You can’t make changes in your life until you begin to see yourself exactly as you are now.3/5/2014
You can’t make radical changes in the pattern of your life until you begin to see yourself exactly as you are now. As soon as you do that, changes will flow naturally. You don’t have to force anything, struggle, or obey rules dictated to you by some authority. It is automatic; you just change. But arriving at that initial insight is quite a task. You have to see who you are and how you are without illusion, judgment, or resistance of any kind. You have to see your place in society and your function as a social being. You have to see your duties and obligations to your fellow human beings, and above all, your responsibility to yourself as an individual living with other individuals. And finally, you have to see all of that clearly as a single unit, an irreducible whole of interrelationship. It sounds complex, but it can occur in a single instant. Mental cultivation through meditation is without rival in helping you achieve this sort of understanding and serene happiness.
“What you are now is the result of what you were. What you will be tomorrow will be the result of what you are now. The consequences of an evil mind will follow you like the cart follows the ox that pulls it. The consequences of a purified mind will follow you like your own shadow. No one can do more for you than your own purified mind—no parent, no relative, no friend, no one. A well-disciplined mind brings happiness.” Throw a stone into a stream. The running water would smooth the stone’s surface, but the inside remains unchanged. Take that same stone and place it in the intense fires of a forge, and it all melts; the whole stone changes inside and out. Civilization changes a person on the outside. Meditation softens a person from within, through and through. Meditation sharpens your concentration and your thinking power. Then, piece by piece, your own subconscious motives and mechanics become clear to you. Your intuition sharpens. The precision of your thought increases, and gradually you come to a direct knowledge of things as they really are, without prejudice and without illusion. Meditation deals with levels of consciousness that lie deeper than conceptual thought. Therefore, some of the experiences of meditation just won’t fit into words. That does not mean, however, that meditation cannot be understood. There are deeper ways to understand things than by the use of words. You understand how to walk. You probably can’t describe the exact order in which your nerve fibers and your muscles contract during that process. But you know how to do it. Meditation needs to be understood that same way—by doing it. It is not something that you can learn in abstract terms, or something to be talked about. It is something to be experienced. Meditation is not a mindless formula that gives automatic and predictable results; you can never really predict exactly what will come up during any particular session. It is an investigation and an experiment, an adventure every time. In fact, this is so true that when you do reach a feeling of predictability and sameness in your practice, you can read that as an indication that you have gotten off track and are headed for stagnation. Learning to look at each second as if it were the first and only second in the universe is essential in vipassana meditation. The purpose of meditation is to develop awareness. Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition by Bhante Gunaratana Willpower is the missing link in reaching human potential. Because it’s so crucial, you’ll discover many other situations where you need it. Try out Jeopardy in those everyday moments when you tend to lose your will: getting out of bed in the morning, concentrating in the face of distractions, or restraining the impulse to give in to a bad habit. It works just as well at those heightened moments when you’d like to take your life in a new direction. You might want to start a book, a new business, or move to a new city. You fantasize about it endlessly but you don’t even take step one. We’ll elaborate on these other uses of Jeopardy at the end of this chapter.
Jeopardy is a model for being fully alive. Paradoxically, this sense of life emerges from a relationship with the deathbed version of yourself. Because he knows what it’s like for time to run out, he has the wisdom you need every moment. Invite him into your consciousness, feel him looking at you every moment, and welcome the pressure he puts on you. You’ll move through life with a wind at your back. The consumer expects a reward for the slightest effort—or better, for no effort at all. He cares only about what he gets from the world, not about what he might add to it. Living on the surface, jumping from thing to thing, his energy is diffused, like milk spreading across a tabletop. He makes no impact on the world; when his time on earth is over, it’s as if he never lived. The creator won’t accept that fate. Everything he does is with the intention of making an impact on the world. His code ensures this:
Anyone can live by this code, but very few of us do. It means putting your life in the service of higher forces. These forces can’t be found on the surface of life; they’re found in its depths. The creator’s energy must have the singular focus of a drill boring through stone. As difficult as that is, a creator is rewarded many times over for his efforts. You don’t have to be an artist to be a creator. You can add something to the world in any human activity—even the most routine. Your job, your role as a parent, your relationships, your contribution to your community—all become more meaningful when you put your personal stamp on them using higher forces. The Tools: 5 Tools to Help You Find Courage, Creativity, and Willpower--and Inspire You to Live Life in Forward Motion In essence, worry had become a powerful superstition—with no more real benefit than a rabbit’s foot. But superstitions have a powerful appeal because they give us a magical sense that we can affect the future. Of course, this is an illusion—most of life is beyond our ability to predict, much less control. From a picnic getting rained out to a sudden heart attack—anything can happen at any time. Still, we insist we can control the uncontrollable.
We assume (because science tells us so) that the universe is indifferent to us. Based only on what we see around us, this is a reasonable conclusion. But it makes us feel alone in a universe that doesn’t care about us. Feeling we won’t be provided for, we become obsessed with controlling our future. In that context, worrying seems to make sense. But what if, on a level we can’t see, the universe is interested in our welfare, supporting us in ways large and small? It’s not that much of a stretch to be able to perceive this. Start with your physical body. It extracts oxygen from the air, it digests complex foods, it allows you the miracle of sight and hearing. All these things work amazingly well without your even understanding how. There’s more—the earth supplies us with food, the air we breathe; and it gives us the raw materials with which to build things. And these are just a few examples of the infinite number of ways our existence is sustained by the universe. The Grateful Flow Pick out things in your life you can be grateful for—particularly things you’d normally take for granted. Say them to yourself silently, slowly enough to feel the value of each one. “I’m grateful for my eyesight; I’m grateful I have hot water,” etc. You should do this until you’ve mentioned at least five items—it takes less than thirty seconds. Feel the slight strain of your effort to find these items. You should feel the gratefulness you express flowing upward, directly from your heart. Then, when you’ve finished mentioning the specific items, your heart should continue to generate gratefulness, this time without words. The energy you are now giving out is the Grateful Flow. As this energy emanates from your heart, your chest will soften and open. In this state you’ll feel yourself approaching an overwhelming presence, filled with the power of infinite giving. You’ve made a connection to the Source. Stick to things you’re truly grateful for, not things you feel you should be grateful for. These are often minor things that you might not notice unless they were taken away—like the fact that you had a nice lunch with a friend, for example, or that your electricity works. Patients often ask why we emphasize these minor items. The answer is simple: although we tend to take them for granted, they’re always there You should also make it a daily practice. What Elizabeth had gained was that priceless quality we call perspective. Without perspective, any disappointment can take over your whole life; like a drop of ink in a beaker of water, everything looks dark. Even the smallest setback tends to overwhelm you. Perspective is the ability to see whatever is happening at the moment without losing sight of the enduring, positive nature of life. When your mind is filled with worry, self-hatred, or any other form of negative thinking, you’ve been taken over by the Black Cloud. It limits what you can do with your life, deprives your loved ones of what is best about you. Life becomes a struggle to survive instead of the fulfillment of great promise. What You’re Fighting Against is the unconscious delusion that negative thoughts can control the universe. Because we think the universe is indifferent to us, we cling to the sense of control negative thinking gives us. 1. Start by silently stating to yourself specific things in your life you’re grateful for, particularly items you’d normally take for granted. You can also include bad things that aren’t happening. Go slowly so you really feel the gratefulness for each item. Don’t use the same items each time you use the tool. You should feel a slight strain from having to come up with new ideas. 2. After about thirty seconds, stop thinking and focus on the physical sensation of gratefulness. You’ll feel it coming directly from your heart. This energy you are giving out is the Grateful Flow. 3. As this energy emanates from your heart, your chest will soften and open. In this state you will feel an overwhelming presence approach you, filled with the power of infinite giving. You’ve made a connection to the Source. The Tools: 5 Tools to Help You Find Courage, Creativity, and Willpower--and Inspire You to Live Life in Forward Motion Effectiveness is the true measure of authority. Sound decisions must be backed by intelligent action to generate real results. In order to increase your authority, you must consider two questions: Am I making the correct decisions? Am I taking the correct actions?
Notice how elegantly the principles of truth and power work together to improve your personal effectiveness over time. First, you identify one of your desires and make a decision to move toward it. Then you use your predictive abilities to select a reasonable course of action. As you progress toward your goal, you need only identify the next action you predict will move you in the correct direction. You use your power to move yourself forward, one step at a time. Even as you take these microsteps, your predictive mind is always looking ahead, continually refining its selections and evaluating the results of the decisions you’ve already implemented. Maybe you reach your goal; maybe you don’t. Either way, you experience a powerful gain. When you succeed, your successful predictions, decisions, and behaviors are reinforced. When you fail, your mind learns that its predictions were inaccurate, and it updates your model of reality to help prevent you from repeating the same mistakes. When you suffer from blocks to truth and power, this process won’t work perfectly, but you’ll still gain something from it. Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth Amazingly, it worked. Meditating became so much easier when I observed my thoughts like a detached outsider. Each morning, I would sit cross-legged with my back against the wall and close my eyes for 10 minutes. Then I’d just observe myself. Every thought that my mind produced – no matter how nerve-wracking or obnoxious – was allowed to make as much noise as it wanted. Instead of trying to control and change these thoughts into peaceful silence, I just watched them do their thing, like they were clouds passing by.
My thoughts weren’t good or bad; they were just thoughts. I didn’t need to make them perfect, or assign them any value. They all received the exact same treatment: detached indifference. When I got bored with them, I’d shift my focus back to the rhythm of my breathing. It was like a relaxing mental workout where there could be no failure. After two weeks of observing my thoughts for 10 minutes each morning, my mind wasn’t able to scare me. My thoughts only had power when I granted them that authority. The incessant chirping in my brain that freaked me out for months was now background noise. Sit cross-legged with your back against a wall, or lay down on your back. Set a timer on your phone for 2 minutes. Close your eyes. Practice watching your thoughts as though you’re a detached observer. Alternative: Go on a 10-minute solo run and only pay attention to the rhythm of your breathing (no music allowed!) Play It Away: A Workaholic's Cure for Anxiety During the month I cured my anxiety, I made consistent sleep one of my highest priorities.2/18/2014
During the month I cured my anxiety, I made consistent sleep one of my highest priorities. The first thing I did was optimize my bedroom for ideal sleeping conditions. Here are the steps I took: Plugged my iPhone charger in an outlet far away from my bed so I couldn’t grab my phone while I was laying down. This little obstacle prevented me from checking email or Facebook before trying to fall asleep. Cranked up the air conditioning so the temperature in my bedroom was around 68 degrees Fahrenheit.23 Kept the curtains drawn and wore a sleep mask so that my room was as dark as I could possibly make it. Downloaded the Relax Melodies app, which played a continuous loop of ocean waves throughout the night.
Once my room was optimized, I committed to a consistent bedtime. I set a daily reminder on my iPhone called Get Ready for Bed, which went off at 10:00PM every night (i.e. nine hours before I wanted to wake up). As soon as it went off, I’d stop whatever I was doing, hit the bathroom, brush my teeth, and change out of my day clothes. I was dead serious about obeying my phone’s command. Even if I was in the middle of a conversation, I’d abruptly end it so I could get ready for bed. After I finished getting ready, I would switch my phone to Flight mode, open the Relax Melodies app, and climb in bed to read fiction for 15 minutes.24 When I was done reading, I’d turn off the lights and focus on the rhythm of my breath until I fell asleep. It took several nights to adjust to this change, but within a week, I was sleeping like a champion. I wasn’t eating anything after 8:00PM, and I stopped drinking caffeine after 5:00PM. Those habits helped my body wind down earlier, but the critical part was getting ready at the same time every night. There was another aspect of my sleep routine that was critical for healing my anxiety: I took a 20-minute nap every afternoon. Play It Away: A Workaholic's Cure for Anxiety The Comfort Zone is supposed to keep your life safe, but what it really does is keep your life small.
A few rare individuals refuse to live limited lives. They drive through tremendous amounts of pain—from rejections and failures to shorter moments of embarrassment and anxiety. They also handle the small, tedious pain required for personal discipline, forcing themselves to do things we all know we should do but don’t—like exercising, eating right, and staying organized. Because they avoid nothing, they can pursue their highest aspirations. They seem more alive than the rest of us. They have something that gives them the strength to endure pain—a sense of purpose. A sense of purpose doesn’t come from thinking about it. It comes from taking action that moves you toward the future. The moment you do this, you activate a force more powerful than the desire to avoid pain. We call this the “Force of Forward Motion. To tap into this force, you need to move relentlessly forward in your own life—only then have you taken on its form. He talked about the subject closest to his heart—football. He was first team All-City, considered the best running back in the area. For whatever reason, he was eager to explain to me how he’d achieved this distinction. What he said shocked me—I can still remember it forty years later. He explained that he wasn’t the fastest back in the city, nor was he the most elusive. There were stronger players, too. But he was still the best in the city, with big-time scholarship offers to prove it. The reason he was the best, he explained, had nothing to do with his physical abilities—it was his attitude about getting hit. He’d demand the ball on the first play from scrimmage and would run at the nearest tackler. He wouldn’t try to fake him out or run out of bounds. He’d run right at him and get hit on purpose, no matter how much it hurt. “When I get up, I feel great, alive. That’s why I’m the best. The other runners are afraid, you can see it in their eyes.” He was right; none of them shared his desire to get crushed by a defender. My first reaction was that he was mad. He lived in a world of constant pain and danger—and he liked it. It was exactly the world I’d spent my young life avoiding. But I couldn’t get his crazy idea out of my mind; if you go right for the pain, you develop superpowers. The more the years went by, the more I found this to be true—and not just in sports. The Tools: 5 Tools to Help You Find Courage, Creativity, and Willpower--and Inspire You to Live Life in Forward Motion The Mirror Exercise
Select a random person, such as a friend, co-worker, or celebrity. How would you describe this person? Make a short list of this individual’s key character qualities. Then put a plus (+) next to the qualities you like and a minus (-) next to the ones you dislike. Now look at the list you’ve created, and read it back to yourself. But this time consider it from the perspective that you’re looking at a list someone else wrote to describe you. You’ll likely gain some new insights about yourself as you recognize that this is a fair representation of what you like and dislike most about yourself. I’ve offered this mirror exercise to many people around the world, and those who apply it are often stunned by what it reveals. I encour -age you to try it for yourself. It only takes a few minutes, and it will help you realize that other people are not so different from you after all. We commonly praise in others what we like most about ourselves, while condemning those qualities we resist facing in ourselves. Inci -dentally, did I mention what a beautiful, brilliant, and loving person you are? Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth Every day I write down ideas. I write down so many ideas that it hurts my head to come up with one more. Then I try to write down five more. The other day I tried to write 100 alternatives kids can do other than go to college. I wrote down eight, which I wrote about here. I couldn’t come up with anymore. Then the next day I came up with another 40. It definitely stretched my head. No ideas today? Memorize all the legal 2 letter words for Scrabble. Translate the Tao Te Ching into Spanish. Need ideas for lists of ideas? Come up with 30 separate chapters for an “autobiography.” Try to think of 10 businesses you can start from home (and be realistic how you can execute them)? Give me 10 ideas of directions this blog can go in. Think of 20 ways Obama can improve the country. List every productive thing you did yesterday (this improves memory also and gives you ideas for today)
I Was Blind But Now I See: Time to Be Happy Here’s the truth: You will work harder at something you love than at something you like. You will work harder than you have ever worked when you start chasing a dream. You will hustle and grind and sweat and push and pull. You will get up earlier and go to bed later. But that’s okay. Know why? Joy is an incredible alarm clock. It will wake you up and keep you up and pick you up and gently pull you through a thousand rejections along the way. If your goal is to work less, stay on the road to average. Do something you just kind of like. Settle into life like a long winter’s nap and coast on through to your 80s. But if you want to dream—if you want to live out some unique talent you’ve been given to steward during your time on this planet—get used to 4 a.m. alarms. Get going. Get up.
You have to love the act of being awesome. Writing, selling, singing, running a business—whatever the act is, that’s what has to fuel you through the land of Harvesting. Even if you harvest a thousand accomplishments during your time in this land, treat them as rewards for what you do, not the reasons for what you do. Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters |
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