Spend more time doing ….. well, nothing!

A couple of things happened today (written on the 2nd) that reminded me, once again, of the number one lesson that we can learn from dogs, that of quietly and peacefully enjoying now!

The first was a call with a close family member who has been over-stressed for months with a very sick father and juggling very demanding work pressures.  R. took a couple of days off, 5 weeks ago, and immediately went down with a severe case of gastric flu, putting her to bed for 4 weeks!

See how her body demanded some ‘peace‘ as soon as it could get a wedge into her otherwise manic life!

Then later on I was trawling a few web sites and came back to Zen Habits, a beautiful Blog published by Leo Babauta.  His latest Post was called simply

find stillness to cure the illness

Precisely!

Leo starts thus:

It’s a busy day, and you’re inundated by non-stop emails, text messages, phone calls, instant message requests, notifications, interruptions of all kinds.

The noise of the world is a dull roar that pervades every second of your life. It’s a rush of activity, a drain on your energy, a pull on your attention, until you no longer have the energy to pay attention or take action.

It’s an illness, this noise, this rush. It can literally make us sick. We become stressed, depressed, fat, burnt out, slain by the slings and arrows of technology.

The cure is simple: it’s stillness.

Now go and read the full article, not for Leo’s sake, nor for my sake.  No, read it for your own sake.

And with no apologies to those regular readers of Learning from Dogs, who will have seen this picture before, look deep into this face below.

This is really how to do S’shhh!  Go on, try it!

By Paul Handover