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Find joy in the unspectacular moments.
I wonder how many of your thoughts you consciously choose.
Are you even aware there is a stream of thoughts going on constantly?
If I asked you to choose your next thought, what would you choose?
When we are not present, where are we?
More than likely ruminating about the past or worrying about the future.
You cannot suffer in the past or the future. They do not exist.
Where, then, are we suffering? I suspect in our imagination.
Don’t let me oversimplify. I am aware of the great complexities of the anxious mind, and more importantly, I am not aware of their magnitude.
It is fair to suggest, however, that connecting with the present is something few of us do.
Even the most grounded of us are always looking over the shoulders of the present into the future.
Everything from social ineptitude to tonight’s dinner.
Feeling the body
Most thoughts repeat on autopilot.
I look at builders on scaffoldings in my street, surrounded by threats and machinery and wonder how they don’t fear falling to their demise.
They can’t afford to.
Imagine living in a world where every imminent risk could fill us with fear. We’d never act. Cars would be obsolete.
Similarly, we grow numb to certain sensations too.
Your inner body is a lively place. Putting the focus on the body takes you back into the now.
Feel the cushion against your body where you sit.
Feel the fabric of your clothing on your skin.
Close your eyes and take deep, long breaths.
Eat slower. Much slower. Feel the texture of the food on your tongue. What are the tastes?
Are they as nice as you anticipated?
Maybe you have been eating so fast all your life that you come to see you have never actually tasted food.
Life in this moment is life, so try to replace what you have been thinking about with the experience you are currently having.
Reconnect with movement
Our mind is often elsewhere when we move so we miss the opportunity to connect with our body’s movement.
How many people walk solely to burn calories?
How many people don’t exercise habitually?
They see it as a chore rather than a blessing.
Most people who lack good training technique are not connecting with the movement.
A perfect metaphor for thoughts and for life, they are so focused on the external — moving the arbitrary weight — they have no connection to what is occurring in the body to move the weight.
You could throw a dumbbell up through fresh air, but that doesn’t challenge your body.
You could walk solely to hit a step count, but that doesn’t connect you to the body’s capabilities.
Don’t be afraid to introspect.
What thoughts arise when you exercise?
Does your mind tell you you’re done when in reality you have 50% more effort to give?
There are so many benefits of exercise to the physical body, but for the few who dare to go there, it can be a practice of a more spiritual variety.
How the body moves, how it all connects and the cross-over benefits of how to delay gratification for a richer, better life.
Consciously choosing a thought
Take five minutes today.
Lie down. Close your eyes.
Observe your thought. What is it?
Did you choose it? is it autopilot?
When you do this, you’ll probably return to autopilot thoughts in no time. That’s fine.
Just pull yourself back to the present when you become aware again.
What thoughts are you going to choose next?
So many of our outcomes are determined by what we think.
When someone feels like a failure, they make lack any true evidence of this, yet act in a way guaranteed to make the feared outcome a reality.
Their thoughts dictated this.
They are stuck in negative patterns.
They cannot take the time to audit the mind.
They pass this on to those around them.
Generation to generation.
Ambition dies. Gratitude rots. Life wasted.
Mental prisons are built.
Suffering remains.
To lie in stillness is to try and bring awareness to thoughts.
You do not need to control them.
You just need to get better at spotting them.
Being comfortable with them.
Anxious thoughts will always arise.
Some days seem inexplicably bleak.
We can develop a practice that helps us deal with intense emotions.
Thinking isn’t bad or good
Don’t project your own morality onto your thoughts.
I have had clients who have never taken the time to taste any food before despite years of diets. Years of eating everything like it was a final meal before a restrictive crash diet and repeat.
Rather than take this as a sign of improvement, they used this new information to continue the cycle of self-torture.
The goal is to become aware you have a stream of thoughts in your head 24/7.
It is endless. It deceives. It irritates. It angers. It reacts. It polarizes.
It does everything we know in our hearts to be unsupportive until we draw ourselves back into the present.
The goal isn’t some pseudo-spiritual aim at perfection.
The goal is to embrace the human experience through feeling the array of normal human emotions without becoming them. So much of our suffering comes from never having learned how to deal with certain emotions.
Instead of spending all the time in our minds, we can escape excessive thinking through the above.
There are more techniques, but I wanted to share with you the simpler strategies that have improved the quality of my life immensely.
I want a life filled with gratitude and joy. To be able to embrace the full spectrum of life, as it is, here and now, as if I had consciously chosen this moment.
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