24 FEB

Living In The Moment

I never understood why some people would work late into the night and sleep most of their mornings away, but now that I am sitting here, at 1am, listening to the same song on repeat, I get it.

When the rest of the world is asleep, there are very few distractions. There are no phone calls and no urgent tasks that need to be done at this time of the morning. I can completely focus myself on my work and let my creativity glow.

You may have read The Power of Now, or studied the Sedona method. Both these resources focus on teaching you how to get your mind in the present to forget about your worries and to really live in the moment.

The thing is, if you hear these “Living in the moment” thoughts from others, you’ll likely agree with their teachings, however, it’s hard to fully grasp the truth behind them, and to put them into practice in your own life.

Recall the times when you felt most alive?

I bet it was when you were with friends or family, maybe on top of the Eiffel Tower, maybe playing a game or a sport, maybe when racing your car or dancing the night away.

I bet it was when your entire being, body and soul were totally immersed in the moment and in the experience. I bet you had zero thoughts focused on worrying about the future or regretting the past.

I am asking you to recall the moments in your life when you felt ecstatically alive, because I believe that you can choose to live this way, most of the time.

You can choose to be completely present-minded, enjoying every moment of right now, second after second, minute after minute. You can’t feel alive in the past and you can’t feel alive in the future. You can only feel alive right now, in this moment.

Why would you want to spend every day worrying about the things that can go wrong? Why would you want to spend every day regretting the past? The sun could burn out, wars could start, you could get robbed or shot, you could lose your job, importantrelationships could come to an end. Any of these things could happen in the next 5 minutes, but they could also happen in 10 years, or even after your lifetime.

The past will never, ever change. What’s done is done, no matter how hard you wish or how much you think about it. Live and learn, life is a journey and the journey is the destination.

But this moment right now…it’s priceless. Every single moment of right now is a gift. You don’t know what tomorrow will bring. It may bring happiness and joy, and it may bring bad news.

This doesn’t mean that I am suggesting that you just forget about everything, and live in the moment. We are all unique individuals. What may work for me may not work for you. We all have our path for living happily.

For me, I make plans for the future. I like to think of scenarios that could occur, and I like to have targets to work towards. I like to think back to the past sometimes, and although there are things that I’m not completely happy with, I don’t regret anything. I am the sum of all my experiences, both good and bad. If anything in my past would be different, I would not be who I am today.

I’m scared sometimes. I fear that I won’t be able to build a successful business and that I will not make money. Sometimes I doubt my own abilities, and I wonder if I’m good enough for the world. These are the thoughts that surface when I get in my head too much, and I let thatnegative social conditioning take control.

My desire to live and to succeed is far greater than my fear of failure. The past is over, and all we can do is learn from them.

The future is uncertain, and it is coming, whether we worry about them or not.

Right now, I’m focused on writing this post and on nothing else. I feel really alive, aware of all my senses and everything around me. I feel connected to the world. And I feel like this is the best way to live, to be, and to experience.

Tomorrow is coming whether I sleep, eat, party or work. It’s a matter of hours and minutes. I could worry about what it will bring, or what could go wrong. But instead, I choose to enjoy being alive right now, to live in this moment, and to trust in myself that I will be able to handle whatever is coming.

Some may see this as fatalistic thinking. Maybe it is, but does that make it right or wrong? I once heard a saying, “There is no right and wrong, only actions and consequences.”

All I know is that constantly worrying about the future and what could go wrong creates massive stress and unhappiness. Not only that, but it also focuses your thoughts and entire being on the negative. Whether you believe in the Law of Attraction or not, I really think that you attract what you focus on. You are what you think…

What do you think? Do you worry a lot? What if you just focused on the present moment, become aware of everything around you?

How does the air smell? What do you feel? What do you see? What do you hear? What do you taste?

Can you feel your worries fade away when you focus on this moment, right now?

Power of Focused Attention

I recently sat down with several highly enthusiastic achievers, all of whom have many ambitions. These casual chats revolved around the theme of, “How do I turn my ambitions into reality?”

I deeply admired their energy and drive, but it became clear as to why they were not seeing their desired results: Trying to do too much at once.

Despite the social illusion that we can have it all, we only have a limited amount of energy and time. Even if we think we can achieve it all during our heightened state of enthusiasm and inspiration, when reality hits, we’ll find that striving to achieve it all at once will result in exhaustion and disconnection with our inner selves.

Instead of striving to achieve it all, how about striving to achieve what’s most important to us? How about striving to be fulfilled and happy? How about striving for personal wellbeing and meaning?

Doing Too Much …

Given that we have a limited amount of resources; attention, energy and time, how we divide our resources greatly affects the success of our desired outcome. The more focused we are at any one thing, the more energy gets concentrated into that thing.

Attention can be compared to the sharpness of a knife. A knife is sharp because energy has been focused at the blade. Thus, the more focused the energy is at the blade, the sharper the knife, the higher the cutting power, and the stronger the knife. If energy is not focused at the blade, we end up with a dull knife, with lowered cutting power – weaker knife. A dull knife may be good for spreading butter, but if your goal was to cut through soda cans, you have missed your desired outcome.

When we try to do too much, it is as if we are trying to sharpen too many knifes in our limited time. We juggle between the sharpening of the different knifes, and in the end, not one knife is sharpened enough to be deemed useful. We can be much more effective if we spend our time and focused energy sharpening one knife, and move on to another knife only when the first one has reached its desired outcome.

One example of doing too much is having many goals that we are trying to achieve in the same short period of time. The term many is subjective, and we have individual thresholds for what that means for each of us. There are exceptions to this, and there are people who are exceptional at multi-tasking. I happen to know that I am not one of those people.

If you are like me, then perhaps you can relate to the feeling of doing too much, and how that tension can take us away from what matters to us most. Here are some potential effects that can arise from doing too much. Becoming aware of these is the first step towards adjusting our life situation and priorities towards a more balanced lifestyle.

Mental Noise – Constantly thinking about the things still left to do can clutter our inner space. They become mental noise and are very distracting.

Unable to Focus – When we are distracted by too many things, we feel overwhelmed, our focus becomes diffused, and things appear ‘foggy’ from our perspective. In this state, it’s tough to focus on our current tasks, think clearly or make fast & rational decisions.

No Personal Life – We can become consumed by all the external achievements we are trying to obtain for the prized title of success. In so doing, we can forget to experience Joy. We forget to look after ourselves, our health, and our personal life. We become unbalanced.

Exhaustion – When our energies are not properly managed, we feel exhausted and dis-eased in our bodies. This can physically manifest in different ways. For me, exhaustion translates to lower back pain, sleeplessness and dehydration.

Self-Inflicted Guilt – When we become too ambitious, we tend to underestimate how long things will take and this will result in an overloaded plate. We commit ourselves to this overloaded plate, and set ourselves up for failure, unconsciously. When we realized that we haven’t done everything we’ve set out to do, we become subject to the guilt inflicted by our own minds. This can be destructive to our motivation and self-esteem.

Hurt Relationships – When our attention is fully occupied with too many targets, we don’t have room for other important life areas, such as developing and maintaining relationships with people.

Unsatisfied – When we have too much on our plate, we are constantly chasing after the things we haven’t done yet and forget to celebrate what we’ve accomplished. Our attention is spread out so thin, that we cannot really excel at achieving any of our goals. We become dissatisfied. Similar to self-inflicted guilt, this feeling is not conducive to healthy self-esteem.

Failed Partnerships - When we over commit ourselves to more than we will have time and energy to do, we end up sacrificing certain goals. If we have goals with other people, such as partnerships in a startup business, we may end up disappointing them. They may end up concluding that you’re an unreliable and flaky person. At the extreme, friendships may be hurt as a result of failed business relationships. I’ve personally been on both ends of such a scenario, and I would advise anyone to try to avoid this.