Illustration from the book, “Be Here Now” by Ram Dass
I just finished up with a series of 6 blogs on Resilience. If you haven’t seen them yet, they are still available to read and download. Go to this link on the website:
https://www.authenticlifecoach.net/blogs
One of the very important keys to living a life you love is to bring yourself to the present moment whenever possible. There are many books and articles on living in the present moment and I have read many of them. Like anything else, you can teach yourself how to live more in the present moment. It is an acquired skill!
One of the very important keys to living a life you love is to bring yourself to the present moment . . .
Are you listening? Do you hear that voice in your head or do you hear that bird singing? Using our five senses (and sometimes a 6th sense) we can connect with the present moment whenever we make a decision to do so. Don’t get me wrong. I am not de-valuing the thinking mind unless it runs amok! Some thinking is not only good, it is necessary to live in a 3-dimensional world. The value of the thinking we do is what is at issue, not the act of thinking itself.
The question we might consider asking ourselves is whether or not what we are thinking is TRUE. If it is not true, it may work against us. Let me give you an example in the form of a story.
A beggar had been sitting by the side of a road for over 30 years. One day a stranger walked by. “Spare some change?” mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding out his old baseball cap. “I have nothing to give you,” said the stranger. “What’s that you are sitting on?
” Nothing”, replied the beggar. “Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember.”
“Ever looked inside?” asked the stranger. “No,” said the beggar. “What’s the point? There’s nothing in there.”
“Have a look inside,” insisted the stranger. The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw that the box was filled with gold.
The beggar believed his thought that the box was empty, even though he had never actually checked to make sure that was true. It took an interruption (the stranger) to question the truth of his thought. The longer we have been thinking a particular thought, the more we believe it.
Most people are compulsive thinkers, but the truth is that we must interrupt the thinking (like the stranger did for the beggar) or it will control us. Personal growth and transformation cannot occur unless we can discern truth from fiction. Thinking false thoughts creates roadblocks to our development as human beings unless we question them. We must be careful not to let our compulsive, dysfunctional thoughts to take control of us.
The past is gone. The future is not yet here, and if we do not go back ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.
~ Thich Nat Hanh
I invite you to try an experiment. Allow your thoughts to run freely for a period of time – say 20 minutes – and then do something to force the thinking to stop. You could have an alarm set to end the thinking cycle or hit a virtual “pause button”. You could get up and take a walk or get some refreshment . . . whatever will distract you for a couple of minutes. Then go back over the thoughts you were having and try to discern whether what you were thinking was true.
Try to repeat this exercise every day for a few days and then evaluate if it has become easier (or less easy) to interrupt your thoughts. Also, notice if you had some thoughts that passed the test of “truthfulness”.
I would love to hear from you after you try this. How did it work? How did you feel?
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