We: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere

TIP: Try to meditate in the same place each day. Create a special place for yourself to sit, whether it’s cross-legged on the floor in a corner of your bedroom or on your favourite sofa. Try to make it feel special. Lighting a candle before you start helps to create a ritual around the process. Or you could burn incense, if you like it, or place a fresh flower in a vase just in front of you. Assail your senses so that your body and mind learn that when you sit in your special place and the candle is lit this is their time to switch off and allow something else to take over.

Before I started meditating I used to think, ‘When I’m in the right apartment, I’ll create the perfect space and then I’ll do it on a regular basis.’ Eventually I started anyway and then it became about the perfect conditions. I had to be facing in the right direction, there could be no distractions, the candle and incense lit, my legs crossed. Then at one point I was away working and had none of my usual crutches. I remember sitting on a hard floor in a fluorescently lit corner of a kitchen and experiencing one of the most blissful meditations of my life. Now I do it anywhere – in the midst of a crowd, on a bus, at work. My need for meditation to be a part of my life is greater than my need for it to be perfect.

GA

When I first tried to meditate I was scared of it. It felt like I was being put in a torture chamber where all the thoughts I’d been trying to repress would appear and torment me. But knowing that I only had to sit for two minutes made it possible. It might not have sounded like very long to anyone else, but to me it was a lifetime. Over time my mind learnt to quieten for that period. Just that brief respite gave me a glimpse of what was to come. Peace of mind and a way of being in the world without the noise in my head constantly destabilizing me.

JN

Reflection

‘It feels good. Kinda like when you have to shut your computer down when it goes crazy and when you turn it on it’s OK again. That’s what meditation is to me.’

ELLEN DEGENERES

Meditation is the way I achieve real, lasting change. I breathe in deeply and I breathe out, and as I do so I return to the present moment and remember the truth: I am a spiritual being on a human journey.

Action: Today I will take time out. No matter how busy things get I will create a moment to honour myself and the spiritual path I am on.

Affirmation: As I breathe in and out deeply I feel myself return to who I truly am.

A NOTE ON ADDICTION (#ulink_15d0af1b-f66b-5e38-9f88-f26a109924d1)

An addiction is any behaviour you are unable to stop repeating despite its negative impact on your life. It’s a medical illness, like cancer or hepatitis – not something you can heal through willpower alone – and it’s impossible to make much real progress if you’re in active addiction.

The good news is that there is great help out there. There are now 12-step fellowships that can help with any addiction you might have. At the back of this book are links to their websites where you’ll find self-diagnosis questionnaires and information about how to access the support that is freely available (here (#litres_trial_promo)).

One of the most cunning symptoms of addiction is denial. If you find yourself tempted to minimize your behaviour, please don’t. Ignoring it will cheat you out of a whole new way of life.

Addiction to substances like drugs, alcohol or food are widely known, but you can also be addicted to behaviours like shopping, exercising, gaming, gambling, care-taking, loving and sex. Basically you can become addicted to anything that changes how you feel. A temporary period of abstinence from a substance or behaviour doesn’t mean you no longer have a problem. Addiction is a progressive illness, so in its early stages you may be able to kid yourself that you’ve got it under control. Long term, though, it only gets worse. So if you find you’re unable to control yourself around a particular substance or behaviour then you should jump straight to the Resources section here (#litres_trial_promo).

Congratulations. You now have four Essential Practices in place that will hold you steady for the journey ahead and, we hope, for the rest of your life.

Often we start this journey feeling alone. But the truth is that there are many of us – across the globe – searching for a happier, more meaningful way of living.

PART 2

The Nine Principles (#ulink_25cbe82f-870f-53fa-b9e0-ab0fb841867a)

The Path Ahead (#ulink_0c2dcfa6-d28a-557b-b749-83261f8d9642)

‘Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain, then refuse, under any circumstances whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anyone else.’

KAREN ARMSTRONG

The Nine Principles in this book provide a compass. Without them life can feel like a losing battle. We can thrash around trying to satisfy conflicting wants and needs. At times we seem to make headway in the ‘want’ department – we get the job or the partner or the home – and yet our deeper needs get buried. Other times we feel like we’re in a boat with one oar, paddling as hard as we can while spinning in circles.

The Nine Principles in this book guide us forward. They guide us home.

When you’ve learned to practise them in your life you’ll be able to live from a place of authenticity and love wherever you find yourself and whatever has happened in your past.

‘Only if you are ready to change yourself can you be ready to change the world.’

EDIT SCHLAFFER

The work of transforming our world begins with healing ourselves. If we don’t do the work, we risk allowing our egos to run the show. We can wind up acting out our own unresolved issues on those we seek to help, or taking up a cause from a need to feel important rather than from a place of genuine passion and concern. Our world is full of people who inadvertently cause harm while trying to do good.

You may feel tempted to flip through the book until you find the part that deals with a particular issue that you feel relates to you – like relationships, for instance – but don’t. The Nine Principles are laid out in an order. Each one builds on the last and if you skip through the others, you’ll short-change yourself. When you finish the book in its entirety you may want to keep it close for reference, but before then give yourself the gift of committing to the whole process. You may choose to complete a chapter a week or take it more slowly. You can also work through the chapters with friends or other women who are also interested in taking the journey (here (#litres_trial_promo)).

There’s no timescale, but the sooner you do the work, the sooner the miracles will manifest.

‘Action is the antidote to despair.’

JOAN BAEZ

Doing vs thinking

WE is an experiential rather than an intellectual process. Most of us exert a lot of mental energy trying to understand ourselves, but with little permanent result. We may have plenty of insights, but insights alone rarely lead to change, just as reading a recipe sadly doesn’t result in a cooked meal – there’s still all the measuring, chopping and stirring to do.

For change to work, ACTion is necessary. ACT is one of the acronyms we’ll repeat again and again:

Action

Changes

Things

Right action leads to right thinking. Not the other way around. It’s not enough merely to know or understand. You don’t get to experience swimming by sitting at the edge of the pool. And once you’re in the water, if you want to stay afloat, you’ll need to move your arms and legs rather than just think about it.

Action is also what will enable you to make the journey from the head to the heart. So throughout this journey you’ll be reminded to ACT.

The exercises that each chapter contains are actions in their own right. They are an integral part of the journey as they help you to action what you’re learning.

For decades I tried to work things out in my head. I lived with a mountain of self-help books by my bed. I’d read a chapter or two until I found an insight that made me feel momentarily better. Then I’d recommend it to someone else as a brilliant read. I thought I could get rid of my pain by understanding and knowing. I’d lie awake at night looking at things from every angle, stuck in analysis paralysis. In the end, a combination of whisky, sleeping pills and tranquilizers was the only way I could get any peace from the constant noise in my head. It was revolutionary to me when someone suggested I move a muscle to change a thought. I thought I had to wait for my thoughts to change before I could act. Now I know it’s the other way round. Right action creates right thinking and self-esteem to boot.

JN

I have to say that even though I was introduced to these practices decades ago, I still find the doing of them hard. Even though I know what’s best for me and have experienced first hand the difference they make to my entire life, my brain still wants to forget that I feel better when I practise them daily. Maybe it’s the fact that they work that makes the challenge greater – my ingrained, stubborn self-sabotage doesn’t want me well, or maybe it’s my internal rebel that says, ‘Don’t tell me what to do!’ or perhaps it’s just plain laziness. Whatever my resistance is, the fact is, when I do them, they work.

GA

Commitment

There’s only one thing you need to agree to for the principles in this book to work. It’s a commitment to be willing. Willing to try. Willing to pick yourself up when you mess up (which we all do) and to try again.

Anyone can make this commitment. It doesn’t require education, status or wealth. And it certainly doesn’t require perfection.

Nothing in this book needs to be done ‘right’ or ‘perfectly’. The P-word, perfectionism, should be banned. It causes all of us monumental problems – in society’s expectations of us and the demands we make on ourselves. We are not cardboard cut-outs. We are individuals. That means each one of us is complicated and real, with our own unique and often messy layers of emotional wounding.