The art of letting go. The practice of clearing and cleansing body and mind.

For the first time in my life finally I acknowledged. Result? A magnificent experience.

Isn´t it quite normal to spring-clean your house? Getting rid of dust, dirt, waste and useless things. Clean windows and sometimes even redecorate?

I remember the spring-clean in our family house as a young boy. It created space to see, to breathe and to open up again. Supporting us to live a good, healthy life. It really made us all happy. My mother who - I want to be honest - did most of the job, afterwards always called it; “Rewarding work”.

But what about ourselves, our own inner temple? Do you clear and clean yourself, your own private temple you live in, once in a while? OK we try to keep our body fit, maybe go to the gym once in a while and eat healthy but… isn’t there more we can do to be or stay healthy?

And what about your mind? The real heart, the computer and manager of your body? Think about all the ‘waist’ we throw into our mind and things we are still suffering about from the past. Most of the time we do not spend much time on cleaning and freeing the mind until… it’s too late.

Last week my employer offered me the opportunity to do a detox cleansing fast program. I am already working in a part of this program but never did it myself. It's all about clearing and cleaning, well let's just say detoxifying, your inner temple. I can tell you; a ‘spicy’ cleaning you really need to take time for to do it.

Detoxifying the body and by meditation and life-coaching, also creating space in, and detoxify the mind. A unique way and combination of the real art of letting go.

The results? Maybe the picture on the right gives you an idea. What started as the picture on top of this blog (full and still holding the 'roof') feels now like this. Clear, freer, lighter and with some more space, in body and mind.

After joining you feel like your car has been given a total makeover and looks like new inside and out. And putting the first fuel in again is a boost. Your head is feeling clear and with empty space, you're more alert, you can deal with the world in a different way, your skin feels soft, you feel actually you are rejuvenated.

And it’s easy to go on with this. I do not mean with the inner cleaning process, but you learn to be the sustainable gatekeeper of what comes into your body and mind. In short, it makes you feel healthy, feeling fit, happy, wise and free.

Let go! Detox your body and mind? Rewarding work!

Want to know more and/or have the same experience? Please contact us.

Frans Captijn
Host / Catalyst / Talenteer at Captijn Insight

Captijn Insight: “Catalyst in your process to new sustainable flow. Whether you are an individual, couple, team or an organization.” 

www.captijninsight.com

captijninsight@gmail.com

How to be (more) successful? What a question…? It can be so simple.

Last week, from a colleague who is living in China, I got a Facebook message with a recommendation to read an article with the name: “Nine Things You Need To Stop Doing If You Want To Be Successful.” After reading the article, with a smile, I made the comment to her: “A lot of stopping. I miss: Start Living.”

The word successful took my mind for a while. What is being successful, and in relation to this message, why do I have to stop doing things to reach it?

For me the word ‘successful’ has some same things as the word ‘beautiful’. You never can find the right description and you cannot touch it. What beautiful is for you, for somebody else can be unnatural, out of style, or even disgusting. Being beautiful has no end. There is always a ´more beautiful´ and, if not, we just create the desire to get it by photo-shopping.

With the word ‘success’ it’s a little bit the same. You always can reach more. There is no end. Thousands of people have the same degree as you. Millions have a higher amount of money on their bank account, a nicer/bigger car, or a bigger or more luxury house. But is this being successful?

Other people laugh about what success is for you. Even when you would win an Olympic medal in gold, within a couple of years somebody else takes over this place. Thinking of reaching/having success always and immediately is an invitation, for yourself or somebody else, to go beyond. In this way you never can reach success and when we feel we reached it, nearly always it is temporary.

Does success really exist or do we just imagine it as a kind of goal and make ourselves a little bit mad with it?

The English version of Wikipedia offers for the word Success; ‘Attainment of higher social status’, ‘The opposite of failure”. Reading this I got the feeling of competition, fight, and sometimes – using other ones backs - things even worse. It can be a kind of reaching the (temporary) first place and showing that you are (temporary) the best.

It’s this competition world in which we grow up. Our system is injected with it. We have to reach goals to be successful. Actually every single person has a goal of unique superiority. Sometimes out of early dissapointments changing in inferiority.
In The Netherlands we have a so called Cito-test to ‘help’ schools, children at the end of the primary school, and their parents, to take the next step in education. When this students, after growing up and having a job for several years, as adults look back and check what really was the impact of this test in their ‘success´ in life a lot of times you find different results. Sometimes even the opposite than expected (Inferiority changed in superiority).

Wanting to be successful helps us to make steps forward, to grow, to discover and that´s great as long as it’s a kind of playful game instead of a struggle or fight to get it. And when we reach our longing goal take a little while to celebrate. Most of the time, even before we get there, a new goal is already longing. A never ending story. Sometimes a vicious circle of running instead of enjoying. So what about this first goal we reached? What did we learn? Did it make us happy and if so, for what period of time? Was it really worth spending a part of our life time on it?

There is another way and perspective to look to being successful as well. It does not need shiny cars, no higher status, a big house, and it is not even necessary to stop with doing nine things. It’s immediately working in a sustainable way. It’s called … GET A LIFE!

Do the things you are passionate about, live your talents and gifts, enjoy the small things in life even more, enjoy life, smile. I am grateful to live in a surrounding on a daily base filled and full of smiles and positive energy.

When my mother should read my story I think she should add the sentence: “Be and feel satisfied and sometimes just sacrifice. Humility is not a bad thing.”

A maybe different and ‘small’ world of success at first sight. At the end it will infect the big world around in a very positive way.

And competition or struggle? For what? What are these words? Just laugh and ‘enrich’ yourself (this is not an egoistic thing) with the success of living. Do not support the row of people who only were running for success and, at the end, got regrets about their already past life time. Let your life be your career, there will be no desire left.

Being successful only is a label the outside world gives you as an temporary ‘award’. A label often filled with underlying envy. A direct call to compete. A call to endlessly try to accomplish others losing sight of the shores of living. There is no way to sustainable reach it. It does not exist unless you are God.

Am I successful? What a question...? I feel, step by step, this word is leaving my vocabulary because I try to be more and more aware of life and enjoy the only goal in it, living. 

You have a choice. Get a life. It’s simple. Success is guaranteed!

Frans Captijn
Host / Catalyst / Talenteer at Captijn Insight

Captijn Insight: “Catalyst in your process to new sustainable flow. Whether you are an individual, couple, team or an organization.” 

www.captijninsight.com

captijninsight@gmail.com

Reap what you are. Imperfection does not exist.

Last Wednesday I guided the weekly class of mindful communication. One of our guests who is doing a health program is reading a book with the title; “The gifts of imperfection”. During the class we gave attention to this word “imperfection” and it’s meaning.

We found that imperfection does not exist. It is only a thought that makes you suffer. A thought “offered” to you by your surrounding world. What other people think about it and sometimes how they use their verbal action in relation to it. The ‘news’ they spread about this in their eyes imperfection.

For me a great phenomenon is the Australian guy Nick Vujicic, the man without arms and legs. He not only tells but also shows that people are unique and wonderful the way they are. “I do not believe in mistakes. And when the world says you are not good enough… ask a second opinion.”

In the mean time the business world, the world of marketing, the world of ego and jealousy tell us imperfection exist. And business and marketing offer you the solution to solve the imperfection and suffering about it. You only have to pay for the temporary ‘solutions’.

Also here in Asia I work with wonderful and beautiful people. I start my classes most of the time very early in the morning. When I visit the office, after this morning class, most of the time the first staff members arrive at work. First thing they do is their make-up. No pictures allowed, sometimes - in a playful way – a kind of hide and seek till they are ready to ‘show up’. In my opinion – but who am I – a lot of times they look even better and much more natural in the in their opinion “imperfect” way than with (lots of) make-up. What is there to hide?

And it is exactly the same with the things we do in life. We try to be perfect in the eyes, we think, other people look at us. A lot of times we do - or try to do - things we do not like doing and think we serve the world we live in. We forget our greatest gift in life, that we are perfect already. And doing things that are actually, out of your heart and uniqueness, your things are not serving you as well as the world around you in the best and natural way. You are forcing, consuming lots of energy and hurting yourself trying to be a ‘perfect’ person in the eyes of others, forgetting you sustainably already are perfect (and you do not have to pay extra).

The Buddha was inspired by nature. And again nature shows us how it works. The area where I live in produces lots of species of all different fruits and herbs. The mango season just started. Nice fresh desserts (mango with sticky rice) are being served again.

Ever thought about an apple tree that reaps mangos? Or a leeches fruit tree that harvest cherries? Or the banana herb that offers you tomatoes? I think there is no other word than being aware of imperfection when this should happen.

Nature shows us how it works, with trees, with animals, etc.. It shows us the seasons and one of the seasons is to harvest.

Just reap what YOU are and bask in your perfection to serve yourself and the world around in the best way. 

Frans Captijn
Host / Catalyst / Talenteer at Captijn Insight

Captijn Insight: “Catalyst in your process to new sustainable flow. Whether you are an individual, couple, team or an organization.” 

www.captijninsight.com

captijninsight@gmail.com

Time is everything… every minute you are one step closer to the end.

Above the door of the house in Thailand I live in I wrote the text; “The clock won’t find you here.”

It is an invitation to people who want to work with me that there is time and attention for them. More and more I discover the basic need of people for attention and breathing. Beside that they need time to work on realizing their goals and dreams and to try to make sure the next thing goes right for them. Trying to keep grip on life.

Being a CEO of the Safety Region Zeeland in The Netherlands, from my colleague a couple of years ago I got a book with the title; “Time is everything…”. A merely and inspiring book that, whenever I have the chance, I just open at a random page. Every time again it shows new insights. We even organize a program here about this theme.

Time really is everything. Most of the time we do not even realize it. Yes, sometimes and only for a short while, when some of our friends or colleagues abruptly passes away. Or if we, or one of our love ones get a sad message of for instance health. Immediately life changes and things in life get another meaning. Priorities change, thoughts change. What would you do if you know you only have to live for one more week?

In the Thai village I live - and I think everywhere here at the countryside - time has another meaning. This meaning has everything to do with the status death has in this culture. It’s being seen as a normal and accepted part of life. A mark for an end but directly also for a new beginning to celebrate. A kind of fresh start. Last week, during a contemplation about ‘death’, it made me even more clear.

No person or situation in life could ever teach you as much as death has to teach you it said. Death show you the insignificance of the things that you cling on, it takes them all away in a split second. There is no difference between poor or rich, man or woman, status or position, races or whatever else. Death makes us all the same.

What can we learn from death? The question was raised how long you are going to wait to live life the fullest? How long do you wait till death becomes your teacher?  Why wait until everything is taken from you before you learn to dig down deep inside yourself to reach your highest talents and potential and live life in a (even more) valuable way? If with one final out-breath all of this can change, why bothering about so many not really valuable issues now and ‘spoil’ time of life? Don’t you want to live before death comes? A few things I wrote down:

• There is something in us that sometimes won’t let us live and enjoy our lives. It is so busy trying to make sure our future will be fine that we can’t just be in the here and now and live life. 
• We are months or sometimes even years ahead of ourselves. Because of this we are not even aware of the present moment and do not enjoy and-or celebrate what we already reached in life. 
• If you live life fully, you won´t have any last wishes. You will have lived them every moment. 
• If you make your final week to live the most important week, ask yourself what did you do with the rest of life-time. Did you waste it?
• The beauty is, you do not have to change life; You just have to change how you live life.
• It’s not what you are doing; it’s how much of you is doing it (awareness of enjoying life).
• Life itself is your career, not the other way around. 
• Your interaction with life is your most meaningful relationship. 
• What actually gives life meaning is the willingness – and the courage - to experience life’s events. 
• Life is not something you get; it’s something you experience. 
• Life exists with or without you.  You are not living life; you’re living your thoughts.
• Start using every day to let go of that scared part of you that won’t let you live life fully.

What are you doing with life? That’s what death asks you. Don’t get uptight about it. Instead, let this knowledge help you to live every moment of your life fully, because every moment matters. Feel invited to live with that level of awareness and enjoy life maybe even more. 


Frans Captijn
Host / Catalyst / Talenteer at Captijn Insight

Captijn Insight: “Catalyst in your process to new sustainable flow. Whether you are an individual, couple, team or an organization.” 

www.captijninsight.com

captijninsight@gmail.com