around you determine the vibrational field.

Associations:

Jim Rohn once said: “You‘re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Are those people you are around with having a positive, energizing influence on you, or are they pulling you down into a lower vibrational field with their negativity or narcissistic self-absorption. Who are the people that you would like in close proximity? Who are those that you need to limit contact with and those that you need to be keeping far away?

Distractions:

The pull of external distractions is probably the biggest obstacle of the three. Are social media, your mobile phone, Netflix, and all those things screaming for immediate gratification pulling you away from your mission in life, your most important objective, your dreams, your convictions, and your philosophy? Distractions can pull you into numerous directions where your thoughts are constantly dancing around in the past or the future.

Be kind to yourself

Even if you have failed to accomplish the goals you set for yourself at the beginning of the year and are in sadness and regret over missed opportunities or failures, it is important to remain in a loving and cherishing mindset to your inner self. Sabotaging yourself with negative self-talk can in extreme cases even pull you into a depression.

Be aware of the human condition that remains imperfect. You will have failures and disappointments. You will fall back into the trap of old habits. Life is happening all the time with its daily challenges and ups and downs. But the obstacles in the shape of people, events out of your control, unforeseen loss, and tragedy have shaped you into the person you are today and elevated you on a soul level.

You are on a journey of reconnecting to soul. You are much more than your physical body and its needs. As you walk the path of life you might deviate, and choose the wrong direction but ultimately set yourself onto the true path based on the learning experience you have had so far.

In a relaxed state of mind, in a space of solitude and contemplation, you will see things from a different perspective and be open to opportunity and growth.

Reino Gevers – Author – Mentor – Speaker

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by | October 24, 2022 · 12:10 pm

Beware: Toxic emotions are a health risk

Are you getting caught in the maelstrom of grievance culture permeating the public narrative? Beware you are not only risking your health but also blocking the path to your inner voice and soul destiny.

The medieval Sephardic Jewish philosopher Maimonides devoted a considerable time of his teachings on a holistic approach to health including physical, spiritual, and emotional well-being, pinpointing chronic anger as being particularly harmful.

What the sages of old knew from observation and intuition is being confirmed by research. If you don’t have your emotions under control and are constantly triggered into negativity by external circumstances you are weakening your immune system.

At the same time, you are lowering your energy vibration. If your mindset is focused on the negative you will only be seeing the negative and attracting the same.

Your brain stem, also known as the animal or reptilian brain, is programmed to survive. When your thoughts are focused on a perceived danger your survival brain prioritizes survival functions such as an increased heartbeat and higher blood pressure. You are in fight or flight mode.

When you are in an emotional state of intense anger, pain, or fear you are no longer in control. Your prefrontal cortex part of the brain that is crucial for creative thinking, and problem-solving is basically switched off.

A short-lived stressful situation can have a positive effect in helping you slam on the brakes in a traffic situation. But it is the severe and long-term stress with the body permanently being flooded by stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline that is the killer. Your vital organs such as the heart, kidney, and liver are working overtime. Your digestive system is affected, ultimately causing inflammatory disease, according to a study

A poll of 14-to 24-year-olds showed that the frequent use of social media such as Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter increased feelings of anxiety and inadequacy because they facilitated negative comments about self-image and appearance. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have found a strong correlation between the use of negative language on Twitter and heart disease mortality.

You have the power of choice

The good news is that you have the power of choice. A proper diet based on foods with a high nutritional value, regular physical exercise, attractive surroundings, walks in nature, a regular spiritual practice such as meditation will immensely boost your capacity to deal with momentary difficulties and challenges of daily life.

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You might want to listen to my podcast interview with best-selling author Liam Naden on harnessing the infinite power of the brain.

Emotional shifting is a practice where you first of all accept the situation you are in. Accept that you are angry, fearful, or sad. It is better to surrender to those feelings than to fight them. You are in survival mode with the monkeys dancing in your head painting horrible scenarios of the worst possible outcome of a situation. You are in survival mode.

Now take a step back, inhaling and exhaling through your nose. Focus your thoughts on your breath counting to ten. You might now be in the position to emotionally shift. Replace fear with trust, sadness with a happy moment, and anger with calmness of mind.

As the echo chambers of the external world continue their negative drumbeat it is more important than ever to stand guard at the doorway of your mind. Surround yourself with upbeat, positive-minded people. Be grateful for the small blessings in life by practicing a daily gratitude ritual. What was my best moment during the past 24 hours? There will be such a moment and relish it.

Reino Gevers – Author – Mentor – Speaker

One more thing...If you have found this article interesting you might want to subscribe with the “follow” button above or recommend my FREE weekly Blog to friends and family. My books can be ordered at all places that sell good books in both paperback and kindle.

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by | July 25, 2022 · 8:28 pm

Live to work or work to live?

Assuming that you are an average person working a full-time job of about 40 hours per week you will spend at least 50 years of your lifetime in the workplace. If you are unhappy in that job you will have spent a large portion of your life feeling miserable, negatively impacting your family life and your entire spectrum of well-being.

It, therefore, makes sense to find a job with a vibrant, healthy company culture where you can fully live your potential and creative abilities. But if we look at job satisfaction statistics there are many working people out there who are exceedingly unhappy in their jobs. In America, only 20 percent of people are passionate about what they do for a living.

Job satisfaction appears to be highest among the clergy, chiropractic, caregivers, and high-level executives. Low satisfaction is particularly prevalent among waiters, roofers, cashiers, and bartenders. 

It’s seldom just the money that gives people satisfaction. Employees want to feel recognized and are most happy where their own values are aligned with those of the company. They thrive in a vibrant culture of social interaction, creativity, and respect.

This week I had as a guest on my podcast “Living to BE” Dr. Shahrzad Nooravi, an expert on what drives a healthy corporate culture. In this podcast Dr. Shahrzad explains:

  • The importance of leaders and senior teams “walking their talk”.
  • The keys to a successful coaching program.
  • How to keep up the momentum of a healthy, dynamic, and creative culture where employees feel they are a respected part of the company?

A healthy corporate culture starts with you. One kind word or gesture to a colleague can make a world of difference. It simply pays to help create a healthy space in the environment where you spend a good portion of your lifetime. Life does not start at some time in the distant future when you reach retirement in the illusion that you can spend the rest of your life resting.

Albert Camus once said that to have time “is at once the most magnificent and the most dangerous of experiments. Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.”

How you spend, cherish, and purposefully live every moment of your time is key to a life of bliss.

Reino Gevers – Author – Mentor – Speaker

One more thing...If you have found this article interesting you might want to subscribe or recommend my FREE weekly Blog to friends and family. My books can be ordered at all places that sell good books in both paperback and kindle.

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by | June 7, 2022 · 6:05 am

Are you living someone else’s life?

Are you living through a life of a celebrity and forgetting to live your own life? Millions of people around the globe were glued for hours each day to the live coverage of the recent court drama between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard.

The business model of certain mass media is to elevate normal people like you and me to “God-like status” for the particular field they are successful at and then relish in their fall from grace with every detail of their shortcomings and failings.

The dynamics of the Depp and Amber relationship not only seems to have stirred a dark underside of their respective characters but resonated with something in the shadow of the collective consciousness.

We have the perfect Hollywood couple falling in love. It’s a paradise world where they have everything going for them – youthful beauty, fame, beautiful homes, and travelling to the most exotic places of the world in private jets. Then the curtain falls revealing a world of brutal accusations and counter accusations – a couple literally creating their own version of hell.

External success is no guarantee for happiness

What does that tell us? No matter what status, wealth and fame you have, it is no guarantee for happiness. “Both heaven and hell lie in your own mind. As heaven is your good memories and hell is your bad memories. Whether you want to enter into heaven or hell. It’s not at someone else hands. It’s your own choice,” according to Lord Robin.

Preoccupation with the lives of others is something we observe in village gossip, family drama and on the global stage. You can become so immersed with the life of another that you forget to live your own life. Celebrity worship syndrome (CWS) can become an obsessive addictive disorder. In extreme cases it results in stalking and in relatively mild cases regularly following a certain celebrity on social media.

Researchers in the United Kingdom have linked celebrity worship with higher levels of depression, anxiety and negative stress. Significant relationships were found between attitudes toward celebrities and body image among female adolescents.

We all have the same struggles, fears and anxieties

A big part of the problem is comparing one’s own unhappy and unfulfilled life with that of the celebrity who seemingly has everything that life has to offer. Such comparisons are based on illusion. On the material level certain individuals might live in completely different worlds. But on the consciousness level we are all humans with the same fears, anxieties, and emotional struggles.

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The journey of life is ultimately a journey in growth of consciousness. It is practise of presence and in becoming aware of what the Holy Oneness, the Universe, or God whispers to the soul.

You have been given the power of choice. What you feed your mind with, what programs you watch on television, what books you read and the people you choose to spend most of your time determine who you become. What daily habits you practise have a major outcome on the quality of your life. It is a life with a limited timeline that you won’t want to squander.

As a wise sage once said: “You have all the time in the world and yet you have no time to lose.”

Reino Gevers – Author – Mentor – Speaker

One more thing...If you have found this article interesting you might want to subscribe or recommend my FREE weekly Blog to friends and family. My books can be ordered at all places that sell good books in both paperback and kindle.

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by | February 15, 2022 · 7:20 am

Just another hill to climb

The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.

– Warren Buffet–

One of the worst chains of physical and mental habit is procrastination. Without action, there is no result.

We can dream, hope, and think our wishes will come true but they will only remain dreams if they are not followed up by action.

The pain of breaking the chains of habit are perceived as greater than the pain and the fear of facing an uncertain future. It is the reason we stay in dysfunctional relationships, fail to change an unfulfilling job, and refuse to change a diet that is ruining our health.

The universe will inevitably test your willpower

So often when we are on the brink of giving up in walking through that long, dark tunnel of obstacles, the breakthrough comes in the most unexpected ways. We climb a hill. We reach the top and then we find out that there is still another hill to climb. It is in such moments of despair that most people give up.

It is almost as if the universe is testing our willpower, creativity, and clarity of thought on the walk through life.

The yin and yang, the law of opposites, is an active process of life force, “qi” energy, swinging us from one extreme to the next in the never-ending cycle of growth and change.

Finding the balance between the extremes

The first light of dawn can only be seen in the darkness. Deep happiness is a feeling that is all the more intense after we have gone through the experience of sadness. They are both intense feelings. There is a fine line between love and hate, as William Shakespeare vividly portrays in “Romeo and Juliet.”

The moral of the story is that nothing good can come from blindly embracing fully one or the other.

In Act 1 Scene 1, Romeo is well aware of the close relationship between these two strong emotions:

“Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love.

Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate,

O anything of nothing first create!

O heavy lightness, serious vanity,

Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms,

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health,

Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!

This love feel I, that feel no love in this.”

When we fall in love we tend to see the other in a rose-colored hue of positivity. Love appears all-encompassing and we are blind to character traits or habits that are difficult to reconcile.

The disappointment comes later when we move in with each other and the fights start over who is responsible for the grocery shopping or cleaning the bathroom. Shattered hopes and dreams of what an idealized relationship never was or could have been is one of the main reasons for the breakup of so many relationships.

Extremism has its roots in fear and lack of grounding

Much of the animosity in the political divide comes from the same energy—embracing either the right or the left of the spectrum without seeing the nuances in between. The one is the shadow of the other. Both extremes have a shocking level of intolerance and are rooted in fundamentalism that prevents them from listening to each other.

The tendency toward extremist positions is rooted in uncertainty and fear from a lack of grounding.

Mastering the mundane to grow spiritually

The Chinese masters placed great emphasis on this aspect—not only as crucial in the martial arts but as a life philosophy.

Without a solid foundation in dealing with the mundane, any type of self-development will come to naught.

The ancient Jewish sages went further in teaching that if we fail to master the normal daily activities such as looking after our health, family relationships, and livelihood, we cannot hope to advance to higher spiritual experience.

Thus, a good portion of life in the monastery is spent in cleaning, gardening, and other menial chores. It is not only a practice in humility but stems from the knowledge that mastering the mundane is the gateway to loftier spheres.

Physical exercise and the mindful carrying out of mundane chores are excellent for grounding. If your work is mostly in a sitting position in an office, it is crucial to use breaks for walking or another low-impact exercise.

Reino Gevers – Author – Mentor – Speaker

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by | January 17, 2022 · 2:22 pm

Depression and the deeper message

As a child, I was frequently confronted with episodes when Dad would withdraw behind a thick grey wall of brooding silence. Only much later in life, when confronting my own demons, did I begin to understand the meaning of depression and what profound effect it can have on family and relationships.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that about 280 million people worldwide suffer from depression with the Covid-19 pandemic having further impacted mental health on multiple levels as we deal with the loss of control and personal freedoms.

It is part of the human condition that we go through stages of melancholy sadness but depression is characterized by the WHO as a condition when a person suffers for a longer period of several weeks loss of pleasure in all things, hopelessness in the future, fatigue, low self-esteem and self-worth coupled with frequent suicidal thoughts.

When to ask for help

When you or a loved one are in such a situation it is advisable to seek professional help. Medication can be necessary, especially when hereditary factors or biological issues such as hormones and serotonin levels in the brain play a role. However, medication is not a quick fix and therapy must be understood as a long-term journey to improving the quality of life.

Depression has many facets and is intertwined with an individual’s response and coping mechanism to external stressors. Childhood trauma or emotional neglect could be underlying factors for low-esteem and self-worth, seeding the depression. And, sometimes depression is disguised as a job burnout or a midlife crisis because of the social stigma attached to mental health.

Losing the sense of meaning and purpose in life could be triggered after a relationship breakdown, loss of a loved one, job loss, or the diagnosis of a life-threatening disease. A personal tragedy can be so overwhelming that the individual is unable to find a way out without professional help.

Finding new meaning and purpose

What we do know is that most forms of depression are treatable. Low-impact sport and a healthy diet rich in fatty acids and low on sugars and processed foods play an important part in brain health. At the same time finding new purpose and meaning with the help of a good therapist or mentor is key.

There is a lovely quote from Mark Twain that “the two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.” The “why” need not be the one silver arrow. Very often people are passionate about a certain career path in the early part of their life and then find out decades later that they need to walk a new path.

Learning from the pain and trauma

Everything that you have experienced or suffered so far in life has prepared you for the next step. What did I need to learn from my divorce? Has it left me with resentment fear and hate? Or, has it taught me to forgive, improved my social skillset, and made me into a more compassionate human being?

Finding a new challenge and stepping out of the normal comfort zone of complacency is a major antidote to depression. When you reflect on your life so far you will always find some stories where you chalked up victories and personal accomplishments. You can add to that success list by finding a new challenge.

For me, such a challenge was walking the Camino in northwestern Spain for the first time in 2007. I was in a very bad place at the time going through a tumultuous relationship and finding myself on the edge of a job burnout. You can read my story in the book: “Walking on Edge: A pilgrimage to Santiago”

I now take the time each year for a personal retreat. Walking one more stage of the Camino has become my annual detox and timeout for realignment and soul replenishment.

Photo by SHVETS production on Pexels.com

What is your inner dialogue?

How are you talking to yourself? Is your self-talk predominantly negative or positive? You have the power to change your thoughts and your mindset. Predominantly positive people are more successful, happier, and content. We like to have those people around us. When they walk into a room there is a different energy. While those people who are cynical and only focused on the dark side of life inevitably pull you down. You can shift those dark emotions by replacing them with positive thoughts. What makes you laugh? What are the five things that you experienced during the past 24 hours that you can be truly grateful for? Training the mind is like training the body in physical exercise. It takes practice and sometimes we have to simply empty the mind from all those dancing monkeys in the head moving between the pain of the past and the fear of the future.

The healing power of community

Our modern culture of individualism has mutated into narcissism and loss of community bonding. We, humans, are social beings. We are formed by the nature of our associations and primary family connections. We all need a supportive network of long-term friends, family, and community that provides positive validation. Volunteering in a group or a community for a useful project, charity, or church group that improves the lives of others changes the perspective from self-absorption to giving for others in a worse situation. Find a reason to do something for the good of something.

Repurposing failure, tragedy, and grief

Some of the world’s greatest minds have turned a personal tragedy, humiliation, or failure into success by repurposing their experience into new meaning.

Andrew Carnegie, arguably one of the most successful industrialists ever, emigrated to the United States with his family at the age of 12 to avoid starvation in Scotland. He eventually amassed a vast fortune in the iron and steel industry but spent most of his later life on philanthropic projects including the establishment of 3,000 public libraries in the United States, England, and Canada.

Charles Dickens’s greatest works of fiction came from a dark place after losing his father and one of his daughters within a week. At the age of twelve Dickens was forced to work with working-class men and boys in a shoe polish factory while his father was in a debtor’s prison. This experience shaped his views of the harshness of the industrial world confronting human values.

Oprah Winfrey, raped, molested, and beaten in early childhood, faced many struggles before becoming one of the world’s most famous talk show hosts. She told fellow chat show host David Letterman that through all of the pain and struggle, she was thankful, “for everything that has happened. I would take nothing from my journey.”

Tony Robbins came from a dysfunctional family and was thrown out of his home by an abusive mother. The experience turned him into one of the world’s top motivational speakers, best-selling author of self-help books, and life coach.

In a world addicted to immediate gratification and quick-fix solutions – take a pill and it will go away – the individual going through a hard time is often told: “Get over it and move on.” Every person has a different rhythm when dealing with grief or trauma. That sadness over the loss of a loved one remains for a lifetime but over time it can take on a different perspective.

Those “dark night of the soul” moments force a look inside. A crisis reveals what needs to be changed. Complacency is the biggest obstacle to soul connection and elevation of consciousness. During times of pain and grief, we dig deep into the resources of resilience for that next hill to climb on life’s journey of growth and evolution and ultimately fulfillment of soul destiny.

Reino Gevers – Author – Mentor – Speaker

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by | November 22, 2021 · 7:45 pm

When nature moves closer

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

—Lao Tzu

Relationship to the self defines the relationship to nature. For too long we as humans have defined ourselves as a separate entity to the natural world that needed to be controlled, exploited, and subjugated. Gradually the realization is dawning that nature is an expression of the divine and that we are an integral part of the whole.

Feeling, breathing, and aligning with nature during a deep walking experience is one of the most underrated and best forms of healing, especially when you might be feeling overwhelmed and frustrated by all the negativity of the external world.

Aligning and healing with the help of nature

Some years ago I had a profound experience on one of my pilgrimage walks on the Camino de Santiago in northwestern Spain. I started the walk feeling exhausted and stressed out. Inevitably my thoughts would wander back to the daily treadmill of life.

Then, in the following days, as I found my natural walking rhythm I noticed nature coming closer. I was starting to smell the grasses and herbs along the path. Birds would fly close by, stray dogs would follow me for part of the way. On the mountain tops of the Camino Primitivo giant vultures sat motionless a mere two arms lengths away.

I started practicing going in sync with my surroundings by attuning my senses to one element in nature at a time. It would either be the butterflies dancing ahead of me, the calming sound of a creek nearby or just feeling the sensation of a breeze against my skin.

Immersing in nature in this way, I found, has an enormously regenerative and calming effect on all senses. I practice these exercises in nature now as often as I can, having the added benefit of living on a beautiful island in the Mediterranean.

Science confirms the positive effects of the green and blue spaces

Several scientific studies have meanwhile confirmed that the connection with the blue and green spaces in nature has many positive physical and psychological effects. Humans are naturally drawn to a beautiful river or lake.

The Japanese practice of shinrin yoku, or Forest Bathing, has been proven to reduce stress hormone levels and lower heart rate and blood pressure. Trees and plants emit substances called phytoncides which have been found to boost the immune system. 

Studies by Qing Li, a Japanese scientist who has been carrying out shinrin yoku research for many years, showed that Forest Bathing increases the Natural Killer cell activity in people, with at least some of this effect coming from phytoncides.

David Strayer, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, conducted a study in which participants saw a 50 percent improvement in creative problem solving after only three days immersed in nature with all access to modern technology removed.

We are very much a species that has lost its way, having become disconnected from nature while emphasizing technological advancement. It has become more pronounced in recent years with the addiction to digital gadgets with the average person in the United States spending about ten hours a day glued to a computer, smartphone, or television screen.

The sages of old, the Mystics and Shamans, have all tought us that nature offers so many important lessons if we would only stop and listen. Every significant place and and animal has a story and a legend. By reconnecting with nature we return to ancient wisdom, to a place of solitude deep inside – the power of the present moment.

Reino Gevers – Author – Mentor – Speaker

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