Recently farmers in Indonesia set alight large swathes of forest land in order to clear the land for expanding palm oil plantations. The result was an environmental hazard for not just some fellow Indonesians, but for all people in the neighboring Republics of Singapore and some cities in Malaysia.
How it should be:
For days this week the Pollutant Standard Index (PSI) hovered between 100+ to 400+. Singapore’s worst environmental crisis in more than a decade saw acrid smoke seep into people’s homes.
How it is:
Pic Courtesy: Straits Times
Environmental wellness is often under valued. How important is the air we breathe? How often do we even stop and think and feel grateful for the excellent quality of air that Mother Nature has bestowed on us.
This is a good time to bring home the value and importance of environmental wellness and make it touch down in our individual private lives. At goholisticwellness.com we defined Environmental Wellness as “Environmental wellness is a state in which a person realizes the need to alter his/her dwellings of work and living to bring about harmony and efficiency in a way that does not pollute other people’s environment and utilizes environmental wellness to drive his/her other wellness dimensions.”
If every individual were to adopt the above definition in the way they go about their lives, would it have prevented the situation that we started out this post with? Wouldn’t it have automatically encouraged innovative thinking on the part of the farmers who are slashing and burning forests and their keepers for years now? The current happenings can serve as a good way to appreciate why the way to view Environmental Wellness the way we do, is so special.
Creating financial wellness by burning trees in a way that results in stealing an unrelated individual (in the case whole cities of millions of people)’s Environmental Wellness, will be disallowed if people followed the wellness principles stipulated in @ goholisticwellness.com. By allowing slash and burn to happen year after year, every time it happens, you can see the negative impact on not just the obvious environmental Wellness dimension of Singaporeans and Malaysians, but its negative impact on other wellness dimensions such as their social, physical and mental dimensions! These are our Wealths, our WELLths!
Take the goholisticwellnessTeller(c) assessment and get a snapshot of how WELLthy you are today.
Call to Action:
1. Recall the activities you indulged in in the recent past to improve your Environmental Well-Being and check to see if in doing so anyone else unconnected with your Environmental Wellness was adversely affected.
2. Plan any future EWellness pursuits to be executed in a way that does not impact another’s. By doing so see your Social, Mental and physical Wellness also benefit, from this simple act.
i was caught up with a series of classes i had to run for Enterprise Services. Time for reflections.
One of my goals of a Wellness pursuits for mind and body has been Archery. I got my chance at professional archery practise for the first time at the HP clubhouse this friday. i believe some pictures were posted. i’ll upload them once i have them.
Share with the team how you have been these recent weeks.
Sarah Darling’s life got seriously plunged into an a imperfect life when she discovered she lost her most loved diamond ring.
She almost never took it off, but it was giving her a bit of a rash so she did, zipping it in her coin purse for safe keeping. Later, she absentmindedly emptied the contents of that purse into the collection cup of Billy Ray Harris, who is homeless and often stays under a bridge in Darling’s hometown. — A good deed– that gave her happiness. It wasn’t until the next day that she realized her ring was gone. These were her words then. “It was horrible. It was such a feeling of loss,” Darling said. “It meant so much to me beyond just the financial value.” Was she happy after losing the ring?
Billy Ray Harris, who is homeless and often sleeps under a bridge, however noticed the ring in his bowl and instead of pawning it off and making a few extra bucks, kept the ring safely, hoping for the owner to return for it. How usual is that for a homeless man to do?
Darling however went back to the place she had given her money to Mr. Harris, He was gone. But she returned the next day and found Billy Ray Harris there. Sarah Darling asked him … ‘I don’t know if you remember me, but I think I gave you something that’s very precious to me,’ and he said, ‘Was it a ring? Yeah, I have it, I kept it for you “. Imagine how Happy Sarah would have been when she heard this? Imagine how Happy Mr. Harris would have been seeing Sarah so happy and relieved? That was Mr. Harris’ moment of perfect Happiness in his imperfect life.
What do you think?
The story did not end there. Sarah and her partner were so touched by Mr. Harris’ honesty that they started an online donation campaign for Mr. Harris and in a week over $140,000 has poured into the account. Sarah and her husband will give all money raised to Billy Ray Harris at the end of a 90-day fund raising campaign. More Happiness for Mr. Harris and his benefactors!
Here’s what i liked most. When asked asked him how he felt about all the attention he’s attracted since returning the ring.“I like it, but I don’t think I deserve it,” he said. ”What I actually feel like is, ‘what has the world come to when a person who returns something that doesn’t belong to him and all this happens?’” Harris said.
Anyone who would like to recognize homeless man Billy Ray Harris and his humble belief in honesty and honor can donate to the account.
Sarah Darling is thrilled at the response from people all over the globe and told CNN, ”I actually feel like I’m especially lucky to have this ring now. I loved it before. I loved it so much, but I love it so much more now. I feel like it has such great karma.
We talked about the 6 situations or circumstances our social circumstances, our financial circumstances, our physical circumstance, our mental circumstance and our environmental circumstance. A newly evolving circumstance is our spiritual circumstance. Circumstance is a fact or condition connected with or relevant to an event or action; An event or fact that causes or helps to cause something to happen, typically something undesirable
Lets talk a bit about the last one..Spiritual Wellness. VIktor Frankl invented what’s called Logotherapy. What might be the connection between Logotherapy and our group’s theme? A lot. Logotherapy is the powerful psychospiritual wellness aspect of existential psychology that was developed by Dr. Viktor Frankl who was the successor to Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler in the Third Viennese School of psychiatry. The core of this therapy lies the belief that besides Maslow’s Motivational theory of Needs, there is one other need i.e. to live with a consistent sense of meaning. You can find more practical resources here;http://www.logotherapy.fulfillmentforum….Next week we’ll touch on more ideas to maximize our Spiritual wellness. Before i go i share a story
My Son, 11-year old, was going thru his growing years and was out of school last week overcoming mild case of chiken pox. As we did not want him to miss out i called his form teacher and let him know what’s going on. We talked about options to get his home assignments to reach him. After assessing various options the form teacher suggested the following: He will swing by my apartment twice a week and drop this assignments in our letter box. My son will complete these assignments and send in scans of his work via Email. The form teacher would then distribute the work to the respective teachers. i thought that was brilliant on many fronts. Above all was the meaning that both the teacher and my son were deriving from this. My son will grow up and am sure will recall this gesture when he gives talks as an adult and for his form teacher, he is going to have one father of his pupil, who is on the way to idolize him in all of Singapore by writing about his care and effort in the main newspaper forum. Here’s why. On the second time he tried to drop in the assignments he found the slot was locked–something i do to prevent spammers– He smsed me when i was in a meeting. 10 mins later when i responded her replied..”not to worry, i have handed over the assignment to your wife”. In this day and age? WoW!! That was way beyond anything i expected. My son’s gone to school today after this ‘break’..Lets see what he comes back with 🙂
Perfect happiness for him while undergoing a phase of imperfect life!
