I am writing while at Manchester Airport on my way back to Malaysia to celebrate the Chinese New Year – a once-a-year trip to visit my family, especially my mum.
Due to having to wait several hours, I’m able to reflect on my life over the past few months and update my blog.
There has been a bit of change in my life during the past few months. I was called back by my previous company to help out with the difficulties faced by their finance department.
The financial controller who took over my position didn’t perform to expectations and was therefore asked to leave. I am back there temporarily on a consultancy basis whilst they recruit a new financial controller.
I was asked to take up the job permanently, but I decided that it wasn’t a good idea, since it took me a lot of courage to leave the job in the first place.
My consultancy contract is coming to an end and the handover took place last week. I am now able to take my holiday with free mind, i.e. I need not worry about any responsibility for the department.
I would like to touch on my life for the past few months whilst I was serving with my previous company. Things have changed dramatically since I was there, new faces and new management styles and new cultures.
My task was to sort out the mess created within the department and put control back in place. My life was full of surprises and pressures, certainly back to the life I had 15 months ago.
During the first month back at the company, I noticed mentally I was really tensed up - having such a great task to accomplish, my mind was restless and unable to find peace most of the time.
I had a lot of ideas about how to improve the various departments and to bring them back on track, just as they were when I left 15 months ago. Apart from this task, I had accounts deadlines to complete for my own companies.
Therefore, I was feeling really tensed up having to juggle the two companies and literarily forgot to rest. I felt ill for few days and my mind wasn’t working to its full potential.
I have to travel 10 hours to and back every fortnight which I found a drain on my energy.
I am now able to reflect on my life for the past few months and I realise that I created my own busyness and therefore my mind wasn’t able to rest, which created a lot of sleepless nights due to apprehension. I took up the challenge to earn more money.
However, a life that is overwhelmed by stress and anxiety cannot perform to its fullest. An efficient mind requires the removal of busyness and the creation of space for thoughtful processes.
In conclusion, we can influence our own life, however, I chose to become busy due to the desire for more earnings and should therefore, accept the consequences of restlessness and anxiety.
The lesson here for me is to choose a balanced way of life and create the necessary space in my mind for a healthy life.
The following phases from a Buddhist text would help us to decide what life we want:
• By removing busyness and agitation, there is natural peace.
• By removing endless desires, there is natural satisfaction.
• By removing self-centredness, there emerges a natural awareness of others and care for them
• By removing illusions, there is natural lucidity about things.
• By removing fear of loss and stinginess, there is natural generosity.
