Being Interrupted
What happens when you're in the middle of something, and someone comes over and asks you a question? How do you react? How do you view it? Qualify it? Label it? Is it an interruption? A curiosity? An opportunity? An urgency? An annoyance? A disruption? A welcome? Perhaps unexpected, but now it is a real change in what you were doing and what you are doing now. A transition to something new. Seeing An Opportunity And now you are creating this moment in your own fashion. You're a producer, a director, and an actor at once. Creating the narrative in your own play. Are you not always creating? Creating your schedule, your reports, your writing, your emails, your email-checking, your weekend, your excitement, your goals, your plans, your friendships, your ideas, your happiness, your judgments, your vision, your thoughts, your confusion, your love, your habits, your moments? Creating An Outcome You are creating with others and your environment. In sync with the people, the places and all the things you may not even notice, like the shifting weather, the noise of the traffic, the colors of the buildings, the quality of the oxygen, or the culture of your town, state, or country. You move with it. You own the direction of your attention by knowing you are creating it. Right now. In every moment. What are you creating? Now? And now? And now?
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Finding Time To Meditate
There's a zen parable about a young man who asks his teacher, "Should I study or meditate, since I only have one free hour left after my work and chores?" It's a tough question for the zen teacher because it asks him support one worthy discipline over another. But the teacher quickly responds, "Meditate, then you'll discover that you have more than one free hour in the day." Meditation Is Not An Activity Seeking an end result from meditation is falsely approaching it the same way you would approach any another activity; in order to get something, whereas meditation is exactly about who you are NOW. It's focus is just to be, not to be something else. Meditation is a continuous exploration. It is a process of self-examination, of personal evolution. It has no end. Rather, it is continuous in the same way a moment is forever continuous. When "meditation" and the "moment" are in sync, you are completely present and not concerned with pursuing an "activity." Meditating On The Why By asking yourself the "why", you have already begun the process of meditation. Meditation is a constant, not just relegated to sitting on the floor every morning. Albert Low, a teacher at the Montreal Zen Center in Rivière-des-Prairies, puts it aptly: “Meditation is not a technique. It’s an inquiry. You don’t do it in order that something else is accomplished. The very act of doing it means an enrichment, one’s life is enriched not as a consequence of the technique but of the fact of the inquiry itself.” Next time you berate yourself for not making time to meditate, stop and re-consider why you want to meditate and why you can't find time. By doing so, you will start down a road of self-understanding that you can meditate on. Riot Suppression
The Atlantic recently published a short article where a prisoner, Kenneth Gourlay responded to the pros and cons of upgraded riot-suppression training that correctional officers receive. The commentary was profound in its clarification of a famous quote by Einstein: "You can't solve a problem with the same consciousness that created it." Kenneth shows how this plays out in his prison system in this statement: "I found it hard to believe the presumption that riot-suppression training is responsible for reducing prison riots despite the increased prisoner population. To the contrary, I am more inclined to think that rioting has decreased exactly because of the increase in population." Suppressing X Does Not Eliminate X Riot-suppression is a reaction to riots and upgrading the training regimen creates an anticipation for future riots. And the fact that future riots are a given creates a mindset for preparing to suppress them. It's a self-fulfilling cycle. We all do this. When someone gets angry, we tell them to stop getting angry. When someone is shy, we tell them to stop being shy. And so on. The circular reasoning is never clear at first, it makes sense to approach the problem head on. Doing The Opposite Here's how Kenneth explains the reduced rioting: "If correctional officers can take credit for reduced violence, it’s because of their training to avoid the use of force whenever possible and to treat their wards with the respect and dignity any human being deserves. Beyond their training in physical control, they also are experienced in addressing complaints through diplomatic communication and rational problem-solving, so problems can be resolved long before they turn into riots." Instead of telling someone to stop being angry, create a fun and happy environment where anger can't exist. Instead of telling someone to stop being shy, start dialog that makes it easier to open up. Do the opposite of what you want to suppress. Please share your thoughts! Getting Things Done
It's great to be an achiever, to get things done, until it becomes OVER-achieving and the process becomes stressful and loses its flare. The irony is that achievement begets a desire for greater achievement. It requires you to set the bar higher, to do more and do it better. You lose track of what you were achieving in the race to get things done. The reward becomes a slave driver instead of a challenge. The process becomes a chore instead of a high. Anyone who comes from a demanding family, went to a tough school or worked in a fast-paced job knows this inherently. What leads to success also lead to stress. No pain, no gain right? Sound familiar? How do you stop the "over" and keep the "achieving"? More Input ≠ More Output The old adage of work smarter, not harder applies here. How? Achievement acts like any addictive behavior in that it reinforces itself. Once you have achieved a goal, the reward for the next goal must provide a greater sense of achievement. This upward trend is not sustainable though. When have you achieved enough to stop? When can you take a break? Redirecting Your Energy Recognizing when the marginal change for a given project becomes negative allows you to shift your energy to a project where the marginal change is much more positive. A leisure activity to break the routine, another fun project like getting in shape for a 5K or learning to play an instrument or reading David McCollough's 752-pg biography of John Adams are but a few ideas. A break creates eustress opportunities that keep you fresh for the original task that became stale due to over-doing. No need to reset, but rather redirect focus to another area that lights you up. Interests you and moves you. Excitement is contagious and will spread not only to others but also to yourself and your other projects or the original project you put off. Try it out and share your thoughts! X-hour Energy
Have you seen the new 5-hour energy ad? It promises all the benefits mindfulness does. Clarity + alertness, being in the zone, owning the moment. When I first saw it, I thought, "Wow, that's what I would say about mindfulness!" And a little red bottle of liquid can give you all that? But to what end? The ad doesn't tell you that. What are you going to do with all that energy? How are you going to use that powered-up version of yourself? What more will you do now that you can do more of it? The obvious problem here is dependency, but the deeper, more sinister, hidden problem is not knowing where your energy comes from and seeking an outside source as a substitute. Mistaking The Source of Energy Why is it that lottery winners sometimes go bankrupt in a few years? Or become depressed? What do they do when the craving is immediately satisfied? Shop, travel, splurge on the things they always wished they could have. And then what? They do it some more. And then what? Maybe a little more. And it keeps going until they don't have any money or they don't know what to do with it. The money represents a desire, a wish, an aspiration, a craving and when it's gone, there is nothing there to replace it. They got everything they wanted at the expense of wanting everything, which is much more important. The drive is more interesting than the outcome. Defining What Drives You Defining what you will do with all the productivity is what makes you productive. Deciding why you seek clarity will make things more clear. 5-hour energy is enticing because it represents instant fulfillment, but like the lottery winner, will you know what to do once you are fulfilled? How will you know if it's enough? What will fulfill you next? Mindfulness is not about the promise of X amount of energy. It's about understanding your self and your purpose, because energy alone doesn't have a driver. It's not energy that drives you, your drive energizes you. Shifting the focus to what end you seek energy is exactly what will give you the energy you seek. This is not a zen puzzle. It's another angle from which you allow yourself to see what you do day in and day out. Pay attention to those areas in your life which energize you without you pushing yourself. What kind of people, music, art, thoughts, food, drink, writing, theater, movies, nature, exercise get you going? When you learn what moves you, only then can you push the accelerator. Only then will you be filled with the right amount of energy to do what you believe needs to get done. Does that make sense? Please share your thoughts! The Supermarket Cart
David Foster Wallace noted something interesting in a commencement speech about the daily rigamarole of our lives: "You will go to the supermarket. At the supermarket you will get a cart. The cart will have three functional wheels, and one wheel that spins out all curvy in a weird direction. That wheel - and thus the cart - will drive you mad. If you let it." There are many supermarket cart experiences in our lives:
"If Only" The things out of our control can take control of us very easily. The rhetoric is "If only". If only I had sat in another chair, if only I had been 10 seconds faster, if only I decided to go in a different lane earlier. The relative past haunts us. If only you had made a different decision before you knew what was going to happen. Doesn't that sound odd? How could you have known? You're here now. You didn't make those decisions. And isn't it true that if you did, you may not even think twice about it? You might just let it pass? What matters is what you're going to do now, in the reality you find yourself in. Will you let the supermarket cart wheel bother you the whole time? Isn't it funny how you sometimes think you "deserve" the bad cart because of something else you did that day? How you bring karma in to justify our bad luck? You could just as easily get another cart. But maybe it'll be too small or too big or missing the grip. These mundane, random events are a part of your day-to-day life. They make up the tedium that annoy you, bother you, change your mood, affect your state of mind, and sometimes translate to a larger part of your day. Being A Witness This is a perfect opportunity to watch your mind work itself into a frenzy. Just observe how it thinks through all the bad. How it justifies. How it rationalizes what is happening. As you watch your mind, you'll see yourself removed from the emotionality of the situation but still a part of your surroundings. Still pushing the cart. The annoyance will melt away. The more attentive you are to these simple parts of your life that have the power to drive you mad, the better you'll get at being a witness and not an actor and taking away that power. The quicker the negative emotions will melt away. The more sane and at peace you'll find yourself with the dumb luck you had. You might even laugh. Please share your thoughts! |
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