I remember a portrait exhibited in the Archibald exhibition inspiring me. The work was titled ‘The inner stillness of Eileen Kramer’ by Andrew Lloyd Greensmith.
At the time of display, Eileen Kramer was 102 years old and as the description of the painting pointed out, “she personifies the key to longevity and a full, rich life.” She is currently the worlds oldest working dancer/choreographer as well as a poet, artist and costume designer. She has been travelling the world living in places such as India, Paris, London and New York and recently returned to Australia, aged 99.
Eileen found her passion in life, the arts. In the artist's eyes this has contributed to Eileen having a sense of inner stillness and being at ease with the world, her life and her craft.
Loads of research has shown that participating in happiness related activities contribute positively to psychological wellbeing ('Lyubomirsky S, Sheldon KM, Schkade D: Pursuing happiness: The architecture of sustainable change' is just one study). For me personally, wandering through galleries is something that brings me happiness. I am also fortunate that one of the things that brings me happiness, mindfully admiring art and painting, is proven to contribute to overall wellbeing. What a bonus!
This got me thinking. There were a lot of things I liked doing that had the potential to have more impact on my overall wellness if I just did them more mindfully and better. It was only when I realised that by doing these things better, I could reach new peaks of my happiness and potential.
I am lucky that my work at Benny Button has allowed me to invest time in understanding how to get better at things that are good for me. It has led to greater fulfilment in investing in my wellbeing. My partner in crime and co founder of Benny Button, Adrian Medhurst, and I have developed the Benny Button Profiler to help as many people as possible explore and understand what factors personally contribute to them living well and having impact. Our aim is to help people narrow the focus on the areas that can help them reach and even fast track their potential.
For me being mindful about the choices I make and how I practice doing the things I like doing, has had a massive impact on my overall wellness. Moving better, more effectively and more efficiently, making better decisions about the food I eat, being present in relationships, learning about new stuff, getting quality sleep, working in a job that I love and consciously breathing more often have contributed to my overall happiness and my own inner stillness.
I am not sure I will live as long as Eileen Kramer but what I do know is that I am giving myself every chance of happiness and a long rich life. Learning about wellness can lead to Information overload as we navigate new studies, fads and opportunists that sometimes make wellbeing more complex and difficult than it needs to be. If we keep it simple, if we just pause for a while and think about what we like doing, how what we are doing contributes to our wellbeing, and how we can do these things a little bit better over time, then we all have a chance to find that inner stillness realised by Eileen Kramer.