Perhaps we all need a bit of contrast in life in order to appreciate things more!
I went for a cycle today and I LOVE Germany for many reasons and one is for its cycle paths - see photos below. I used to cycle to work in Dublin and during the PhD in Galway as well. I cycled when I was small and I loved it. I grew up on a quiet road in Limerick (now it is not so quiet). I would go out and cycle up and down the hill outside the house and down the back of the avenue near the racecourse. It was lovely and then I fell off my bike. I hit my head, there was blood everywhere and a neighbour brought me into the house where I was still gushing blood everywhere. I don't remember much apart from not being able to stop the bleeding. I remember going to the hospital and getting stitches. I was off school for a week with a bandage that went all around my head. I had cut open my eyebrow and still have a scar from it. Apart from that I stopped cycling. I didn't do much. I was still using my sister's bike at that point too. I didn't pick cycle again until years later. 

I arrived in around 2008 to Dublin and bought my own bike. It was a fold-up bike and I was living in the suburbs so I thought I'd be able to cycle it. Dublin was far too dangerous though. I didn't have the wherewithal to carry a whistle like some cyclists and get aggressive where needed. I'd watch some cyclists zoom in and out between the cars with ferocious speed. They dominated their space and they were not afraid to let the cars know that they were intruding on the small gutter that was at the edge of the road that they cycled in. Soon Dublin had cycle paths which were only lines draw on the existing roads to show that cyclists would be cycling there - see some photos below. It didn't help much. There wasn't much space. So I didn't cycle and I ended up giving my bike to my flatmate at the time who said that she would use it. 

Cut to 2012, I was now in Galway for the PhD and I was in a car accident. I wasn't in only one accident but three in a row and I sold the car. I had a back injury that kept me awake during the night with discomfort, I slept with heat pads on my back and I had continuous treatment with physiotherapy. She advised me to do two things to strengthen my back muscles which were, cycling and swimming. I had to learn to swim and then buy a bike.

I went for some swimming lessons before the storm in 2012 reclaimed the swimming pool in Salthill in Galway into the sea and that was the end of that. While I stopped the swimming as there was now no pool, I kept cycling and cycled in and out to the NUIG campus right up until December 22nd. I slept a little better and my back muscles started to strengthen. The winds were violent and most of the rain was beating off my face most rides but I never regretted the cycle in - as long as I had my wet gear on. It was refreshing and I was awake by the time I got on campus. It definitely got the blood flowing being out in the wind and rain but arriving in dry after delayering! I loved it. I had a €100 euro bike that was an old rental bike - see photo below and I loved that bike. It was old, it was heavy and the first cycle I couldn't make it up the hill to the apartment in Knocknacarra but soon after a few weeks I was cycling up and down the hills in Knocknacarra without any issue. 

I then moved to Dublin in 2015ish where I decided I'd cycle in and out to work in Kobo and if it was really bad weather I could shower before work. They had facilities in the office such as a gym downstairs as well as a changing room and showers. It was ideal. I rented a bike in the morning with the Dublin Bikes scheme on the north side of the city and then I'd drop back on the south side in a Dublin Bikes station nearby the office. I didn't need to buy a bike at all. I rented it usually for 25 minutes in the morning and 40 minutes on the way home - it seems like a mismatch as I took the same route but the cycle home was full of traffic and knocking on car windows to make sure you weren't squashed. See photo below for the route to show no cycle lanes in Dublin. 

Cycling in Dublin is taking your life in your hands - I needed to wear a high visibility jacket of some sort, a helmet and anything else to make sure that I are seen. If you are not used to cycling within a few centimetres of cars and knowing their blindspots then it is very risky and uncomfortable. As for cycle lanes, well, there aren't any really. I cycled O'Connell bridge with three lanes of traffic - no cycle lanes and you cycle in beside the buses too - the huge, gigantic double-decker busses. It's no joke and you'd want to make sure you have eyes that are on the back of your head as you look to see if a bus has just pulled out or not. It's exciting and at the same time it's something that you need to be aware of all the time. I didn't buy a bike in Dublin. It was all for the commute and I would say not an easy cycle. You are on alert the entire time making sure no taxi/bus runs you over.

In contrast then I come to Germany in 2017, I buy a bike in 2018 and I cycle it a lot. I love cycling here, there are cycle lanes and even the entire way to the city there is a cycle lane. Galway also had cycle lanes and some were off the road too which were a pleasure to cycle in and out to campus. In the city itself it was a different story, on the old bridge into the city barely pedestrians or buses would fit together at the same time. Anyway, Germany with the cycle lanes and you can cycle for over an hour, it's not a short little 3km cycle path in Galway that I mean, it's a full route. The cycle lanes can be off the road too and under beautiful trees where leaves touch each other as they lean in to meet in the middle. It is absolutely beautiful. I mean even the ones on the roads have space, you aren't thinking to yourself - oh no, I've to knock on a window or stop cycling or jump off the bike quickly at any point. It is pure pleasure. 

So maybe we all need a little contrast in order to appreciate the things we have. In some cases its cycle lanes, in others it's the beautiful weather in Germany because I am coming from a country which can rain in the west up to 225 days of the year. It's the appreciation of my health now that I have it and I cherish it, I don't think I will ever take these things for granted again. It's not until you go through the rough times that you appreciate the good. It's also important to recognise all those past experiences be it a trivial one like cycling or something else in order to recognise how far that you have come. Now don't get me wrong I loved cycling in both Galway and Dublin but the culture is different. It isn't a cycling culture in Ireland.

The culture of cycling is starting to develop in Ireland but in Germany they make bikes and have a culture that everyone uses a bike. In some cases in Ireland it's seen as being dirty - some say what about sweating - others say it's too dangerous, others have other reasons but they are not the same as here. Here everyone seems to cycle, I did notice not as many use helmets but they have more cycle lanes. Not everyone wears high visibility jackets, but they have separate cycle lanes. Not as many need to light up their bike like a Christmas tree in winter due to the darkness, because the lights are on both sides of the roads and usually you are cycling on the cycle lane. It's completely different in Ireland and Germany so there is no comparison. 

While you cannot compare these two countries in terms of cycling facilities and cycling culture, when you enjoy cycling and then go to a country with the right facilities for cycling, you cannot help but admire, appreciate and adore the presence of these beautiful off-road cycle lanes. So maybe we need a bit of contrast in life to appreciate what is in front of us, and when we can't appreciate what is in front of us at that exact time then keep in mind that there is always rainbow after every storm, there is a good day after every bad days and spring comes after every winter.  

Either way you look at it, those contrasts make me appreciate things even more. I love Germany, I love the cycling culture and I love the outdoors. It is so refreshing and invigorating to be able to run in the forest or cycle on a cycle path, here there are actual summers too. It's beautiful. Absolutely beautiful, I appreciate every day and every moment that I can go out and do these things. If anything the last while must have taught us is that the world can change at any second and for me, I had this view already from previous experience - see posts below regarding lessons learnt and I wouldn't change a thing. I love my life here and I love my life - FULL STOP!  

It's so great to see the good reviews come out regarding the Tolino Vision 5. I had been working on that device as part of the eReader team and I absolutely loved the coding part of work. I had a great opportunity presented to me when I came here for in 2017 to work with the eReader team as an Android developer and move full-time to Germany. While Android was completely different to what I had worked on previously, I was ready for the challenge.

I learnt a lot in that team and technology part was regarding architecture. I implemented the MVP (Model-View-Presenter) architecture in September 2018 for the light settings. It took approximately two weeks to implement but for the older existing design. The design was the part that took the longest. It seemed that the previous design of the light settings was that if you were in bright surroundings - you set the eReader to full brightness, however, as we all know the eReader doesn't need any light on in bright surroundings. It is not the same as the phone and this led to months of re-designs going back and forth to booksellers, having test evenings with beer-pizza nights so we'd have potential consumers test them. It went back and forth to having two screens explaining what SmartLight was to the eventual final design. 

As far as I know the landscape mode was updated. I had worked on the previous implementation of the landscape mode which was in a different architecture. I absolutely loved the programming side and I had loved programming since I learnt how to program in University. I had always had an interest in computers since I was a child - see post below regarding Technology and Teaching Technology - My Passion. I absolutely love programming, it's something that challenges me, is part of my identity, has given me a chance to develop games during a PhD, develop processes for healthcare systems, small applications to help run automated services and many other projects. I am delighted to see people use something that I've worked on. I wish them great success in the future. 

Solitude breeds creativity, it is when you can hear yourself think and those thoughts lead to creating and contributing a form of joy in your life. Loneliness, on the other hand, is the fear part of the brain. The 2,000,000 year old brain that is saying that we need social interaction and that we cannot cope. It is fearful. We must acknowledge these feelings and yet find a way out of loneliness and look at how we can contribute to the world. This is where you will find solitude, the positive side-kick of loneliness. Where loneliness is part of our ego screaming at us that we are lonely and feeling sorry for oneself, solitude is appreciating the quiet-time, looking at what you can do and taking control of who you want to be. 

I spoke with someone recently online who was very lonely and having bad feelings regarding this Covid-19 crisis. While he found it difficult to process these emotions I encouraged him to look at what CAN be done. What can he do. He seemed hard on himself saying that he was an introvert and not calling people or doing anything about it. I told him to recognise that loneliness isn't forever, it is not the eternal state of being and to have hope. Not to convince yourself to be positive as that's different but to look at it in terms of optimism. There is a huge difference between being optimistic and being positive. Being optimistic is a case of looking at the existing circumstances as not being great, however, acknowledging that it will be over soon. Being positive is convincing yourself that 'all is fine' even when it isn't and squashing your emotions - we are all guilty of doing this at times. This is also to do with emotional immaturity and sticking your head in the ground. I can say that once you process the emotions of pain suffered while feeling lonely, it is time to focus on contribution of what can be done and to get out of yourself and look at the world as our community. I am sure we all have something to offer. 

Look at what can be done, what are your skills, what can you help someone else achieve, be, feel, do? It is also looking at what we are absorbing around us, is our environment making us feel bad about ourselves? Are we consuming too much information that is talking about the death rates or are we around people that are overly critical and we have absorbed their criticisms. It can happen easily that you feel confident and then you find yourself in a toxic environment and slowly it creeps into your being. It starts off with a comment here or there, maybe someone being sarcastic or having a laugh and then accumulates as if it's a snowball rolling down the mountain. It brings with it all the snow on the mountain. The mountain stands firm but a layer has been peeled from its face. 

You will figure out if you are in a bad environment if the people around you do the things in the image I have shown above. They may be run by fear which is natural in these times of Covid-19 and while we can't prevent ourselves from interacting with some people especially during this crisis, it is time to look at how we speak to ourselves when around these people. Perhaps it is our self-esteem that has been impacted - self-esteem being the distance between who we are and who we want to be and they are insulting something attached to our identity. This will, of course, lower our self-esteem if we feel bad or stupid every time we do something. It is mathematical, we are losing our sense of self by the erosion of these words on our boundaries. We need to listen to ourselves more and build our own optimism so that it rebounds off our walls. It is another one of life's lessons teaching us some resilience. 

Another thing that I have found useful in the past is to also figure out what brings you joy, what makes you feel alive? I find sports always gave me the energy and positive feelings. I never regret a workout when I feel good after it. I love it. I love dancing, I love watching comedy, I love seeing other people laugh. It's contagious, we can uplift each other. I have found during this time that I look at other new things and applications including games, TikTok and other sources that have comedy in them too. Comedy is one of the key tenants to relief tension. It eases the atmosphere. 

There is an Irish proverb that says that in the shelter of each other, the people live - Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine. (I took that from Simon Coveney's speech on Global Citizen) and he also stated that we are reminded of the interdependence that we have upon each other. It means that we are one, we are all connected and everything in the universe only exists because it has a relationship to everything else. We are all interconnected, we are all sharing this Global pandemic crisis together as we grief the loss of some of our loved ones and see others suffer though the pain in overcoming this virus. Without relationships as Conway's game of life states, we would die of isolation. 

As we are living in each other's shelter, we are social creatures even as introverts who are drained from human interaction, we still need human interaction but to a limited degree. We might get overwhelmed by noise and oftentimes startled by noise or loud extroverted people. Our boundaries might be pushed by extraverts and we might be made uncomfortable. We might be seen as reserved in certain circumstances but may have trained ourselves to overcome some of these qualities by forming habits that are extraverted. This is normal, however, we need to get real about how we feel so we can heal our feelings of self-doubt and in terms of loneliness perhaps abandonment. These are emotions that can be addressed as you settle into yourself and learn to enjoy your own company. 

It is simple to think of loneliness and solitude as two separate things, one can be seen as negative and the other positive. Loneliness may come from the form of the self that is the child who wants to be taken care of and looked after. It is important to comfort that voice. Comfort it as if you were comforting yourself at 7 years old. Tell yourself that it'll be fine, it's only temporary and things will be back to normal soon. Have empathy for yourself the same as if you have empathy for another person - see video below. 

Solitude on the other hand is positive, it is the time to create, contribute, excel at being alone, emotionally regulate yourself and find meaning in things that you are doing by yourself and for others. Solitude can be the feeling of being grateful for a walk in the forest and a run alone. It can be a form of activity or it can also mean sitting alone in silence and relaxing - simply enjoying the peace and quiet. 

So, yes we may feel lonely sometimes but know this - it is temporary. While this crisis is unusual, it has given some of us a time to reflect on what is important to us, what we can do to help others and how we can contribute. The altruistic nature of humanity is starting to shine and it is truly heartwarming to see and feel. Regardless of the thoughts of some political leaders I am proud to see the head of government in Ireland renew his medical licence and contribute to some time working in hospitals as a medical doctor again. I am proud to see the people gather around and come closer.

​The connectedness of everyone has been strengthened in a global fight against one common enemy that does not discriminate in terms of race, age, gender or nationality. I am proud of the human race as a whole and the generosity that it shows when contributing and adapting to different things that can be done. I am grateful for all who are working hard on the front lines during this crisis as I speak to people online and try to uplift them, teach others a new skill and do what I can from home, all we can do is do our small part to help humanity. Some have learnt how to cook, others have learnt a new skill while others have felt the kindness reverberate through clapping at our emergency workers around the world, it is important to remember - while you may be experiencing some loneliness right now, it can turn to solitude, enjoyment of life and the loneliness will not last forever.

Like waves in the ocean, these feelings will go so stay optimistic that the future will be better as I know it will. Connect with others and learn empathy, as Bréné Brown puts it, what makes something better is connection. See what you can do to connect with others because you don't know what they are going through, it could be a case that they have experienced something truly painful so smile at a stranger, give the rest of your change to the person working behind the shop counter and tell them thank you and that it's for chocolate for them later. Once you adapt to solitude you will feel the best feelings of joy, happiness and feeling ALIVE. Do all the things that bring you joy, do something that you love once a day and these feelings will start to trickle into your being. It may start with synthetic happiness until it turns into true authentic happiness. It grows like seeds, they need to be watered daily.

​Do things that feel good and perhaps not for you but for someone else. Do something that brings another person joy, find a way to contribute, get outside of your head and your being and send a text to someone letting them know that you are thinking of them, say hi to people passing you by in the forest going for a run. People are coming together and connections are stronger, people are warmer and you can tell by going to the shop that people have found other ways to connect so find ways of connecting to yourself in terms of joy and enjoying solitude and also to others in terms of contribution. Connect with each other in our humanity as we are all in this together and as John Donne puts it 'no man is an island'. Look at what is good in your life right now and write them down, YOU ARE ALIVE and (first heal the wound of abandonment - see above) and then be thankful for your health, it is time to use it and uplift others when they are suffering from this pandemic. Have the compassion and understanding for others and perhaps a smile or something for another can impact their whole being. List the things that made time stop and you were in flow and do that everyday. Enjoy life, enjoy the creativity that solitude brings and enjoy the peace and quiet that it affords to all of us. You can make confidence permanent by doing the things you decide to do. You can be quiet and not shy but this is for another post as they are also two different things. This time in our lives is not a productivity test - read a book, go for a walk, get outside, get outside of yourself and contribute, find ways to bring joy into your life and loneliness will turn into solitude. 

​I am thankful that this part of my life is finished and I can do plenty of sports again having completed my first triathlon last year, learning how to swim was a tremendous undertaking and having the right team made it so enjoyable. I am so appreciative of the women that I met setting up that 10 friends triathlon team. They have been a central part of my life in Germany and I am delighted that we could train together at the weekends as well as now currently using zoom during this Corona crisis. We have swam, ran, hiked, and had plenty of great conversations together. I am so lucky that I got to do that last year especially as this year's turn of events changed the possibility of training even though we were looking forward to possibly entering a new race. So here are the main things that I learnt from the heart surgeries and the clarity that was achieved as a result of my life being turned upside down in a flash.  

• There is always something to be grateful for - you can choose your thoughts and how you view life. I choose to wake up and be grateful for the small things. The nurses would come in and have a chat with me in my room which I was really lucky to have in the heart ward overlooking the sea in Dublin. It was like a dream and I had all the technology that I could have asked for from a few friends that visited. I watched the entire series of Stranger Things and enjoyed it. 
• There’s a routine in hospital that you fall into fairly quickly. The hospital routine is one that takes up a lot of the day including cleaning, eating, nurses checking, tablets to be taken, scans and resting, oh and sleeping… a lot while the body recovers. 
• Movement and the body creates confidence. Using your body allows you to explore the world and only when something happens to it and this is taken away do we realise how lucky we are to breathe, walk, run and climb mountains. It creates a confidence for living and joy of living life. 
• It’s important to get real about your fears and let them go. The worst thing that might have happened has just happened and it will continue until it’s finished. You can choose to make friends with your fears or fight against it. I choose to comfort myself and told myself that it was alright. 
• Your energy for putting up with bad behaviour from others will diminish and you won’t accept it especially when you are recovering. This is really tough and sometimes you need to remove yourself from certain scenarios in order to recuperate. You just do not have the energy to either 1) fight 2) flee or 3) freeze. You are simply… lacking the energy to do anything as your body heals. 
• Getting dressed will make you feel better but others will think you are back to normal faster than you are - as you start to dress normally again it can trick others into thinking that you are back to full strength even when you are not. You might be dizzy for a number of days as they rectify your tablets. 
• The most important is to try not to rely on anyone - family or otherwise - they will not be there for you when the going gets tough. You are by yourself, you are going to the hospital alone, you are looking after you and that’s all you’ve got. Family or otherwise can come meet you afterwards but it’s best to not rely on that. Everyone has lives to lead and other things to manage. When it comes to it you have to support yourself and not put the weight of those expectations on others. It is also a case of not putting the weight of these thoughts on others. They are not responsible for how you feel - YOU are responsible for how YOU feel. All that matters is how YOU feel about THEM NOT how they feel about you. There is a freedom with that and it’s knowing that you want to be with people that you feel good about. 
• Everything can change within a minute. First thing you think is that it’ll be fine, you soothe yourself into knowing that you can get through it and next thing you know you are dumbstruck. It’s as if a truck drove into your life and decided to devastate your relationships too. You find out very quickly who you want to be around in your life too. 
• Challenging times can shake your world and put it to the limits but it can come out the other side better than before. These are life’s lessons and it brings with it such clarity that you will understand what things and why things have happened along the way. There is a sequence and order to events and what happens for a reason. It all falls into place when you have time to think in the hospital bed. Thoughts like, oh if I wasn’t stressed with this then this may not have happened. I need to learn to manage stress better. Perhaps this is true but we also need to figure out those who are projecting fear onto us and increasing our stress levels to an unhealthy degree. 
• Justification of decisions is wasting energy - Trying to justify YOUR life or YOUR life decisions to anyone else is wasted energy. You can try to convince and ‘sell’ an idea about what you are doing to someone else but at the end of the day if they are fearful that you are making the wrong decision with YOUR life then there is no point in convincing them as they will think that they are right regardless. 
• Whatever happens you’ll be fine and you are stronger than you think. People have a tendency to talk to you in terms of sympathy then that is putting them a level up over you and talking down to you. It is lacking in empathy and understanding and most importantly compassion. Know that even though it’s a rough patch right now, you’ll be fine, everything works out. You have yourself for your decisions and regardless you are stronger than you think you are. 
• Love is unconditional - love does not require you to do certain things or make certain decisions to please them, no love is based on the conditional actions of others. Love that is really unconditional does not require you to do certain things. Love that is unconditional is the expression of affection towards another person. It is waking up to the person beside you and CHOOSING to be with them and also love them for their BEING, not what they do, when they do something or how they do it. Yes appreciate them for doing those things but LOVE them for BEING the way they are. 
• You come into life alone and you will die alone - one of life’s major lessons is the ability to love yourself or even like yourself when you are alone. This goes without saying that a lot of emotionally immature people find it challenging to be alone. It is something that you need to acknowledge and while certain things occur that make it challenging to sit with yourself - for instance - see post below - you cannot convince a person with depression to overcome their depression by doing this. That would not be helpful and a lot of people who suffer with this may find it worse being alone. 
• Sitting alone in solitude without distractions can heal emotional wounds faster and allowing yourself to purge any bad emotion can alleviate all the bad things that have happened. You have strengthened the mental agility and your resilience muscle. You get a clarity with solitude that can be brought about by a stillness of the mind. Once the chatter escapes and the fear projections of others leaves your mind, it is only a case of figuring out what YOUR life looks like and embracing it for all that it is. You will not only learn to heal faster but you will enjoy life more, figure out what’s important and what’s not and shed the old to make room for the new. 
• The people that were not reliable before surgery - are also not reliable after surgery. No matter what happens to you other people will not change. There is a freedom in knowing that these people will remain unchanged but you can choose how YOU interact with them. 
• Freedom - ability to make up your mind and change your mind is part of happiness. Freedom to choose and stick with that decision is part of what makes us human and what makes us feel alive. 
• Happiness isn’t about getting what we want - it’s about being happy with what you have. This might sound cheesy but things like recovery instil in me some patience that I never knew was available to me until I had to pull away from doing sport and sit in the apartment for weeks on end. I was so incredibly grateful for having what I had and I had all that I needed. 
• Patience is something that is cultivated. Patience is not something that I was all too good at growing up. My piano teacher used to say I played it too quickly. He had a ruler that he's hit my knuckles if I played too quickly and referred to me as 'speedy Gonzales' regularly. I was forever in a rush and when I was focused I had a singular ability to concentrate on a task and get it done. Your ability to be patient comes from your ability to focus on the task. I knew that I needed to be patient waiting between surgeries. Not being patient is waiting for something with an idle mind and an idle mind is the devil’s playground. I readjusted what I did and took each day step by step adapting to what my new life meant being on tablets and waiting for the next surgery. Instead of going for a run I took the time to slow things down and looked at other activities. I painted, I drew, I started looking at other ways to keep my mind active and most importantly I looked at a lot of comedy. They say laughter is the best medicine and it really is. I watched a lot of comedy and made that a central part of my life for those months. I watched/read at least one thing funny per day and laughed at life - Frankl in a Man's search for meaning states that even in the worst of times that humour can cultivate a new way of looking at pain - an objectivity to life - see post below regarding Frankl - we can learn a lot from reading and re-reading that book. 
• You can read all the books in the world about the mind but until you are truly tested then you know that your practice is worth it. I read a lot during the PhD including 'as a man thinketh' and 'a man's search for meaning' and the concepts were I guess still abstract. I had already built a strong sense of self from the time during the PhD in my life, I knew who I wanted to be and what life I wanted to construct. (Programming joke - use the constructor to construct Ali's life AliLife aliLife = new AliLife();) It goes without saying that I am human and while I tried to maintain a clear mind I sometimes slipped as stress got the better of me. Stress can make you fall into an abyss of thinking that it is never ending and only your practical mental muscles that you have trained will get you out of it. Only when the theory has been implemented into practice will these skills become one of the most important lessons to keep in your life. Sitting with discomfort, meditation, awareness and allowing yourself time to breathe means nothing on paper unless you do it practically. You need to exercise the muscle daily to prepare it to run the race. Like any sport you need to train to go on the race, if you show up to run a 10km without training, your legs will teach you the lesson the following day by not being able to walk up the stairs. So the mental muscle is the same, you need to train that muscle frequently in order for it to cope with stress - stress being analogous to a sports race. You put your body under stress when you exercise - it's the good stress, it builds muscle and grows. In this case you need to put your other muscle in your mind under stress in order for it to grow and cope with stress. Your awareness will tell you your coping mechanisms in terms of stress. Your caregivers are the ones that have provided these coping mechanisms since childhood. Such coping mechanisms can be unhealthy reactions like aggression or avoidance. It is important to become aware of them so you can calm your mind. I know when I have not engaged in exercising my mind I let automatic negative thoughts (ANTS) invade and react in ways I probably picked up from watching on t.v. It is normal that this happens as we fall into an unconscious state especially if exhausted. Raising awareness about your thoughts can allow you to figure out and focus on who you want to be. It means cultivating compassion towards yourself, allow yourself to take brain breaks, do what you can to encourage mental agility and most importantly cultivate a positive attitude which is related to the next point regarding mindset. 
• Your mindset is everything - what you think, you become - Socrates. Some may question your ability to cultivate synthetic happiness in order to stay optimistic about the future. This is synthetic but as Dan Gilbert in the video in the previous blog states - it doesn’t matter if it’s synthetic or authentic. It only comes about once you have accepted reality and acknowledged what has happened to allow yourself to move forward. Your mindset can be cultivated - it is something you can become aware of when you observe your thoughts by writing, or going for a run or being alone in stillness. You can then realise some of the ways in which your thoughts are not true and adjust them to your new line of thinking. Thoughts can play tricks on you when you are in survival mode and comforting yourself by telling yourself that you are safe can champion feelings of gratitude for your life. 

These are the main things that I have learnt in a practical way after having these two surgeries. I guess the clarity I experienced from the first one gave me such a sense of serenity that I gained a confidence in knowing that all would be alright. Life might be fleeting but we need to cherish the moments we have. It is finite and can be changed at any second. Change is the rule not the exception. We can only learn to adapt and the species that has this adaptability survives the longest. It is part of our evolution as a person. We grow up and we rely on our caretakers, we learn from them, we observe them and when we are struck down then of course we want them to reassure us like the way they did as children but we must reassure ourselves, we have flown the nest and are independent of every other human's thoughts. Having this freedom creates some responsibility that a lot of people are afraid of. It takes bravery to be vulnerable and to sit in your own pain, to address what makes you you! It also takes a certain amount of consistency and persistence to settle our 2,000,000 year old brains that are hardwired to look for fault and scan for danger. We can easily fall into an unconscious state when zombified from lack of sleep and exhaustion. We may find it difficult to get a hold of our emotions in those states especially when something is bothering us and then the true test occurs. This test is what our mental training is used for. Our training of our minds to have a stillness and clarity to approach any problem. The training can then allow us to freely choose our attitude for without the training we can fall into the despair of suffering. It is our responsibility for how we feel and it is also our responsibility to cultivate these mindsets in times of stress. That is exactly what we do for our bodies when we train them for marathons - we train them to overcome the pain and lack of motivation, we overcome ourselves and we challenge our mental state to focus on achieving the goal, so then it is equally if not more important to train our attitudes for it is the greatest of our freedoms. It is a practice to cultivate this mindset and for it to be strong and resilient, it needs to be practiced frequently. It is easily forgotten as we fall into the state of unconsciousness and adopt behaviours that we have observed. We are creatures of habit - and we need to make this also part of our habit. I have fallen into bad habits and been zombified and I know for certain that with compassion for myself in knowing that I am human, we all make mistakes and forgiveness for what happened, I can strengthen my mind in knowing that I have learnt this lesson again and Frankl says it best when he says 'Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude'.

It can happen easily that we can lose our good mindset or attitude towards life in toxic environments or think that we have lost it and give up our own power but this is within us, within our own minds and our own control. It is something that needs to be flexed like any muscle and a reminder to us all that WE choose our thoughts, WE choose our own perceptions and WE can overcome the challenges that lie before us with great fortitude and resilience for what is to come is something that is a life and life knows no bounds in terms of good or bad, only experience as we ride the waves of the ebbs and flow. We can train our minds to be flexible and adaptable like the greatest of all species that survive and I know that I survived many challenges while experiencing this time in my life. It is not only that we survive but we can thrive with the right attitude and embrace all challenges with the excitement that comes with every breath we take, every step we can walk and every kilometre that we can run and know that 'WE ARE ALIVE' and what a great privilege it is to know that and experiencing that. Embrace life for all that it is - we only have one and I LOVE MINE, I love being me, I love reading, swimming, climbing, mountains, I love the sea and smell of freshly cut grass, I love learning new things and meeting new people (when they are nice!), I love dancing, exploring and going on new adventures. I want to contribute and promote learning computers for women. I love smiling at strangers thinking that when they smile back that maybe that was the only smile they saw that day. I love watching comedy and laughing at least once a day. I love sausage dogs in particular, they are SO CUTE and melt my heart and watching videos of them running towards a camera because that is exceptionally cute and make my heart sing. I love my family. My Dad is wise and loves poetry like 'If' by Rudyard Kipling and insightful poems that would have you thinking for years. I love my sisters and home life, I love it all and would I change any of it for the world - NO. I AM ALIVE. Learn to listen to your whisper and energy flows where your attention goes. Focus on what you CAN do. You are here to experience life, how you handle it is that the journey is FUN. 

The connection between your body and mind is not that complex although we make it seem that way. We want to attack something a 1,000 years ago and we primed our bodies in order to attack. We were afraid and we would cower down and protect ourselves in our caves. We were happy and we'd smile, our chemicals would be released as a result. It was pretty straightforward. Our body sends the signals to our brain and thus biofeedback allows us to take action. 

In these times we are more intellectual and sit in an office where we don't have the luxury of spending time with ourselves in solitude in order to hear our own thoughts and figure out what the contrast is, what makes us uncomfortable, what was unacceptable and what was fine? These are things that happen by accident - you are intellectually stimulated and focused on your goal so your attention goes to only the thing that matters the most and the rest take a lower priority. You may even squash something that happened down to seem like nothing even when it is uncomfortable in order to accomplish a goal. This can happen easily. We are all guilty of striving to accomplish a goal and focusing only on that goal while the world can fall down around us. 

We are now in a world where as Charlie Chaplin says 'we think too much and feel too little'. It is starting to lead us astray as we decipher other people's words and not pay attention to how we feel about them. It doesn't really matter how they feel about us but it's how we feel about them. That is where true freedom lies. It is the freedom of regardless of how they feel about us, we know how we feel about them. In saying that we are always going to be in situations where we need to calm our minds in order to accomplish a task. We get nervous and the more nervous we get the more we know that something really matters to us. We can learn to calm these nerves and balance our thoughts of what matters to us at the same time. 

Amy Cuddy delivered a talk a few years ago regarding what is well know in scientific circles as biofeedback. You can train your mind based on your bodies movement. Everyone knows that when you don't feel like going for a run but go anyway you will never regret it. The run has released the endorphins into the body and sets off signals of enjoyment. The connection between the chemicals in your brain and body is intensified by the movement of the body. Cuddy states how much body language and power poses can improve your confidence going into something like an interview. (I've linked some videos below.)

It is also proven that when we are feeling down that we can uplift our own spirits with our body. Although it is not recommended to undermine our own emotions and perhaps you need to feel deeply any emotion especially painful ones so you can heal first. Once you know that you can sit with yourself in your own discomfort, you have reached what is known as one of the traits of emotional maturity. Spending time on your own without distraction and thinking about your experience even when they are uncomfortable. It is sitting with yourself and allowing yourself to feel everything no matter how messy that is. Having the wherewithal to remain introspective as well as seeing perspectives outside of yourself can show some of your own growth. 

We also need to acknowledge the coping mechanisms adopted from our caretakers. It is something that we have learned since we were young in seeing how they coped with things be it in terms of aggression, stonewalling or having one person in a relationship 'win' in an argument over the other. These are all things that as an adult we need to address and recognise our own 'insanities' as they are referred to in some books. These are the things that when an event triggers them that they are automatic and without knowing it, you have repeated some of these behaviours. It is a case of recognising these and adapting your own behaviour. Being able to take a step back and listen to yourself over the voices that guided you into adulthood is one of the ways we form our own paths in life. It is also a case of remaining and maintaining a growth mindset - as mentioned in the previous post - and also paying attention to your own faults and insecurities. Looking at how we interact with the world around us can be uncomfortable at times and sometimes a challenge, however, the lessons that life presents us will keep appearing until we have them learnt. We will keep repeating the same behavioural faults until we gain such introspection.  

Some of these lessons are overcoming things like nervousness when in a different place. It is a simple technique that can reduce the chemicals in our 2,000,000 year old brains. It is reducing these in order to realise what is happening at the present moment in time and that we are safe. These strategies can be useful when working in the modern world or simply meeting someone for the first time. These can include adopting a power pose or smiling. Both of which involve movement of the body to open up the heart and send signals to the brain to tell it that we are safe, we are fine and we are ready for what is to come. Adopting these in the short term in specific times often brings us great biofeedback when needed, however, it is also a case of adopting these in the best of times so that we can remember and draw on them when we need them. It can encourage and support us through the inevitable storms in life.

Of course, we can tell ourselves to smile when we are nervous or stand up and put our shoulders back. Do we really remember in times of stress when Cortisol is flooding the brain and shrinking the hippocampus while enlarging the amygdala? Will our brains cope in such a stressful task and remember what's important? Probably not! While we can consciously use these when approaching isolated events and tasks like job interviews as we prepare for them and know ahead of time, what about the events that happen on a day-to-day basis that are unexpected? What about the times that we react unconsciously and fall into old patterns that come from our learned behaviours from our caretakers?

It is then a case of practice makes perfect, we need to stand shoulders back, relax our jaws as a clenched jaw - usually someone grinding their teeth suffers from anxiety and our body tells us that we are anxious even when we don't listen to it. Our bodies hold the tension in our muscles and is screaming at us to either 1) get out of a stressful environment as it will clench all muscles and restrict blood flow in order to run from danger and send more blood to vital organs to survive or 2) make us extremely tired and sick in order to let us know that it needed a break. Both of which is our biofeedback telling us to pay attention and when we don't pay attention to our bodies then our body tells us by our posture, for example, our jaws are clenched, our sleeping habits are disrupted or our stomach is upset.

What can we do with this biofeedback? We can address our pain and seek to find the lessons that our body is trying to tell us. We can understand what makes us uncomfortable and what makes our heart sing. What can we do each day to ease our troubles and find the things that we enjoy, we can do one thing that brings us joy daily and the contrast between discomfort and joy will grow wider until we are comfortable with our own discomfort. It may not completely go away but we can learn to live with it and send other biofeedback signals back to it knowing that that discomfort will also pass - we can smile and release oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin. We can even look at puppies and imagine one cuddling you as these also send signals to your brain as if it is happening. The brain can't tell what is real and what is fake but the chemicals released will allow for that good feeling that you deserve to have each and every single day.

We can also remind ourselves that we are safe. We do this by looking in the mirror and daily saying 'I am safe'. It tells your brain to relax, you will start to notice that in a couple of days that your body starts to also relax and you know that if you are in an unsafe environment that you will protect yourself more. Of course telling yourself that you are safe when you are not is another story but that is for another blog post. For now I will say knowing two things along with using biofeedback can improve confidence, reduce anxiety and allow you to grow as a person and they are knowing that 1) this too shall pass - pain is temporary and you may need to sit with that discomfort until you figure out what your body is trying to communicate to you and 2) everything requires growth and growth can be evidenced through pain and this is why we call it growing pains. Of course it is also adopting a growth mindset but that's in another blog post - https://www.alisonmcnamara.com/my-blog/done-is-better-than-perfect and https://www.alisonmcnamara.com/my-blog/technology-mypassion 

Sleeping is also an issue with anxiety and of course it is also not always easy, it is challenging and it opens the world to an entirely new level of understanding that can only be described as enthralling. I have been grinding my teeth since I was a child. My teeth are jagged and I have worn a mouth guard in the past but that is history. I no longer use it. I remind myself going to bed each night to relax my jaw, relax my face by first clenching my entire body tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter and taking deep breaths and before I get to the next breath I now fall asleep and if I wake up in the middle of the night (when I remember) I do the same and it works almost every single time. It is a trick known to send biofeedback to sleep better. Of course this takes effort but once a habit is formed and we are creatures of habits then we can sleep better. I also write three things that I am grateful for that happened that day. Oftentimes I listen to a guided bedtime meditation as well as this relaxing music helps with noise and allows me to think that I am in a Spa :-D 

As for stomach issues, I've also had those since I was a child but again, not anymore. I get them every so often when my stomach is in a knot about something or I am anticipating an exam - those of which I have done quite an extensive amount. I was in the education system for a long time and continue learning - it's part of who I am and I love it so I needed to find ways to relax my mind going into examinations. The ways I found to cope also involve body movement and breathing. It's a method called the 5-4-3-2-1 method that is well known in psychology circles as a way to ground yourself. Pick out 5 things that you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell and 1 thing you can taste. Once you run through this the brain acknowledges that you are present, it takes a breath and stops the 'monkey mind' hopping to the future.

They say depression is your bodies way of telling you that you need 'deep-rest' and you are caught up in the past while anxiety is linked to the future and focusing on possible outcomes that will disrupt your present. Both need your mind to pay attention for you are not living your truth. Both of which in buddhist terms are known as the monkey mind - not living in the present but focusing on the past or the future. There are simple strategies to over come certain forms of anxiety by telling yourself that you are excited. I learnt this a few years ago skydiving. Your body releases the same hormones but actually telling yourself that you are happily excited instead of nervous can make a difference in how you view and perceive the world right now including doing an examination or accomplishing a task. These are only a few tips and tricks I have learnt from reading during the PhD and adapting coping mechanisms through various situations that I have been in.

For me I need silence in order to hear myself think and that is also important, we need to listen to ourselves in order to find our own way. We need the solitude for productivity and sparking some creativity and we already know that we need a relaxed brain so that it can be an innovative brain. When it all comes down to it, life is a joy, and as my Dad says quite often 'life is what you make it'. Forge meaning in the suffering you have encountered for it is your journey, your story and it makes up you for who you are as a person - I recommend watching some of the videos below - without the bad, there is no good. We experience both the good and the bad to make up our story and biofeedback is the intelligent part of us communicating with us that something is going incredibly well or something is tragically wrong.

​We can tell ourselves that we are safe, we can comfort ourselves in times of anxiety and excitement and we can and are in charge of the thoughts as we observe them coming and going like waves on the ocean. Biofeedback is something that when paid attention to, can impact our entire worlds and improve our lives immensely by stepping in and letting us know that the body needs attention. It is also a case choosing to move the body and adventures so your body can give you back those endorphins and get the 'runner's high' that we all love and enjoy. As Alastair explains in his video below - choosing 'micro-adventures' if you can't go to the South Pole then enjoy smaller adventures and enjoy these for all that they are. The biofeedback will thank you for the adventures that will ensue and as Dad says 'life IS what you make it'! 

*It is important to note that I am referring to biofeedback as the natural form of mind-body self-regulation and not the EEG tests performed in studies that measure what happens, although these are interesting, I am speaking about ways that biofeedback can be used in order to overcome sleeping issues, stomach issues or events like going to an interview or taking an examination. 
Image source: https://alastairhumphreys.com/life-love/

Recommended reading:
Brain talks:
https://totalbrainhealth.com/30-days-to-total-brain-health-featuring-ted-talks-day-30-happiness-self-talk-our-brains/
Anxiety:
​https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2939454/
https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/behavioral-health-partners/bhp-blog/april-2018/5-4-3-2-1-coping-technique-for-anxiety.aspx
​Brain neuroplasticity:
https://positivepsychology.com/neuroplasticity/
https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/the-life-changing-potential-of-neuroplasticity
Brain research:
https://www.amenclinics.com/blog/8-tips-brain-improvement/
In the media:
​https://www.forbes.com/sites/amymorin/2017/08/05/7-science-backed-reasons-you-should-spend-more-time-alone/#3d210e0e1b7e

I've had plenty of time to reflect these last few weeks on the past couple of years and the whirlwind that has ensued. I remember focusing on my mindset during the PhD and really looking at how I was going to handle the overwhelm as well as handle the workload that was coming down the pipeline. I can now look back and really look at the journey I went on. It wasn't always easy, it was challenging, in fact a daily challenge but I was excited about that challenge. I was invigorated, inspired and I embraced it whole-heartedly. I adopted what is known as a growth mindset and ran with it for the PhD. I loved it. It gave such freedom and I watched documentaries and inspiring talks daily to keep myself focused. I read books like Carol Dweck's Growth Mindset along with many others. I watched a documentary on Ruth Gruber - the youngest person to ever receive a PhD and her phrase 'done is better than perfect' in the documentary 'Ahead of time' she mentioned that as the best advice for anyone wanting to pursue a PhD. She was absolutely correct in that. 

I also meditated daily and I know what you are thinking now - it's all fluff but if you think of it like a brain break then it really was. I also had a great quiet morning every morning. I made a lovely breakfast and watched the view of the ocean. I cycled into the PhD room daily so I got exercise. I arrived into the PhD room which was always empty at the early hour I arrived and settled into my desk for the day looking up at the inspiring quotes and posters on my desk to remind me that I could do it. These were both supportive and uplifting and I watched at least one inspirational video daily to start my day before getting started on both learning C# and coding a 3D gesture-based game that I was completely new ground for me. Of course there were days that I was frustrated spending hours getting something to work. I did design-based research using agile software processes which were focused on user-centred design with a turnaround time of two weeks. It was challenging being a one-person team. It was really a case of taking a step back and thinking - I don't have it YET and that's where the growth mindset comes to the fore. YET is the keyword there. It can almost cultivate a patience with yourself because you haven't gotten it YET, which is a key quality in accomplishing almost anything. Everything is done in stages, everything is done little by little, task by task, goal by goal in order to achieve what you have set out to do.

I was in a PhD room full of inspiring people wanting to pursue their goals in various doctorates including topics like the Mexican Narcocorrido as well as other heart-wrenching topics like finding strategies that help survivors of sexual assault and of course, those in the hard sciences too like pure mathematics. It was an eclectic mix of everyone and we'd go to the lunch room which was part of the PhD room daily and have discussions regarding human rights with people studying doctorates in law as well as Irish history or even English literature. It was a mix of people that I will forever be glad that I met.

This experience challenged my primitive way of thinking. By primitive I mean, I didn't put an emphasis in the language I was using and the meaning associated with particular words that would change the way someone viewed a particular topic. This also filtered its way into the PhD during the 'write up phase' as well. Each and every word of that book was selected carefully so it could be read with clarity and understanding and anyone could pick it up to understand what the study accomplished. This, of course, entailed letting go of 100s or pages of other work that I could have added but in order for the conciseness and clarity to be achieved I had to let go. It would have been a two volume edition of the PhD but I was limited to a word count of 100,000 and that meant cutting out and letting go of a lot of work over the years. 

Letting go was also where mindset played an important role and I am not saying that I maintained the same mindset 100% of the time - I didn't but I know that I did my best. I am human after all. Having this mindset allowed me to let go and I did focus on developing this mental muscle and look at also maintaining it. I realised one thing that I did not adopt this last year and that was my mental agility. I had stopped my practice in 2018 and it is a practice. Just like any other muscle, it's a case of exercising this muscle to strengthen it and in times of true hardship being able to use it and focus on its resilience. Look at the mind as a transient thing and getting perspective in terms of life happening in waves. It is so easy for our minds to think that something will never end.

When we are in a cycle of something happening outside of our control we can get caught up in thinking that it will never end. We want the pain and suffering to stop. This can happen easily when something happens and you fall into what I like to call 'child mode' when you want comfort and safety but the world isn't providing that for you. You need to find comfort and safety yourself. If you want peace, then practice being peaceful. If you want joy, be joyous. It is that simple. Of course the mind can play tricks on us and it can be difficult to overcome a chemical from our primitive 1,000,000 year old brain telling us that we are in danger. It is the neuroscience that will kick in but we are also in control of certain things that enable other chemicals - we can encourage the biofeedback to send other chemicals to counteract the stress hormone cortisol firing. 

These chemicals can be overwhelming and it is a case of finding what is right to comfort and support yourself and also calm the toxins in your brain. You can control them by relaxing your brain. A relaxed brain is a more creative brain. Your brain will be inspired, think better, create more and enjoy life more. Everyone wants that (I think!). During the PhD to maintain this, I watched films that were inspiring like 'The Great Dictator' that I believe is the best speech about humanity that anyone has given in the 20th century and is still true to this day. I've linked a video below. I had Charlie Chaplin quotes hung up on my desk to remind myself that I can love myself with his 80th birthday speech 'as I began to love myself'. 

These books focused on cultivating a mindset that would give you strategies for protecting your boundaries by focusing on your thought processes and becoming aware of them. This was, of course, through meditation and simply focusing on the present moment. I had been interested and practicing this for years. I have been to courses regarding this and looked at the benefits that others have attained from doing various forms be it, going for a run or exercising - as long as you are focused on the present moment I would call that a meditative experience. Going for a run can be invigorating and make you feel alive - sport can be analogous to life in that you need to exercise the muscles for them to get stronger, every muscle must experience pain to grow. Everyone goes through growing pains - that's why they are called growing - pains.

Also perhaps cultivating a mindset of looking at life as a series of tests that life shows you and they will keep appearing until you have learnt that lesson. Finding the lesson in the chaos and figuring out what can be learnt from this. What is this interaction with this person trying to teach me? Why am I uncomfortable about this interaction and then having the ability to still your mind and reflect on this can lead to a clarity and objectivity that can allow you to detach from outcomes and enjoy the process. Allowing for this detachment and keeping in mind the phrase 'I won't remember this when I am 80' is always good, although bearing mind that you can also undermine your feelings and situation by repeating this phrase - it is more to do with holding yourself in a place of compassion towards the human experience and understanding that it is all too fleeting. Time will inevitably, as everyone says, fly by without you knowing. It is cherishing the good and realising the lessons from the bad and looking at the entire thing with beauty. The detachment from the outcome can be freeing and also bring a plethora of benefits. You will find that you will work harder as you focus on the task at hand more, you may even enjoy life more as you appreciate where you are right now enjoying the process along the way. You might even start dancing with life when you adopt the process-based mindset and let go of the outcome. Life is a process with only one destination that we are all headed to so you might as well enjoy it along the way! 

Life is exciting, nerve-wrecking, thrilling, enthralling, relaxing, stupefyingly beautiful and looking at your body as an instrument that will help guide you along this wild-ride can also cultivate a mindset of compassion towards what the body can do. It can walk - a privilege denied to many, it can breathe without help - a privilege, as we know now especially, is to be cherished at the best of times and the worst of times, it can sustain injury after injury and recover. What an amazing thing the human body can do and recover from incredible injuries only with some rest and recuperation. It will even tell you when it needs rest and recuperation. It will be exhausted and when you find yourself needing to sleep after work then maybe work is draining your energy and it is time to find a place that invigorates you to work there.

You can get excited about new challenges OR it is a case of adapting to the existing environment and finding your attitude towards it. Reinvigorating yourself by supporting yourself and seeing that YOU can choose your perception towards it. It is having the strength and courage to be vulnerable and face your weaknesses and say... look, I have them, they make up me, that's fine, this is me! I am improving them by learning how I interact with the world around me. It is focusing on what can be done and focusing on the main thing that started this blog post which is 'done is better than perfect' in order to keep motivated and keep going.

As Charlie Chaplin says in his speech below 'You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful​'. Life has taught me a lesson since 2018, I stopped exercising my mental muscle - I know now that this was the lesson life was reminding me and teaching me to embrace it all. It's a great adventure after all and a reminder of the brief time we have on this wonderful place called home. Everything is part of our story and we can write our own story by choosing our own direction. Life is also not that serious and a laugh a day is a necessity to get through any bad situation. Frankl stated in 'man's search for meaning' - see post below - https://www.alisonmcnamara.com/my-blog/comparison-thief  and also related - https://www.alisonmcnamara.com/my-blog/comedy-and-computer-games-as-a-way-of-coping - that laughter can be a lifeline to survival and when things can challenging - we can use these examples as a way to laugh at the absurdity of life - “Humour, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.”

One more thing, if you find yourself procrastinating - it's because you feel bad doing what you are going to do so you develop strategies of distraction or avoidance towards doing these things. Once you figure out that then you can readjust your feelings to point them in the right direction. What thoughts are you having that is making you procrastinate? Can you do things like go for a cycle/run/swim/walk and then do 5 minutes and tell yourself that you'll only open the book and see what CAN be done. This is a simple strategy for feeling good and then associating those feelings with the thing that you are procrastinating doing. It's a psychological tip I learnt through the PhD - some of these I obviously forget from time to time but I try and practice as often as I can. 

Always important to laugh at least once a day - here are some of my favourites. 

Recommended reading:
Mindset: Changing The Way You think To Fulfil Your Potential -  Dr. Carol Dweck
Rewire Your Brain: Think Your Way to a Better Life - Dr. John. B. Arden
The Happiness Advantage - Dr. Shawn Achor 
Flow - Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
The seven habits of highly effective people - Stephen Covey
The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance-What Women Should Know - Claire Shipman and Katty Kay
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance - Angela Duckworth

Some funnier related reads:
How to Be Human: The Manual - Ruby Wax

The Women in Tech conference is happening this year in June and it will be a virtual conference given the circumstances. I am delighted to speak and also engage with inspiring women in the area of technology. I'll be in the Java room engaging with fellow Java enthusiasts during this virtual conference in June this year. 
Please join the women tech conference at the link below. It's a great opportunity to meet like-minded individuals who are starting out their career or those who have established their careers in the tech industry. Please see the link below to sign up for the virtual conference online. See you there! 
https://www.womentech.net/women-tech-conference?join=NDg3Nw==

I guess I will talk about this a lot more. I appreciate my life so so much and I am never going to take it for granted. Supporting yourself means everything. It means picking yourself up when you have been kicked down. We are all human and make mistakes, we fall into toxic patterns easily, we get infected with a poor mindset by staying in a negative environment but we have the control. We must notice when this happens. 

When was the last time you looked at the stars and saw how beautiful they are. When was the last time you took a deep breath in and looked at the wonders of the sky. Being in nature brings me a stillness like no other - of course it is natural that when your mind is not there then you are not really in nature, you have carried your vibrations and thoughts with you from the traumas. That is natural. That is fine. You can have those times. You are allowed to have that time.

You can appreciate your time and life when the time allows it. The bad times are temporary, like all things. It is important to reflect and have time to yourself to allow your thoughts to calm. It is also important for someone to have solitude to collect thoughts especially if in a negative environment. This is another lesson I have learnt and I thought I knew already and tried to do this by going for walks but a colleague would accompany me and I didn't get the space I needed for my brain to breathe. Solitude allows for creativity. It allows your brain to breathe. I was reading all the books and had read books about this but hadn't put the things I learnt into the practice needed. Instead I focused on the positive but didn't allow my brain to let the negative thoughts be there. You are not your thoughts! You are the observer or your thoughts! When you sit for a while or walk in solitude negative thoughts will pop up, do not push them away - they will get louder - observe them, allow them to appear and they will go like waves on the ocean. By pushing them away you are drawing your attention to them and draining your energy. Some of the books helped me to focus on the positive but it also undermined my own experience by thinking that 'it could be a lot worse' and that is a toxic way to be and also your feelings are your feelings and your experience is your experience.

A few year's ago I read Man's search for meaning by Viktor Frankl, the book details life in a concentration camp and how people have incredible resilience and fortitude in circumstances that we can only imagine. It is even difficult to envisage what it was like and the utter despair experienced by those who were in the camps. The grief having lost their loved ones and yet seeing the same people walking through the camps offering pieces of bread to others and being compassionate. I read about these experiences in awe and I also thought to myself - wow, people go through so much worse, my experience is nothing in comparison. Again, comparing feelings and undermining my experience in order to suppress the bad thoughts that I was experiencing in the workplace! My mindset was skewed and toxic as a result. Yes, focus on the positive, but do not undermine your feelings or your own experience. Comparison is the thief of joy and it truly is especially when comparing traumas. Allow yourself to feel without figuring out the 'why'. 

I am all too familiar with the concept known as 'the leaky STEM pipeline' from my PhD and also from my own experience at school. I have seen girls drop off bit by bit away from the technology side of things into other areas and I know, I have also been tempted myself - see post on technology and teaching technology - my passion below. I have been in school and the girls had a low uptake of subjects like Physics. I have even gone into visit an all girl's school where they didn't even offer Physics as a subject. It is mandatory for all to take a science subject and they would take Biology, few would take Chemistry and not a lot would take Physics. I even took Biology over Physics and I knew that I was taking computers in college! My first year I had to get revision books of Physics as I hadn't looked at it for two years previously so I could catch up quickly. I did thankfully but they covered a two year course in six weeks to get everyone at the same level and out of 88 students taking that course 11 passed the first time.

The course was renowned as one of the 'sorting the men from the boys' to make sure they knew what they were signing up to in Information Technology with the highest failure rate on campus. It was tough, it was challenging but I still enjoyed it. It wasn't the same as going to school with girls. It was a culture shock and the competitiveness was rife. I am so grateful I lived with girls to keep me encouraged and my head straight as I would have internalised a lot of their insults otherwise and I was having too much fun. I even did my final year project in Linux so that I could be in a different room for some peace and quiet from our fourth year computer laboratory and I was delighted. :-D So... in essence, I agree 100% with the video below and I have lived it... every part of her descriptions of what happens!   

If we are  socialised to be brave instead of socialised to be perfect  - men and women approach problems differently. This video below validated almost every single part of me trying to explain to the men that I have a different way to problem-solve. The girls fear of not getting it right. This is simple - this is, in essence, the growth versus fixed mindset. I have seen with my own eyes some of the things that have happened at University while studying. She gives an example of approaching a lecturer stating that there is something wrong with my code and a female approaches and says - there is something wrong with me. I have seen this, I have lived this and I have been there! I believe environment matters and girls tend to be socialised to internalise that something is wrong with them as opposed to objectifying the issue - which is difficult to do if all you hear all day is that you need to read a book or start again you don't know what you're doing - these comments were again on the Facebook groups answers to people asking questions as new members of the Java Programmers group. 

PERFECTION OR BUST! We have learned perseverance and we need to socialise the girls to be brave and be comfortable with imperfection. 

This gif below pretty much sums it up! I'm the one on the right incase you confused me for the one on the left! :-D 
I love working from home, in fact, in my previous job I requested working from home privileges be two days a week and the one before that I thought we could work from home that's why I accepted it. Neither case was true! I, myself, prefer working from home especially during these times. You have no interruptions, it's very peaceful, I can concentrate, there's no noise - the list goes on and before you ask, no, I don't miss human contact. I have plenty of zoom meetings and other meetings for that. I keep myself busy and enjoy doing a lot of sport so this also gives me the freedom to get out when I want to mostly during the morning before I start work. I used to run in the mornings while marathon training and still enjoy the early morning rises. It's great to quiet the mind and keep focused throughout the day. I also enjoy walks in the afternoon after I eat lunch and go into nature. This nature is where my heart is free. I feel free to create. I am surrounded by the wilds of the birds singing and dancing in the air as I look up to the blue skies that surround me. It's away from noise and traffic. There are real forests, a real escape. A wave of calm washes over me as I enjoy walking through the forests here in Germany. It's serene and I am serene. So to conclude, yes, I love working from home. Stay healthy and stay home everyone! 

I am excited to get started on the new Udemy course and also look at the intermediate series for my YouTube channel - learn computers with Ali - which will take off from multidimensional arrays and look at more examples as well as using the ellipsis (...) in a method's parameter list to indicate that the method receives a variable number of arguments of that particular type. 

I have finished the series of YouTube beginner's programming playlist now which finished up at multidimensional arrays. I also posted up the Udemy course --- Free Udemy course: https://www.udemy.com/course/learn-beginners-java/
​It is limited to two hours of content. The next Udemy course will be announced when it is available and it will have a lot more content, programming exercises and self-review quizzes.

Finding my passion has been relatively easy, I have loved computers and teaching from a young age. I was a computer mentor in school and at lunch time had the key to the computer room to allow other students in under my supervision. I also engaged in workshops where I showed the class what to do in these classes. One of the computer classes in school allowed us to play games and one of the games was a typing game where you'd type a sentence and the car would drive. The errors that appear on screen would appear as flies on your windscreen and you could make the car go faster, the faster you typed. So I learned how to type properly as I knew that would come in handy. It was free and in school so why not. I also had plenty of experience with other consoles at home but this stands out as the point at which I did a project on my cousin who was working for a games company as a 'Senior Test Automation Engineer' and thinking, WOW, what an amazing job. That is like a dream job, working in computers sounds amazing. In school we had to do a careers project to see what we would apply for after school and what Universities and Colleges we would go to. It was about finding out what our goals, dreams and interests were. I did the school careers project on him and all the while was encouraged by both School and home to pursue my interests. Things came naturally when setting up computers, pulling them apart, installing a new chip in an old Dell remanufactured machine that my sister had brought home. 

I didn't stray too far and continued into studying Information Technology after school as a degree but I was left with this sense of wonder at how I was going to cope within this environment. The fourth year of the course was really challenging and I went through a lot in terms of the final year project. I had been studying away from the guys in my class as they were all into the 'one up man-ship' - see post below regarding masculine toxicity. The competitive, dominant and oftentimes, offensive nature of Information Technology often led me to have a low self-confidence. I worked hard. I knew what I was doing. I remember coming back after the Summer one year and I was chosen to be a mentor to the 1st years of the course. The University were going to pay us and we were going to give them classes in different topics. I choose to cover the Fundamentals of Electronic Engineering and came up with pretty unconventional ways of explaining AND, OR and different logic gates by telling a story of two people going to the shop (I always like real-life examples)!

Naturally I loved this as I had a whiteboard and blackboard at home when I was growing up and I tended to lean towards explaining things to others easily. It was logical. I loved it. It made sense! I finished up in the degree having mentored for a few years and started work in Luxembourg where I was left with a terrible taste in my mouth. It wasn't easy. My first month my boss was fired and so our department was now under one of the directors. I remember sitting at lunch and him explaining to me that the reason why he divorced his first wife was because she spent too much time with their new born child. I was stunned but okay, this was a different culture. It was pretty jarring to hear though. 

I worked in a software security company as a tester and at the time we took it in turns to output the software onto devices for clients. It was my turn this one particular week and so I asked Franc where the sleeves were, he said check with marketing so I went to the marketing department and they said to check with HR and the chase went on until finally HR saw me walking around the office looking for the sleeves and said that is enough. Myself and HR marched back to his desk and demanded the sleeves and he opened his desk drawer to hand me them. I remember thinking - this environment is not for me. There was plenty of other things that happened but that was the one that really stood out as the entire company had seen me wandering around looking for these sleeves. I felt somewhat humiliated and I think maybe that was the plan when I look back on other things that were done. I didn't last long there. I wanted to move somewhere else and as I wanted to get into programming and never felt good enough I decided to go back and do a masters. 

I started into a Masters programme and there was a taught first year with programming classes. I loved it. I got top of my class and started teaching computers in the evenings to older people part-time. It then came to the following year and we needed to do the thesis and work in a company full-time. I got a job in Dublin. It was time to move to 'the big smoke'. I had moved to Luxembourg to avoid this but as it was my Masters I had to go in the end. I remember thinking, I'll only stay for the six months that is necessary to fulfil the programme guidelines and then move back to Galway. 

I started working in a Healthcare company as a programmer analyst working in Java in Pega systems and JavaScript in Sharepoint. It was great, I got assigned a student to work alongside me. I worked and managed to get a pay rise and large bonus. I enjoyed it. Then some things changed and some people joined the department that were not very nice. It became really competitive again and I sat quietly and did my work. I wanted to take the time at lunch to go outside and so I went for walks at lunch time. I got assigned work on this healthcare project and my boss told me about some clinical trials and people's fingers falling off. He told me some other stories too but let's not go there. I decided not to work for and be a cog in the wheel of a giant healthcare company after that. I saw an opportunity to get involved and become the first person employed in a book publishers programming and digitising for the future. I snapped up the opportunity quickly and you can see some of these projects on my portfolio page! 

I enjoyed working there and loved the projects I was working on. We won the digital awards for our work on Project Maths resources and I learnt a lot while I was there. I was always thinking about whether I could get back into more programming though as it moved into using authoring tools to develop these as well as flash but little programming in the end. My title had changed three times my first day too so it was no surprise that the job was not what I signed up for in the end. I applied to do a PhD and developed my own proposal in the technology that I loved. I focused on gesture-based technology and had the privilege of getting a full scholarship based on this in 2012.

I moved back to Galway and lived happily for a few years working in the PhD room where I made and met some of the most interesting people who challenged my beliefs every lunchtime. They were so encouraging, focused and driven people. It was inspiring and motivating at the same time. We were all doing PhDs and all focused on finishing as soon as we could. Supervisor meetings, department meetings, side work as a lecturer, planning conferences, attending conferences, writing journal articles, developing pilot projects, developing focus groups and the next stages of the project, picking up work supervising students - I loved it. I loved all of it. I loved the fact that I could go into the PhD room at 8 or 9am, sit quietly working on my project until lunch and then continue until dinner before cycling home to cook a nice hearty meal. 

Towards the end of the PhD it was back to Dublin and getting back into industry. I worked in a technology company and for the first time I found myself in a company where I thought - wow - this place is great. I love the people working here. They all want to be here and are all nerds like me. The technology company in Dublin was for a while and I also kept on teaching on the side as a lecturer in Pulse College teaching C# programming in Unity to develop games. It was a lot of fun but I couldn't manage to keep both and had to give up the Saturday 11-5 lectures. It was too much. I wanted to put in more time and I usually had games to teach the students game programming too but every evening I ended up doing something.The technology company in Dublin  took over and it was full-time. I spent a lot of time at work and it was enjoyable most of the time. We had game nights, poker evenings and beer o'clock every Friday. It was great and I am still in touch with the people I worked with to this day. It was a 'work hard, play hard' mentality and I loved it. We were a team and we really were like 'team work makes the dream work'. 

To clarify, I have worked with inspiring men who have also forged my outlook in life. I want a respectful environment and workplace. Somewhere that respects both genders equally. No one is shouting at the other or disrespecting them and I have worked in those places too. I have worked with men who want their daughters to also get into technology and want it to be a better environment for them too. All equal, all treated with respect, all kind to one another - that is possible, I have worked in those companies as well so don't get me wrong when I am painting the highlights of my career so far. I am advocating for a better environment for everyone. Freedom for both genders in terms of expression and respect in the workplace. 

I have since been very successful in other companies with a better environment and enjoy working from home quite often and this allows me to code without the nonsense of these males thundering on their chests like the primitive apes that they are. It is like being in a real life Jungle, it is how I see them when they are thumping your chest after solving a problem - an ape in the Jungle - a primitive being who has not evolved and a repressed male who cannot be vulnerable even when true strength and courage is in vulnerability and having the integrity while having the convictions to follow through. Being angry doesn't solve anything. It's a case of learning and remembering the lessons, forgetting the rest and focusing on overcoming the obstacles. It is a case of creating and becoming a creator in your own life and what you want to focus on. 

It is a case of finding the right environment, creating the best version of yourself and focusing on your own goals, thanking them for making you realise what you don't want and finding where everyone is working as a team, the level of cooperation is high and you work together to achieve a common goal. This is what I had initially and unfortunately we all stumble across the 'primitives'. Once you find an environment that is willing to work with you then you will thrive. It is a case of being open and free to do your work to the best level that you can. It is also a case of gaining perspective when it comes to working in an environment that isn't working for you and that means engaging with programming groups online - helping others - seeing where you can contribute.

I am now an active member of a number of Java programming groups where people ask many questions online and I have had the pleasure of getting to know a lot of lovely people in technology. I love technology. I love the people. I love teaching and I love what I am passionate about. This is not to be confused with preaching. You can do whatever feels right for you but for me that is a case of thriving in an environment that works best for me so I can shine. It means working with people that I can call 'my Uruguayan brother' (referring to my previous colleague) or 'best boss ever' (referring to my previous boss) frequently and stay in touch after work. It is having the freedom to take on other projects and look at working on other things as well as work and wanting to work at home. It is getting the time and space necessary to complete the job that you are passionate about and contribute to communities around the world. It is about producing and creating your best code and learning from others. It is engaging with others and being able to communicate and lift each other up when you find yourself taking longer to solve a problem than normal. It is about being in an encouraging environment that inspires you to thrive. It is having constructive feedback of where you can improve without unhelpful feedback or confusion. It is about knowing where you stand.

​The contrast is there and I will strive to be in a good environment where I can thrive as I continue working in technology. Move on with your life - create what you want, take responsibility and put the past behind you. Some people are not nice and it is taking back the power and moving on. Forget about them and create the best life and success you can imagine! You can create your best life yet. Take back your power! Thank them for showing them exactly what you don't like and giving you the strength that it gave you. I love technology and I love teaching technology, they are my passion and they are what make my heart sing. 

Recommended reading:
In the news:
https://www.independent.ie/business/jobs/independent-jobs/why-toxic-masculinity-in-the-workplace-is-everyones-problem-37892005.html
Books:
Rising above a Toxic Workplace - Gary Chapman, Dr. Paul White, Harold Myra.
Women in Tech - Tarah Wheeler, Esther Dyson
Mindset - changing the way you think to fulfil your potential - Dr. Carol Dweck
The power of positive thinking - Dr. Norman Vincent Peale
Comebacks at work - Kathleen Kelley Reardon, Christopher T. Noblet
Emotional Intelligence - Prof. Daniel Goleman, Ph.D.
Dodging energy vampires - An empath's guide to evading relationships that drain you and restoring your health and power - Dr. Christine Northrup
The Universe has your back - Gabrielle Bernstein
The Ultimate Happiness Prescription - Deepak Chopra, M.D.
You can heal your life - Louise Hay
The gift of forgiveness - Katherine Schwarzenegger
How to be human - Ruby Wax
The Highly Sensitive Person - Elaine N. Aaron
Burnout - the secret to solving the stress cycle - Emily Nagoski, Amelia Nagoski
Grit - Angela Duckworth
Braving the Wilderness - the quest for true belonging and the courage to stand alone - Dr. Brené Brown
The Happiness Advantage - How a positive brain fuels success in work and life - Dr. Shawn Achor

I have listed some videos of the summaries of some books that I have read that I have found useful and one that summaries lessons learnt from 134 books. Brain chemistry plays an active role - so take care of your brain chemistry - eat healthy, exercise, take vitamin D. 
I highly recommend reading the Growth Mindset - it is related to business and is lesson 3 in the video below. This is where companies like IBM have grown and reduced their toxic culture of competitiveness and status and incorporated a culture of cooperation and teamwork. 

Yesterday I decided to post the #challengeAccepted challenge on Facebook. It's a photo challenge where you take a photo of yourself and share with up to 50 beautiful women across Facebook to pass on the challenge during these Corona filled times! I decided I was going to add some of the men in my life, after all, why not share with only one gender? I mean, I am in a lot of Java Programming groups on Facebook and I have helped a lot of men with their programming problems. Some have engaged in what is known as masculine toxicity. It's the toxic culture where there is a competitive nature. The inevitable 'one up man-ship' and competitive nature can be destructive. It is not helpful in the slightest especially to those learning Java. For example, yesterday I know a complete beginner posted up an error that we have ALL experienced as programmers and the rhetoric went like this - go back to beginner's, read another book etc etc. 

The destructive nature of male toxicity will prevent people from learning and engaging in groups - at all! Some of the comments under mine were quite harsh and pointed out that he should go back and read a book. While this might be true, it is not solving the problem at hand and we all encourage programmers to 'learn by doing' so telling them to go back and read a book isn't only unhelpful, it is invalidating and discouraging for those that are starting out. Remember this was his first post in this group and he had stated that. 

Perhaps something was being unearthed in me yesterday when I realised that some of the posts that I engaged in in the Women in Tech groups were also excluding the voice of men and some of the Java programming specific groups didn't have any women! It was as if at times there was a breeding ground for separation. A toxic separation where we do not hear the other gender's perspective. We only see them separating themselves from each other in order to solve problems. While this can be productive when looking at and encountering gender-specific issues such as the pay gap, it is also a case of finding the balance and inclusivity among genders. Why does one group get to have fun programming or engaging in social activities for fun and not the other? It made me think!

I was here doing all this Java programming, dancing, singing and engaging in some social activities online during lockdown while my male colleagues were missing out. I shared the challenge with them and some stepped up to the challenge and I have to say kudos to them for accepting it and running with it. I could not be more proud of knowing these men that will engage in things for fun and let go of the stigma that is attached to their male toxic environments. What started out as a bit of fun allowed us to be more inclusive. 

Boundaries - the definition of boundaries is to see what is okay and not okay. Being able to say yes to what makes you comfortable and no to what makes you not comfortable. I fall for people saying 'we are only concerned about you' when someone says they are concerned and I tell what's the matter. All of a sudden the news has circulated and I am now in a position where I have to defend my boundaries and it drains more energy. The person who I told in the first place had passed on the information to another and the other person had questioned me in front of more people. It is really uncomfortable. My vulnerability is now exposed and it can be humiliating depending on the personal details being circulated. 

What was once my private business and something that I was telling someone in private is no more and the trust is broken. Can I forgive the person? Yes, sure, it was my responsibility not to tell them in the first place but I gave in and did tell them! I don't know why, perhaps it's a way in which they kept on and on and on asking questions until I finally gave in or maybe it's the sense of connection that I felt at the time was strong enough. It was this sense of connection that we all crave. I have learnt from this and I know that it's important to practice boundaries to have healthy relationships. It is rooted in love and goodness for yourself and for them. 

Boundaries come under the realm of respect, not just for others but for yourself. It is taking into consideration what makes you feel uncomfortable and what is fine to talk about. When someone breaches your boundaries, it makes you uneasy, uncomfortable and sometimes it's a case of reacting in a compassionate way towards yourself and saying - right, I need to reestablish these again and not let that happen again. I have been fooled in the past with trusting my past colleagues when it came to boundaries and under the same realm of 'we are concerned' which is actually a way of getting information from you and spreading it into the drama filled workplace. This breaks trust, breaks walls and breaks relationships.

Lowering your boundaries when you are sick or exhausted is normal. You are vulnerable in these times. You are going through a time where your strength is under pressure and walls are down. People can unfortunately give into the feeling of someone else caring and allowing them to look after you. We all do it, we all go into this 'child mode' - it's natural. We want the connection to another human and meet them in a way that is empathic and authentic. Empathy without boundaries is not empathy so it is important to protect them. 

Be compassionate that your boundaries may fall when you are sick and they need to be protected even more then. Perhaps notice when this happens and become more aware when you are triggered. It all leads to healthier relationships and understanding and for those that do not respect your boundaries - were they ever really your friends to begin with if you can't trust them? We are all allowed to make mistakes, especially when we have so readily sought the guidance from others. We are always improving.

For me improving looks like this, it's accepting myself as I am, being grateful to be alive, knowing that I confident in my own skin, I am a beautiful person, I approve of myself, I love myself and I am a work in progress. I focus on becoming aware of my own thoughts, feelings and limits aka boundaries. What is uncomfortable, recognise why and what beliefs pop up. It's recognising these and having the courage to sit with them and still do things that bring up uncomfortable thoughts. It is not accepting things that are wrong for me and protecting my own boundaries. We cannot have a healthy relationship without practicing boundaries. 

Recognise that there are people that will always want something from you. They want your time, energy, money, control, reaction - anything. I used to think that I wouldn’t stoop to someone else’s level and not treat them with respect. It is now a case of me seeing respect for what it is and when someone else isn’t willing to give me the respect I deserve, I owe them nothing. That might seem harsh but if you think of life as a computer game and they are sending in bazooka full ammunition and you don't take out your defence mechanisms to fight then they will send in all they have and more until it has worn you down. With boundaries it is not your responsibility to accept the fault that someone has overstepped them, it is your responsibility to protect yours if they have been overstepped. In computer game terms, your health bar would deplete rapidly after boundaries are encroached, to keep it maintained you need to arm up, say no and defend or withdraw when necessary. It is acceptable to revoke access to you when they have overstepped your boundaries. It is a privilege to be in someone else's story and life. Who you share your story with in person is an honour. No one is automatically entitled to it, you get to decide that and that is part of the beauty of boundaries. You have the decision power of who you allow into your life and you decide who gets to engage with you in conversation, go on hiking trips, camping, who you live with, run with, go cycling with - do any activities at all. Over the last while I can describe different types of boundaries as the list below:

• People who want your time and push you to spend time with them - anything forced is not genuine
• People who need to convince, cajole and manipulate you - this is not an authentic relationship
• People who want money from you for something that they are trying to convince into getting out of you - or those that complain so much that they want you to 'rescue them' - this happens especially online on development groups from my experience
• People who want you to change - change job, change YouTube content, change anything, change your personality, change anything about you - this is conditional and can also be gas lighting if they are undermining your very being like saying 'you're too sensitive' etc This can shake your identity eventually so protection is needed to the fullest, step away from them, revoke access
• People who want a solution to their problem and they keep telling you the problems over and over again - You have the right to say stop when you have listened enough times
• People who put pressure on you for an answer or a solution and it’s time-dependent - time pressure can happen in any situation and can royal us up easily - oh we need to do this fast or by tomorrow - you are entitled to say no especially if it is laying unnecessary pressure on you and also if there is absolutely no need
• People who want you to do things in their interest over yours - do not sacrifice yourself for others - you are entitled to say no and not be convinced
• People who insult you to push your buttons because they want a reaction - you are entitled to say stop and give a consequence to this - refer to the paragraph above for offering too much respect when it is not given your way. This happens a lot with empathetic people as you put yourself in their shoes too much and understand that they are acting out of hurt and that is why they are doing it. If empathy is strong within you this is oftentimes harder said than done
• People who drain you of your energy because they want you to act a certain way and act disappointed when you don’t - this is again conditional, manipulative and it is easy to fall into absorbing this in certain ways because everyone wants everyone to be happy usually! An empathetic person will also find this difficult but can be taught and done
• People who want you to justify your actions so they feel better - there are people who will troll you when they know they are doing it only to wind you up. Stay away from these people. The ones that tell you that they have a wife/husband keeping tabs on them and don't see that the person who loves them wants to be part of their life, their story and loves them so much that they want to make sure they get home safe. They may only see it in the negative and not that the person who loves them wants them to be safe because they love them so much
• People who guilt you into feeling bad so they also have the upper hand - the sympathisers not the empathisers - no sentence that starts with 'at least' is compassionate. These are the wrong people to share your truth with. Find the right people and do not settle for people that will not give you the compassion that you deserve
• People who do not want you to do what you are doing because then you’d be following your dreams - there are a lot of people out there suffering, it is a fact of life. There are people that are frightened when they see someone else thriving as they couldn't imagine doing it themselves
• People instilling fear in you with the outcome and those that are outcome focused usually have a fixation of trying to get to that outcome, they are scared themselves. If you are empathetic this fear could rub off, remember stress is contagious and so are colds! Same goes with fear, all fear is stress related 
  
• People who want you to explain everything almost including your very existence - this is draining, it is not necessary to explain yourself to anyone. 

Sometimes your haters want you to succeed, because otherwise they have nothing to talk about. Your haters might also be unhappy in themselves because they see you as a threat or that you are enjoying the success that they desire. There are people that will want to put pressure on you for deadlines for answers or to manipulate their way into making you do something. When you are very empathetic you may tend to give them the benefit of the doubt or even allow them the respect by saying something like ‘I don’t want to do that because if I was in their position then I wouldn’t like that done to me’. The issue there is, you are not them. You need to protect your boundaries, they are yours, they are part of your ‘being’. There are three things that cannot be destroyed, love, being and awareness. With all of these three things you are equipped to notice when your boundaries are being intruded upon and there is no explanation needed. 

Be compassionate towards yourself and remember that fear blocks love. When you do not love yourself then you cannot protect yourself. Boundaries are an act of self-love. Negativity then flourishes where love has been excluded and we may find ourselves in what Dr. Brené Brown calls a shame spiral. Boundaries are necessary for healthy, loving, connected relationships. They are the foundation of deep and meaningful relationships and genuine connection and trust. If you envision life as a computer game, your health line would drop a lot without them. You could continue to fight but eventually your self-identity would die in the game. It is the same thing in real life with that analogy. 

For me practicing self-care and boundaries is figuring out what's important to me and how I do that is up to me. It's reading, listening and watching informative and inspiring research. It's also a case of trying different strategies, not only reading about them. One strategy that has come from research is the practicing of gratitude or recognising a shame spiral. We are need meaning - like tokenising in programming. Once we name what we are experiencing which could be a hard emotion like a shame spiral, it loosens its grip, it gives us power over them. I practice gratitude every morning by writing a few things that I am grateful for and it has also been proven in the research from Dr. Brenè Brown and Dr. Shawn Achor that it can make our lives more joyful - who would not want more joy in their live?! Of course, I try these things, I love trying new things. I also love a good podcast and I have already learnt so much from Dr. Brené Brown and she's doing a podcast. I have just subscribed. I would also highly recommend her Ted talk 'the power of vulnerability' , the Netflix show 'call to courage' and also her books braving the wilderness and lots more. This is the link to her website so you might like listening to her podcast on a run or walk. ​https://brenebrown.com/podcast/introducing-unlocking-us/ Finally, it is also revoking access to those who do not respect me for in essence, boundaries are about respect and when you respect yourself then you realise how peaceful your life is without giving access to people who do not respect your being, awareness or love of life.

You also start to laugh at the audacity of people across the world telling you what to do, when to do it and how to do it. I have laughed for an entire afternoon after some random guy told me to change my YouTube content and followed shortly by can we work together?! People sometimes like to push boundaries for fun, also remember this. It can be something that they have grown up with in the dynamics of their family and think it's funny. In that case, if it makes you uncomfortable, stay away from them and laugh. Whatever makes you uncomfortable is your compass for your boundaries. When it's off course, bring it back on course. We all make mistakes too so be compassionate with yourself if and when you let boundaries fall and allow someone in that you shouldn't have. It's a case of course correction like when flying an airplane from Ireland to the US and the pilot notices that it's gone off course, re-align yourself like the pilot in the airplane. It's that simple, we learn, we evolve and we grow.

I am so happy that I can bring you a free Java for beginners course. It is now up on Udemy and the content has to be less than two hours for it to qualify to be free. 
I also posted up the free Udemy course: https://www.udemy.com/course/learn-beginners-java/ It is limited to two hours of content. The next Udemy premium course will be announced when it is available and it will have a lot more content, programming exercises and self-review quizzes.
I am so grateful that I get to have this opportunity to develop courses. I am excited to add in the next course that has more content, quizzes and programming exercises. So far since it went live I already have 123 people enrolled in the course and have 13 lectures online. It's light on quizzes and there aren't any programming exercises - you follow along the videos yourself and it's self-guided. The next course will be a little different. There will be quizzes and programming exercises to accompany the lectures, however, it needs to be premium (free courses are limited to 2 hours) as the content covers a lot and the videos are more than two hours of content.  Also see the new video I posted today in the beginner's course on YouTube. With Udemy you will get a full experience of course exercises, real-life examples and coding to do. In YouTube it shows the videos that I have recorded so far to explain different concepts and we are almost coming to the end of the beginner's course on YouTube. I have had so much fun creating these and I hope you have fun watching them too. Enjoy programming and thanks for watching! 

I worked in a bar when I was 18 in Limerick city and my first night working I got ice thrown down my t-shirt by the manager for fun and apparently it was a tradition to all new people joining. I thought the place was wild and it was. I was used to working in the Body Shop during the day as a summer job and decided I needed some extra cash before going to college. I did what another girl in the shop did and that was sign up to work nights in the bar and club in town. It was a culture shock - bear in mind only a few years earlier I had gotten sick meeting boys for the first time and also shied away approaching customers until I was shown what to do and I didn't even speak until I was three - yes - that shy! It was a massive change, there was loud music, the pub was packed to the brim with a live band playing and lots and lots of drunk people. 

I started as a glass collector and, for those not from Ireland, we do not have a pfand for the glasses. You just put them down anywhere and people go around and collect them. I would stack them up above shoulder length and bring as many as I could at a time. Sometimes managing two or three stacks of pint glasses a couple of feet high. After a few nights of this I progressed onto table service which was asking people for their drinks orders at the table and bringing them to them. I was really good at this as I am not the tallest and I could weave in and out of the crowds fairly easily. 

I then moved onto selling shots, working behind the bar, cloakroom and club behind the bar too. It was ideal for the summer and I worked really hard. The boss would come and run their finger along the counter of the bar to make sure there was nothing and we would scorch our hands on the boiling hot water to ensure that all the alcohol was wiped away and the counter surface was sufficiently cleaned. It was hard work and our bodies were definitely put to the limits. I worked usually until 4 or so, sometimes later and would run home (don't tell Mom!). We lived outside the city limits and it was quiet enough at that time in the morning that no one was around as all the pubs were closed about an hour earlier. It was the clean up of the toilets, bar and everything that took time to leave. We'd also (sometimes) have a staff drink at the end of the night to relax. I always wondered why I never made tips and apparently once I was told I was 'too happy' by one of the customers who used to call in regularly. I would, of course, dance to the music behind the bar and serve drinks as quickly as possible and without any waste which I was and still am very proud of that! 

The summer went by fast and I was going to start college. I had been introduced to a new way of life. I loved it. I loved the music, bar people and I had fun partying sober while working all summer - or at least that's what it felt like. Limerick is small so the same people came into the bar regularly and we saw them again throughout the evening in the club upstairs. It was fun and good hard work to keep me honest for the summer before college started! I was really thankful that I could ask my coworker to come to my debs (the end of year school dance in September) because I had been tragically unsuccessful asking others and he obliged thankfully. It's another story but he's a lovely person and I was also lucky to meet him a while back and recreate our debs photo! 

I came back that following Christmas to take back up my job to work Christmas (not Christmas day obviously as everywhere is closed!) and the new year. I had enjoyed working there because my first day it was like a christening into the place with the ice down my t-shirt and the lovely managers we had. They were hard but they were lovely. They reasoned with us. Long story short, they weren't there when I came back and I was upset. In fact, none of the staff remained and it was under new management again. I continued working hard and dancing behind the bar, not collecting my tips but enjoying myself, happy out dancing and pouring pints. 

The following summer again the staff changed and again it was under new management. I was shocked. How could they go through so many people in such a short time. It was the largest bar outside of Dublin so there must have been at least 15 working in the bar and more upstairs in the club. I didn't ask questions and kept doing what I was told. I worked hard, didn't complain and enjoyed working there. I made friends again and every time (over the next few years) that the staff changed, I made new friends. I stayed there for a few years while in college and even to this day I still know the upper management. 

When I was working in the Body Shop we had a manager that also was a bad boss. She managed to get everyone, even the people working there for 15 years or so, to quit including myself. It was a really lovely job but it was something that we all had to do. Eventually though and usually it is too late - upper management notices and once they do they get rid of the rotten apple. It usually takes several people to leave a position before that happens though as that's the only way that sends messages to upper management when something is wrong. It's unfortunate but I have seen it across several sectors now and in offices, retail and bars. I have had enough experience at this point to conclude that that is my perspective as I have several more examples.

The key now is if you find yourself under a bad boss to get out and not let that impact you. It is really hard to do and when you don't have a choice or feels like you don't have a choice because of money or bills to pay for example, then it is harder and you can convince yourself to stay longer. The real issue is that it is insidious and you can't tell when the damage is happening when it is happening. We are all fighters and want to stay in jobs that we love but at the end of the day, the facts are the facts and a high staff turnover is, unfortunately, a sign of a bad boss so get out while you can! 

Burnout is common and from only speaking with my friends they seem to have all landed in a toxic relationship/workplace/situation. Burning out can tremor feelings of anxiety and also land you in a situation where your self-esteem has taken several blows by the environment that you are in. You may find yourself overwhelmed and unable to cope in the uncertainty of the time. Perhaps even your sense of identity has been questioned. All in all I know that it is a temporary time and that what goes down must come back up. You need to view this time as a time that will pass and also that once you have felt overwhelmed, it is time to get strategies in place that help you to manage these and never let it happen again. 

Feeling overwhelmed during certain situations can happen quite often. For me, I live alone and going into a loud environment like going home can be overwhelming. All of a sudden I am thrust into the realm of busy-ness and have to deal with people wanting my attention constantly. This, I am not used to and it can be overwhelming. I enjoy quiet mornings and when I go home it seems really loud and jarring to the psyche. Having yourself become overwhelmed versus burnout is another thing - see post on burnout below. It is a continuous feeling of being overwhelmed, a continuous stress and a continuous questioning of how you are handling things in the best possible way for you. Your identity can come into question as the strategies of the past may not work in this current scenario and you are too exhausted to figure out the why or how to move forward with new ones. 

You may resort to avoidance and avoidance is a strategy in its own right - we've all been there, the phone rings and we look at the number, it's not from someone you know so you decide to ignore it. It rings and rings and your mind goes through who it could be until it stops. We hope an email comes through explaining that it was so and so on the phone or that a voicemail has been left. The discomfort experienced with phone calls is not something I enjoy or like. I was never one for phone calls. In fact, I would say that phone calls make me anxious and nervous. I prefer messages/emails or even video calls are better than phone calls when my voice goes dry and I've to bring the energy to the call when I am nervous on the other end. 

I am aware of this and have sought to overcome it time and time again. I even had a job as a call-centre representative for a summer once. I was actually really good at it and enjoyed it, once I got used to cold calling people! What was once uncomfortable then became something I just did without thinking. I had to do, I was there to do and it became normalised. I didn't get stressed. I just did it. My body went into the motion of doing it and performed the task at hand. We all learn to overcome these things eventually! 

When you experience burnout feelings of insecurity and questioning of your identity becomes the norm and this can impact on your relationships too. You normalise these feelings and your day to day tasks can increase your insecurities to a realm where you cannot cope very well. It's into the abyss of feeling inadequate. You start to question the level of respect given in certain relationships including the ones closest to you and are on high-alert for these. Some of which might be that you want the support and someone there for you but they are off doing their own things. You may even fall into being dependent while you are experiencing this sickness. This is, of course, normal. You want the people closest to you to look after you. 

Being physically sick you can see the illness, it is there to view, it is visible and physically present but when you are burnout, you are emotionally drained, perhaps also physically ill and your immune system is not functioning as your body goes to fight/flight/freeze mode. A small cold may take longer to recover, you may fall into victim mode and the person closest to you may choose to be around other people. You feel upset and tell them that you cannot deal with the disrespect shown - this may be interpreted as jealousy. 

Jealousy can result in having low confidence. Jealousy is toxic and a lot of people that are jealous are unhappy with their lives and look at another person doing something that they want to do but do not have the courage to do it. A healthy way to look at this is to get yourself up and do what you want to do. Perhaps approach the girl and tell them how much you admire and look up to them. That is a healthy position to be in and a healthy thing to do. We need to lift each other up. There are times of course when some behaviour is not to be tolerated and sometimes people think girls are jealous when they might have been disrespected by another girl - then this is a case of not jealousy but disrespect and burnout.

If there was some behaviour that is not to be tolerated then, of course, address it. Why wouldn't we? We are human, most people do not do things to hurt others. Most people are good human beings that want to be safe and secure - unfortunately with burnout, everything is under threat and the feelings of safety are also not secure so you will be on high alert. This is also normal as your body is experiencing fight/flight/freeze mode.

In these times you will need support - to support yourself and tell yourself that you are overwhelmed and to comfort yourself alone. I want freedom and that includes for a partner. I think these feelings of burnout can be interpreted as jealousy so it is whether or not your partner sees that and knows that you value freedom is another thing. Being upfront about things is both yours and your partner's responsibility as secrecy also breeds jealousy and what can be interpreted an unhealthy perspective from one side - this is for another post! I value being straightforward with people and once that is done then everything will fall into place. 

For me, I value freedom, I value other's freedom, I want other's to be happy and to feel free, light and able to do what they want, when they want. It is something that I want for myself and it is that not feeling that goes with burnout as you feel trapped and smothered by feelings of inadequacy. Being emotionally drained you need to get back on track and taking a walk or going for a run might be pushing yourself too much depending on your physical state. You may need to sit with yourself in solitude (without distractions - I know when you are in pain it is easy to pick up your phone to look at as it's easier than facing sitting with yourself) to work through your emotions until they are under wraps and balanced again. You may need time alone to let everything out and allow yourself to accept the situation that you are in. Don't breed toxic positivity - by telling yourself to only focus on the good we cannot appreciate why it is good and what happened for it to become that way. 

WITHOUT THE BAD TIMES, THERE ARE NO GOOD TIMES

You need to sit with the bad and allow the emotions to be purged - for me that is journalling and letting them out. I also love celebrating things and redirecting my energy where it is needed most. Celebrating the small wins can be part of purging the burnout. I love celebrating things - it's the small things that need to be celebrated that amount to the big things. Sometimes we feel empty and stuck and don't know what to do. I think that's a natural cycle. People go through periods of stress and push themselves and we could learn from nature. We need time to reenergise. We all need to have the balance. We have taken a few steps forward then we need to stop and accept it. Take it in and relax. You can drive ahead with things and once the level of emotion has peaked in terms of performance then it is time to rest.

​Like flowers giving all their energy to blossom in the summer and then rest in winter. It might be time to take a leaf out of nature and take the time to go through your own cycles. Do other things and do not push yourself. The most common way we give up our power is by thinking we don't have any. So be compassionate and kind to yourself - let yourself blossom for the flower that you are. :-D Feeling free is the best feeling in the world, it should be cherished and when you can overcome the burnout, you will cherish it even more. Without the bad times, there are no good times! You will appreciate the freedom more once you have had the feelings of being trapped from burnout. A free mind is a dangerous thing and most people will not know what to do with you so protect it and laugh about it. Enjoy living your free life, with your free mind and your free choices. The picture below was taken in Galway in 2013 - running, adventures and hiking makes me feel free - do the things that make you feel free and you'll notice more when you aren't free - but only when your body allows it, if it doesn't, then prioritise rest! When there's no petrol in the tank, there is NO PETROL IN THE TANK!

​If you are in a relationship that means taking on a mature freedom. Embracing commitment as a freedom in a way that enables both people to flourish, be themselves and step into their own power. Being free, feeling free and most of all protecting that freedom as a human so we can thrive in all environments is one of the most important things about live and feeling alive. Do fun stuff and get out of your comfort zone. You have only one life and life begins at the edge of your comfort zone. Go for it! Make the stuff happens that you want to happen. You'll thank yourself afterwards for building the life you want and for the freedom you have accomplished. Start the blog, do the adventure, learn the language, run the marathon - build the life for you. 

BY ORIAH MOUNTAIN DREAMER

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.
It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, 'Yes.'
It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

Fear and anger are the two emotions that can hinder ourselves from progression, not only that but they have the power to overwhelm and destroy relationships with ourselves and with others. Having fear can prohibit us from reaching our goals and stepping into the part of our lives that is full of adventure and ambition. Anger can lead us down the path of 'why me' and adapt into aggression when nothing can be done about something. Both are neutral emotions designed to help us in different scenarios and both can be overcome through time and effort to make progress. 

Fear is completely normal when we step outside of our comfort zone. The questions in our head about will we be accepted, rejected or are we good enough stands out to keep our fear at high levels. Fear can also be a reaction to our environment and the intense nature of disruptive environments around us. Fear can be part of our animal instincts that tell us to stop doing what we are doing as we are in danger. Fear can also be something to be overcome to achieve our goals. 

Our goals are things that we might want to achieve or it could be something that we want to do that scares us. We set the goals and want to achieve them. We want to get that degree, run that race, get that job, remain in that job despite circumstances, learn that language, learn to cook, go zip-lining, jump out of an airplane, climb a mountain, learn to dance, sing on stage. These are the goals that can stretch our limits and to achieve our goals we must overcome our fear of failure. Our fear of failure is so powerful that if we envision failing then we are more likely to fail than succeed. Our brain can interpret that as something we want as opposed to don't want as our attention is focused on 'not' failing as opposed to succeeding.

Our emotions fill with anxiety at the prospect of failing and we think of our worst case scenarios in order to cope with the impending doom. Unfortunately this can lead us to failure faster as our brains fill with the stress hormone and we become more forgetful, unfocused and on high alert. We force ourselves not to concentrate and our conditions are not ideal as we go through the 'what if I fail' scenarios over and over again. Yes, it is pragmatic to thing about what happens if we fail, however, bringing our attention to that will increase our stress hormones. Ideally, we need to concentrate on succeeding and include the feeling it would be like to succeed in our goals - getting that mark and feeling elated that you passed that examination, got that degree, ran that race, learnt that language and sang on stage etc.

Doubt and fear both tell us that something needs our attention and we need to focus on these in order to get out of that 'dangerous' situation. It is our body's way of telling us to take care of ourselves, our stress hormones are raging and our blood starts only circulating to specific organs in order to run away from that stressful situation. If experienced for a long period of time our body starts to get sick as the blood flow is restricted. What happens when you cannot run away from the stressful situation? What happens when you are boxed in, locked in and kept in a stressful situation that is disruptive over long periods of time?

Anger starts to creep in once fear and doubt are present for an extended period of time. Anger and aggression is our way of trying to fight back. If you picture an animal locked in a cage, all they want to do is get out and initially they start railing against the cage with anger until they give up. When we, as humans, feel trapped and in a stressful situation, our brains send out the signals with stress hormones, our hearts start to race, our blood only goes to vital organs and our entire bodies are screaming at us to get out of that situation as quickly as possible either by fighting/running or freezing.

​Anger and aggression is the next step that happens once the helplessness of the scenario is absorbed. In a similar way that animals get sad and a range of emotions sweep through them as they are locked into a cage from once running wild and free. Anger then has the power to become explosive if provoked and injustice prevails in our lives. Anger is encountered at a higher level when a hostile provocation occurs and defence needs to be engaged. Anger is normal. Anger is a healthy emotion and not good or bad, however, in these situations it can fall into the bad territory as the mix of injustice can trap us in our minds and we are then akin to the animals in the cage unable to break free.   

The only way through anger is to lead. Leadership takes courage and something happens that might 'wake' us up to enact this stance. Perhaps the anger was useful to push us to act and give us the strength to pull ourselves out of a situation that is both stressful and harmful over a long period of time. The issue is trying to stay awake once we have woken up and we can tend to fall back to sleep when we are overworked, burned out, overwhelmed and do not have the support we need. We may not have engaged in a community and wanted to isolate in order to cope - which is also animalistic - imagine being wounded and going back into a cave to recover, it is similar to this. We need to reenergise and recuperate after our stress hormones have raged in our bodies for a long period of time. 

Not engaging with the community and trying to do it all on our own can be detrimental and increase our levels of stress more as we figure out our own realities. It is seeing these situations happen but not having the perspective to wake up to the reality and see how others have coped with it. We all need to recuperate and reenergise, however, isolation is our way of protecting ourselves and while that is useful initially, it is more important to engage in a community where you get the support and inspiration to 'power through' these times of stress.

Everyone has their own power and figuring out what is unique to you that you can bring to the table is part of finding that power. What can you contribute? Things are greater than you and looking at this as the perspective and that you are not alone can help motivate things. When you do things alone and feel alone in a stressful environment you can fall into that helpless and hopeless realm of victimhood. We are always so much more likely to fall into the 'I am not right for the job'. The challenge is to stay awake, look for people that are inspirational, build a community that supports you and figure out how to manage the fear and anger associated with that stressful situation in order to get the courage to leave it. Find people that stay 'stop, you are good enough'.

We get empowered when we understand other people have had similar situations, however, we must decipher what is best for us. It is all well and good having this community and getting the support. It is much more important to find our own voice and make our own decisions as to what matters to us, what are our priorities, what can we contribute, what can we learn from other people's stories and how can we progress in our own situation that will allow us to have the freedom in our minds going forward. We need to tell ourselves that we are safe in order to dissipate the fear, purge the anger in order to become serene and become self-compassionate in order to heal. Ultimately, we need to ask - what is best for us based on what we have learnt from our own situation, about ourselves and from others around us? 

I love a good comedy. I love observational comedy the most and people like Dylan Moran, Des Bishop and Dara O'Briain make it seem really easy but at the same time are really clever in the way they put together their material. I watch comedy when I am down and as a way of coping and seeing the silver lining in things all the time. I love the IT crowd and Father Ted and also some dark humour like Black Books - all of which are written by the same author - Graham Linehan. 

These are a way that I usually laugh once a day and they do say laughter is the best medicine. I do know babies laugh far more than adults but they haven't lived through or carry with them the sense of cynicism that we adopt throughout life. They are free to laugh at the most minor and subtle things and giggle at whatever they please. My Father - who is 90 - maintains that we should see everything as if it was for the first time to keep it fresh and have a sense of wonder and astonishment with the world and I think he is right. I do carry a sense of curiosity with me and amazement of most things that are new. 

In college I had the privilege of participating in laughter yoga. It was an experiment that was open to all PhD students. I went to the laughter yoga with an open mind and participated in the brain study. It was, in fact, hilarious. We were in a room and she gave us exercises to do and we had to fill out forms etc. I won't go into detail but we laughed and before I went back to the PhD room I was lighter. The world had lifted off my shoulders and I saw the study a little differently. Criticism is good for improving and trusting your supervisor is also key in order to develop your study and I believe this laughter throughout the day helped. 

I do have a tendency to seek out funny videos when I am going through something traumatic. I tend to bury my head and focus on the funny videos and while the world might be crashing down around me I will laugh at the absurdity that the comedian is explaining and transpose that to real life. In some ways this can be a bad thing as people misunderstand my comedic nature for not taking things seriously but, in fact, it is my way of coping. While I can't address the pain that I am enduring at the time I laugh about something that is not real in order to cope with the overwhelm of my emotions. Privately this has allowed me to manage well in times of stress, however, when someone sees this and questions it, it can dismantle the fabric of my being and I am lost without my coping mechanism. I have now built other strategies and do not need to rely on this as much, however, it was a key strategy for me for coping and we all need good strategies. 

When I was younger my other strategy was playing computer games, I would sit for hours distracting myself from whatever was around me and focus solely on playing a game. It could be TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) or old games that my sisters had available like Terminator 2 on the Commodore 64. I have a penchant for classic computer games since! The time can pass by like minutes and I am in what is known as 'flow' - a concept widely written in academia by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The description of which entails the warping of time, where a person is fully immersed in their experience and energised afterwards. It is a case that the person is fully engaged and while, for me, it is a coping strategy and the world around me might be falling apart, I am 'distracted' by the engagement of the computer game. 

We know now that there is an immersive element to computer games and studies have been completed on this - see my PhD for references! Computer games can improve concentration and allow for users to fully engage with their experience. For me, computer games can act as a way of coping. They can fully distract and fully engage me in something else at the same time. At the moment, we are facing a time of crisis where we are all at home and seeking ways of coping in this troubling time and while I have distracted myself with other activities like reading, making videos for my YouTube channel - Learn Computers with Ali - I find myself missing the one element that I went to quite often before I did research in computer games and that is gaming. 

'Steam' is offering more free games and while during the week I am busy with work, it is the free time that I have at the weekend that I can fully engage and fall into a different world, a world free from the horrible news of deaths from the virus sweeping across the world. I used to be too busy for computer games holding down usually several jobs, studying, teaching, supervising students and training for marathons and now I find myself innovating and looking at my time as a way that I can spend being kind to myself and enjoying the 'flow' state that computer games present. The 'Houseparty' app allows people to share their experience for mobile games and 'TeamSpeak' allows sharing on a computer so it doesn't necessarily need to be a solitary activity. You can engage with computer games as a team activity. 

So I will leave you with this, I will go watch some comedy to cope and play some computer games and I will leave judgement at the door while I distract myself for a few hours from the world around me. I will enjoy every minute of it and fully immerse myself in an 'out of this world' experience and laugh about the absurdity of some real-life mundane situations. While these might seem inappropriate in some instances, I am all too aware of the reality of the situation and its seriousness. However, in these times we also need to look after our own mental health so we can come back energised and that is what 'flow' does. It re-energises a person so they are ready for more - as long as they meet the 'flow' state requirements though and start off small - something not too challenging and yet enjoyable. 

Recommended reading:
Mihaly Csikszentmihályi (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0-06-016253-5.
See PhD for list of references or contact me for a list regarding flow state and computer games.