Tag: happiness

How to Live in the Now

How to Live in the Now

As someone who is truly a work in progress when it comes to living in the now, I often feel unqualified to write on this topic, but maybe that is where most of us seem to be in our lives. I think we all want to make this more complicated than it really is, expecting that for us to live in the now we must become enlightened in some way. I am going to take a simplistic approach to helping you live in the moment and offer only two things to work on:

meditation on the steps

1) Meditate – You can say I am living in the moment, concentrating on what is going on right now, and not playing some future script of you life in your head, but you are really just brainwashing yourself with positive thinking. We all need to learn to meditate to teach our mind to live in the moment. You say well that should be easy, but I say it is much more difficult than you may think. My first couple experiences attempting to meditate last 5 or 6 minutes and it seemed to be much longer than that at the time. It seems to be relatively common knowledge that for the benefits of meditation to take hold you need about 15 – 20 minutes a day. Although even 5 or 10 minutes can be beneficial, but make 15 – 20 minutes your goal. There is nothing like meditation to help you live in the moment. You may consider yourself just too busy to meditate, I’ve often thought that myself and then I think about the the old zen proverb:

If you don’t have time to meditate for 15 minutes …Then you need to meditate for an hour!

simplify

2) Simplify – You might just consider simplifying your life by starting to say “NO” to people, and to the desire to do everything, to make everyone happy, and to have everything. As long as you buy into the program that you can have it all and do it all, which is really bullshit by the way you will never stand a chance of focusing your attention on the moment. Pick the 3 or 4 things that are really important to you and start focusing on them, and forget about the rest. This will put you in the mindset that focusing on the present is the most important thing you can do because you don’t feel like you need to do it all anymore. Too many priorities just makes that much more noise in you head and make it difficult to focus on the present.

There are other ways to move towards living in the moment, but these two are highly effective. I didn’t say either learning to meditate or simplifying your life are easy to achieve, but I do believe that they are effective tools in helping you live in the now. This is my focus right now in my own life. I am determined to move my mindset to the now by meditating and simplifying my life. In the next installment on this topic I would like to make a case why living in the now will actually make you more productive, happier, and maybe even more successful.

Namaste

Living in the Moment

Living in the Moment

I was taking a look at LinkedIn the business social media website the other day and someone had posted a quote from the Dalai Lama:

The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered “Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present: the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

I thought this was a pretty profound statement by one of the greatest spiritual leaders of our time. It made me consider my own behavior and motivations. It seems our future orientation, often with a fixation on acquiring wealth, position, power, and things prevents us from living in the present. I guess most of the time I can at least claim that I do not live in the past, but I am surely not fully living in the present. I seem to be fixated on what’s next, what do I need to achieve, the next thing I need to acquire (car, phone, home), how much more money I can earn, and the future sense of satisfaction that I will feel. This is really a fools game when you think about it. Have you ever recieved a large raise or cash windfall? How long was it before whatever sense of satisfaction you felt just faded away? For me it was a matter of days, maybe even less. All the time invested in this quest for material gratification only made me less accessible and less aware of what was happening around me. I truly lived in the future and was never very happy with the present.

past-future-present

What is really ironic about living with this future oriented mindset is that you go through life as quoted above anxious about the future and not enjoying the present. I’m sure much of this future orientation comes from our desire to judge our success in terms of wealth or how much we have acquired. So the more money I make, the larger my house, having an expensive car, and spending lavishly on vacations motivates us and we buy into the idea that this makes us happy. As future oriented people we are also driven by fear; this might be a fear of not having enough money to retire or the fear that we will lose our wealth or possessions. Goals are great, but to live in the present means that the motivation to achieve these goals must be something other than accumulating wealth or avoiding disaster. How will our life change if we start to focus on living in the present.  My assumption going forward is that when you really think about it is all you have is this very moment. All my elaborate plans go right out the window if I succumb to a stroke or die in a car accident going home today. If you can live with the notion that the most important time we have is now then let me take a stab at a few reasons why we should change our mindset:

Increased happiness – Instead of spending all your time thinking about the future and what your next acquisition will be you are focused on this very moment. You are not agonizing on future choices, what you need to achieve next, or something you need to prepare for. You are just focused on what is happening all around you, right at this moment. There is a sense of calm that happens when you are not thinking about what I need to do next, and your stress levels begin to diminish and your attitude starts to improve, you are starting to feel what some people call being happy.

Being connected – If I am always talking to you about what I am going to do in the future and how I need to work on this or that for some future reward, I’m probably not even listening to what you are saying and much worse I don’t really care because I am on a quest. Do you know people like this? Maybe a co-worker, a brother, a sister, a friend, a parent, a spouse. They are very busy people, but they are not connected to you in the moment. They may have feelings for you or care about you, but they don’t have time to show you or time to listen you, they are much to busy. Living in the present allows us to spend time with people and become available, to hear what they are saying, to show empathy, and to make a better connection.

Mastery – When you look around you at those people that have become masterful at something in their life, maybe it is music, sports, writing, or teaching you find that they invest in the present. I would suggest that a great pianist or violinist doesn’t spend their time thinking about how much money they will make or what material thing they will acquire next. Instead they are focused in the moment knowing that their focus will let them acquire something more than wealth or things, but it will result in mastery. Don’t get me wrong mastery can have material consequences, but it starts with living in the moment and focus. I would suggest the primary motivation is to get very good at something, to master it someday, and this alone creates happiness.

There are many other benefits to living in the moment, and we didn’t really make much headway on how you develop that mindset, but we can save that for some other time. It is Friday night and as much as I enjoy writing and posting I think I need to go spend a few moments with some special people.

Enjoy the weekend!

 

5 Keys to Happiness

happiness sign

This comes from an article I just read on LinkedIn by their CEO Jeff Wiener.  He talks about what his mentor Ray Chamber taught him were the 5 keys to happiness.  I thought these 5 keys to happiness would be something we could all embrace.  I’ve added a bit of my own qualifications if you will to each of these keys to happiness.

  1. Live in the moment – No not tomorrow, not yesterday, not next week, but NOW!  Face it there is no point living in the past, and little benefit to always thinking about the future. Living in the moment allows us to do our best right now and makes us the most available to those other humans that we live on this earth with.
  2. It’s better to be loving than to be right – Thinking you are smarter than everyone else makes you a real pain in the ass, and when you do it to people you love or like it makes you even a bigger pain in the ass.  This key to happiness is not so easy to pull off, especially for those of us who want to tell everyone the right way to do something; not teach them but tell them.
  3. Be a spectator to your own thoughts, especially when you become emotional – Have you ever got all worked up and written one of those long winded emails only to hit the Cancel button as it begins to occur to you that your emotions have got the best of you? Do you catch yourself thinking negative thoughts about someone or some organization, that are probably more than a bit ill founded? Having some ability to analyze your thoughts when they become less than calm and tranquil can help you get back some sense of happiness, or you can continue to fall into the pain in the ass category as in #2.
  4. Be grateful for at least one thing every day – So even on those days where you think the wheels are coming off, think of one thing you are grateful for.  I used to write once a week all the things I was grateful for, but found that is not a frequent enough of a reminder to make a difference on a daily basis.  So if you journal or blog or just meditate each day, think of that one thing you are grateful for. For example traffic was pretty good today, lunch was very good, I felt great after or during my workout, I had a great meeting at work today, I helped someone with their work, I showed someone appreciation for what they do, and the list goes on and on; pick one.
  5. Help others every chance you get – In this self serving, me oriented planet we spend our time focused on our own goals often at the exclusion of everything and everyone around us. I am as guilty of this as the next person, but fortunately I know other people that have taken this to heart and helping others seems very effortless to them.  In fact they seem quite happy about it, so I am trying to emulate them and see if it makes me happier too. When you do allow your mind to wander back to the past you find those times you spend mentoring, teaching, and doing something nice for others is what you remember fondly.

What are your keys to happiness?

The complete article is at: http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140210025756-22330283-five-keys-to-happiness?trk=tod-home-art-list-small_2