The workshop started with a simple question: What do you want? That question was followed shortly with What is your deepest intention? And then, What do you want to create in your life? Out then came the magic markers, poster boards, glue sticks, glitter, and all sorts of other art supplies. We were to start drawing, mapping, and fleshing out a future life and future self, complete with the action steps that would lead us to our deepest wants and intentions.

From the time we’re very young, we are conditioned to be strivers. We are trained to want and keep wanting for more and better. Better versions of ourselves and better experiences for ourselves—this is where we are supposed to aim our attention.

Truth be told, when confronted with these kinds of broad, future-oriented questions, I often find myself blank, unable to identify what I want for my future in any real detail. I usually use the magic markers and glitter to make a picture for my daughter. It’s not to say there aren’t things I want to do and create: I want to spend more time in the desert, I want to build my speaking business and I want to do more silent retreats. But mostly what I feel in the face of these five-year-plan questions is a big fat “should” with a sprinkle of confusion and a splash of fogginess. The strong sense is that I should have a clear plan and an overarching vision of the future. And, that there’s something wrong if I don’t or don’t even want to participate in the exercise. 

But then I remember: We take our progress-oriented, more and better, capitalistic mindset and apply it to ourselves and our time on the planet. We relate to ourselves as an object in our model of unending progress. We focus on the future, where we want to get to, what else there could be, and what we are aiming for. At the end of the day, we assume that wanting means wanting for something, and specifically, something else, something external, and something new and different. 

After years of asking myself these sorts of well-intentioned questions, I discovered that they’re not the right questions for me or for many of my clients. The question, What do you want?, while wonderfully helpful in some ways, can become another demand on us, another thing we’re supposed to accomplish, another bar to reach. We are supposed to have a to-do list for our future and a plan to get there, and if we don’t, we are certain to miss out on that future of our dreams. 

After thousands of workshops and too many hours spent journaling, talking, meditating, singing, and every other ing, I realized that what I really want is to get to be here. That is, to experience this moment, this dare I say ordinary moment, and to experience it as enough. The intention I hold is to stop trying to get to somewhere else, stop becoming someone else, and stop figuring out a better reality. While there’s nothing wrong with any of that, for me, the work is in diving deeper into this present moment, and finding the wonder and awe in this. My five-year plan is to show up for all of the individual moments on the way to that moment in five years, which itself will then be just another now.

We are trained to think of time and our life as something that’s moving forward on a horizontal line, hurtling into the future. Progress is our north star. It gives us a place to move towards, and with it, a sense of purpose and meaning. At a deeper level, the idea of progress protects us from our existential fear of meaninglessness, from the vastness that comes with just being here, one now at a time. If we are not heading somewhere else, somewhere better, then we are left simply with this moment, heading nowhere in particular. If now is all we have, then what? Can we bear that existence?article continues after advertisement

But what’s remarkable is that when we enter this present moment fully, dive completely into now, with no next, and nowhere else to get to, we discover that time feels more like a vertical experience than a horizontal one. With each now, we drop into a kind of vertical infinity that is its own destination.

After diligently searching for an impressive “want” that would warrant a giant poster board and bright green sparkles, I discovered that what I want is far simpler than what I thought I should want. What I want is to be completely where I am, and to stop having to want something else all the time. I want for this moment to be everything, whatever it is. Furthermore, I want to feel a more consistent sense of awe for the fact that I get to be here at all. 

I offer my own experience here so that you may know of an alternative to the habitual striving and wanting that we are encouraged to participate in. But please, if these sorts of intentional inquiries are useful; if they help you gain clarity and move the dial forward in your life, then use them without hesitation. But, if you find yourself feeling blank or lacking when asked about what you want and want to make happen, about where you are headed, then perhaps you can give yourself permission to stop striving to get somewhere better, and instead, strive to just be here. 

Getting off the five-year-plan highway can feel like getting off the “normal” grid, opting out of the way we do life in this society. But that’s okay. Getting off the striving highway and turning your attention to where you are can lead you to a far better and richer life, which paradoxically, is exactly the kind of life you are supposed to be striving towards. article continues after advertisementhttps://26087277e0629cab930157be009c0c8d.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

It is the ultimate challenge to just be in this moment, with no agenda and no need to improve it. To arrive here and stop trying to get somewhere else may be the most difficult and remarkable achievement of our lifetime. When we’re able to truly show up for this moment, whatever we create and wherever we find ourselves in five minutes or five years will be just that. That “there” will be our new “here” and that “then” will be our new “now.” In a society that values striving above all else, we can add “striving to be in our life (as it’s happening)” to our want list. We can add “here” to our list of sought-after destinations. At the end of the day (and the beginning and middle too), the journey to where we are is the most important journey we will ever embark on. What do I want? Truth be told, I want to be here.

The post Must We Always Be Striving For A Better Life? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

There’s something profoundly disturbing going on in our culture right now. Well, truth be told, there are a multitude of profoundly disturbing things going on. But at the center of our toxic culture is a rapidly metastasizing and malignant sense of entitlement—a righteousness. And specifically, the right to cast judgment.

As a society, we have become astoundingly judgmental. We feel entitled and emboldened to cast judgment on absolutely everything and everyone. We not only judge what everyone is saying, doing, and believing right now, but we judge what everyone said, did, and believed throughout history. We feel entitled to criticize and condemn those who came before us, specifically, for being less aware and evolved than we are now. We shame who we used to be, and at the same time, deny that that’s who we were.  

We do this judging not only on a public stage, to other people, but also personally—to ourselves. We are constantly attacking, shaming, and rejecting earlier versions of ourselves, judging and blaming who we used to be. But we judge and blame through the lens of who we are now—who we’ve become.

Oddly, we expect ourselves to have always known and understood what we now know and understand. We shame ourselves for being works in progress, for having to grow up and keep growing up, for not coming out of the womb fully formed and perfect. As we become more awake and aware beings, sadly, we look back at less mature incarnations of ourselves with disdain and contempt. 

Laura, a client, started to tell me about a recent, wonderful experience in which she did something profoundly kind for her neighbor. She felt really good about her choice, and about herself. But before she had gotten even a few sentences into her story, Laura veered off into a shaming and critical diatribe on herself—specifically, about a past experience from 20 years ago, when she had acted with less kindness and less generosity.

The opportunity to honor this lovely experience, and also fully inhabit the person she had become as a woman in her forties, was hijacked by her need to vilify and condemn who she had been in her twenties. In an instant, she had abandoned her present-day self and was back in self-loathing and shame, caught in an old narrative, and an ocean of regret about who she used to be.

It’s odd really. We don’t expect our children to be able to run the moment they’re born. We all understand that, as human beings, we need to roll around for 9 or 10 months, then slide along on our butts for another few months, then crawl, then stand up and fall down, then toddle for a while holding onto something, then take a couple of steps on our own, then fall down some more, then take more steps, then fall down, and then walk. 

We accept that we need to grow into ourselves on a physical level, to fail until we can succeed. And to some degree, we hold this same acceptance with regard to our mental evolution, recognizing our need for education. And yet, for some reason, when it comes to our emotional and spiritual evolution, the maturation of our character and awareness, we expect perfection right out of the gate. We deny ourselves the right to learn and evolve over a lifetime, and similarly, to change and grow over generations, as a species.  article continues after advertisement

Life is a process of endless becoming. We’re never fully done growing, never done becoming. We are works in progress, throughout life. Over time and through our lived experiences, we learn who we want to be, who we are capable of being.

The truth is, we don’t come out as our best self; we grow into and learn how to be our best self. Particularly if we didn’t have parents or caretakers that could serve as models for our best behavior. We become more evolved and aware, and hopefully more compassionate, through trial and error, good examples, failure, time, and experience; we become the people we can respect and be proud of. That’s precisely the journey of life, precisely the point of it. To deny this truth or demand that it should be otherwise is to deny reality. 

When we judge and condemn our past behaviors and level of awareness based on what we are capable of now; when we shame the toddler in our past for, well… being a toddler, we not only deny reality, but we reject and abandon our more evolved selves. We refuse ourselves the privilege to change, to become and be better versions of ourselves. We cling to our past failures in the face of our current successes as a way of holding onto an old identity, an outdated narrative on ourselves as bad or not who we should have been. 

Often, at the root of our judging is shame. We shame ourselves for having to spiritually and morally mature, as if there were some other way for our evolution to happen. We condemn ourselves for having to grow into our best self. And of course, for ever having been imperfect.

In the process, we turn our backs on who we actually are, now. We dishonor the ways we’ve evolved. Simultaneously, we block the self we’ve become from becoming even more, and from fulfilling its potential. By focusing on the missteps and failures of who we used to be, we prevent ourselves from stepping into the shoes of the person we’ve become. In so doing, we get in our own way and slow down our continuing evolution.  

As human beings, we are works in progress. We grow into who we are on a daily basis. There’s no point at which we reach our final destination, a completed self. Again and again, we realize that what we thought and believed before, maybe even yesterday, we no longer think and believe now. Again and again, we discover that how we want to behave and how we can behave has changed.article continues after advertisementhttps://86b187bc2b58c4d1800c54a967d26945.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

The same holds true for us as a species. Who we were at other times in history is not who we are now. There’s no shame in that; it’s just what is. But each minute we spend condemning and judging who we were; each present moment we waste expecting and demanding a past self to have known what a present self knows, is not only a complete rejection of reality, of the human condition, but it’s also a moment we’ve lost, one that could have been spent living our life from and as the more evolved self we are right now.  

The post We Weren’t Always As Good As We Are Now, So What? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

His response was, to my ears, a lukewarm, unenthusiastic “yeh” or it might have been an “eh.” Either way, it was upsetting. We had been having a good time and, in an instant, I felt hurt and angry, and, for a moment, I saw no alternative other than to turn around and head home, which I did.

For the few blocks it took me to get home, a tsunami of thoughts was building inside my head, at the center of which was the thought that my best friend had just taken a sweet moment—a moment of real connection—and intentionally thrown it away. My thoughts were also saying that he chose to reject me because he didn’t really think it was such a great thing that we became friends back in high school, and that he would actually rather have other friends than me.

With each tree I passed on the journey home, I was becoming more hurt, more resentful, and more convinced of my storyline. By the time I got the key in the door, my thoughts had convinced me that my story of rejection was the absolute truth.

But then, thankfully, it occurred to me to ask myself the following question: Is this choice I’m making right now—to stick with my story about what just happened (and what it means)—moving me closer to happiness or unhappiness?

The answer was easy; I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if I stuck with what I was thinking and kept feeding it with my attention, my evening and maybe even my next day would be prickly, tense, and just plain bad. I wondered, was it really worth it when I could actually, right in this moment, make a different choice and change the whole trajectory of my next 36 hours? I pulled myself out of the micro and considered the macro.

But the question I asked next was the one that snapped me out of my binge-thinking, convinced me to put my thinking fork down if you will, and propelled me to act differently. I asked myself this: Is it true that my friend said what he said for the reasons I’m telling myself right now?  Is the meaning I’m assigning this interaction actually true?

With these questions posed, I could immediately see that I was thinking myself into a lather about something that, when considered deeply, I not only didn’t and couldn’t know was true, but that I deep down believed was untrue! I did not believe that my friend wanted or intended to hurt me and also did not believe that he would rather be friends with others instead.

Realizing that I did not believe in the truth of my own story allowed me to recognize the ridiculousness of hanging onto my storyline and staying looped into such thoughts.

Considering these questions allowed me to feel an entirely different feeling towards my friend. It shifted my emotional weather from resentment to gratitude. In considering how much he did not want to hurt me, it made me appreciate his kindness, his deeper intention to make me happy.

I will also say, however, that through the investigation of what was true, I discovered that indeed I had been feeling a bit under-appreciated by my friend, and maybe even a little hurt. What was true was that I knew he appreciated my friendship deeply, but that lately, I had been needing a little bit more acknowledgment of that appreciation. And so, the inquiry into what was true uncovered my love for my friend and also, the hurt in me that needed a voice.

While in this example, it was clear to me upon asking this question to myself that what I was telling myself actually contradicted what I believed to be true, there are also many times when the answer is not so clear cut, and when it’s not so easy to break free from the thinking pattern.

It’s often the case that we do in fact believe what our thoughts are telling us. We may believe, for example, that another person is intending to hurt us. But here’s the thing: Even when we believe it, we can open up to the possibility that we don’t know for sure what’s true in another person’s inner world. When we can say to ourselves yes, this is true as I see it, but I don’t know what’s true for the other, in their reality, then we’re on our way to freedom.  It’s just that little bit of wiggle room we give ourselves when we say, “I can’t know for sure what’s real for another; not at least until I talk to them about it.”

The mess we get into with our thinking is that we assume our thoughts are telling us the truth, which includes what’s true inside another person’s reality. Asking ourselves, “Is this true?” Or possibly, “Is there anything else that could also be true?” allows some air into our airtight system of thinking.

Once we deeply comprehend that we can’t really know what’s true inside another person’s mind or heart, we are relieved of the suffering that comes from having to believe in the stories we create—for others. We are still free to write our own stories, make meaning or truth for ourselves, but we no longer have to write the motives and intentions, the parts if you will, for all the other characters in our life.​​

The post Are Your Thoughts True? Do You Even Believe Them? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Lily’s inability to listen had created tremendous conflict in the family. A conversation would happen over dinner, and the next day, Lily would have little or no memory of its content or details. (She was not on any substances.) Their two kids were constantly yelling at their mom for not remembering what they had already told her. Shelly had spent many hours consoling their kids, assuring them that Lily’s inability to pay attention to the details of their lives did not mean she didn’t care (which is how it felt). Although Shelly experienced tremendous resentment and hurt herself when Lily didn’t listen, she did her best to convince the kids that it was their mom’s distraction that was to blame, not them.

Shelly had been talking about this issue for a long time, mostly about how to change her partner and get her to listen better. She had explained to her wife on many occasions how it made her and the kids feel when she didn’t remember what was discussed or the daily goings-on in the family’s life. She had expressed the profound emotional value of remembering the details. Shelly had described in poignant detail how it felt when Lily uttered, “Uh-huh,” at a place in the conversation where clearly no “uh-huh” was called for or appropriate. And how, with that simple, ill-attuned “uh-huh,” Shelly would know instantly that Lily was not present and not listening to what she was sharing. She had talked about the sorrow and loneliness of that moment in great depth and detail.

Shelly had also gone through a stretch of encouraging Lily to get a brain scan, to see if there was legitimately something wrong that made it hard for her to pay attention and land in the present moment. (Lily discovered her brain was fine after a routine cat-scan for an unrelated issue.) In addition, Shelly got Lily into a program of meditation and gave her books on being present and managing distraction. Despite positive changes, when Shelly stopped leading the charge for her wife to meditate, Lily’s behavior eventually reverted back to the way it had been before.

Shelly had also run the gamut in terms of expressing her anger. Again and again, she had begged her wife, “Where are you? Are you ever here where everyone else is, actually listening?” On behalf of herself and their children, she had demanded a change: “Your family is here at the table, we need you here! Where are you?” For Shelly, it felt like an emotional trauma each time it happened.

Shelly had given it the full college try, working at changing her partner for more than a decade. She had lived in a state of waiting—waiting for Lily to change. Some part of her believed that she couldn’t be fully content until her wife became someone else, someone who was not distracted, could pay attention closely, cared about how much it all hurt, and wanted to remember the lives discussed. Shelly had been waiting for her partner to become someone who made her happy.

But as frustrating, enraging, and hurtful as Lily’s behavior legitimately was, the bigger problem as I saw it was Shelly’s belief that her own well-being and freedom depended on someone else changing. Shelly was hostage to a situation she had absolutely no control over (as was abundantly clear by now). Her captor was not actually her wife (as she imagined), but rather her conviction that her wife’s behavior was responsible for her own happiness or to blame for her unhappiness.

Before Shelly could get free from this belief, it was important to offer empathy to the despair and rage that her wife’s behavior triggered, the familial pattern it held, and the emotional abandonment historically tied, for her, to the act of listening. Empathy and compassion for our own experience is a necessary step in letting going of a limiting belief, and in this case, Shelly’s belief that her happiness was tied to someone else’s behavior.

No one, not even our partner, is responsible for our happiness, for providing us with a sense of meaning, or filling up our emptiness. No one is responsible for our well-being—no one except ourselves. (This does not apply to children and their parents.) As adults, it is our responsibility to make ourselves happy—to make choices that are in alignment with our own needs.

This last week, Shelly told me about a recent incident with her wife. In passing, Shelly had mentioned something about an upcoming weekend trip her older child was planning. Lily, per usual, hadn’t been listening when they discussed the trip at dinner (and other times as well) and thus needed Shelly to fill her in yet again on the details, and also to be convinced that she should be allowed to go. In years past, Shelly would have gotten angry, explained what not listening did to everyone in the family, perhaps made an interpretation of her wife’s psychology, and then, finally, done what she always did… repeated the details and explanations so Lily could be included when she was able to pay attention. This time, Shelly felt a sting, but remarkably did not feel inclined to participate in the same way. This time, she calmly told her wife that the conversation and trip had already been discussed, and she was not going to repeat the information again. She then left the house and moved on with her day without anger or resentment. This was, for both of us, a huge victory.

Shelly had done so many things differently in this interaction. For one, she had actualized the serenity prayer. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. She had spent more than enough years trying to get her wife to change, which clearly was not in her control. By continuing to spend her time and energy explaining her anger and repeating the details that had been missed, Shelly had unknowingly been inviting her wife to continue not listening, and also condemning herself to the suffering of the relational pattern, ensuring that nothing would change.

On this occasion, however, she did not do what she had always done, and as a result, did not get what she had always gotten. Following the interaction, she did not live a day full of anger and resentment, did not suffer from high blood pressure and anxiety.  She did not spend the day ruminating and obsessing over how and why the problem had happened again, and of course, what to do about it that she hadn’t already done. Shelly had changed her own behavior, had taken ownership of what she wanted, what she was willing to do and not willing to do, no matter what choices her partner made. This is the most important change we can make in any relationship.

In deciding to stop trying to change her partner and start changing herself in response instead, Shelly discovered that freedom and happiness were already available, now. It’s not to say that Lily’s behavior was suddenly satisfying or delightful; the frustration still arose, but Lily’s behavior did not define Shelly’s emotional state or dictate how Shelly needed to spend her energy or attention. Shelly was not captive to Lily’s choices or limitations. Furthermore, she was not responsible for changing Lily, but she positively was responsible for owning her own wants, needs, and boundaries, and acting accordingly.

In this profound paradigm shift, Shelly realized (as we all need to realize) that it was up to her to decide and also act on what she wanted and what she would participate in. She was no longer waiting for Lily to behave in a way that made her happy but rather taking responsibility for her own happiness—separate from her partner.

When we claim and act according to our own wants and needs; when we get clear about what we’re willing and not willing to do (or do anymore); when we give up trying to change others into people who can make us happy; when we’re willing to take responsibility for our own happiness, then, finally, we’re free. As it turns out, when we are responsible for our own happiness, we get the job done better than anyone else possibly could!

The post Freedom: Taking Ownership of Your Own Happiness appeared first on Nancy Colier.

29,200 days. That’s how many days we’ll get if we’re lucky enough to live to 80.

I think about that a lot, not to be morbid or frighten myself, but to remind myself of the importance of each day I get to be alive. The knowledge of 29,200 doesn’t keep me from occasionally watching too much Netflix or perusing eBay, but it does wake me up to the profundity of a single day, and evoke a sense of gratitude for the opportunity to experience another day of life.

So too, reminding myself of the day count of a human life encourages me to pay attention to this moment, treat this day like it matters, and live this day, the only day I’m certain I’ll get—to the fullest.

So the question then begs, what does it mean to live a day to the fullest to make it matter?’ It’s a question I think all of us should ask ourselves. It may be the most important question we can ask, because it forces us to consider what really matters—what makes a day or a life of days feel meaningful.

The message we often receive in our society is that living each day to the fullest means packing the day full with activities and accomplishments. It means travel, adventure, taking chances, being productive, and of course, success. Our version of living fully usually has a lot to do with what we achieve and/or attain.

There’s nothing wrong with achieving and attaining, but getting, doing, and accomplishing may not be what a well-lived day includes for ourselves. How can we know what makes a day feel meaningful or fulfilling if we never ask ourselves, and never listen for our own answers?

We waste a lot of days just going through the motions of life, doing what we’re supposed to do but never stopping to contemplate the value of a single day. Sleepwalking, in a sense. We fall into the trap of accepting what our society and other people tell us we should do with our days, what we’re supposed to want, what’s supposed to matter. The problem is, it may not be what we want, may not matter to us.

For me, a day fully lived is not necessarily a day packed full with activities. It’s not about what I get, get done, or accomplish. It is, however, about the quality and presence of my attention, how I show up for the individual moments that make up this day. It matters to me that I show up present and with kindness.

What makes a day matter is not what the day contains in terms of its contents, but rather that the day contains me, that I am present, physically, mentally and emotionally, tuned into my senses, noticing what’s actually happening in my physical reality, and my inner and outer environment. To fully live, for me, is to be conscious and grateful for the profound gift and opportunity that this one day is.

Furthermore, contemplating the reality of 29,200 makes me more rigorous about not distracting myself with entertainment, information, technology, or any of the other endless choices we use to escape, ignore, or avoid the day.

It also means not engaging with the narratives and judgments my mind wants to write, not going down the rabbit hole of thinking, not distracting myself by thinking every thought that appears in my mind. 29,200 makes me far less tolerant for negative thinking or excessive rumination, far less willing to let my mind control my attention, take me off on this tangent or that, and thereby kidnap one of my 29,200 days.

As I see it, with only this many days to play with, why would I waste a single moment thinking about what I can’t control, makes me feel bad, has already happened, may never happen, doesn’t help me, or just plain isn’t true?

The finite-ness of our days is a what is not a what if. What does the reality of 29,200 days provoke in you? How does it change the way you choose to live today?

We can all benefit by taking our day count to heart, deeply considering what we want to do with and who we want to be today. Don’t take anyone else’s opinion on what makes a moment or a day or a life meaningful. Only you can answer this question for yourself and only you can create a life that fulfills it, one day at a time, one moment at a time.

Ask yourself, how do you want to show up for today, who do want to be, what is your life in service to, and what, ultimately, do you want? Start today, or even better, now.

The post How to Make Every Day Matter appeared first on Nancy Colier.

But recently, Harvard Business School conducted a different kind of study, one that examined the strategies and habits of winning athletes and whether they could be transferred to apply to business—in essence, whether we could train high-level executives as corporate athletes. It appears that the answer is yes; we can indeed apply the wisdom of sport to help ourselves succeed in anything and everything that’s challenging.

As someone who competed as a top-level equestrian for over two decades, it has long been clear to me that the skills and mindset I learned as a competitive athlete are what allow me to succeed in every other pursuit in my life, both professionally and personally. It appears that now there’s proof.

Research in the field of sport demonstrates that top athletes succeed in large part because of their ability not just to perform under stress, but more importantly, to recover after stress has occurred. Recovery is the critical process in which the body and mind not only rest, but also rebuild new strengths and develop resilience, as a muscle does between workouts.

When comparing the careers of athletes and executives however, vast differences exist in the natural opportunities for recovery. Most of an athlete’s time is spent in practice with just a small percentage in actual competition. An executive, however, is in competition every day, all day. An athlete’s high-stress season is usually fairly short with lots of time to recover in the off- season, while a corporate athlete gets a few weeks off per year if she’s lucky (during which time she usually works). And finally, the average top-level athlete’s career lasts less than a decade while an executive’s career spans a lifetime.  All that said, an executive, if she is to reap the benefits of the recovery process must find alternative ways to rest and rebuild.

To consistently perform well in high-stress environments, executives must focus not just on the skills needed for their specific field, but more broadly, on creating a mindful and nourishing life, one that feeds them physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. To create excellence at work, a corporate athlete must ultimately create excellence in life.

The Physically, Emotionally, Mentally, Spiritually Fit Corporate Athlete

Although executives are primarily mentally-focused, the corporate athlete must, nonetheless, pay close attention to the wellbeing of her body, not just how it looks but how it being taken care of. A corporate athlete cannot function at a high level, not for long anyway, as just a head running around without a body attached. Corporate athletes are inclined to forget about their bodies, and yet, over time this dismissive attitude is a sure-fire recipe for burnout. Attention to diet and exercise, sleep, and a program of physical well-being cannot be excluded when excellence is the goal.

On an emotional level, the corporate athlete must pay close attention to her feeling state. She cannot wait for a strong emotion like anger or frustration to overwhelm her and thus land her on the bench. Just as an athlete might ask herself how she is feeling on a physical level, a corporate athlete must be aware of how she is on an emotional level and also be able to manage strong emotions when they arise. Mindfulness of emotion is thus a critical practice in the creation of excellence.

From a mental perspective, the ability to control our attention is the key ingredient in the ability to perform under and recover from stress. We must not only be able to focus our attention when it counts, but also to turn our attention away from negative and distracting thoughts. Meditation is the practice of observing and separating from our thoughts, which protects us from getting caught up and sidelined by the thoughts that destroy performance. As such, meditation is the practice of most importance, mentally, for creating peak performance.

And finally, on a spiritual level, a corporate athlete must discover meaning in her life—why she’s doing what she’s doing, what really matters to her, what values she’s serving. As unrelated as it may seem to the executive mindset, a top-level performer in any field, in order to sustain herself, must consciously contemplate what her life is about. A sense of meaning is, above all else, the antidote to burnout.

Top level executives are athletes—corporate athletes. Excellence is created not just by the obvious skills one’s profession demands, but by the building of a whole and well human being. To create and maintain high-level performance in stressful environments, we must pay attention to and nourish all areas of our life. As it turns out, self-care is in fact the recipe for greatness.

This article is based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, the primary researchers and coiners of the term “corporate athlete.”

The post The Making of a Corporate Athlete appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Her husband didn’t miss a beat and accused her of being too sensitive, twisting his words to mean something they didn’t.  Mary, becoming even more furious, shouted that it wasn’t about what him and him and more him, but rather about the fact that his words had hurt her. And it went on… her husband, deaf to her pain, accused her of judging him, to which she again responded that this was not about him, not about who was right or wrong, but rather about his being able to simply hear the fact that she was hurt.

Later that day, Mary called to tell me that her husband had approached her about an hour after the session and acknowledged that maybe his words could have come off as a bit insensitive.  While she was still brimming with anger and hurt, Mary had offered a simple thank you for your apology.  It was the first time he had owned any of his own behavior in twenty years of marriage.  And so, while his “apology” felt light on empathy, she made the choice to acknowledge his attempt at kindness and leave it at that, and not risk doing or saying anything that could discourage him from this new, positive behavior.

But the following week, Mary reported that her husband had become withdrawn, sullen and unfriendly.  He was playing the part of the one hurt and angry, while she had stepped into the role of the one trying to win back his affection and regain a sense of peace in the couple.

This was the standard trajectory of their disagreements.  Mary would be hurt by something her husband said or did; she would then bring it to his attention. Upon hearing what he perceived (only) as criticism, he would immediately attack her emotionally (which I had witnessed), and then withdraw into his role as the victim in the relationship. As victim, he would become silent, non-responsive, and backhandedly unkind towards her over the next several days.  He would, in essence, fall into full-blown episodes of passive aggression.

Mary and I had both felt hopeful the previous week when her husband was able to take a baby step forward in acknowledging his own behavior and considering how it might have affected her.  And yet, it seemed that his old pattern of reverting to passive aggression after hearing he had done something she didn’t like, was still firmly intact.

Mary confessed that she was completely lost as to how to deal with her husband’s behavior.  She still wanted to stay in the marriage (and still loved her husband) but his passive aggression, which appeared each time she shared that he had upset her, felt upsetting and unmanageable.  She was utterly unable to find her ground or feel at ease when he was in this mode.  She couldn’t get okay until the couple was again okay.

Mary felt that she had always been stuck in the same place with regard to her husband’s passive aggression.  Unable to speak her truth, she felt that her only recourse was to wait for him to get over it after which she could get back to her own center.  But of course, when he did get over it, she would then have to deal with her own anger at having been controlled and mistreated.  Regardless, her well-being was dependent on his behavior, which she hated.

But while she felt stuck, I reminded Mary that something profound had in fact transformed within her.  When we first started working together, Mary would actually feel guilty when her husband punished her in this way.  She would identify with his projections of blame and try to make up for the hurt she imagined she had caused him.  She would play the perpetrator (having told him he hurt her after all) to his imagined victim; she stepped into his projections and took on the role of the bad one. I was happy to remind Mary that she no longer felt guilty in any way despite his playing the part of the one abused.  This was an enormous change in her and a huge relief.

While Mary could acknowledge that she was no longer suffering with this most insidious consequence of passive aggression (imagining oneself as deserving of the punishment), she was however still frustrated that she felt so anxious and de-stabilized, that she couldn’t get comfortable inside herself when her husband was acting out in this way.  No matter what she did for herself, how much mediation and awareness she practiced, or how she tried to separate herself from it, she still felt afraid and off-kilter living with his punishing behavior.  She was angry and disappointed with herself that she couldn’t get a grip on her experience.  She couldn’t will herself into well-being, but she strongly believed that she should be able to control her own inner-experience regardless of what was going on in her environment.

Simultaneously, Mary was bottling a lot of rage about the fact that she couldn’t speak her truth to her husband.  In the past, when she had tried to call him out on his behavior, he had attacked her more directly and denied all responsibility and intention for his behavior.  Her trying to talk about it had always made things worse and so she felt resigned to acting as if nothing was happening.  Pretending he wasn’t affecting her was the way she had learned to protect herself.  The truth was, he was getting to her; she felt manipulated, controlled, and humiliated by his behavior. Enraged in fact.

However, this pretending to not notice, to save face if you will, was breaking down as a defense strategy; it felt impossible to maintain this level of falseness, and also, more and more like an abandonment of herself.  It was making her angrier and more anxious to know that he was (as she experienced it) cornering her into being inauthentic.  Mary felt stuck in this either-or scenario.  Either she confronted someone angry, reactive and not self-aware and faced the consequences of that scary choice, which also included acknowledging that he was hurting her (and therefore winning in her mind), or, she pretended nothing was happening, that became Teflon to his control and aggression, and in the meanwhile went on living in an anxious, disconnected and angry state of being.  Neither felt doable for much longer.

When I asked Mary what she wanted to scream from the rooftops, she said this (without hesitation): I did nothing f***ing wrong.  I’m the one who was hurt!  And now, I’m the one being punished.  What the f*ck!  But instead, she went on smiling, asking if he wanted milk with his coffee, and being the person she wished he could be with her.

The first thing I wanted Mary to know was that there was nothing wrong with feeling anxious and angry.  Living with someone acting out in this way is bloody awful.  Her expectation that she should be able to feel well in an environment that was so un-well was absurd.  She was not made of Teflon and as humans we are relational and porous beings; we are affected and impacted by our environment.  So right out of the gate, I insisted Mary stop blaming herself for feeling anxious and off-center.  If she didn’t I’d think something was wrong!

With regard to her desire to stop pretending she wasn’t being affected, I asked her a simple question: What was it was like to be with her husband when he was treating her this way?  She erupted with tears upon hearing the question.  After some time, she was able to share that it felt painful, unfair, unkind, hurtful and just terrible in every way.  I asked her if she could stay with these feelings and maybe see if there was also any sense of I don’t want to be treated this way, or maybe just I don’t want this.  I asked her if she could step outside the whole narrative and history attached this situation and just feel the direct, bodily-felt experience of I don’t want to be treated this way.  And indeed, Mary could feel this, without any help from her mind.  It was right there in her heart and gut.  It was true now.

I then asked her if she could remember this I don’t want this, I don’t want to be treated like this feeling in the moments when she felt herself putting on the Teflon suit.  This refuge of self and self-compassion, could then be a home for Mary, a destination she could go instead of having to step outside herself and into the pretender.  Her self-caring truth was safe ground for her in the present moment, when the unkindness was happening, and this is what she had been missing.

What we need in these situations, when we’re really struggling, is self-compassion.  We don’t need more judgment or more strategies for figuring out the situation.  Yes, we need to address the other person and their behavior, and yes, we need to decide if and how we can live with this situation if it’s not going to change.  But in the moments of triage, when we’re really suffering, what we need most is our own loving kindness.  In offering Mary permission to let herself have the experience she was having and also, pointing her towards her own self-loving experience of I don’t want this, Mary was able to return home to herself and to her ground.  While the situation on the outside might have been the same, her inner world had profoundly transformed.  She had somewhere to go inside herself now, a refuge in which she could live in the truth in the midst of whatever was happening in her outer environment.

Furthermore, I knew that Mary’s body-knowing of I don’t want to be treated this way would prove to be a far more powerful guide and motivator than anything our minds could come up with.  I trust and know (from experience) that when we let things be as they are, feel what we’re actually feeling, without judgment, and simultaneously, allow ourselves to feel the heart’s authentic I don’t want this, the process itself reveals our next right step; we are led to know what we need to know.  How and why this happens remains for me the great mystery and magic that is this thing we call truth.

4 Tips for Dealing with Passive Aggression

1.  Don’t fall into guilt.  The passive aggressive character will play the part of the victim.  Be mindful not to step into the role of the perpetrator, the bad one.  Remind yourself, you are not that.

2.  Give yourself permission to have the experience you’re having, to be affected by their behavior.  When we’re around aggression (regardless of whether it’s direct or buried), we feel it.  Don’t judge yourself for having a response; it comes with being human!

3.  Tap into self-compassion.  Feel your heart’s genuine I don’t want to be treated this way.  Drop into this feeling on your own and when their behavior is unkind.  It’s your refuge; let it guide you in how to respond.

4.  Prayer.  Regardless of whether or not you have a higher power, ask the universe for help.  Silently or aloud, ask for guidance: You can say something like, I don’t know how to do this, show me how to be okay in this not okay, lead me to where I need to go.  No matter what you believe, the act of asking for help always helps.

(All names are changed and permission was granted for use of all material.)

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Knowing also gives us a sense of control.  If we can know something, we believe we can control it.  If we can control it, we feel less vulnerable, and less at the mercy of our ever-changing (uncontrollable) life.  And of course, if we can control life, we can be happy.

When we’re young, we’re taught most of what we need to know in order to function well.  We’re schooled in the process of living.  As we get older, however, we’re no longer taught what we need to know and seem to know less and less.  And yet the belief persists: we have to know in order to stay safe and be okay. Great anxiety thus forms within us, in the space of this gap.  As a result, we start desperately trying to figure out life.

In our modern world, we know through our mind.  We make sense of things, organize ideas into rational patterns and linear progressions.  Causes and effects. Knowing involves stringing together our thoughts about what’s happening, why it’s happening and what we need to do about it.  Whatever we want, whatever problem we think we have, we’re convinced that thinking more about it will lead us to the answer we need.  We think we can think our way out of and into everywhere, everyone, and everything.

Simultaneously, we all crave a sense of serenity that can withstand the ever-changing ups and downs of life. We want to trust in something that can hold steady in the midst of the unknowable and often difficult reality that is life.  And so, we bring this same figure it out/knowing paradigm to how we view the attainment of the peace we desire.  We imagine that we can mentally muscle our way to serenity, that more thinking about life will ultimately lead us to peace.

One of the inherent problems with this belief system, our great faith in and reverence for figuring it out, is that it relies on the premise that our thoughts (the building blocks of figuring it out) are not just our thoughts, but rather, the truth. We think that our subjective experience is an objective reality, simply what is.  And it follows then that everything that’s built from our thoughts, every narrative we construct from our thoughts should also be absolute truth.

If I have a fight with a friend then start figuring out what happened and what needs to happen going forward, I’m basing that interpretation, that entire storyline of thought, on my subjective experience, my particular mind with its particular wounds, conditioning, history, thoughts, core beliefs, and everything else I’ve ever lived. I believe that my thoughts about what this other person was doing is what they were doing and therefore, what I think they need to stop or start doing in order for me to feel better is also an inarguable fact.

But the problem is, what I think this friend is doing may have nothing to do with what they think they’re doing or what I’m doing for that matter.  Their intentions and inner reality may and probably does exist on another planet than mine.  The whole narrative I’ve constructed, the way I’ve figured this situation out, is irrelevant and useless then.  I’m operating in a universe (my mind) with rules and systems that make sense inside this particular mind, but which have little or nothing to do with what’s happening in other minds.  What makes the dots connect in my thought system is of little use when applied to someone or something else’s reality. That said, figuring out life, based on our personal narrative, is an exercise in futility and to some degree, absurdity.

This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to understand our experience.  But rather, that we need to be aware that our knowledge, our version of what makes sense lives only in our own mind.  Our truth exists within us, and only within us.  And, it co-exists with billions of other truths that exist in other people’s minds.  We can still present our version of reality or our truth to another person but we can stop assuming that our subjective experience, our thoughts of what makes sense, are also true in some absolute way.  We don’t have to work ourselves up into a lather believing that we have the keys to the castle, we know exactly what’s happening and the way it all needs to go. And, we don’t need to worry that if it doesn’t go the way we’ve scripted it, the way our mind tells us it must, that something is wrong and we are being wronged.

It’s profoundly liberating to realize that our version of the truth, which not coincidentally always places us at the center of what’s driving everyone and everything else, may not and probably is not the truth for anyone else.  When we believe this, we suffer alone (and we really suffer), trapped inside the certainty of our own figured-out and usually unwanted reality.

There is yet another flaw in our assumption that we can figure out our way to happiness. The belief that bringing more thoughts and mental understanding of a challenging situation or relationship will automatically benefit that situation or relationship is false. We believe that the mind is the proper tool for every situation, but it’s not.  It’s often the worst tool we can pull out of the shed in fact.  In many cases, what’s needed for actual improvement, growth or change, is something else entirely.

Sometimes, if we’re dealing with a difficult person, the best thing we can do is nothing—not try and understand their behavior or what we need to do about it. Sometimes the best thing we can do is to just let it be what it is.

Often, when we stop trying to figure out what’s wrong with and how to fix everyone and everything (which we know as masters of the universe), and just let it be the way it is, for now, our whole experience changes. We discover that in all the trying to understand and fix, we actually exacerbate the problem, not just on the outside but on the inside too, scratching at the wrongs, fomenting anger and resentment, which always intensifies our own suffering.

Sometimes, when confronting a problematic person, it’s wise to simply offer it the generosity of compassion, the serenity of not trying to control it, and the wisdom of not trying to figure it out.  It can be helpful to realize that the other person’s behavior probably comes out of their own suffering or ignorance, and also remind yourself that they also want the same things you want—happiness, safety, and peace—even if the way they’re going about it may not seem wise to you.  Keeping our attention focused in kindness, while resisting the urge to go up into our sense-making mind, frequently serves to improve the situation far more than any mental gymnastics could.  The felt experience of wishing this person well, even if we cannot or choose not to try and understand their behavior, is the choice that brings the most change—and relief.  And most importantly, whether or not we can find compassion for this other, it is an act of profound compassion–for ourselves–to stop trying to figure it all out.  Nothing ultimately feels better.

Knowing feels fundamental to our safety and control.  But in the end, surrendering to not knowing, realizing that if what we really want is for the situation to change or us to change in relation to the situation; if what we really want is peace, then understanding it more is not the wisest choice.

In place of figuring it all out (which I spent umpteen years doing) I now like to turn difficult people and situations into opportunities.  In place of trying to make sense, I focus on being the person I want to be in the situation.  I turn my attention away from figuring out what’s making the other do what they’re doing and how to get them to change (according to my reality), and towards how I am being in the midst of this reality.  This profound turn from something I can’t control something I can gives me back my power and more importantly, my freedom.

What’s ironic too is that if my underlying desire is for my external world to change with regard to this difficult situation, I’ve had far more success when my focus is on my own behavior and not the others.  Taking my eye off the self-diagnosed problem and putting it on myself, how I’m being in this difficulty, just plain works better.  But even when the situation doesn’t change on the outside, my experience of the situation on the inside radically changes when I shift my attention in this way.  Challenges become opportunities to grow and evolve; in moments I actually even look forward to them.  I get to practice being who I want to be, my best self; I get to choose what my own participation in life will look like.

The process of taking care of my own side of the street has never failed to be a nourishing and rewarding choice.  It always changes my experience even when it doesn’t change a single thing on the outside.

If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say (something like) “When I don’t try and figure it out, I’m happier and things go better,” I’d be a very wealthy woman. I sure know that’s it’s been true for me. Figuring it out may give us a pseudo sense of control and safety, but it doesn’t make us feel better, which at the end of the day is what we really want.

The post Why You Can’t “Figure Out” Your Way to Happiness appeared first on Nancy Colier.

And so it occurred to me (brilliantly) that this might be an auspicious time to practice acceptance, right now when I hate this particular reality.  And also, that it might be a good time to better understand what it means when we say (usually too nonchalantly) just accept what is, be with it, don’t fight it and all the other expressions we have for this very challenging and mysterious process.

When investigating an idea or practice, I like to start with what the thing is not. In this case, what are the myths and misconceptions about acceptance that get in the way of our being able to do it?

Myth #1: We’re okay with what’s happening. We can agree with it.

The biggest misunderstanding about acceptance is that it means that we’re okay with the thing we’re accepting, that we’ve somehow gotten comfortable and on board with this situation we don’t want.

Reality: Acceptance does not require that we’re okay with what we’re accepting.  It does not imply that we now want what we don’t want.  It does not include feeling good or peaceful about what we’re accepting.  It does not mean we now agree with it.

Myth #2: Acceptance means we stop trying to change it.

We believe that accepting what is is synonymous with agreeing to be passive, giving up on change, surrendering all efforts to make things different.  Acceptance is saying we agree that this situation will go on forever.  It’s deciding to pull the covers over our head.

Reality: Acceptance does not mean suspending efforts to change what is.  It does not imply that we’re giving up on reality becoming different.  Acceptance is all about now and has nothing to do with the future.  Furthermore, acceptance is not an act of passivity, but rather an act of wisdom, of agreeing to start our efforts from where we actually are and considering what actually is.

Myth #3: Acceptance is failure.

In our culture, acceptance is for the meek, for losers. It’s what we do when we’ve failed at doing everything else. We see acceptance as a choice-less choice, a disempowering and depressing end to a battle lost.

Reality: Acceptance is not an act of failure. It can, with the right understanding, be experienced as an act of courage. It is for those who have the strength to face the truth and stop denying it.  It can be, in fact, a first step in a process of genuine success and movement.

So if not the myths, then what is this thing we call acceptance?  What does it really mean to accept what is or stop fighting with reality?  And, is it ever really possible (I mean really possible) to accept what is when we so don’t want what is?

To begin with, I want to throw out the word acceptance because it carries so much misunderstanding with it. Rather than asking can I accept this? I prefer, Can I relax with this? Or, can I be with this as it is? Or, can I agree that this is the way it is right now? These pointers feel more workable given what we associate with acceptance. Because the fact is, something inside us will never fully accept or get okay with what we don’t want, and that part of us needs to be included in this process too.

To relax with what is means that we also relax with the part of ourselves that’s screaming “no” to the situation. It means that we make space for the not wanting in us.  So we accept the situation and also the fierce rejection of it at the same time.  We don’t ask ourselves to get rid of the resistance; that resistance is our friend.  It’s there to protect us from what we don’t want.  So we accept and allow the negative situation and also, the hating of it.

Secondly, acceptance is about acknowledging that this particular situation is indeed happening.  It’s not saying that we like it, agree with it or will stop trying to change it, it simply means that we’re accepting that it’s actually what’s so. The primary element of acceptance is opening to reality as it is, not how we feel about it, just that it actually is this way.

In my case, with the situation I have going on, I’m practicing relaxing with the reality that I don’t have an answer to this difficult situation.  I am accepting that this situation is what is and I hate it and I want it to be different and I don’t know right now how to make that happen.  All of that is true; the practice of acceptance right now is about letting all that be so, whatever is true, and still being able to breathe deeply.

What’s comical is that our refusal to accept what is involves a fight against what already is. What we’re fighting against is already here. We refuse to allow what’s already been allowed.  Seen in this light, our refusal to accept reality has a kind of insanity to it.

When we practice acceptance, we’re just saying one thing: yes, this is happening. That’s it.  And paradoxically, that yes then frees us up to start changing the situation or changing ourselves in relation to it. As a good friend said, the situation will change or you will change, but change will happen. We waste so much energy fighting with the fact that this situation is actually happening that we don’t apply our most useful energy and intention to what we want or can do about it.  We’re stuck in an argument with the universe or whomever, that this is not supposed to be happening, all of which is energy down the drain. The fact is, it is this way, and acceptance allows us at least to begin doing whatever we need to do from where we are.

Acceptance is a profound and powerful step in our growth and development. It requires the immense courage to be honest about where we are. And it requires the fierce willingness to actually feel what’s true, which can be excruciating, but is far more useful than avoiding such feelings by denying what we already know or arguing that the truth shouldn’t be the truth.  Relaxing with what is puts an end to the futile and draining argument that is this is not the way it’s supposed to be and gets on with the business of living life on life’s terms.

When we accept what is, which includes our guttural “no” to it, we give ourselves permission to join our life, to experience the present moment as it is. We allow ourselves to stop fighting with reality, which is exhausting and useless. It’s counterintuitive and yet supremely wise; when we’re willing to say yes to this thing we don’t want, yes, this is the way it is whether I want it or not, something primal in us deeply relaxes. We can exhale; the hoax we’ve been conducting is up at last. The funny thing is, we’ve always known what’s true and it’s only us we’ve been trying to trick in our non-acceptance. To accept what is offers us permission to finally be authentic with ourselves, to fully be in our own company. When we can say I accept that this is the way it is — even if I hate it and don’t know what to do about it — then we can at least be in the truth, which ultimately, is the most empowering, brave, and self-loving place from which to create our life.

The post How to Accept What We Really Don’t Want to Accept appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Living in the present moment — it’s the practice at the heart of all mindfulness teachings, and the essence of well-being. But what is it, this thing we call being present? I’m not sure we all share the same answers for what it means, or if it even matters that we do. What does matter, however, is that we know what being present means for ourselves, in a visceral, practical, and non-conceptual way. And perhaps too, that we have a sense of why we even want to be in the present moment, why it’s something we want to set as an intention for our lives.

I believe there’s something inherent in all human beings, something that longs to not feel separate from everyone and everything else, not feel separate from life. At a deep level, we want to heal our fundamental aloneness. When we’re fully present, we feel connected to life and everything in it. We are part of the moment, inside it. So too, there exists a drive within us to directly experience life, freshly, to know our experience more intimately than we can through any idea, concept, memoryor fantasy. We crave the flow experience, to be fully absorbed into an activity, when the doer merges into the doing and the separation between doer and doing evaporates, when all notions of time disappear. We have a longing to lose our separate self so that we can be inside life, of life, part of life. We want, ultimately, to return home to a state we seem to remember at a psychic level, a state of oneness before the me who’s in charge of managing life was formed.

On a more immediate level, we want to be in the present moment because its alternative, the experience of not being present, of being distracted and somewhere else while life is happening, feels unsatisfying. Not being present leaves us feeling empty, unfulfilled, and unreal—like ghosts in our own lives, like we’d gone missing for the whole adventure that is our life. Profound regret appears for so many when they realize that they’ve missed out on their life, that while they were physically present they were never really here, never fully paying attention to the experience at hand. Not being present is like winning a ticket to the most amazing adventure ever created and choosing not to attend. We want to be present so that we can be in life, in the game while this amazing opportunity is here.

Being in the present moment, at its core, includes a few fundamental practices. Most it all, it involves experiencing what’s happening in our senses right now. It’s feeling what our body is feeling, inside and out, seeing what we’re seeing, smelling what we’re smelling, tasting what we’re tasting, and hearing what we’re hearing, as it’s happening now. It means living this moment as a direct sensorial experience, experiencing the feelings and sensations through our body and not our mind’s interpretation of them. Being present means not being engaged in thinking about our past, not projecting our thoughts onto the future, and not engaging in our thoughts about what’s happening right now. It means paying attention to this moment as it’s arising through our senses, without judgment or commentary.

While being present means not being engaged in thinking, it’s important to mention that being present does not require the absence of thought. Being in the present moment doesn’t mean the mind stops producing thoughts, and thoughts in and of themselves are not a problem for presence. Thoughts happen, they keep coming no matter how present we are. Sometimes the thoughts quiet down and more spaces appear between them, sometimes no space appears. It’s not something we can control. To be present with thoughts involves being aware of the fact that thoughts are appearing, but (and here’s the big but) without identifying with those thoughts. In other words, noticing the presence of thoughts without getting involved in their stories or content, without going down the rabbit hole into which they beckon. Being in the present moment means directly experiencing what’s arising in the body, in the senses, which also includes paying attention to what’s happening in the mind.

Simultaneously, living in the present moment involves experiencing whatever’s happening right now without an agenda for where this now needs to lead us. Being present, fully, is turning our attention to right now without trying to build this moment into a potential future, an outcome we think will be good.

Many of us (myself included) struggle with this subtler and less discussed aspect of presence. Deep within us, perhaps from conditioning, perhaps wired into our DNA, perhaps both, there exists a drive to make something with our moments, to move our now-s in a positive direction that will create what we want. As we’re living this moment, a part of us (not always conscious) is relating to now as a stepping stone in the larger path that is our life. We live in a linear frame, with the present moment inextricably linked to an imagined future. This linear frame emits a subtle, sometimes imperceptible energy, but nonetheless, its energy keeps us at a slight distance from life; we’re still doing something with life, making something out of it that will benefit us, moving the separate I forward. With our now perpetually linked to a future then, we cannot trust that it’s safe to truly let go and surrender entirely into this moment, as its own destination.

To be fully in the present moment is to show up for this moment without demanding or expecting that it become or lead to anything else. So too, it’s to be here without using this moment to promote any particular identity, demonstrate that we are or aren’t something we imagine. To be fully present is to relate to each now as a kind of vertical eternity, each moment complete and whole, a hologram of everything; it is to release the idea of now as a point in a linear and finite line from a past to a future, with now serving as an usher between those two points. To live with profound presence is to trust that life will be enough and we will be enough if we simply show up for it one moment at a time. It’s to believe that like a necklace of pearls, life can be well-lived as a series of present moments strung together. The shift into this sort of presence is about letting go of the idea that we are the directors of our life, that we need to use life to achieve a particular agenda, that life is here to move us along or us to move it along.

Living fully present is surrendering to this now, completely, and believing that we do not need to use this moment to achieve a destination of our own strategizing.  But rather, that we can simply show up for life one moment at a time, and trust that just showing up, on its own, will be enough to lead us where we need to go, which ultimately and paradoxically is back to now.

When we pay attention to our senses without judgment, interpretation, or agenda, and refrain from engaging in thinking, we start to experience, at a gut, heart and mind level, that simply taking care of our now-s, one now at a time, showing up for this moment again and again, is in fact the most skillful and successful means for taking care of our then-s, and ending up in a future that we want.  It’s actually a lot easier and less effortful than we’re conditioned to believe. Counter to everything we’re taught, the best way to create a joyful life, a good life, is to pay attention to this moment and then the next and then the next. . . We can only learn this truth through practice, but attending to now is all we ever really need to do.

Practices for Being Present

1. Take a few minutes each day to drop out of your mind and into your body. Feel the experience of right now as it’s happening in your senses. Experience what it feels like to be alive in this moment in your body. Like a photograph syncing up with its frame, allow your attention to sync into frame with your body. Sense the felt experience of returning your attention to your own physical being.  Feel the sense of relief, calm, joy, or whatever arises as you bring your body your full attention, presence, and intimate company.  Feel the “Aaah yes, I’m here with you, I’m home.”
2. As you go through your day, notice the subtle drive to live the present moment as a means to an end, to be doing something with the moment. See if you can drop that agenda, let go of where this moment should go or what this moment should do energy. Practice surrendering into now, without any thought or plan for a future.  Play with living in this moment as if there really is nowhere else to get to, no next, no future.  Give yourself permission throughout the day to require only one thing from yourself, that you show up for this now. Approach it as an experiment, field work for knowing whether taking care of your present moment, and only your present moment, can be enough, and can in fact generate a good life.

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