Your Personal Reality

Just to be clear up front, I believe there is an actual objective external reality that exists “out there”.  I know that not all people believe that, but that external reality is more or less irrelevant to the point of this article.  Either way the point I am making in this article still applies.

External reality has to be perceived by individual human beings.  As part of that process,  it is filtered through that individual’s experiences, memories, conditioning, genes, biases, knowledge, and any number of other factors.  Two people look at the same external reality and “see” something that might look quite different.

I think this is uncontroversial.  Two people can be in virtually identical circumstances and see and react to those same circumstances very differently.  Think about all the different perspectives and personal realities through which the health care issue in the United States is being viewed.

From a personal standpoint I can attest to the fact that changing my personal reality, the way I view the world, has had a major impact upon both what I see and how I react.   Change your personal reality and to a very real extent you are changing reality.

Is all this just a bunch of irrelevant doublespeak?  No, on the contrary it is an insight that, if you accept and internalize, can make all the difference in the world.  Instead of having to suffer in the present to create an ideal reality in a future that may never arrive, you can alter your perspective by changing your personal reality now.  Then you may discover that you are already living in an ideal reality right here and right now.  Instead of hopelessly trying to create perfection, you are discovering the perfection that you already have.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” — Marcel Proust

Groundhog Day

Paul Hannam wrote a book called The Magic of Groundhog Day.  The thesis of this book is very simple.  You can transform a mundane day into a magical day simply by changing yourself – your attitudes and perspective.

The book is based upon the movie Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray.  In the movie Bill plays the character Phil Conners who gets stuck in a time loop.  The same day, Feb 2nd, repeats itself over and over in a time loop that apparently is going to last forever.  Every day at 6:00 AM Phil wakes up to the exact same day.  Nobody else is in the time loop except Phil.  He’s the only who is living the same day over and over.

Phil Conners hates the original Feb 2nd that occurs before he gets stuck in the loop.  He is a TV weatherman on a one day assignment to cover Groundhog day in Punxutawney PA.  He is miserable and can’t wait to get out of there.  But then he wakes up to the same day the next day, and the next, and so on in a never-ending loop.  When he realizes what is happening to him, he tries to kill himself but he wakes up very much alive at 6:00 AM Feb 2nd the following morning.

There are no consequences to anything he does.  The next day he wakes up with the entire day and all it’s consequences wiped clean.  The exact same day starts over.  Phil knows what is happening, that he is living the same day over and over.  He has his memories from each day and he uses this to benefit himself.  It’s a hedonist’s dream.  He knows what is going to happen next so he uses that to manipulate situations and people and seduce women.

Phil doesn’t enjoy his strange life and no matter what he does he doesn’t find happiness.  However, he eventually discovers something magical.  He discovers that even though everything else is exactly the same, he can change the way he views the circumstances he finds himself in.  He discovers that by changing himself, he can turn a horrible day into a magical day.  The circumstances that are dealt out to Phil are identical each day.  The only thing that changes over those thousands of repeating days is Phil himself.  So by changing himself, Phil changed his day from hell into his magical dream day.

In the book The Magic of Groundhog Day, Paul Hannam takes the lessons from the movie and lays out how they apply to all of us.  It doesn’t matter that each of our days have somewhat different circumstances (they are similar in many ways).  The lesson of the movie is that any particular set of circumstances is filtered through your personal reality, through the way you personally view the world.  Depending upon your personal reality, the same set of circumstances can be a horrible day or a magical day.

You have the power to change your personal reality.  It it easy?  No.  It takes a lot of reflection and a lot of effort.  You have to change a lot of your personal filters and biases.  It took Phil Conners a lot of time and effort in the movie.  But it can be done and it is much easier to change yourself than it is to change the world around you.

The good thing is that it doesn’t have to happen all at once.  You can start making changes and you will see the impact right away.  A lot of what I have written on this blog lately speaks to this issue.

“Tomorrow might be very similar to today.  You might be unable to change the place or the people, but you are able to change your attitudes, thoughts, emotions, and actions.  You have more control over the outcome of your day than you might realize.  You decide if today is going to be something to endure or a unique opportunity to be imaginative.  Is today a dreaded routine or a chance to open up new possibilities?

When you wake up tomorrow, think of the day ahead as a blank canvas on which you can paint anything you want.  As you learn to craft your life, you will discover the ability to create your own masterpiece.”  — Paul Hannam

What about you?  Are you prepared to change your personal reality and discover your own magical days?  Are you ready to paint your own masterpiece?

What do you think? Leave a comment below.

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In one of his books, and I can’t remember which one, Robert Ringer described a sign he made for himself.  It asked:

Does it really matter?

If so, how much does it matter?

We get caught up in a thousand ridiculously small things that don’t really matter and we burn up our psychic energy dealing with them.  I’m not talking about small acts of kindness or taking small steps to get going or other positive small actions.  I’m talking about sweating the small stuff of life and blowing them up into things that matter, when in reality they don’t mean squat.

Going beyond the don’t sweat the small tough attitude in Ringer’s sign is J. Krishnamurti.  He is reported to have asked, “Do you want to know what my secret is?”.  His answer was:

“I don’t mind what happens.”

What do you think? Leave a comment below.

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There seems to be a lot of confusion about how you can have an attitude of acceptance of your current situation, being thankful for what you have, maintaining perspective, etc. and at the same time continuing to strive for growth and improvement.  I previously wrote about this in an article about contentment.  For whatever reason though some people continue to struggle with it.  I’ll try to clarify my thoughts in this article with some other ideas.

For me personally, this is no longer a problem.  My current situation includes my intentions, ideas, and plans.  They are all part of my now.  They are part of my current situation and so when I accept what is, I am accepting the fact that I intend to or may even be in the process of growing and changing.   If I have a new idea tomorrow then that new idea becomes part of tomorrow’s now.

You can be thankful for the fact that you have a job.  You can be doing an extraordinary job at whatever it is you do.  You can live in the moment while realizing that each moment is a step to the next moment.  You can maintain perspective and even consider yourself lucky that you are better off than most.

You can do all of this while at the same time looking to improve yourself and grow in every way you can.  You can strive to live each day more than you lived the last while being happy and at peace with what is during each of those days.  You can be totally happy now and at the same time strive towards more dreams in your future.

I admit I used to struggle with this.  I was never happy with the present.  I was always looking for something better and of course if there was something better out there, I couldn’t be satisfied with what I already had.  They key is to disconnect the situations you find yourself in each moment from how you feel about your life.  Disconnect results and conditions from how you think about your life.  You can do it and if want to find lasting peace and happiness you have to do it.  No matter what you achieve, it will never be enough.  Your threshold for happiness will just shift.  The target will move as you move.

If you don’t equate a particular result or condition to happiness, you won’t have any problem.  There is no conflict here.  When tomorrow doesn’t turn out the way you wanted it to turn out, you don’t have to stress about it, have a breakdown, lose your self-esteem, or anything else.  It’s just another day with another set of circumstances that make up your life in that now.

The other day I published the article Mavis Karn’s Secret.  The whole point of that article is that your thoughts and your thoughts alone determine how you feel.  It’s not external circumstances, it’s your thinking about those circumstances that make you feel stressed, depressed, unhappy, or whatever.  Eckhart Tolle says very well:

“Maybe you are being taken advantage of, maybe the activity you are engaged in is tedious, maybe someone close to you is dishonest, irritating, or unconscious, but all of that is irrelevant.  The fact is that your are resisting what is.  You are making the present moment into an enemy.  You are creating unhappiness, conflict between the inner and outer.”

Richard Carlson says that becoming aware of your thinking is the most powerful and practical mental tool in your toolbox.  I think I have to agree.  You can get there and I know you can because I did it.

What do you think? Leave a comment below.

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Photo credit

Nothing can keep you from being extraordinary.  It’s totally up to you no matter what you do. Check out this blog article about an extraordinary dentist.  The blogger actually blogged about all the extraordinary things her dentist does.

In 2004, Mark Sanborn published The Fred Factor: How passion in your work and life can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary.  In this book he tells the story of his mailman Fred.  Fred really cares about the people on his route.  He treats them special and becomes their friend.  He watches their homes while they are gone and goes the extra mile in everything he does all the way down to how he puts the mail in the mailbox.  He turns what many people would consider a mundane job into a job where he makes a difference in the lives of others.

“If Fred the Postman could bring extraordinary creativity and commitment to putting mail in a box, I can do as much or more to reinvent my work and rejuvenate my efforts.  He is proof that there are no insignificant or ordinary jobs when they’re performed by significant or extraordinary people.”  — Mark Sanborn

Eckhart Tolle is a big proponent of doing everything in a quality manner.  He takes it farther than anyone I have ever run encountered.

“Whatever you do, you will be doing extraordinarily well, because the doing itself becomes the focal point of your attention.  Your doing then becomes a channel through which consciousness enters this world.  This means there is quality in what you do, even in the most simple action, like turning the pages in the phone book or walking across the room.  The main purpose for turning the pages is to turn the pages; the secondary purpose is to find a phone number.  The main purpose for walking across the room is to walk across the room; the secondary purpose is to pick up a book at the other end, and the moment you pick up the book, that becomes your main purpose.”  — Eckhart Tolle

The passage quoted is part of a larger context about inner and outer purpose and cannot truly be appreciated without the larger context of his book.  It’s about being totally present in everything you do.

It sounds bizarre when you read it, but I truly think he is on to something.  I was reading his book A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose on a weekend and that whole weekend I tried being totally present in everything I did, including the simple act of walking around the house.  I was shocked and amazed at how I felt.  By being in the moment, the extraordinary quality happens automatically.

It’s hard to describe how it feels to perform basic actions in such a quality manner and so you will just have to experience it for yourself.  Doing this requires no heroic effort and no special skills.  It requires only a change in attitude and habit.

These various sources and examples as well as my own experience, demonstrate very clearly to me that you don’t have to be in any particular job or circumstance to be extraordinary and make a difference in your world.  It’s not about your circumstances, it’s about you.  You no longer have any excuse not to be extraordinary.

What do you think? Leave a comment below.

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I was rereading some of Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now today and I thought I would share a bit of it with you all.  I’ll issue my normal caveat that while I don’t agree with some of his more mystical ideas, he offers up a lot of powerful insights.

All of this fits into the living in the moment and victim articles I have published recently.

“What I call ordinary unconsciousness means being identified with your thought processes and emotions, your reactions, desires, and aversions.  It is most people’s normal state.  In that state, you are run by the egoic mind, and you are unaware of being. It is a state not of acute pain or unhappiness but of an almost continuous low level of unease, discontent, boredom, or nervousness – a kind of background static.”

I highlighted that last sentence because I think it is such an insightful observation about how the overwhelming majority of people live.

“You may not realize this because it is such a part of ‘normal’ living, just as you are not aware of a continuous hum of an air conditioner, until it stops.  When it suddenly does stop, there is a sense of relief.  Many people use alcohol, drugs, sex, food, work, television, or even shopping as anesthetics in an unconscious attempt to remove the basic unease.”

I think Tolle’s point about using those “escapes” is outstanding insight.  If you do those things then ask yourself why.

Because this background noise is so normal, it may not be easy to detect in yourself.  Here’s what you can do:

“Make it a habit to monitor your mental-emotional state through self-observation.  ‘Am I at ease at this moment?’ is a good question to ask yourself frequently.  Or you can ask ‘What is going on inside of my at this moment?’  Be at least as interested in what goes on inside you as what happens outside.  If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place.”

The whole idea of observing your own thoughts is key to all of the.  Step outside of your mind and observe your mental state.

“Direct you attention inward.  Have a look inside yourself.  What kind of thoughts is your mind producing?  What do you feel?  Direct your attention into the body.  Is there any tension?  Once you detect that there is a low level of unease, the background static, see in what way you are avoiding, resisting, or denying life – by denying the Now.”

Do you resent some person or thing?  Are you unhappy with your job or your partner?

“Do you realize that the energy you thus emanate is so harmful in its effects that you are in fact contaminating yourself as well as those around you? … Do you have a choice?”

And then the best answer that I have ever seen:

“Maybe you are being taken advantage of, maybe the activity you are engaged in is tedious, maybe someone close to you is dishonest, irritating, or unconscious, but all of that is irrelevant.  The fact is that your are resisting what is.  You are making the present moment into an enemy.  You are creating unhappiness, conflict between the inner and outer.”

That paragraph above contains the essence of the whole matter in my opinion.  Are you going to clean up the mess?

“Either stop doing what you are doing, speak to the person concerned and express fully what you feel, or drop the negativity that your mind has created around the situation…  Anything that is done with negative energy will become contaminated by it and in time give rise to more pain, more unhappiness.”

“You are responsible for your inner space; nobody else is…”

Notice I highlighted the word “you” in the passages above.  It’s all about your own responsibility for your own inner state.  It’s not about anything external to you.

“How do you drop a piece of hot coal that you are holding in your hand?  How do you drop some heavy and useless baggage that you are carrying?  By recognizing that you don’t want to suffer the pain or carry the burden anymore and then letting go of it.”

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By “speed” I don’t mean amphetamines, I mean the speed of your life.  As a kid I remember getting irritated at my father’s slow driving.  I had places to go and things to do and his slow driving was a huge waste of time.  My whole life has been one frustration after another at the slow pace some others moved; starting with school of course.  Talk about slow and boring!

Nothing changed as an adult either.  My first job out of college included a formal training program.  The training was conducted at a center that was formerly a private mansion.  The grounds were beautiful with a lake and magnificent old trees.  My classmates would take breaks and go down by the lake and hang out.  I thought they were lazy and unmotivated.  Not me.  I burned through the training in near-record time and got the hell out of there.  I was proud of my speed.

Rushing around from one activity to another, focusing on getting things done, we tend to place all our priorities on accomplishing tasks on our lists – doing routine housework; preparing meals and eating; commuting to work; getting things done at work; putting in time at the gym; driving our kids to soccer games, swimming lessons, and birthday parties; staying in touch with friends; taking the dog to the groomer; and so on.  Are you tired yet?  In the midst of it all, we become slaves to our to-do lists and become doers instead of be-ers.  We give ourselves little or no time feel, to more fully experience much of our lives.  We forget that our capacity to feel is the very essence of our vitality.  Without feeling, we become zombies or robots, and after a while we are left with a vague sense that our lives are unfulfilled, empty, lacking purpose, and devoid of anything resembling vitality.  –Anat Baniel

Maybe it is just wisdom that comes with age, but for whatever reason I have become a convert to and an advocate of slowing down.  I still have to fight it sometimes; the urge for speed, but I am getting much better at going slower.  It’s time we started slowing down and experiencing life.  It’s extremely cliché but we really do need to stop and smell the roses.

I stood still, paralyzed by the beauty and the magic of this moment. Everything stopped, even my breath. Like a sloth, I didn’t want to move. There was nowhere else I needed or wanted to be. Standing there absorbing the beauty of this place, I stepped out of time. In this timeless moment, I saw and felt the unity of all things. There it was all around me: the chaos of the natural world, silently woven into a tapestry of exquisite, perfect order. I felt at one with the trees, rocks, plants, birds, insects, squirrels, leaves, and water. A witness to this sacred scene, I felt humbled and blessed to be given this moment.

So, this is what the slow lane is about, I realized. Sipping and savoring tiny moments, stopping the clock and slipping out of time, feeling my own heart begin to synchronize with the rhythms of nature and being in the presence of the sacred. Not bad learning for a single visit. I can see possibilities here.

And then, the moment ended and time began again. Reluctantly, I headed back to “civilization”. I could hear the ever-present music of the freeway in the distance. Back to business as usual, the world full of cars, trucks and the people inside them; barreling towards their destinies at speeds too fast to notice life. –Judith Rich

How To Slow Down and Enjoy Life

Be Present in the Moment

When you practice being present and being in the moment, you will automatically slow down.  Check out my three-part series about living in the now: Living Now – Part I, Living Now – Part II, Live Now – Part III

Disconnect

A great way to slow down and start enjoying life again is to disconnect for a while.  It’s tough if you are addicted to your CrackBerry like I am, but you can do it and the resulting sense of freedom is amazing.  Turn off the computer, the cell phone, and the PDA.  Disconnect from your electronic and virtual world for a few hours, for a day, or maybe even for a week.  Do it regularly.

At one time I was going to disconnect one day a week every week.  Maybe I’ll really do it this time.  My recent vacation when I was disconnected for most of the day every day has inspired me again.

Immerse Yourself In Nature

It’s very difficult to go fast surrounded by nature.  Read the passage above by Judith Rich again.  Find you a place of your own.

Meditate

Aside from the other numerous benefits of meditation, it’s a great technique for slowing down.  How can you meditate fast?

Slow Mindful Movement

Yoga is great.  Check out Movement With Attention.

Listen to Soothing Music

Listen to music that sooths your soul.  Stay away from the high-energy stuff when you need to slow down and relax.

Make Time To Be Alone

The demands others make on you is a leading cause of your rushing around hurried lifestyle.  Make time to be alone with your thoughts or just to relax and enjoy yourself.

Read These Articles and Resources

How to Slow Down Now (Please Read Slowly)
10 Ways to Slow Down and Still Get Things Done
In Praise of Slowness
Slow Down and Get Smart
Four Day Work Week
Anti-Productivity: 30 Ways To Slow Down and Relax Like a Cat

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What do you think?  Leave a comment below.

In this article, I will provide practical advice on how to live in the now, to be present.  I’m not at a point where I do this anywhere near what I believe it takes to really experience life, but I started near zero so any improvement is huge for me.  Let us know by commenting where you are at and what practical advice you can share with the rest of us.  There are a lot of good articles on the net for practical advice on being present and I will link you to some of them.  If any of you have written articles on how to be in the now, give me a link in the comments and I will add it to the resources section.

This article is the third in the series.  The first two are here and you need to read them before proceeding:

Living Now – Part I
Living Now – Part II

Change Your Environment

This is a not what I would call real practical much of the time, but as Jonathan pointed out in a comment to Living Now – Part II Comments, it has some powerful effect.  So if you are particularly time-bound, stressed out, irritated, overwhelmed, or any other tense state and need to make a more drastic move consider one of these ideas as therapy:

• Mountains
• Beach
• River
• Lake
• Forest

Stop Thinking

This one is tough for many of us, but it is the key.  When I say stop thinking, I’m talking about the kind past or future thinking that gets us into trouble.  These are either reliving the recent or distant past or imagining future outcomes.  Much of the latter is cast in a negative light and is what is otherwise known as worry.  If you are in conversation with yourself, if you have a mental chatter going on, you are not in the now.  I’m very familiar with the problems with too much thinking and internal chatter.  This is what my whole life has been like and it is where I struggle most.

You may believe that if you are thinking or chattering about your current situation, then that is being present.  It is not.  You are often judging your current moment with a view of the past.  If you are judging and commenting on your present, you are not present.  Your mind-talk is very often your worst enemy.  If you are going to listen to the voice in your head, listen as an observer.  Listen impartially and without judgment.  That’s not very easy to do and you have to work at it hard to make it a habit.

Your Past is Dead

Forget the past.  It is almost always a hindrance.  In my opinion the best use of the past is to draw on memories to produce emotional states that are good for you.  Otherwise, leave the dead past where it belongs – buried and forgotten.  It hurts you far more than it helps you.  If you must occasionally draw upon it to learn a lesson then fine.  Go there only occasionally and briefly and then get right back to the present moment.

Remembering special times in the past, times you had with your children for example (I do it), may be great therapy if used occasionally.  However, it is living in your past and does nothing to help your present or future.  It takes away from actually living now.  That may be emotionally hard to accept, but I think if you really consider it carefully, you will see the point.  You often are juxtaposing something wonderful in your past with something not so wonderful in your present.  Sorry my friends, but that is negative thinking whether you are aware you are doing it or not.

What are complaining and bitching all about?  They are about the past.  When you are angry, mad, irritated, stressed, or most any other negative emotion, it is very often linked to the past.  That past may be five minutes ago, but you must internalize and accept that five minutes ago is still the past.  It’s gone.  You won’t get it back.  Don’t let it ruin your present.

Set Aside a Specific Time for Future Thinking and Planning

Many personal development and  time management advisers suggest setting aside a specific time each day and week for planning.  I’m a big believer in setting aside time each morning to come up with your MIT’s for the day and to visualize your future state.  Then for the rest of your day, just execute and be present.  Live in the now and drop the constant planning and dreaming.  For bigger goals and projects you can set aside weekly or monthly sessions.

I used to struggle a lot and still do to some degree with 1,000 mph future thinking.  Driving, showering, walking, eating, trying to sleep, and even reading were times where my mind was racing ahead to the future:  planning, rehearsing, and imagining.  I missed almost all of the present experience of living.  Shut it down.

Paying Attention to Movement

This is one of the very best ways to be present in the now.  Whenever you are moving, focus on the movement itself.  If you are walking up or down stairs, just plain walking, exercising, showering, washing your hands, or any other type of movement, focus on the movement itself.  Feel the muscles, tendons, joints, and bones as they move in harmony.  Aside from the tremendous value in keeping you present, there are huge benefits for your brain and long term functional skills from paying attention to your movements.  Do you want to be vital now and in your old-age?  See my article on movement With Attention for more information.

Don’t Be a Drama Queen

Drama is conflict and pain.  Things are what they are.  Stop telling the world about your problems.  Stop the “woe is me” attitude.  If you are talking about your problems aside from a therapeutic setting, you are reliving and intensifying something negative.  You are talking instead of doing.  I know this may be hard for you to accept, but I honestly believe that the more you talk about, think about, or focus on drama, the more drama you will get.  Also to be quite frank, nobody that should matter to you wants to hear it anyway.

Stop Labeling

Do you find yourself saying things like “This sucks.”  “This is bad.”  “I hate this.”  “I’m pissed.”  “She drives me nuts.”?  Labeling a situation is focusing on the negative.  That framing creates the pain and unhappiness in your life.  Is the present moment unpleasant?  Maybe so, but stop labeling it as such.  Accept it and act on it without labeling it.

Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.  Always work with it, not against it.  Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy.  This will miraculously change your whole life.  –Eckhart Tolle

Three Simple Choices

None of this means you should be helpless in the face of challenges.  Do not interpret any of this to mean non-action on your part.  When you really understand what this means, you will understand that accepting something that simply is, actually allows you to act to change it.

You have three choices in an unpleasant or distressful current moment.

• Remove yourself from the situation
• Change the situation
• Totally accept the situation

If you can’t or won’t do one of the first two, then just do the third.  I know this sounds simplistic, but it really is that simple.  When I was behind the million year-old driver led line of cars, and I couldn’t change it, I basically had two choices.  Pull over and stop (remove myself from the situation) or just get into the drive and enjoy it (totally accept the situation).  Staying frustrated and tense does nothing but create pain and unhappiness.

Resources

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment is a very good resource.  I don’t agree with much of his general philosophical position, but his practical advice is excellent.

Six Steps to Living in the Moment
Being in the Moment
How to Live in the Moment

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What does it mean to be in the now, to be present?  What exactly does that look like?  What do you experience?  Well, I thought I knew, but I guess I didn’t and so I’ll explain.

This article is the second in the series.  The first one is here and I suggest you read it first:

Living Now – Part I

This is the third part:

Live Now – Part III

This is not the article I was going to write.  I’m sticking this one in here to describe an experience I had this past week that gave me a glimpse of something better than I had previously imagined.  You may consider what I describe here as insignificant or trivial.  That’s ok.  To me it was very transformative.  I hope you’ll bear with the length.

Stephen’s Personality

To understand why this experience made such an impression on me, you have to understand a little background on my personality.  People who know me, and that includes myself, would describe me as fairly (or even extremely) moody, irritable, negative, pessimistic, etc.  I have a very reactive nature and get irritated easily.  I have made great strides in becoming calmer, less reactive, and developing a more positive outlook.  I am slower to react and the reactions are much shorter-lived.  I get control of myself, but I am nonetheless still a reactive and easily irritated personality.  I am a thousand times more positive than before, but I still have to work at it pretty hard.

I still constantly swear at other drivers for example.  I constantly get irritated whenever normal life “stuff” happens.  I thought that to minimize my reactions and being successful at minimizing them was the end-game.  Boy was I ever wrong about that!

The Experience

This example may seem trivial to some of you, but to me it was a very big deal.  I’m in the beautiful Colorado Rocky mountains.  I’m driving down a canyon road totally absorbed in the natural beauty of the place.  I pull over at a particularly beautiful spot and turn off my engine.  I’m totally in the moment.  I’m listening to the sounds of nature and taking in the fragrance of the flowers and trees or whatever it was that I could smell.  The sun was warming my skin.  The birds were singing and the water in the river was roaring.  Even the road noise from the cars going by was part of the whole scene.  I was totally in the moment without a care in the world.  I was happy.

I think I was pulling my camera out from under a sweatshirt on the passenger seat, but I’m not really sure.  Then it happened – a bag of Macadamia nuts that I had been munching on spilled all over the floor.  I simply observed myself watching it happen.  That’s the only way I can describe it.  For the first time I can ever remember, I had no reaction whatsoever; none.  It wasn’t just that I was calm and held back.  It was something completely different and new to me.  No swear words, no drawn breath, no need to suppress a reaction.  I was totally happy without a care in the world.

When the nuts spilled I momentarily stopped my movement, but after they spilled I continued on getting my camera out.  I started moving again and the the next thing I saw was an open bag of pumpkin seeds, which must have been hidden in a fold of the sweatshirt suddenly fall and spill its contents everywhere – on my seat, on my console, and on the floor.  It was surreal.  It seemed to happen in slow motion.  It was weird and wonderful at the same time.  There was absolutely no reaction from me.  The best I can remember, I just turned and got out of my SUV and took a picture.

I didn’t think my normal negative and reactive thoughts about the spill or about having to clean it up later or anything.  In fact I didn’t clean it up for two days because I didn’t care.  And when I did clean it up, I was totally happy doing so instead of being pissed at the inconvenience and time-wasting nature of the whole thing.  It truly didn’t matter.  It just was what was.  The old Stephen would have reacted strongly to back-to-back “stuff” like that.

Of course, I didn’t think any of these thoughts at the time it was happening.  This all came later upon reflection.  I was aware of it, but I was also aware that I wasn’t thinking anything at all.  I know that sounds strange and if somebody told me the same thing I would have called BS.  But that’s the way it was.

What This Means

So why did this have such a big impact on me?  Spilling nuts and seeds in your car?  Not exactly life-changing stuff.  Or is it?  Everyone has ups and downs in life.  Everyone has those great thrilling highs and everyone has the tragic lows too.  But those are not the norm.  They are the not the day-to-day experiences we all have as we go about our normal lives all day every day.  Spilling nuts in your car is what day-to-day living is like.

What I saw in this experience was that those day-to-day experiences could be completely and fundamentally different.  I started imagining what it would be like to maintain that calm, peaceful, and serene manner all the time.  It’s mind-bending to me.  I didn’t even know it was possible.  I could have never even imagined it before, but now I can.  I’ve tasted what it can be like.  I’ve known for quite some time at an intellectual level that something like this was the right way, but I was wrong about what it actually meant.  I didn’t know what it felt like.

I was in a state such that it was not possible for the negative and reactive thoughts and feelings to even occur.  They may have been outside the door pounding to get in, but I was protected by the shield of being in the present moment.  I did not have to resist them or try and push them out after they had already entered.  That’s the key difference in this experience.

I’ve never been like that before.  What would it be like to be in such a state say 10% of the time?  For me that would be a massive improvement.  What about 50%? 90%?  I still can’t really imagine, but I now know that it is possible.  I’m not naive enough to believe anyone can be that way 100% of the time but anything less than nearly constant is no longer good enough for me.

I want that all the time and the rather simple context of that experience showed me that it is possible.  I won’t be in a beautiful natural environment all the time but so what?  The same internal state is possible.  Just imagine what it would be like to go through your day, every day, without anything bothering you?  Just accepting life as it happens and being in the moment living it all the time and not just occasionally?  I may be on some kind of natural drug, but I am now convinced this is attainable.

Am I Kidding?

Nope, I’m not.  I’m sure it was easy to be present while being surrounded by all that natural beauty, during a vacation, and all alone.  There is something about nature that makes it easy.  There is something about being alone that makes it easy.  Skeptics will say just wait until you are back in the everyday stress of your normal life.  I’m sure they expect me to go back to being normal and that I won’t be able to maintain it.

In one sense that is correct.  Even later that day, back in my room, I had a little accident and flashed irritation.  I wasn’t focused on being present.  My old habits were surfacing.  I don’t yet know how to maintain that all the time.  However, I caught myself quickly and focused on being present.  The memory of earlier was fresh on my mind.  I stayed this way the rest of my trip.  Not being as serene or in the moment as I was at that one particular point, but getting close a lot of the time.

I made sure I focused on it and remembered it.  I wrote this article as part of that effort.  Coming down the mountains yesterday I struggled temporarily with one of my worst problems.  I was stuck at the end of line of cars crawling along while being led by a million year-old driver.  That was tough, but my awareness was so much higher that even then, I was able to experience a huge improvement.  Ever since the nut spilling experience, I’ve ebbed and flowed below that state getting close at times, but more importantly staying on a much higher average level than normal.  I still have a ton of experience to get and a lot to learn, but I’m highly motivated now.  I may refer back to that day as the day I lost my nuts   Some of you may think it was the day I actually went nuts.

I’m going to work extremely hard at figuring out how to get back to that state and maintain it on an ongoing basis.  It has to be possible.  There was nothing extraordinary about the circumstances.  Sure I had help with the environment, but fundamentally the only difference was my internal state.  That was something I had control over.  That was something I did.  That is something I can learn to make a habit of.  A year earlier I would have been cussing out my own stupidity over spilling and then spilling again.  I would have been cringing at the thought of cleaning it up and I would have been irritated the whole time I was cleaning it up.  Something is different now.

It will be difficult to get there because I’ve had 47 years (oops I’m turning 48 in a couple of days) of practice being completely different.  I know it will be tough, because of all the people I know, I don’t think I know anyone who is like that consistently.  Everyone I know bitches and complains to some degree.  Everyone worries about the future and stews about the past.  Some only a little and some a lot.  I started watching people when I was around them later in the trip.  Very few people seemed serene and happy.  They were just rushing around in their normal stressful world.  Even those on vacation with families seemed to be going through all the normal drama that families seem to bring out in people.

I’m going to do whatever I can to be a rare exception.  It’s worth whatever it takes.  If I fail, it will not be because I didn’t try and I have this blog article here to remind me.  Big tests are coming I’m sure but I look forward to learning from them.

I hope this didn’t bore you.  If you don’t experience things like this, I hope this article helps you understand that you can and that there is a better way to be.  It’s what a few people I read talk about, but something that I now know I really didn’t understand before.

To be continued…

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This series of articles may say some things to you that you’ve never thought about before.  If so, then welcome to something really special!  I suspect many of you will find what is said here to be something you’ve heard before and might even agree with on an intellectual level.

Here are the other parts to the series:

Living Now – Part II
Live Now – Part III

Whether this is new to your or not, this series of articles is a plea to you to do more than just accept these ideas intellectually.  Whenever I hear these ideas, I say to myself something like “That’s great; I’m going to really do it.”  Maybe I do for a bit, but I usually find myself slipping back into old habits that seem to never die.  I know these ideas work because I have experienced something wonderful when I practice them.  The problem is I seem to never fully internalize them and keep it going.

This stuff is hard because it is not natural to people who live in our modern world.  I’m willing to bet that most of you who think you live in the now much of the time, really don’t.  You only think you do because you are not aware most of the time.  You mind is churning away and you don’t realize it.

As a non-stop thinker, I originally found these ideas impossible to believe.  Eventually I suspended my disbelief and gave them a try.  That may have been the best decision I’ve ever made.

You will see extensive quoting of Eckhart Tolle in what follows.  I don’t agree with everything he says especially when he gets really philosophical.  However, regardless of what he actually believes, his practical advice is unsurpassed in my opinion.

Your Mind is a Tool.  It is Not You

Your mind is an instrument, a tool.  It is there to be used for a specific task, and when that task is completed, you lay it down.  –Eckhart Tolle

Sentences like that used to have me screaming “Bullshit!”, but not anymore.  Lay it down?  You have to understand what that really means.

As it is, I would say 80% to 90% of most people’s thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful.  … It causes a serious leakage of vital energy.  –Eckhart Tolle

If you get caught up in non-stop thinking you will go mad in a way.  I’ve spent most of my life in that condition.  You will find that no matter what your intent, if you constantly think, you will dwell on the past, worry about the future, and quite simply forget to actually live; really live.  You will do exactly what Tolle says and think repetitive and useless or harmful thoughts.  This will happen automatically no matter what your intent.  That bold phrase is the key.  I can’t prove it to you, but it’s simply the way your mind works.

One of the keys of cognitive therapy is to recognize that you are not your thoughts.  They are nothing more than thoughts that you can observe and choose to put aside.  You are not your thoughts and therefore you are not your mind.

We all need to start using our mind as a tool for our practical decisions, when it is required, and then lay it down.  The rest of the time we need to experience the now and really live.  I can’t believe I’m saying that because it is so not what I would have called “me” for the last 47 years.  But it works in a way that you have to experience to believe and so I suggest you try it.  If you accept it intellectually, then commit to really internalizing and living that way.  I am committing to do so.

Yes, we need the mind as well as time to function in this world, but there comes a point where they take over our lives, and this is where dysfunction, pain, and sorrow set in.  –Eckhart Tolle

The Present Moment, the Now is the Key

Your life will change to the degree you start living in the present moment.  No matter what situation you find yourself in, notice how constantly sitting in judgment of the situation creates pain and unhappiness?

Are you stuck behind rude people who drive the same speed across multiple lanes and trap you?  This seems to happen to me all the time and is a source of unending irritation.  I judge them to be idiots and rude and create anger and unhappiness for myself.  Did it change the situation?  No.  This is insanity.  I could actually be enjoying the drive, enjoying my life, and living in the now.  This is an example where thinking is repetitive, useless, or just plain harmful.  Yet it is something most of us do whether we are aware of it or not.

Notice all the things you think about that make you unhappy.  You complain about people in general, your health, the government, your neighbor, your co-workers, or anything else about your life situation.  When you do that, you are living in a past that is already over and done with.  You don’t get a do-over.  You are not learning from it when you complain about it.  You are reliving it and prolonging the pain.  You are polluting those around you as well.

Time is mostly an illusion.  The past is a memory happening in the now and the future is a projection of the now into a possible future.  Nothing happens except in the present.  When you are not living in the now, you are trapped in a memory or in an anticipation.

… the Now.  That is precious indeed.  The more you are focused on time – past and future – the more you miss the now, the most precious thing there is.

So break the old pattern of present-moment denial and present-moment resistance.  Make it your practice to withdraw your attention from past and future when they are not needed.  Step outside of the time dimension as much as possible in everyday life.

This does not impair your ability to use time – past or future – when you need to refer to it for practical matters.  Nor does it impair your ability to use your mind.  In fact it enhances it.  When you do use your mind, it will be sharper, more focused

–Eckhart Tolle

If you can really internalize and practice the above, you will discover something life changing.  I’ve done it briefly and then forgot about it as my old habits reemerge.  To be life changing you can’t just do this occasionally.  It needs to be your normal state with only occasional visits to the past and to the future.  Let it go and really live.

To be continued…

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