Book 189 - A Year of Magical Learning (1 of 2)

Reflection Title: Making My Peace with the Here and Now!

Book – Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Your Everyday Life by Jon Kabat-Zinn (Part 1 of 2)

Book Description:

In his follow-up to Full Catastrophe Living--a book in which he presented basic meditation techniques as a way of reducing stress and healing from illness--here Jon Kabat-Zinn goes much more deeply into the practice of meditation for its own sake. To Kabat-Zinn, meditation is important because it brings about a state of "mindfulness," a condition of "being" rather than "doing" during which you pay attention to the moment rather than the past, the future, or the multitudinous distractions of modern life. In brief, rather poetic chapters, he describes different meditative practices and what they can do for the practitioner. The idea that meditation is "spiritual" is often confusing to people, Kabat-Zinn writes; he prefers to think of it as what you might call a workout for your consciousness. This book makes learning meditation remarkably easy (although practicing it is not). But it also makes it seem infinitely appealing.

Reflection:

I’ve felt incredibly off balance the past few weeks inside my mind. During this entire journey I’ve been driven, focused, and full of energy every day powered by Emilia, my values, and living for 2. This whole time I’ve felt great and like I had unlocked the secret to living a balanced and fulfilled life.

Somehow, I’ve accidentally spent the better part of this past month doing the exact opposite and trying new things that focus more on the here and now. I didn’t plan for this, but here is what happened. I read a book called the Wim Hof Method and decided to use my monthly challenge on it. I’m currently getting close to wrapping up my month of the Wim Hof Method which consists of daily breathing exercises and cold showers which has really put me in a different state of mind (more on this to come in another reflection). In addition to this, I’ve tried this whole “floating” thing a few times where you lay in a large bathtub filled with salt and float with the lights out for an hour completely on a whim. The cherry on the sundae was finishing a book on mindfulness and meditation called Wherever you go, there you are that really sent me over the edge thinking about the here and now.

Ironically, just a few weeks ago, I finished a book all about Dopamine called the Molecule of More. I really enjoyed that book and learning about how Dopamine powers our superpower of imagination and helps to provide us with discipline in the present to make that dream a reality. The Molecule of More resonated so much with me because it helped me to better understand exactly what I had been doing the past few years and why it felt so rewarding. It made me write about values as being the key to controlling your dopamine in one of reflections and feel like I finally have a grasp on how to find sustainable fulfillment in this world by letting my values guide my dopamine.

However, what I’ve come to realize in the course of this past month and doing all these new things is that I’ve done a really crappy job of truly seeking holistic balance on this journey up to this point. While I’ve done an amazing job of finding balance with living my values each day while I unlock the power of the Molecule of More; I haven’t spent hardly any time at all focusing on the here and now for the better part of 2 years.

That wasn’t always the case. Right after Emilia died, it was the exact opposite. I only existed in the here and now in the weeks and months after she passed. It feels like a lifetime ago already thinking back to this time in my life, but I remember what the here and now felt like and I wanted nothing to do with it. I hated the here and now! The here and now was a terrifyingly pointless abyss filled with no future. My here and now was filled with emptiness, pain, and a life without Emilia. It makes sense that I would run as far away from it as I could, and I did. After Emilia and I emerged from the rubble of our lives and discovered our shared mission, I’ve been sprinting a million miles an hour away from the here and now because I never wanted to feel that feeling again.

Finding the future, a purpose, my values, and a mission to live each day changed everything. It brought back my imagination, my energy, my creativity, and it gave life meaning. Why would I ever want to move away from that feeling?

Well, this past month has helped accidentally force me back to the here and now in a different way than my previous experience. All of this stuff, the breathing, cold exposure, floating, and learning about mindfulness has put me in a different frame of mind with how I think about the here and now. I’m not afraid of it anymore, as a matter of fact, I’ve been kind of enjoying it. I’ve felt so much more relaxed, present, and able to anchor on a perspective that all things will happen in time. I feel calm, but not dull or anything. I still feel like I want to take on the world while I live my purpose and values, I’m just not in a frantic hurry to get it done.

For the first time on this journey, I feel like I have true holistic balance with the future and the present. I’ve made my peace with the here and now and I’m excited to welcome it back into my daily life as we move forward on this journey and try to fulfill our mission of living a balanced existence.

Question: How are you making the here and now a part of your daily life?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Your Everyday Life by Jon Kabat-Zinn