In a split second your family destroyed. Again that mirror. LIVE by the day.

Last Monday morning my partner got a message that her school friend (40), so far, together with two of her family members, tragically was killed in a traffic accident. That accident happened the day before on Sunday morning, November 25, 2018 in the Thai province of Rayong. Her husband is perilous on the intense or care unit and their two 8 and 10 year old sons (on the Facebook photo with their mother) are told to be 'good' because they survived the crash. A heartbreaking picture.

A large lorry with sand overtook a predecessor and, on the two-lane road, he could not get back into his lane in time and crushed, the car approaching. The car with their family and some other relatives driven by her husband. A total of nine people, unsuspecting in that car, on the way for a family daytrip to a waterfall in the national park there.

My girlfriend called me during her work right after she heard about this tragedy and was and is pretty upset. Not in the mood to work any longer that day. I big shock.

In the culture in which I live here, family and family ties generally play a more important role than in the West. And so too that is with friendships. For example, my girlfriend is part of an active close group of eight friends who know each other from the university and meet each other at least once a year. Unfortunately this group is now seven...

A young family ... what about future?

I do not know what it is this year 2018 (in Thailand 2561). This year seems to be an ongoing movie full of mirrors to keep me awake what life really is all about and how fragile life is. It can all be different in one split second. And when you see around you how and what we are all concerned about, how we nag and argue and how we run our lives... What is it all about??? Money, status, power, position, etc., you discover this type of messages are hammering louder and louder that this things do NOT have any value in relation to living life. They represent nothing of it.

Every morning when I wake up, I am grateful that I have received a new day. An invitation to LIVE that day and make something of it. And this ongoing mirroring stories help me to understand it is better not to let me in with all the negativity around us and given by the ('social') media. Enjoying more the small things that actually most of the time are even for free available. Being happy, after having the experience, nowadays to be free of any 'status' or ‘position’ and enjoy living a free life and another lifestyle.

And that constant, and seemingly faster and faster, stream of mirrors that everyone knows and gets in his life, actually point more and more to LIVE by the day and be grateful for all that you already have and for the one you are.

And again the saying of OSHO came through my mind; "The only goal of life is living". Live by the day. Where else do you all worry about than living life? You are running out of time and ... it can all be different in one split second.


Gangey Gruma (Frans Captijn)

Captijn Insight. Catalyst in developing tranquility & in-sight to get in a sustainable way real connection, purpose, pleasure and flow in life, love, family, business, career and work again.

captijninsight@gmail.com

The usefulness of the nonsense.

I got humor from home. Just like in any other family, also our family sometimes had to deal with problems. In particular it was my mother who often broke the tension and stress or helped to let things flow again during this situations using her fun and laughter.

Many people nag and argue about often even very small things. As if their life depends on it. My mother often stepped frivolously and lightly over this situations and things with a smile and her humor. There are worse things in the world she regularly said. Don’t accept hiccups to occur. Life goes on. Let alone let your precious energy merge into futilities. Always try to see the bright side of things was one of her winged statements.

Complaining and often making each other's life miserable… for what reason? Is it really worth it? Does it bring any solution or solve the ‘problem’? Mouths full of all that’s going wrong in the world around us and at work. Often not doing things better ourselves in our own small world. And the older you get, the worse it often becomes. Moaning.

Yes, 50% out of my mother, I know for sure I am inserted with my mother's humor. Even more than my other brothers and sisters because I was, after seven years in between my youngest sister and me, the last born of our family. Because of this I spend lots of time as a young child alone with her and even accompanied her to the theater. No children day-care that time and even if it should have been available it was nothing for my parents to drop me there.

She was an actress in Haarlem (The Netherlands) and performed in the Haarlem Theater as well, the place I have been born. You can see her on the photo with this blog in the play called "Summer in December" as I just read on the backside of the old photograph I just found.

How many layers of cosmetics make-up artists put on her face or whatever clothing they put on her... they could not hide the humor within. Her producers knew she could (and wanted) only play comical roles. Comical types. That 'jester' in her was simply not to hide. She often laughed at herself when she saw how she met herself in life. Those inside pranks were only briefly hidden. Often even big nonsense and many times she was the one afterwards who laughed loud about it. It brought her a feeling of freedom.

And I got that from her. Also in me the 'jester' is the basic talent with which I am anchored with this world. That playful inner child. And how it works is impossible to explain and who does not understand, also good, he or she does not understand. To honor her after she passed away I started my courses to become an actor myself. Looking back now maybe not to learn acting but to understand myself in relation to the world around me even better.

As if my mother regularly goes through me or still works with me. She taught me the usefulness of nonsense. Bringing some playfulness, light, air and/or flow in situations.

My kids and various friends have regularly witnessed or attended. Many times I see something happening, or observe on a terrace people sitting together, and comedy in my head arises like a movie starts to run. And I too cannot keep that inner pleasure inside and start as a kind of reporter telling it. And I believe, no, it is almost certain that that story often is even for perhaps 90% true.

Youp van 't Hek (a Dutch comedian, author, columnist, singer-songwriter, playwright and critic) would say: "A little light, a bit of a laugh, a bit of air, a bit of fun.".

Worry about all those things around you a little less and live a bit lighter and more by the day. You are running out of time. And as far as that’s physically possible of course, it’s better to live more in a playful and ‘airy’ way in flow than with moaning hiccups. Humor is a great supporting tool for that.

Happy that I inherited that humor from my mother. A gift that I enjoy and share every day.

Gangey Gruma (Frans Captijn)

Captijn Insight. Catalyst in developing tranquility & in-sight to get in a sustainable way real connection, purpose, pleasure and flow in life, love, family, business, career and work again.

captijninsight@gmail.com

The causes of our emotions

Last week, after a long period of time, I followed a Buddhist class again. As usual it brought me several insights and I am happy to share. Growing by sharing still is one of my life themes.

The teaching was about emotions. Emotions, we have many of them, are effects. In the present timeframe, especially on the ‘social’ media, people share their emotions and moods with the so called ‘Emoticons’.

Where there is an effect, there is also a source, a cause. And because for every individual person this sources can be different, the emotions we show in several circumstances are different depending on the person. And the deep-rooted habits of our reactions partly determine our personality.

Although there is a balance in emotions (wholesome, neutral and unwholesome), if we talk about emotions most of the time we immediately thing about being emotional in a kind of sad way. During my acting classes I learned for instance that responding out of the same element ‘fire’ can bring us laughter and happiness but also deep sadness and crying. So emotions are personal expressions. Kinds of body language using all our senses and the manifestation of dealing with our inner energy. All emotions have two points of view: what we think (psychological) and what we feel (physical).

Unwholesome emotions have to do with:

# Greediness: Desires, lust, passion

# Anger: Rage, hostility, hate, resentment, dislike

# Ignorance: depression, sadness, despair, anxiety, self-pity, worry, insecurity, and so on.

Negative emotions lead to mental disorders. Affecting (ruining) your health, family, job, relationship, etc.. Simply your whole life. 

Wholesome emotions have to do with:

# Joy: Happiness, enthusiasm, optimism, cheerfulness

# True love: caring, compassion.

Positive emotions lead to mental balance and order. So your whole life as well but in a very different strengthening way. 

If we get more sight on and understand the causes, we can work on them is stead of suppressing the effects with for instance medicines, alcohol, drugs or going deeper and deeper in our mobile devices addictions of loneliness.

So the question in this week blog is: Where do our emotions come from?

Looking deeper into this question we can discover the cause of our emotions has to do with karma. Buddhism even teaches karma of this life but also from former life’s. But let’s leave that for now.

Karma? Easy said but maybe not so easy to understand.

Karma you can see as a gathering of actions. Physical actions, speech and thoughts of our mind. It is also related to the so called ‘law of cause and effect’. Meaning this. Our thoughts, actions and speech (cause) influence (effect) our future.

And again we can understand that our early childhood experiences and primary main life themes at that moment of how to stay safe and how to survive, has a lot to do with the creation of our karma.

Personalization of the experiences of our present life (the dealing with the external world) and the interaction with our build up/learned mental experiences cause the arousal of our emotions. Craving and attachments, satisfying our desires, are big parts of this interaction process and make us dependent. We cannot and do not want (and did not learn) to let go.

So you can see an emotion as the personal, most of the time habitual, way of attention based on your personal perception in your interaction with yourself and others.

Taking some distance to watch without judging to this personal process gives insight in your karma and the way you show emotions.

Learning to let go, calming and clearing the mind (experiences) and focus on wholesome emotions step by step can heal a possibly disturbed emotional balance. And that is dealing with the cause instead of fighting the effect.



Gangey Gruma (Frans Captijn)

Captijn Insight. Catalyst in developing tranquility & in-sight to get in a sustainable way real connection, purpose, pleasure and flow in life, love, family, business, career and work again.

captijninsight@gmail.com

Do not open Fridays and Saturdays received letters during the weekend and control your email movement.

Mail, both letters and email, can disturb your mood. Especially during your well-deserved weekend you got to recharge your energy. Ever thought about that? And of course the content of your received mail can have both a positive or negative influence.

Last week, once again, I was remembered of this by someone from the Netherlands and someone from Germany. Many negative feelings came back again.

I would like to share with you how I have arranged my dealing with (e)mail after past experiences. Not as the ‘Columbus egg solution’ but perhaps to make you think about it and take some action to get even more control back over your life.

Unfortunately, in the nineties I was in a tedious and long-lasting, sometimes harassing, process of divorce. Nothing unique so to say but still. And when I listened to the stories of those two persons a lot of things came back up again about how I experienced that time and how things often still go. Distractions of your weekend, interruptions of night's rest by ... yes mail.

Perhaps I think too negatively by saying after this experiences nowadays, it felt like a sort of conspiracy theory. Usually I received again another thick letter from some legal firm on Saturday morning or I received an email on Friday afternoon. As if included in the curriculum of the legal profession to make the 'weekend enjoyment' as a special ‘additional gift’ bad for the 'opponent' of their 'client'.

'Curiously' you open the messages and… your weekend is ruined. That free time you got just to recharge is being occupied with thoughts, anger, disbelief, and so on. And not only during the day, especially at night.

And of course it is not just and only about the legal profession. I am sure you know several examples from your personal experiences.

Once more this is another aspect to take control back about how you want to live your life. And yes, directing your mail and email requires some discipline. You need to learn to get rid of your addict behavior to read and respond directly. Actually I was amazed, better to say positively surprised, about how quickly my outside world was used to my different way of dealing and approaching my (e)mails. I even get a lot of nice and positive reactions to it.

I would like to share my personal approach as an example with you.

# First of all, I open letters that I receive on Friday or Saturday only on Monday.

# I also took my email movement back in my own hands. Not directly replying as an addicted routine anymore but reading and responding only two times a week.

If people send me an email (both related to business as well as private) they will automatically receive the following message in English and Dutch:

Thank you for your message.

Please note:

As I continue a “digital fasting and detox” program, I live life and enjoy engaged face-to-face connections (and conversations) with people, friends and nature even more. 

That’s why I check my emails only twice a week: Monday and Thursday mornings before noon in Thailand (GMT+7).

If necessary I try to respond within two days after your email is read.

Thank you for your understanding and have a nice day.

Frans Captijn

Till today, this two actions contribute to more rest and almost no disturbance of my generally very nice weekends.

Gangey Gruma (Frans Captijn)

Captijn Insight. Catalyst in developing tranquility & in-sight to get in a sustainable way real connection, purpose, pleasure and flow in life, love, family, business, career and work again.

captijninsight@gmail.com

Management without soul engagement. How to completely destroy a company or organization within a year.

To run a business you must be competent and skilled. In high school I learned that, economically speaking, you run a company to make optimal profit. In my opinion at least one side of the coin.

More and more, in the business and increasingly disconnected world, we can discover that soul engagement, customer contact and so-called after-sales (customer satisfaction) are elements that are needed to keep customers happy with the product or service they are paying for. It lowers the threshold to come back to you again and thus the continuity of your company.

Management therefore not only requires a business sense and knowledge but also passion. Soul engagement and commitment, a belief in the product, knowing what you are doing, knowing the purpose and value of your contribution, embracing the work environment (culture) in which you work and sincere involvement. Not only running for and collecting the money as the main goal.

In management terms, this requires a proper mix of feminine and masculine (Yin Yang) qualities in relation to the company you want to run or the product or service that you want to deliver. And if you run a company as a team, you have to be flexible in that team, speak the same language and complement each other where necessary or desired instead of competing. Keep your eyes and ears open and adapt your behavior to what is necessary or required for the ‘overall’ at any time.

From the sideline I experienced how, in my opinion, because of lack of knowledge of the unique services of a to me dear company, lack of understanding of and dealing with culture difference, lack of management teamwork, developing a culture of fear and especially the lack of soul engagement, a beautiful company in one year completely stranded and was destroyed.

Motivated staff turned their backs to the management and company. All returning individual customers and groups left. Negative mouth-to-mouth 'recommendation' makes a relaunch, if at all possible, hard at least not under the same name. The firm is for sale again ...

Soul engagement is something that really counts and if you know how to deal with, running a business can be a feast that provides energy, customer relations and money in a decent way. Very different from managing something that has been declared dead in advance due to the lack of it.

Sad to watch this dying process as an outsider.


Gangey Gruma (Frans Captijn)

Captijn Insight. Catalyst in developing tranquility & in-sight to get in a sustainable way real connection, purpose, pleasure and flow in life, love, family, business, career and work again.

captijninsight@gmail.com