Yes, It is Still NOW

It always will be. 

If you haven't read the previous blog about the Present Moment, please do so.  Because this blog is a continuation of that subject.

But first, I received an email from a reader last night who asked about my closing sentence of the blog: "When you can say yes to the moment at hand, and make it your friend no matter HOW it shows up, you will experience a freedom you have never imagined."  She wanted to know what that 'freedom' would look/feel like.

It feels like joy, laughter and creativity.  It feels like life is fun and easy, even when unpredictable.  It feels like you can't stop smiling.

NOW let's look at two other ways we rob ourselves of the present moment.  They are called Past and Future.  And they exist only in our minds.  Any moment that your mind is focused on the past or the future, you are not experiencing NOW.  All right, don't get your pantaloons in a twist.  Yes.  Our lives do require some planning for the future.  And yes the past can be useful as a tool, a reference for what worked and what didn't.  AND, remembering good times, good people, good experiences can be fun.  Just be aware that experiencing good times in the present is more fun and more rewarding than reliving the past.

So yes, there are those few exceptions where we use our memories of time gone by, and our imagination of times to come in positive ways.  Much more often though Past and Future are our tormenters.  The past is most often called to mind in the forms of regret, resentment, anger, judgment, and disappointment.  Dragging those feelings into the NOW does two things.  First, it releases the poison of those emotions into your mind and body again.  Second it obliterates your experience of the present moment.  The only good reason to drag those emotions/states into the present is to work on releasing them. 

When your mind and body are focused on remembered pain and suffering, you cannot experience the beauty and joy that is waiting for you in THIS moment.  Same thing with future tripping.  When our minds conjure pictures of the future, it is most often in the forms of worry, fear, anxiety, unease, trepidation.  We imagine all kinds of disagreeable or abhorrent possibilities that VERY likely will NEVER come to pass.  Yet we experience the pain and suffering of some imagined/illusory future right here in the present!  How crazy is that!!  Think about all the times you have made yourself anxious, scared, nervous, stressed out over a mental fabrication of something that never had life in the NOW! 

The present moment is our friend, and we are our own worst enemies!  We steal our own opportunity for joy and creativity and instead make ourselves sick with incessant trips to Past and Future.  You can put an end to this insanity. 

Let the past be the past.  If you are harboring resentments, regrets, disappointments - do the work to let them go.  You deserve to be free of them.

Plan for the future only as much as is necessary.  The future gets built in the present.  It is your relationship to the present that creates your future.  Can you embrace the present regardless of how it shows up?  When your answer becomes yes, you become a mastermind of the good life.

So consider this.  When you argue with what is, you lose.  Every time.  What is, already is.  It cannot be changed.  The only thing that is changeable is YOUR relationship to what is.  What you resist, persists.  It has to because you are giving energy to it.  When you cease resisting, and move into acceptance (which is the only sane approach to what already is), you create the possibility for something different to show up next.  Accept what is and imagine the next best thing you want to bring into being. 

Have you asked yourself today: "What is my relationship to this moment?"

From Worry to Concern

Have you ever paid attention to the character of worry?  In most cases it is repetitive, cyclical, amorphous, and insidious.  It slips into your consciousness and lurks there, eating away at you but never really declaring its size, shape, or purpose.  Do you have certain worries that have remained the same for weeks, months, years, decades???  Have no doubt, they will continue to lurk in the shadows, waking you up in the dead of night in a cold sweat, until you shine a light on them and take away their power.

You can dis-empower your worries by transforming them into clearly identifiable concerns.  Concerns (unlike amorphous worries) are well defined and actionable.  Let's look at an example.  Let's take one that we have all experienced!

Worry:  "I have so much to do tomorrow, there is no way I can get it all done, I don't know what I am going to do."

Concern: "I think I have too much on my plate for tomorrow."

Excellent.  If you truly have too much on your plate, you need to decide what you want (to eat) and what you are willing to share.

1. Prioritize - List everything on your plate and assign priority numbers.
2. Eliminate - Anything that can be postponed to another day - postpone.
3. Deligate - Anything that absolutely needs to be done, but someone else can do, share it.  Ask for help!!!
4. Separate - For the things that have to be addressed, can you separate it into steps to be taken, and address only the steps that are absolutely necessary.
5. Allocate - Start with the highest priority and give your energy to that item to the extent that you need to (for today), and then move on.
6. Evaluate: How did your day turn out?  Did you do all you could do?  Were there items left over?  What does this tell you?

The bottom line on this kind of concern is that you can only do what you can do when you are giving your best.  If you take all of the above steps and find that you could still not accomplish your list, you need to get a new list.  Remember, reality rules.  If the reality is that you can not possibly do all that you have on your list, your list is the problem.

Worry, Worry, Worry

 Worry is the number one way that human beings give away their present moment happiness.  And the average human being gives away literally years worth of life to this negative behavior.  Most of us are so accustomed to worry that we have no idea how much or how often we do it.  It is robbing you of your happiness.       Lets look at the anatomy of worry.  Worry is: thinking (with fear) in the present moment, about a future moment.   It most often involves wanting something not to happen, or fearing something you do want will not happen.  Why do we worry?         Because we can.         As trite as this sounds, it is a very real part of the answer.  We are the only species on the planet actually capable of worrying.  This is explained by the fact that within the last three million years  the human brain went through a huge transformation.  It more than doubled in weight due primarily to the development of the Frontal Lobe.  This area of the brain is the entity that allows human beings to imagine themselves into the future. No other animal on the planet has a Frontal Lobe as developed as ours.  This unique part of the brain is our time machine.  Without it we would be forever trapped in the present moment.  With it, we can foresee tomorrow.    

     Researchers have determined that for the average human being, about 12 percent of their daily thoughts are about the future.  And it turns out that we future trip for a variety of reasons.  Pleasure is one of them.  We have the capacity to imagine infinite scenarios in which positive, fun, successful, lucrative events occur – and we actually enjoy these imaginings as if they are real.  This type of trip into the future stimulates the pleasure centers of the brain just as a real time occurrence does.    

     Not all our journeys into the future are positive.  In fact, most of us take the pain train into tomorrow more frequently than we board the pleasure cruise.  We imagine all manner of un-pleasantries, problems, screw ups, tragedies, and disasters.  These are not enjoyable forays into the future, so why do we insist on them?  

     When asked why they worry, human beings generally answer one of two ways.  They either say, “Because I can’t help it.”  Or, they insist, “To keep bad things from happening.”  The  interesting thing about these answers is that they are both wrong.  Worry is not thrust upon us, it is a choice, and for most people, a habit.  And believing that worry has any ability to control the future is magical thinking.     

     To break the worry habit, you first have to stop believing that worry is effective.  What were you worried about last year at this time?  What were you worried about two months ago?  What has become of those worries?

Getting Clear About What YOU Are Choosing

On February 20th (See 'Happiness Is An Inside Job') I suggested contemplating the question: “What am I willing to have get in the way of my experience of happiness?”

20 years of coaching people has given me a clear answer to this question.  These are the things that people choose over happiness: petty grievances, annoyance, frustration, complaint, anger, resentment, judgment, blame, worry, and fear.  Sounds crazy, right?  Why would anyone choose any of these over happiness?

The reason is simple - We don't realize that choosing the emotions/mind states on that list obscures the experience of our innate happiness.  We have been conditioned to believe that everything on that list is a normal part of everyday life.  And believing makes it so.  That list is a virtual table of contents for your day to day experience of life.  Please do NOT take my word for it.  It is far more powerful to discover this for yourself.

I encourage you to keep a mind/emotion journal for a few days.  Write or print out the above list of emotions/mind states on a piece of paper and keep it with your journal/list.  Read the list in the morning to remind yourself of the thoughts and feelings you are going to record, and then - at the end of your day do a mental review  and write down a brief notation of any that show up.  If you can review more than once per day, you will get a lot more out of this because we all quickly forget what occurs during our days.  And because we are so accustomed to running these emotions and mind states, and accepting them as natural, it takes practice to notice when they are happening.  

Am I suggesting that one can live life without regularly running the above list? Yes.  Absolutely.  And the first step is becoming aware of their presence and impact.  In future posts I will discuss the exact nature of petty grievances, annoyance, frustration, complaint, anger, resentment, judgment, blame, worry, and fear; as well as how one can limit the presence of these emotions and mind states in daily life.

Happiness is an Inside Job

•  Yesterday I wrote about choosing happiness.  There are numerous aspects to choosing happiness, and the most important is realizing that you and only you are responsible for your happiness.  This may seem self evident, but it bears taking a second look.  Even people who easily agree with this statement about happiness, live their life as if people, places, things, and events outside them are the source of happiness.  Never has been true, never will be.

This is actually good news.  It means you have the power to launch happiness in your life.  You have the power.  Which also means you have the responsibility.  Choosing happiness is about taking full personal responsibility in every moment for choosing happiness.

What does this look like?  Let’s imagine that you already are living from a consistent state of happiness.  You get up each and every day happy to be alive and eager to engage with life throughout the day. You make your way to the kitchen where your spouse is drinking coffee and finishing breakfast with the kids.  The school bus is due in 5 minutes and the kid’s lunches are not made.  What happened?  It was your turn to sleep in, and your spouse’s turn to handle the morning routine of getting the kid’s off to school.

This is where you get to choose.  This is where you get to take responsibility.  The question to ask is “What am I willing to have get in the way of my experience of happiness?”

The most common reaction I get to this scenario is, “Don’t I have a right to be pissed off that my spouse didn’t fulfill the morning duties?  I always get it done on my mornings!”

Sure, (in the commonly accepted behavioral code of our culture) you have a right to be mad any time you want to be.  You also have a right to the consequences of your frustration, upset, anger, etc.  And one of those is that you cannot experience happiness and anger simultaneously.

Your life is made up of these moment to moment interactions.  And the choices you make in these moments add up to your overall experience of life.

Although this kitchen scenario is relatively innocent and simple, it is also representative of the millions of moments throughout our daily lives during which we choose something other than happiness – whether it be complaint, anger, resentment, judgment, worry or fear.

Begin to be aware of the choices you are afforded in the many moments of your day.  And as your awareness grows, see if you can create the space – in those moments – to ask yourself, “What am I willing to have get in the way of my experience of happiness?”

p.s.  The kitchen scenario above was related to me by one of my coaching clients.  It turned out that the lunches did not get made because the children were upset about something that was happening at school and the spouse had taken the time to sort it thru with them.  The kids ended up running to the bus with lunch money in their pockets – a rare treat.