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Category: Holistic Living

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I Am A Number 7

The Enneagram is a model which consists of nine personality types. The model proposes that every person falls into one of the nine types. It is not a perfect system of course. It’s kind of like giving everyone a colour that matches their personality. There are as infinite a number of colours as there are personalities but we can form broad categories like reds and greens.

I recently did a questionnaire that revealed that I was a type seven; The Enthusiast. According to https://www.enneagraminstitute.com, sevens are extroverted, optimistic, versatile, and spontaneous. Playful, high-spirited, and practical, they can also misapply their many talents, becoming over-extended, scattered, and undisciplined. They constantly seek new and exciting experiences, but can become distracted and exhausted by staying on the go. They typically have problems with impatience and impulsiveness.

As I read more and reflected, I gained some valuable insights into myself and how I relate to others. There were some things that did not apply to me and others that ‘fell in my garden’ as we say. Now I know some people don’t place much stock in personality typing. Some take the ‘I can’t be placed in a box’ stance or the ‘only God defines me’ stance. To which I say:

  • Nothing about personality typing limits you or places you in a box. It does quite the opposite. It can give you greater insight into what drives you, what are your strengths and what are your weaknesses which frees you to choose a path of growth that’s best for you.
  • The types are not designed to define you but to describe you (generally). If God made you an introvert for example the test will just reflect your natural God-defined nature.

I have done numerous of these types of assessments. For example, I am an ENTJ (Extrovert-Intuition-Thinking-Judgement) under the Myers-Briggs model and an I (Influence) under the DISC profile. Each assessment has provided feedback that I have used to grow and develop as a person.

But for me the real bonus of understanding these models in some depth has been the appreciation for the different personalities of the people I live and work with. It has made me more understanding and compassionate.

When it comes to relationships, I wish I had understood more about this stuff earlier in life. For example, the five love languages (http://www.5lovelanguages.com) proposes that every person has their particular way in which they give and receive love. I have found this to be so true and so empowering. The five love languages are:

  1. Words of affirmation
  2. Acts of service
  3. Receiving gifts
  4. Quality time
  5. Physical touch

If you are married, in a relationship or thinking of being in a relationship (have I covered everyone) I highly recommend finding out your love language. Imagine if your highest scoring love language is physical touch and you marry someone for whom that is their lowest scoring love language?! The more you know, the better able you are to articulate your needs and show your partner love in their language. For example, gifts are dead last for me. You could buy me a new BMW and I would be like “Thanks.”

As Polonius said in Hamlet, “To thine own self be true.” Well, the more you know about yourself, the truer you can be. Greater self-awareness and greater ability to understand and celebrate the diversity of personalities in your world will undoubtedly lead to more joyful and fulfilling relationships. And you know what they say; the quality of your life is really the quality of your relationships.

Joyfully,

Copyright 2017, Matik Nicholls

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I Love To Travel, I Hate To Travel

I was on my way to another work assignment. It was the third time I was travelling over the last five weeks. Fate had conspired to have two conferences fall close to a planned trip, creating the unavoidable situation. I did not want to go. I did not want to leave my children again. I was missing them even before I left. Thankfully though, they handle it much better now than when they were younger (Skype is a tremendous help as well), but still none of us were excited about it.

I looked out of the airplane as the sun rose over Trinidad, bathing everything in its warmth. The lilting voices of Gaelic Psalm singing coming through my headphones seemed perfectly matched with the fantasy cloud world on the other side of my window. I took a picture. I had scores of similar photos yet each photo was unique and each time the scene took my breath away.

I had begun the metamorphosis to travel-mode or Uncle Travelling Matt as some of my friends like to call me. I love to travel. I love the precious me-time that only seems possible whizzing through the air at 30,000 feet. No email, no Whatsapp, no phone calls, no children. Ahhhh. And then there’s something about the hum of that engine (as a co-worker recently quipped) that puts me right to sleep. I can fall asleep on the fifteen-minute flight from Trinidad to Tobago 😊.

I have seen a lot of the world while travelling on business and for that I am thankful. Experiencing different geographies and cultures I believe is one of the most mind-opening things you can do. I love connecting with people from all walks of life. The more I travel, the more I value the brotherhood of mankind. I see myself in every person and at the same time I see the diversity in every country and every culture. I realize that the struggles in my country are not unique to Trinidad and Tobago and at the same time I appreciate strengths of other societies that we can learn from and vice versa. I am such a believer in the positive benefits of travel that I think a trip outside of your country should be a compulsory part of secondary school education.

With all that being said, however, after one week I’m ready to go home. All my routines tend toward neglect when I travel. Prayer, exercise, diet…they are all assaulted by the unfamiliar surroundings and time zones. The forward trajectory of my life is built upon a stable routine of habits that keep me focused and healthy… But learning and growth necessitates injections of change, discomfort and the unfamiliar… It’s quite a balancing act.

A growing, thriving life is like a song. A steady rhythm holds it all together. Everything rides on the beat. Without the stable beat the whole song falls apart. But it is the crescendos and surprising melodic twists that makes the beauty of the music. It is this tension between predictability and spontaneity; between stability and drama; that makes music and life more art than science.

Fill the earth with the joyful sounds of the music of your life!

Copyright 2017, Matik Nicholls

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Wonder Quotient

On a scale of 1 to 10, what’s your WQ? How often do you experience awe? How often do you feel that indescribable feeling of being in the presence of something that transcends your understanding? I believe that people with a high WQ are more fulfilled than those with a low WQ.

What fills us with wonder can be unique to each of us. For my mom, observing her children brought wonder. I experience wonder during worship or communing with nature while sitting on my surfboard out in the ocean or sitting under a waterfall or simply watching the sun rise. Some days just thinking about who God has been to me swells my heart with awe. Whatever it is for you, nurture it.

Our soul longs to feel awed; to feel humbled by something bigger than ourselves. It could be the sheer grandeur of the universe or the unconditional love of a child. The thing is, every moment is a miracle if we open our eyes to see it. Some people only experience this awakening through a near death experience but it doesn’t have to be that way. You can right-size your life right now. Choose not to take your next breath for granted. Breathe deeply, laugh loudly, sing, skip, run, jump, smell, feel. Exult in the amazing life coursing through your body.

And guess what, according to research there is a surprising side-effect….. kindness. Strangely enough, there is something about viewing the Grand Canyon that brings out our inner altruist. Maybe it is the inkling that there is something bigger at play here that connects us all at a deeply fundamental level? Whatever it is, the positive effects are very real. You can read more about it here: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_do_we_feel_awe

So, I encourage you to see the amazing around you. The person that smiles with their eyes. The couple that are truly in love. The worshipper with eyes closed. The serene miracle of a sleeping child. The mountains full of Poui trees in bloom. The orange and yellow kaleidoscope of autumn. The vastness of the ocean. The sunset painted sky. Who invented such things? All we can do is open our hearts to wonder and celebrate and be grateful.

Open your eyes to the wonder. Make it a daily habit and let your heart fill with kindness and joy.

Joyfully,

Copyright 2017, Matik Nicholls

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What I Learned From Baywatch

 

If you weren’t around in the 90s this title may be completely lost on you. Suffice to say, Baywatch was a tv series about lifeguards in Los Angeles, USA. Amazingly, there is something from that show that made a bigger impact on me than Pamela Anderson in a bathing suit. It is this: Don’t drown with a drowning victim. Save yourself first!

The truth is that the lifeguard is the victim’s only hope for survival, so if the lifeguard puts herself in danger she is really sacrificing two lives. Another analogy is the oxygen mask on an airplane. The safety briefing says to put on your mask first before assisting others. Same principle.

We tend to think of sacrificing our own needs for those that we love or for career pursuits as a noble quality and by and large it is, but there comes a point at which we sacrifice too much.  You see, neglecting yourself means that you are reducing the quality of your work and the quality of care for those around you. This is even more pertinent when it comes to people that depend on us. So often we do less and less of what makes us healthy, whole and passionate for the sake of our children’s success but we do not consider that the biggest contributor to our children’s success is us! Are they seeing the model of a passionate, interesting, whole, balanced and alive person? Are we on a slippery slope to burnout?

Now I want to get real practical here and describe what this means for me in detail, so you get an idea of how this works in practice:

  • Every weekday I get up early before the children are awake and take time to spend with God. I pray (which could be silent meditation or more energetic or singing depending on how I feel) and/or I read my bible. This quiet time is my spiritual renewal. It’s sacred. This time is protected simply because no one else will get up at that hour and if they do (as has happened a handful of times), I simply say, “Daddy is praying. You can stay if you are quiet or go back to bed.” This habit was very hard to form. I had to get a friend to help me to wake up early and keep me accountable until my body clock was ‘locked in’. This start to my day is the most important ritual that I have. It directly influences the energy that I bring to my interactions and life challenges. If I neglect my mornings with God I can get snappy and easily discouraged.
  • Every Wednesday and Saturday morning I go for a run and the other weekdays I do a small morning workout. These are the habits that keep me physically fit and feeling good. I don’t have the time to go to the gym or to invest in looking buff, so this is just to keep me healthy. The morning workout is very simple, basically what I can do consistently:
    • 100 jumping jacks
    • 8 pull ups
    • 40 sit ups
    • 40 dips
    • 20 push ups

I know, it’s pitiful, but anything grander takes too long and is too daunting too be consistent. The runs are usually 5km on Wednesday and 8-10km on Saturdays. On Wednesdays I’ve arranged for my parents to drop the kids to school and Friday nights their mom or my parents keep the kids for the night so that I can get out at the crack of dawn the next day for my run. Things will try to encroach on this time. The kids might want to stay home or have a morning activity, but I do not budge. This is my time. Daddies need exercise too. The discipline of running also strengthens my will and mental endurance.

  • I don’t work late or on weekends unless it’s an emergency.
  • Every Sunday I go to church. The most valuable thing about this ritual for me is the worship. Singing at the top of my lungs in praise to my God with a group of other Jesus enthusiasts lifts my spirit and renews my soul like nothing else.
  • At least every other Sunday I play football with my friends. This is my favourite form of exercise. Whereas, I run because I have to do something to stay fit, I would rather play football every day if I could. I feel great after a run but I do not get excited about going for a run.
  • Every month or so I have some social time with friends. It could be a date. It could be hanging out with a group. Sometimes I take a whole day off just to go to the beach with a friend and do nothing but laugh and play and sleep.

My current battle is getting enough sleep. The goal is to be asleep by 10pm, to get 7 hours sleep. The problem is getting the children to sleep on time, ironing their school clothes for the next morning and then not getting side-tracked. It’s a challenge.

On a more ad-hoc basis I get in some hiking, surfing or mountain-biking which I’m trying to make a more regular thing as being immersed in nature is very restorative for me on many levels. I also would like to have an annual vacation/retreat by myself. I started this last year after I realized I was crashing and burning and it was fantastic. I also highly recommend a weekly habit of doing something you love. Yoga, dance, an academic pursuit, gardening, reading, art… whatever… keep your passions alive.

So, my friends, sorry for the length of this one but I hope it has been helpful. I encourage you to have a concrete plan to invest in yourself on all levels. It’s not being selfish. A better you is better for everyone!

Joyfully,

Copyright 2017, Matik Nicholls

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Downpour

“CRAAAAACK!” It sounded like the heavens rent as the clouds vomited their payload in a violent deluge. Everyone sitting under the shed seemed to draw their limbs closer to themselves as the landscape suddenly became a waterscape.

I closed my eyes, to tune into the sound and the feel of the misty gusts on my skin. I love the sound of rain on galvanized roofing. It reminds me of stormy childhood nights cosy in my double-decker, up close to the roof. My home had no ceiling, so you could hear every drop overhead. Even now I began to snooze while I waited to see my daughter’s teacher.

I awoke from my reverie and surveyed the scene with fresh eyes. In the paved area next door, the gigantic drops formed mini-volcanoes with every splash into the pools forming everywhere. Soon the aqua-armies formed into squadrons racing urgently to drains and runoffs. Meanwhile, in the school-yard where hundreds of feet at play had worn the would-be lawn to a brown patch of bare earth sparsely littered with tufts of grass, the rain quickly saturated the compact earth and began to form brown pools of mud.

Next door there was also a well-manicured piece of lawn and on that piece of real-estate things were quite different. Every drop of rain disappeared into the greenery. The lush grass seemed to have an infinite capacity to soak up the rain like a living carpet of sponge.

Still in my zen-place, I began to think how the contrasting landscapes resemble our lives at different phases. There are times in our lives when there is a downpour. It could be an outpouring of job opportunities or maybe as we say in T&T “Yuh in season,” meaning a number of members of the opposite sex are all-of-a-sudden interested in you. It could be that we are experiencing a run of sequential successes as an athlete or performer. Whatever it is, it’s coming hard and fast and the state of our lives will determine how we handle the deluge.

If we are hard and inflexible. If we cannot see the opportunity in the out of the ordinary project thrown at us at work. If we don’t even see the person smiling at us because they are wrapped in a package that does not fit our criteria. If our hearts are closed to love. If the opportunities don’t come at us exactly the way we expect. Then they run-off of our lives like that paved courtyard. We cannot receive the gifts sent from heaven.

If we have been rundown by life, we are quickly overwhelmed. It’s too much for our barren life. Barren of a support system to pull on or maybe lacking a healthy lifestyle we quickly burn out. Maybe past relationship failures have made us emotionally destitute. Maybe we have abandoned habits of spiritual renewal. Unhealthy lifestyles quickly become a muddy pool where opportunities choke and stall.

But the life that is already thriving capitalizes on the rains of opportunity. The life that is already green with healthy relationships and physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health can soak up the downpour.

Every investment in a healthy life (on all levels) today reaps unknown benefits tomorrow. Prepare for the downpour now. Who knows when it will come but when it does, how glorious it will be if you can soak it all up and grow exponentially into the joyful life that awaits.

Joyfully,

Copyright 2017, Matik Nicholls.