Created especially for the introduction to the opening of the TEDxSummit: The power of x (by TEDBlogVideo) by awe-inspiring creatives We are Pi (http://wearepi.com/), no computer tricks.

The project fused architecture, dance, math and magic into a bespoke18-meter high triangular mirrored structure to create the world’s first Human Arabesque without computer graphics.

(via geekerock)

This gorgeous video sums up my experience of Doha, Qatar in the last week. 

A inspiring go-getter of a friend has conceived of a wonderful initiative I am proud to be participating in.

Pause for a Cause.

Mindful in May is an exciting campaign combining the benefits of practicing mindfulness meditation with an opportunity to meaningfully contribute to a significant cause.
Take an opportunity to find relief from the business of life…
Join the Mindful in May challenge 10 minutes of meditation a day for the month of May…or if you’re too busy try a half challenge sign up and practice for 2 weeks this year…
Join us at www.mindfulinmay.com @mindfulinmay

I’ve taken a moment to reflect on my relationship with mindfulness below….

Mindfulness is a loaded word for me, because as a practice, a notion, an art and a liberator, we have had a complicated and occasionally nasty relationship.

I first learnt about mindfulness from a psychologist who helped me make my way out of the dark box of anorexia. I remember us sitting in armchairs in a cosy consult room with our eyes shut, her stepping me through a sort of guided awareness-ing of different parts of my body.

I hated it.

My ‘monkey mind’ was racing: ‘How is this going to help me/I hate this/I don’t want to be here/I can’t feel my chest/I don’t want to feel my chest/I just want to be normal and not in this room becoming aware of my physicality.’ I would have much preferred to be off running on a treadmill or studying or ‘achieving’ in some active, distracted sense, than having to actually sit and calm down and be in my body, the body that caused me anguish because I couldn’t control it in the way I wanted, and just BE.

Jo could tell I hated these exercises, where I could not intellectualise my recovery, so we did them more. She gave me Jon Kabbat-Zin’s cds. This was a mindfulness I relished. He was calm, wise, and funny, and helped me to understand the basic principles of cultivating compassion and awareness of those monkey mind thoughts that made mindfulness such a challenge initially (and still!).

I then started to use mindfulness - that is, cultivating non-judgmental awareness of whatever I am experiencing in each moment – to attempt to help myself slow down that incredibly powerful and fast stream of thoughts I had running in my head all day every day. To begin to slow the tape, such that I could begin to discern the judgment and commentary from the truth, or at least the helpful from the unhelpful (assessed by reference to what I valued and which thoughts were helpful to me in order to live in line with those values).

I said initially that my relationship with mindfulness has been rocky. At times, especially early on, I’ve taken it to stand for ‘acceptance’ that my negative thoughts are truth. Accept that I’m not good enough: ‘live with it, give in the fight to try and be good enough’. I thought my mind must be right, if I’m being told to ‘accept’. I can’t stress how alarmed this made my psych at the time!

‘Trust you to turn this into a mode of self-criticism!’ I remember her laughing. It is not at all about that form of acceptance. Rather (I am always trying to remember) acceptance and mindfulness of constant critical thought is about not allowing yourself to create more discomfort by beating up on yourself for being self-critical, once you realize you are. It certainly does not mean ‘accept that you’re not good enough’! Acceptance for me in the context of mindfulness is about accepting that I am exactly where I am, and that is exactly where I need to be, in any given moment. It is a struggle, in a culture where I feel constant pressure to strive, and be striving.

Mindfulness changed the course of my life because it was the defining aspect in my recovery from anorexia – I came to realize that I had dysfunctional thoughts that were not me. They were very strong, but if I could cultivate awareness of them, I could take back the power to choose my reality and choose whether to pay attention to them or not. Mindfulness helped begin to cultivate that power to choose and define my reality, by practicing slowing down my thoughts and becoming aware of them, such that I can discern delusion and critical commentary when it’s active.

I adore this ‘re-imagining’ of a song. Theme song 2012?

When the plane touched down with a bump I felt spat out,

Spat out into time and space that had moved on without me

Forced to make myself invisible so that I might not be found out for the fact I’d left myself and time had left me

Left me back where I was comfortable, back where I was, where we were, before I zipped my suitcase

When the arrivals gate opened I saw faces flickered fear and expectation

‘Tell us, what happened?’ but also, ‘Please don’t. We can’t bear to know.’

Having been blessed and inspired in the last 24 hours with convening a successful event, one would think it would be easy to rest. Be calm and proud I did the best I could. Isn’t it funny, then, and worth reiterating, that the voice just doesn’t stop. She (it?) is still going on with ideas about how it could have been better, how I am only really allowed to feel happy with what I did if: this, that and the other. Usually they’re irrelevant and unchangeable factors. Is the challenge of the human condition to find a way to exist with this voice? Will there ever be a day when I don’t hear it?

At the moment I suppose I am at a point where sometimes I deal with the voice by conducting my life in such a way that I do not upset it. I suppose that’s what I mean when I talk about striving to be the ‘successful woman’. I speak of this notion as though it’s a fixed concept, which it is of sorts, but of course it has nuanced emphasis for every woman. How could it effectively trap us if it wasn’t finely tuned to our personal values? For me, the focus is often on extraordinary external achievement and the body. This makes me feel uncomfortable, restless and frustrated in my physical body. Others might find their successful woman narrative is around the perfect mother they feel women are supposed to be, whom they feel they will never live up to. In any case, no matter what the emphasis is for you, this dialogue we come to construct and tell ourselves society expects us to live up to can be easy to live with with so long as you allow it to always be right; allow it to retain the voice of authority and you on the receiving end, always going along, following advice. 

I know that living in accordance with the voice that’s trying to help me more and more effectively espouse my constructed narrative of ‘successful woman’ does not make me happy, connected, nor calm. It certainly does not improve my capacity to serve others or live in the present moment, appreciating life as it is unfolding beneath me. But in spite of nothing all this, I still find myself dealing with it’s constant chatter, advice and criticism by going along. I am getting better at listening in to the real me, the voice that knows what is truly best, what my true destiny is, that is pre-thought and already knows I am worthy of love and respect without having to earn it at all. When I successfully tune into her and divert an alternative course of action before it happens, this is success for me at the moment. When I am quiet, and I can let her natter on but know that I need not act, that is success.

I still find myself wondering if life wouldn’t be better without her, and if one day it might be possible to be almost wholly aligned with the true self, living from that self with ease, rather than having to realise and divert from cooperating with and living from a routine, false self. Will she ever just SHUT UP?

The problem is she gets legitimised automatically because for some reason it seems I’ve trained my brain to selectively collect evidence that supports the legitimacy of her views and criticism. Evidence that doesn’t fit into perpetuating the narrative of the safety and guarantee of happiness and love if I pursue becoming the ‘successful woman’ get rejected, in fact, don’t even register. 

I see no way forward than to do whatever I can to expose myself to alternatives, to strengthen the mental muscles of recognising and rejecting the voice as unhelpful, unhealthy and unable to serve me. 

(By the way, I’m aware I sound crazy in this post. I may well be. Hopefully those who can relate will understand.)

Everything I have learnt about being a successful woman I have learnt from the media. As a girl and now woman seeking an identity that will be approved, valued, even loved, I looked to narratives of women who espouse these things, and the media has always been instructive.

From Ship to Shore, to Dolly magazine, to the way the local newspaper wanted to style my photo when I was VCE dux of my school, the media have taught me there is a space to be successful as a woman in our society, (“Of course!” says society), but it is a specific space and I have to fit into it. Thin, but fit. Strong, but soft. Engaging, but not too serious. Intelligent but witty, ambitious but not overbearing, sexy not slutty nor arrogant, confident but not a bitch. Funny but not silly, gorgeous but can hang with the guys. Thin.

Thin.

Thin.

It is easy to learn how to become this girl: just look around! Stories of her and her success are everywhere, in the narrow narratives of women and the way their worth and successes are measured. Even more prominent are stories of who she is not. Those who try to espouse her and fail are our media and advertisers’ favourite tales to tell.

This week I learnt some crucial lessons from our media about how not to be a successful woman. Some might call them ‘revision’. Because they sure have been passed down the generations. I learnt a successful woman certainly doesn’t pass a judgement or express an opinion about a prominent man (“More sponsors dump Kyle Sandilands, as he denies being a woman hater”, 24 Nov, The Age). If she did, national radio hosts might label her a ‘fat, bitter thing’ or a ‘little troll’.

These stories construct for us our collective notion of a successful woman. She is constantly malleable and amenable to external demands. Her function in our society is oppression: to ensure that the creation and negotiation of what it means to be a ‘success’ as a woman precedes our conscious choice, and hands us the perfect tool for self-criticism. And she is not going anywhere! Why? Because paralyzing women by persisting to serve up lessons about an impossibly successful woman? That sells! Not only papers, but face cream, washing machines, schools, banking products, holidays, insurance and yoga pants. Because If no other stories are available for me, the singular story is the most legitimate. It resonates, because it’s all there is for me to shape my ambition. Therefore I am supremely susceptible to buying and engaging it whatever it takes to help me embody that singular story, scrambling away from the domain of “fat slag”.

Who wants this? Not any man I know, nor any woman. However we accept it, such is our apathy towards the impossibly low standards of mainstream media.  We have a responsibility to demand more - if not for ourselves then for the younger women watching and listening - and challenge the attitudes that underpin the content on our airwaves. Such as: that it is fair and legitimate for a man to pass judgment on national radio on the worth of a woman’s opinion based on her ‘titty’.

How do we begin to make the creation of each woman’s own version of success more conscious, and perceived as more legitimate, despite deafening opposition to stories that present anything outside the ‘successful woman’ paradigm? We must start conversations and attend events that promote the infinite ways of being a “success”. Authentic narratives of successful women are available via platforms that bypass mainstream media, such as videos shared online at TEDTalks. a nonprofit organisation devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, started as a four-day conference in California 26 years ago. As creator and host of TEDxParkvilleWomen, an independently organised TEDx event, Friday 2 Dec Melbourne will host its own live program of local women, exploding the norm of the “successful woman”.

The energy I have spent trying in vein to become the media’s darling, this impossibly thin and perfect “successful woman” has curtailed my potential to dream and exhausted my soul. My body and mind have cried out ‘Is this who you really want to be?’ ‘You’re hungry!’, ‘You’re tired!’ But the media had the authoritative voice on how to be successful, and it does not allow space for my own version of success. Our daughters must not be told they can be anything they want, as long as they are pretty and skinny and submissive. They must have the mental and spiritual energy and capacity to live into their true potential.  It is not some nice “fluffy feminine thing” to convene events where women share how they have managed to self-determine new and relevant narratives of success, to sustain and fulfil them and their communities. It is an imperative for the survival of future generations.