I start every morning with a cup of wonderful coffee, writing in my diary, reading some wisdom and this followed by 10 minutes of meditation. This morning, after only 4½ hours sleep, I read a chapter in Pema Chödröns book “The places that scare you”, about how to try to deal with things when the going gets tough. And as you know, little sleep makes you way more vulnerable and gives you a low tolerance and hardly any patience. Easy to get into trouble.

Since little sleep happens to me on and off, especially in a time like this, when there´s so many important desicions to make in life, I have found it a very good time to deal with low tolerance and patience. And just not get steamed up because of little sleep or get involved in any blame game, which is unfortunately such a major thing among people. Always somebody elses fault.

The stroke wake up call about 2½ years ago, and the Greenland accident, put me on this road of thinking. Use rough times to try to become a better human being. And the way I go about it, is basically what Tibetian buddists call tonglen meditation, which basically means trying to look at things from the other side. So when I feel that I am getting upset for something which makes me experience feelings of anger, hate or being offended, I turn things around and try to look at it from the other persons side. It is very helpful.

I am not saying it works all the time! For me, the most difficult times to not get upset, feel anger or aggression, is when Dana plays her football games. I am ashamed to say, I have problems controlling myself!