3 Steps to Getting Unstuck
If I had to pick one thing, one single idea or practice, that makes the difference between success and happiness on the one hand, and despair, depression, and general unhappiness on the other, I would have to say the difference is present moment awareness.
Just the simple experience of feeling exactly what you;re feeling…
right now, moment to moment, non-judgmentally.
Not only is it important to allow your thinking to subside when it isn’t necessary, but really being in your body, where you are, already presumes success. Let me explain what I mean.
When a person identifies as someone who is ‘TRYING’ to be successful, they are living in the future. They are projecting fantasy ideas about what success is i.e. ‘I’ll be successful when I finally have that Bugatti Veyron’ or ‘I can stop struggling and just be happy once I’ve gotten settled into my new beach house.’
Now there is nothing wrong with having goals, even material ones, the only problem is waiting for those goals to be accomplished before you are happy is misunderstanding happiness all together. So what is happiness?
GETTING UNSTUCK
Think back to a time when you felt truly happy in your life. For most people a truely happy moment is often described as ‘time stopping’ where their concerns about the future fall away, their habitual clinging to the past does the same, and they are left with the brilliant clarity of the present moment.
When your mind stops groping into the future waiting for some event to be happy, or clinging to fears and frustrations from the past, it only naturally rests in the present moment. People often describe these moments of embodied presence as feeling ‘more alive’ than they had ever felt before.
A SIMPLE THREE STEP TECHNIQUE FOR COMING TO YOUR SENSES
Before you start:
Sit comfortably in a chair, with your back straight and your hands resting comfortably in your lap, take a few deep breathes through your nostrils and continue to breath normally
1. Begin by becoming aware of whatever there is in your visual field at the moment. Could be a bike tire, maybe a window, perhaps some people walking down the street outside. Try to stay focused just on the colors and movements without thinking about them in too much detail, let whatever you’re seeing sort of move across your field of vision like an abstract brush stroke. If some thought or noise distracts you, simply notice that you are thinking, and return your attention to the scene in front of you. Maintain this effort for at least two minutes.
2. When you begin to find it difficult to hold your attention on your visual field without your mind wandering again, slowly shift your attention to your auditory experience of the moment. Do the same thing in step 1 only allow yourself to become aware of the total field of sounds around you. Try to become aware of the 360 degrees of ambient noises resting just beneath your normal conscious awareness. Maintain this mindful listening for at least another two minutes, coming back whenever the mind wanders, before moving on to step three.
3. Shift your awareness to your physical bodily experience and proprioception. Feel the weight of your body and the rythm of your own breathing in this very moment. If you can allow yourself to become aware of your body as a whole, passively watching, resting as awareness experiencing the experience of having a body. Dwell on the body for at least a minute before repeating this series again from step 1 once or twice.
After sufficient practice with this technique, just the desire to shift your awareness to a particular sensory mode and hold it there becomes significantly easier. Controlling where you direct your awareness is a crucial skill when it comes to finding success and happiness in life. The more you learn to direct your focus the stronger it becomes just like working out a muscle. So practice using your mind every day and mastering its behavior, once you come back to this moment, you may find You’ve already been successful the whole time.
-Chris
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