Did you glide through 2018 with a big smile on your face?
Was 2018 a year of grace and ease under pressure?
If not, here are some amazing tips for a kinder, gentler 2019.
My friend Julie Potiker, author of “Life Falls Apart, but You Don’t Have To: Mindful Methods for Staying Calm In the Midst of Chaos,” offers super useful tips to make sure 2019 is a year of serenity and mindfulness.
“Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can’t afford to lose.” – Thomas Edison
This week, I’ve been thinking about how many of us spend our present lives stuck in the future.
“When I make this much money, I’ll finally do x, y or z…”
“I’ll travel one day…”
“When my kids are older, that’s when I’ll really get to living…”
“I’ll vote in the next presidential election, but I won’t this November because it’s not as important…”
The list goes on and on.
Needless to say, I’ve certainly done a lot of that kind of projecting in my own life. But I was reminded this past week that our present is all we have.
We have today. That’s it. We don’t get to decide about tomorrow. So the question we should all be asking ourselves is, “What am I doing today with the time I have, right here, right now?”
Some years back, I was talking with a woman in our community. She was a breast cancer survivor and she told me about a conversation that she had with a friend who also was a survivor. Her friend asked her, “What would it feel like for you to think that something good might happen, rather than something bad?” Her response was, “Totally weird and uncomfortable. “Good,” her friend said. “Try it now.”
From an evolutionary perspective, it really makes sense that we feel uncomfortable when we envision positive things coming our way. Our brains are designed to scan for trouble and fixate on what might go wrong in any given situation. This is described as the negativity bias and it one of our hard wired survival strategies. Of course, it is a very good strategy for avoiding real danger. But, in the absence of a true threat, it limits our capacity for enjoying, and celebrating our moments. We have such a short time on planet earth. When the negativity bias rules, we get very loyal to our anxiety, mistrust and vigilance. We cannot inhabit the fullness of our lives.
“I WANT.”
Five simple letters. Two words. Yet, there are probably no other two words in the English language that cause such powerful suffering.
The pull of wanting is immensely strong. Like an emotional black hole, it can drag you away from the light of grace and into the darkness of need. You become detached from the present moment. Instead of experiencing the joy, meaning, and peace that is your natural state, you endlessly orbit the bottomless pit of want, a thrall to an emptiness that can never be filled.
In short, these two tiny words equal pain and frustration. Let me show you how:
When your mood is good you naturally tend to see better opportunities and take advantage of them in creating a stress-free life for yourself.
What’s the spark and what’s the fuel?
The Practice:
Welcome joy.
Why?
Positive emotions—such as feelings of gratitude, love, and confidence—strengthen the immune system, protect the heart against loss and trauma, build relationships, increase resilience, and promote success. Based on studies that have already been done, if a drug company could patent a happiness pill, we’d be seeing ads for it every night on TV.
Technically, emotions can be organized along two dimensions: intensity (how strong they are) and hedonic valence (how good they feel). Tranquility, for example, has low intensity but can feel really really good, a profound inner peace.
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
– Carl Jung
In Part One, I talked about the importance of living authentically and my own struggle to develop a life that was full of joy and meaning. Here, in Part Two, I’m going to share the four practices that I use every day to keep myself on the most genuine of paths.
Uncovering your most authentic life will come from deep within yourself. You need to learn to discern that inner voice that often whispers in your ear. It’s a voice that is so very easily drowned out by the noise of the unimportant and the trivial. Too often, this noise is self-created, so that we can ignore what our inner wisdom is trying to tell us. Through a daily practice of silence, you can create a still space that allows the message that this voice carries to resonate throughout your life.
The key is connecting with your inner voice often throughout the day. Get out of bed 15 minutes early and sit in silence. If this feels uncomfortable for you, start with just 3 – 5 minutes. Simply ask your true self to make itself known. Quietly offer that you are willing to be open and grateful for any wisdom and guidance that comes through.
Many years ago, my boyfriend (at the time) and I were invited to dinner at the home of his friends. The conversation was good, but no matter how much I tried, I just couldn’t enjoy the food on my plate. What struck me about this meal was its emptiness. It was devoid of joy and bland in flavor and vitality.
The couple that had kindly asked us into their home was accustomed to an all-American diet, but a doctor had recently told the husband he needed to make a change. So, the cupboards were stripped of snack foods and the fridge was filled with “health foods,” such as turkey bacon, egg whites, and low-fat cream cheese.
This couple wanted to be healthy, but they didn’t know how to change their habits. So, they chose poor substitutes for the foods they were accustomed to eating, and they assumed that eating healthy foods meant that they would forever be relegated to dull meals. There was no joy in the food because they felt no joy in this new way of eating.
Sometimes life gets hectic and things seem to pass by in a blur. Other times the weight of the things occurring may cause you to feel weary or down.
There are times life invites you to embrace uncomfortability, stretch your boundaries and reevaluate your limits. Sometimes in unpredictable, but pleasant new ways; other times in ways riddled with challenges.
