Did you ever feel like you were doing everything you could think of to move forward, but you just felt stuck? The more you focused on where you were, the less you focused on where you wanted to go… the more you just kept treading water in the place you didn’t want to be?
I hear you, Sista.
I spent some time in Italy awhile back. Walking to the train station one morning in a cute little town called Siena, I got lost. I stopped all the sweet old Italian mamas and papas I could find, and asked each one in my beginner’s Italian: “Dov’é la stazione?” (“Where is the train station?”). All of them said the same thing: “Avanti! Avanti!” (“Keep going!”)
No matter how many people I asked, they all said I was only five minutes away. Okay, they were lying. It was kind of funny, actually. But they also said, again and again: “Avanti! Avanti!”
Sure, I could have focused on where I was, upset they I couldn’t find the train station, sitting on a curb eating gelato to make myself feel better.
But thanks to those sweet old Italians, I kept focusing on where I wanted to go. I kept hearing “Avanti! Avanti!” in my ears as I lugged my backpack to the station.
Did I ever once doubt that the train station existed? No. Did I give up because I wasn’t finding it as quickly as I wanted to? No. I just kept going. And you can, too.
Looking for something in life you just can’t seem to find? It’s there. It really is.
Years ago, a friend of mine and I were having dinner at a local restaurant,. As we waited for our meals to arrive, we began to talk about life… specifically, the idea of savouring it… noticing the little things and really enjoying them.
All these years later, I can still hear his voice. As I dug into my Fettuccine Alfredo, he asked me: “Are you tasting that? Really tasting that?” I had to admit that I was eating it, but I wasn’t closing my eyes to savour it.
His question really made me stop and think.
These days they call it “mindful eating”. And one of the fathers of mindful eating is a Vietnamese monk and Zen Master known worldwide as Thich Nhat Hanh. If you want to know more about noticing what you eat and how to savour it, he’s your man.
So what’s the secret? According to TNH, it’s being fully present in the moment. The more present we are, the more we can focus on the texture, taste and smell of our food. The more we focus, the more we appreciate… and ultimately, the more we savour.
How do we become fully present in the moment? That’s easy. By letting go… letting go of our thoughts about the past and the future when we sit down at the table… and focusing on the only moment we ever really have: Now.
We humans are creatures of habit, you know? So often, our ways of thinking become a pattern that repeats again and again. We feel jealous when a friend gets a promotion; we feel hurt when someone says something unkind; we feel angry when the universe doesn’t deliver something we want on our timetable.
Our happiness is so often conditional. We are happy as long as we have… you fill in the blank: a great job, a wonderful relationship, lots of money.
But the point is to learn how to master your state of mind so that you are happy in any and all conditions. Really. Any and all conditions.
Sound like an impossible dream? Think again. Spiritual teachers Esther Hicks and Abraham say it all comes down to two words: the pivot.
Here’s how it works. The momentyou feel your thoughts veering in the direction of jealousy or self-pity or anger or anything else unwanted, you immediately head the other way. You pivot in the direction of what you want in your life experience — what feels good.
And here’s the best part. Within seconds of pivoting, you actually will start to feel good. Really good. So much better than if you’d chosen your habitual ways of thinking, and wallowed in negative emotions instead.
My friend John and I talk every week on Skype. We’re each other’s cheering section, you know? We listen, encourage and ask good questions that always lead to great insights.
I thought I knew John pretty well.
What I didn’t know is that John lives just around the corner from the fountain on Danforth Avenue in Toronto where Sunday’s mass shooting began. You’d expect that he might be safe and sound inside his living room on a Sunday night watching Netflix, right? Wrong.
In fact, John decided to go and see his parents Sunday night. He left right around 10 p.m. and got into his car. As he turned onto Danforth, he immediately saw a woman on the ground surrounded by people, many of whom were on their cell phones. It looked to him like she’d been hit by a car. John’s impulse was to stop and help, but there seemed to be so many people doing just that, he decided to keep driving.
It wasn’t until the next morning that John found out what had really been happening around 10 o’clock that night on the Danforth.
By the grace of – what I’d say could only be a power bigger than you and me – he was spared at the exact moment in time when more than a dozen other people were being shot. Had John decided to leave home two minutes earlier, he might not be here right now.
I asked if the shooting has changed him. You know, does he want to “live every minute” now – the way people usually say they do after going through something like this?
John’s answer made me smile.
Turns out, the shooting hasn’t made him want to “live every minute”. That’s because he feels like he’s been doing that anyway. Yup. He’s been doing that anyway.
Which of course got me wondering… Have I ? Have you?
When you think about it, life is like a litre of milk with no labels on the carton. It has an expiry date; we just don’t know what it is.
Why should we wait for a shooting to wake us up? Why should we wait to be terrifiedinto grabbing our life by the balls and living it?
We shouldn’t. What we should do is snap out of our complacency coma, suit up, get out on the field and get in the bloody game.
John and I are going out for dinner on the Danforth next week to celebrate the fact that he is still here. I think we’ll order some Ouzo and drink a toast to life. Yeah, that sounds good.
Remember comedian George Carlin? He used to do a famous routine called “Stuff”. Carlin said that all your house really is – is a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff. Funny, right? Except it’s kind of true.
We’re a society of consumers. We buy things.
Do you ever look around your home and ask yourself where all that “stuff” came from? Do you ever feel like letting some of it go?
Bravo!!!
Last year, I read a book called “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up”. It was written by Marie Kondo, a Japanese woman who turned the simple concept of sorting your possessions and keeping only what brings you joy – into an empire.
One at a time, I piled my things on sheets on the floor. I held each one in my hand, felt its energy in my heart, and asked myself if it brought me joy. If it did, I kept it. If it didn’t, I bowed to it, thanked it for its service, and gave it away. It felt like a Japanese tea ceremony – reverent and beautiful.
And then something unexpected happened. As my living space became more clear, my mind became more clear. The more I focused on the joyful things around me, the more joy I felt.
The more joy I felt, the more joy I began attracting into my life.
Did you ever have friends who could cook or paint or play the piano or decorate better than anyone... but they didn’t think it was a big deal? They couldn’t imagine that someone would ever pay themto do what they do so well.
It reminds me of a woman named Vivian Maier. She was a reclusive Chicago nanny. Throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s, Vivian spent most of her free time taking photographs. She loved to snap candid shots of people in the streets with an old Rolleiflex camera – the kind with the viewfinder you look down into.
Vivian knew her photos were good.But she never really showed them toanyone. She put them in boxes by the thousands and stacked them in a storage locker. When she stopped paying the monthly rent, the company auctioned them off.
That could have been the end of the story. But a historian named John Maloof bought some of the boxes and eventually posted some of the photos on Flickr. Vivian’s work went viral. They even shot a documentary about her that was nominated for an Oscar®. Vivian Maier is now acknowledged to be … well… agenius.
It’s like the great spiritual teacher Wayne Dyer once said: “Don’t die with your music still inside you.” … your music, your photos, your painting, your writing, your sewing, your cooking, your baking, your woodworking, your gardening, your knitting, your embroidery, your quilting… and on it goes.
Do you really want to be another Vivian Maier?
Step away from the storage locker. Let it out. Let us see!
