Lady Penelope got a Wildlife Camera for her 60th birthday. It’s one of those presents that you are really glad someone close to you have been given! I love it!

It has brought home to me several of the Life Lessons I’ve shared over the last years with Moodscope. It seems that Life’s Lessons are like buses… you wait for a while and then loads come along at once. In this case, they are all reminders.

First Lesson, RTFM. I’ve tried all sorts of settings on the camera and positions. Sometimes, all we get are few spines of a hedgehog’s back! Of course, I could RTFM, “Read The French Manual,” in this case, for the camera is French. Whilst the online version of the manual is in English, it is very boring for such an exciting piece of kit. I wish people would write better manuals. I’ve given up on it several times and just had a bash (you’re not like that, are you?) When you just have a bash, and don’t take expert advice, the results are very mixed!

Second Lesson, KISS – Keep It Short and Simple. Most times I over-complicate the setting up of the camera with various tripods and gorillapods, the results are rubbish. Keeping It Simple works better. I wonder how you might be over-complicating your life at the moment. Where could you simplify your life?

Third Lesson, the camera gives a welcome rhythm to our day. We’ve inherited a world that seems to have lost its rhythm. Rituals and rhythms are essential when we are trying to cope one step at a time or one day at a time or even one hour at a time. Having a dog that needs walking and feeding must help enormously. We don’t have a dog, yet, but we do have our hedgehogs. The ritual and rhythm of putting the camera and food out at night, and excitedly bringing it in for viewing the footage in the morning, is doing us good.

Three reminder steps to wellbeing: Read the (F) Manual, Simplify Life wherever possible, and build in predictable rhythms, routines, and rituals into this unpredictable world!

What are your rhythms, routines, and rituals that are helping? How have you simplified your life?

Lex

A Moodscope member.