HOW TO ENJOY LIFE MORE
Although this essay may seem analytical and conceptual, the desired result is improving of how you life feels; i.e. changing you emotions. You will have the opportunity to improve your ability to notice, experience, accept and be serene about each moment of your life.
How much are you enjoying your life now in general on the average? To answer this, use the following scale. Let “negative 10” be “unbearable misery”, “0” be “ho-hum” or “so so”, and “plus ten” be “unbearable rapture”. Where would you place yourself on the average during the past year on this scale -10------0------+10. As a holistic, mental health practitioner, Dr. Cliff Straehley, M.D., psychiatrist, has over twenty-five years experience using Western and Eastern methods helping people to learn to enjoy their lives more, as opposed to “curing mental illness”. This approach avoids the stigma and fear about mental illness, and yet the results can be equally positive.
This essay can help you learn a simple, but powerful way to notice or become aware of how you are “spending” your life energy. You can then contemplate the results of yourself-assessment, and consider changing your life priorities, and thus your barriers to enjoying your life more. You can experiment with choosing to spend your life energy differently.
Before reading further, answer these three questions in writing. First list what you want to get from this essay. Be specific. Second, list your current goals and desires for your life, both big things and small items. Third, write down how your life might be different sudden, right now, if you found yourself instantly enjoying your life a lot more. Also, write down a list of what you’d have to, give up if right now, you found yourself enjoying you life more. For example, you might have to let go of or surrender getting so much attention, compassion and sympathy from your friends and loved ones, because you are sad. Strange as it may sound, there may be hidden payoffs in staying the way you are and not enjoying your life more.
An essential question to consider is to ask if it would be safe for the world and for the other people in it if everyone pursued their enjoyment. It depends! I find out from people if they believe in their guts the Golden Rule. I also clarify whether or not they believe we are all created equal (i.e. equally worthy and deserving). Perhaps a true psychopath will have to honestly answer, NO! – but they can lie without guilt, anyway. I have not spoken face to face with any psychopaths, as defined, as having no moral conscience and no remorse. So, if you do “pass this test” of the Golden Rule – you have a conscience and it’s safe for others for you to enjoy yourself.
The primary “tools” you need in order to enjoy your life more by using this method are your awareness and your motivation. By awareness, I mean your ability to notice accurately and honestly each “moment of now”. You can start to learn to do this right now by trying to notice your body sensations of breathing while you read this. Also, try thinking of yourself in this way, “I am my awareness – I’m not the content of my awareness” (i.e. I’m the sky, not the clouds). As I try “to speak” to you using these words, my intention will be to bring into your awareness things you may have already experienced and noticed and/or to offer you the chance to experiment with how you can use your awareness in new ways to experience your life – moment-by-moment, more deeply.
The greatest results will occur if you choose to make an ongoing effort to keep returning to successive present moments in your life. I am not suggesting you think about or analyze each moment, which is what many of us do already. Instead, just “notice” the present moment, and return to noticing it each time you get distracted. Try not to judge yourself negatively when you notice that your attention has left the present moment, which it will again and again. I’ll be offering further guidelines to help you notice accurately and … to surrender … to accept and to become trusting of your own moment-by-moment experience. Moreover, your own life will then become your teacher.
As an experiment, try paying attention to the successive moments of your life for ten minutes, no matter what you are doing. Try doing this for sometime everyday for the next week or month. “Do what your are doing, when you are doing it, no matter what it is”.
Learning to Prioritize your Enjoyment Highly
What have you, or would, you, tell your child, or another child who you love, if they asked you, “What should I be when I grow up?” I’ve asked this question of hundreds of people from all walks of life. Many people answer me by saying, “Whatever makes you happy”, to their child. The implication is that they already believe (when they come from their heart) that the purpose of their own life also is first and foremost to be happy. Many people wish/want enjoyment as the #1 priority for the people they love, i.e. for others, but they don’t or can’t wish that for themselves. I have observed that some people think this would be selfish. I prefer the word enjoyment to happiness, because we all know we won’t be happy every moment, whereas we can still be deeply enjoying our life wish overall despite the momentary ups and downs.
“Formula” for enjoying life
The Enjoyment of life comes from involving yourself deeply in your life’s activities and interpersonal relationships.
If you are a “saint” or “enlightened” (I mean this seriously), you’ll be able to feel “blissed out”, deep gratitude and/or rapture, merely because you are alive, in all moments and circumstances. I don’t know any people like that. Certainly, that’s not me.
For the rest of us, it takes involvement to enjoy our lives. If involvement is required, then we can ask, involvement in what? At the most abstract level, there are just two categories of life involvements: 1) Interpersonal Relationships and 2) Activities. (religion can be considered an activity, although a very profound and important one). Other examples of “activities” are jobs, hobbies and interests. Some of these activities simultaneously involve relating to other people. Others are solitary.
What kind of relationships and activities will maximize your enjoyment? Answer: The ones that are enjoyable, fulfilling, and meaningful for your. Are you now spending your moments of now with people you enjoy? During the last month, how much time did you spend doing hobbies you enjoy? If you did not do either very much, where did your enjoyment come from?
Vitality or Life Energy
Understanding the concept of vitality or life energy can be helpful in clarifying the consequences of what involvements we are choosing. At night (for most of us) we sleep to “re-charge” our batteries. Each day, in effect, we ‘spend” our vitality (or our life energy) on our involvements. … then we become tired, and need to rest again. We all have already been doing this during our lives. Try reviewing the major involvements of the past decade of your life. Be honest with yourself. Did what you’ve been involved with make you happy? Eventually, we all will die. Have you been “spending” your vitality so as to produce maximum enjoyment for yourself? Have you been getting the results you want moment by moment? Are you going to postpone your gratification forever? Your future choices about how you “spend” your life’s energy will cause you to enjoy your life more… or not.
In order to maximize your enjoyment during your life, at least two skills are essential: 1) The ability to love yourself unconditionally, and 2) The ability to observe yourself honestly (to notice accurately). By honesty, I mean noticing “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”, moment by moment, whether you like what you notice or not. Unconditional self-love is very different from and infinitely better than just having a good self-esteem. Certainly having good self-esteem is much more enjoyable than having bad self-esteem. Moreover, self love is not the same as self praise. The latter is what most of us were taught, and what our society typically focuses on. By loving yourself, I mean loving your spirit, soul… or being. I don’t mean loving what you do or think moment by moment. We are “human beings” not “human doings”. The Bible says essentially the same thing in a different way from a negative point of view.
Hand Rising Exercise
The following is a learning exercise, which will be most effective if you actually do the exercise as you read this. Imaging we are sitting face to face. Please follow my directions. Be aware that I am going to try to trick you to make this learning experience more powerful.
Please raise your right hand. If you have raised your right hand, my next question is, “Why did you raise your hand?” Commonly, the answer given is “Because you asked me to.” Let’s see how I may have tricked some of you. When I’ve done this exercise with a group, usually there are one or two people in the group who don’t raise their hands at all, and there may also be a couple of other people who pause before they then raise their hands. If it were accurate that my speech had actually caused the hands to raise, all the hands would have gone up. I invite you to remember this as we repeat the exercise in a somewhat different way.
Please raise you right hand. This time, those of you reading this will either have raised your hand, or not, or paused, or whatever. The question I want to ask you this time is, “What made your hand go up?” (Or what did you do to not raise your hand?) Take a moment and think about that until you come to some sort of answer.
The answer that accurately describes what actually made the hands go up is that you chose to make your hand go up (If it did) or you chose not to raise your hand, if you hand didn’t go up. A more completely accurate description about the exercise is that I am 100% responsible for asking you to raise your hand. However, you are 100% responsible for choosing to raise your hand (or not). The actions are actually “independent” if you are noticing closely. The main point of this exercise is to empower you about your ability to acknowledge the choices you make.
Several things can be learned from this exercise. Given that I mentioned that I was going to try to “trick you”, many people pause the first time, if only briefly, before choosing to raise their right hand the first time. Therefore, my request did not actually make a person’s hand go up, even though the initial answer given by many people is “because you asked me to”. That answer implies incorrectly that my spoken request was what actually caused a person’s hand to go up. This could not be true, because some people in the room didn’t promptly raise their hands, even though they heard the same thing. If it was merely my request that made people’s hands go up, every hand in the room would have gone up instantaneously, and that usually doesn’t occur.
Another thing to learn from this exercise is the following: The trick I used is that I deliberately misled people by asking, “Why did your hand go up?” “Why questions are quite common in everyday speech. However, they are an implicit invitation for the listener to provide an analytical, hypothetical and purely intellectual answer. Much of the time the answers to “why questions” aren’t accurate at all. They aren’t provable. They are just one person’s opinion. When I am actually with a person during this hand raising exercise, I repeat the question, but the second time, I ask, “What made your hand go up?” This question is phrased in a way that often leads a person to be more likely to provide an accurate description of what actually occurred within themselves that resulted in raising their hand, i.e., their mental event of choosing. By asking “what questions”, conversations between people can become much more clear and accurate. Similarly by asking what questions of oneself (for example, what thoughts went through my mind in that moment, what emotion was I feeling in that moment, what body sensation was I experiencing in that moment), accurate and potentially useful information can be noticed. Asking and answering “why questions” leads to endless, unprovable speculation - until you address an implicit what question.
As I have mentioned, the answers to “why questions” often result in hypotheses that no one can prove. People then endlessly argue with each other about their personal theories. For example, if someone were to ask me why I don’t like lima beans, that I might mention that they’re too dry or that the covers of the beans are too thick. Those answers certainly describe characteristics of lima beans, which I don’t like, but the bottom line answer is, ”I just don’t like them.” For example, why don’t you want to go to the movie? … to visit my parents?, etc.
In my experience, the use of the word why is often really intended to get the answer to a what question. If so, it’s useful. For example, I might ask someone if they want to go to a horror movie. Suppose they say, ”no”, and I then ask “Why not?” The person might then answer, “I don’t like horror movies” or I don’t like that kind of movie.” Their answer would really be providing me some “what” information about their preferences.
Another problem with “why questions” is that they tend to cause defensiveness in the person being questioned. If you ask a person why they don’t want to do something, the implication is that there is something wrong with them, if they don’t want to do it. In effect, you’re implying that their preferences are not valid, or that they should feel “differently than they do.” Even if you remain skeptical or uncertain at this point about “why questions” versus “what questions”, I invite you “to do research’ by observing your own interactions with people during the next few weeks to see what you discover for yourself about “why questions” versus “what questions.”
Let me digress briefly here. I’ve asked you to choose to spend some of your energy “doing research on yourself” in the next week. Obviously I can’t force you to do so. The issue of “you choosing” appears again. The cumulative effect of your future choices will create your future life experience.
By “doing research”, I mean trying to notice moment by moment your automatic thoughts, your automatic emotions, and your automatic body sensations in response to the momentary external circumstances of your moment by moment life. You will inevitably acquire potentially useful data. After acquiring the data, you may choose to analyze the data. You may then be influenced to choose differently.
Something else can be learned from the hand raising exercise. By warning people that I was going to try to trick them, I created a situation in which people were more likely to pay closer attention, moment by moment in their life for a little while. In that state of heightened awareness, people are more likely to accurately observe what happens in their own mind. In this state of heightened awareness, there is a greater chance that they will notice their internal mental events such as “making a choice”. When someone is not accurately paying attention to their own mental processes, they may raise their hand essentially “automatically’, without consciously choosing it, in response to my request. In that situation, there is a certain amount of truth to their answer “because you asked me to”, since they were actually somewhat on “automatic pilot” or acting like a robot. Some people have a habit of responding in many situations by automatic compliance. In a very real sense, they respond automatically, “without thinking about it”, and they are not even aware of making their choice. Still, unfortunately our life holds us accountable for the outcome of our choices, whether we were totally aware of “choosing” or not.
Lest the above seem merely hypothetical, and nitpicky, consider the case of domestic violence. Male perpetrators not infrequently blame their significant others for their actions by saying that the woman made them very jealous or very angry. I don’t accept that rationalization or justification. Neither does our legal system. I remember my father breaking up arguments between my sister and I, when I was a kid. I still remember his instructions. “Fights are always 50-50.” I no longer see his teaching as accurate. Fights are really 100%-100%. Whatever I did, I’m 100% responsible for. Whatever my sister did, she’s 100% responsible for.
Legal codes also acknowledge the role of awareness and intentions. First degree murder for example is punished differently than manslaughter. For manslaughter, the death was in some sense “accidental” (or careless) as opposed to being planned out in advance or premeditated (first degree). The punishments attached to crimes are modified depending on the amount of the conscious awareness of the perpetrator, and depending on the intentions of the perpetrator.
We all know that humans can be momentarily overcome by strong emotions that they seemingly “can’t resist”. Associated with such strong emotions they act, sometimes with unfortunate consequences. No one I know has become mature or skillful enough to learn to remain perfectly aware in all circumstances. Nevertheless, the law tends to hold people legally “accountable”, even though a person was overwhelmed by strong feelings and may not actually have been consciously in control or fully able to choose what they were doing. Punishment does tend to be more severe when there is prolonged premeditation. Perpetrators may theoretically have “free will”, but if they were truly, in effect, “briefly unconscious” about the connection between their strong emotion and their reflective action, they may not really have had the free will to choose. Legally people are still held accountable for such actions, but the punishment is often less severe.
To summarize, there is a direct relationship between noticing fully each moment, and taking responsibility for one’s choices, and therefore, experiencing freedom of choice in one’s life. In the areas of our lives where we aren’t yet noticing that we have the ability to choose, there will be the perception of lack of control and lack of freedom. At the extreme, people can feel like “victims” in life. Most people I have talked to don’t like to feel out of control, which can frankly be scary. They prefer to have the ability to take control as much as possible in their lives.
Nelson Mandela spent around 25 years in prison. Despite being unable to control his external circumstances, he learned how to choose his attitude about and intellectual responses to his restrictive, external circumstances. He took control of all the behaviors that he could still control while he was in prison, therefore by tremendously mitigating his experience of being imprisoned. Victor Franki wrote a book about concentration camp survivors who similarly were able to exert tremendous control over their internal experience, while in a concentration camp, thereby mitigating the effect of horrific external circumstances.
First Self Love Exercise
Please do this – don’t just read it. Close your eyes and picture in your mind someone or something you love unconditionally (saying “unconditional love” is really redundant – because real love is unconditional). Choose a specific situation, recall specific details (e.g. time of day, person’s clothing, etc), then “gaze” at the image loved one for a few moments in your mind’s eye. Make your mental image as vivid and detailed as you can.
Now turn your attention to your body sensations which have arisen in your (probably the “warm fuzzies” as I call them). Those are the bodily manifestations of unconditional love (U.L.).
To clarify, most parents have no difficulty with this if they visualize their infant child. Notice that this implies that you already have the capacity for U.L….and if you believe that, and if you are now unable to love yourself, it’s just that you aim is bad. The next step is to try conveying U.L. to the reflection of yourself in a mirror. If you can’t send unconditional love towards your reflection, find a picture of yourself as a baby, toddler, 5 years old, etc… up to the present. Start with the youngest picture and move forward. Can you direct U.L. towards yourself as an infant?
Can you now direct unconditional love at the reflection of yourself in the mirror? Can you hug yourself lovingly… caress your face at the same time?
You’ll either be able to do this or not. If not, don’t give in to despair. Instead you can experience or become aware of – your resistance or barriers to loving yourself unconditionally. You do this by paying attention (with nonjudgemental acceptance) of your body sensations, thoughts and emotions. Being aware of your barriers is progress. Be kind to your barriers. For the moment, they still exist. You may be able to begin to argue back against them and learn to overcome them.
I want to make an important distinction. Praise is different from love. Praise is about “doing-ness”. Love is directed towards a being. We are human “beings” not human “doings”, although that is not the attitude of our corporate/capitalist society, or of many people in it. You can learn to choose a different attitude about yourself. Good self-esteem is certainly preferable to bad self-esteem, but self-love is infinitely better than either good self-esteem or self-praise.
Praise and blame/shame/guilt are kind of opposites. Many of us, on many occasions, desperately try to behave, so that we can earn the praise of others, or praise from ourselves, and to behave to avoid the blame from others, or from ourselves. No one can ever find peace or serenity in that relentless struggle… no on can ultimately “win” that game. The capacity to love is an entirely different dimension from praise/blame.
Second Self Love Exercise
“Acknowledging touching moments of each day”
While in bed, before going to sleep, reflect back on the moments of the day that’s ending during which you were “touched by life”, for example, moments of awe or wonder. Perhaps a bird’s song caught your attention. Maybe the sunset was beautiful. Maybe the smell of a flower. You can also reflect on moments when you were suddenly moved to act compassionately, kindly or to restrain yourself from meanness. It’s important that you choose to focus on moments that arose spontaneously; i.e., that were involuntary. If you pay attention closely, you will be able to notice that any moment of awe or wonder just popped into your awareness, spontaneously. Since you did not willfully create that moment, you cannot logically praise yourself for it. You can, however, choose to be grateful that you are, already having such moments, automatically. You can develop the habit of choosing to be grateful for that “already perfect” part of you. Again, feel the “warm fuzzies” as you picture in your mind those moments. To repeat, don’t praise yourself. How can you logically praise yourself for something you did not voluntarily cause? However, you can legitimately choose to be grateful for your beingness. Notice that your beingness spontaneously (i.e. without your conscious control) “caused” the moment of awe or wonder somehow. Choose to be grateful that your beingness already operates that way. Be grateful that an idea or impulse to be kind spontaneously arose…. After which you willfully may have chosen to act kindly. Again acknowledge that such spontaneous moments are already occurring for you. Be grateful for them by choice.
Everyone has lots of these moments every day. You are no exception! Many of us habitually tend to dwell on, or automatically notice primarily the “bad stuff”, thereby “underlining” those in our memory banks. You can learn to develop the habit of grateful noticing, of the way your being already, automatically operates to create many brief moments of awe and wonder. In effect, you are choosing self-gratefulness.
This exercise can gradually create a huge “positive” swimming pool in your memory, full of “underlined positive memories”… gradually tipping the scale towards lovingness and gratitude, and appreciation about your own beingness in your mind. Thus, you can create for yourself a “memory bank” (like a swimming pool of memories) of positivity. I believe this is why some people spontaneously wake up happy. Unconsciously or consciously they have developed the capacity to repeatedly acknowledge with gratitude (not praise) the positive in their life. It is possible for you to voluntarily notice and change the habit of only dwelling on the negative. You can start remembering, and therefore re-enforcing the positive, pleasant moments.
Third Self Love Exercise
Years ago, I read a book by Louise Hay. Over the years, I have recited the following saying of hers and shared it beneficially with others. I’ve modified it slightly.
I love myself the way I am, and still I want to grow. But change inside, more easily comes when deep inside I know. I’m beautiful and capable of being the best me that I can be. And I love myself the way I am. I love myself the way I am.
Please pause a moment. Did you actually do the above three exercises, or just read them? Don’t rip yourself off…. Sorry if it sounds like I’m scolding. The following diagram illustrates one way to conceptualize some of the barriers to enjoying life (which drain on your energy or vitality).
I. Biological Problems
II. Unskillful III. Unenjoyable
Personal Involvements
Psychology
These three are not really separate.
Nature Versus Nurture
My talking/writing right now is associated with biochemical reactions in my brain. Are those biomechanical reactions actually causing my words, sentences, and ideas? Or is there a mind greater than the brain, which is really in charge? Is that “I” choosing my words and causing the chemical changes in my brain? Believe it or not, neither neuroscientists nor philosophers can provide a definite answer. I suggest that you try to trust in your own experience. Do your own research on your own mind.
Human psychology (mind) affects biology (brain) and vice versa. New brain technologies have proven this; for example, PET scan, SPECT scan, etc.
I’d now like to introduce the concept of what I’ll call biological momentum (or severity). It can help you understand how you may be losing a lot of your psychic energy. If your brain biology is severely “out of whack”, (has a lot of negative momentum), medications (biological interventions) are often skillful means. They are analogous to using insulin for a diabetic. Being chronically depressed or anxious “costs” a lot of “physic energy”. If you have abnormal, brain biology, try not to shame or blame yourself for correcting that with a medication. Would you blame a diabetic for using insulin?
Suppose you have enjoyable friends and enjoyable activities, and your biology is also okay, and yet you still aren’t able to enjoy your life. It may be that you have internalized “unskillful and painful psychology”, i.e., negative mental behavior patterns (eg. Negative beliefs) which drain your energy or vitality. Possible interventions for this include groups, self-help books or individual counseling. Psychotherapy is a young science (only about 100 years). However, abundant evidence already shows that it helps in many ways, especially by increasing self-acceptance.
How come some “jerks” are happy? Despite their blind spots and shortcomings, many “jerks” (I mean very selfish, self-absorbed or self-centered people) put a lot of energy into activities and/or people that please them. They may indeed be “too selfish”, but some of them seem to enjoy their lives, at least at some level. Many chronically unhappy people on the other hand, don’t focus enough on their own wants, pleasures and personal preferences. They’re “too unselfish” (called Co-Dependent). Their behavior drains their vitality and leaves very little vitality left for them to create enjoyment for themselves. They may burden themselves with a false sense of obligation to others. Other unhappy people are living out their parents’ scripts or plans for them, as opposed to taking a risk and following their heart’s desires. Other people “sellout” for money, praise, power or prestige. All these habitual behaviors can cost you the enjoyment that is otherwise possible in life.
By contrast, “the jerks” do so much of what is positive for them, that it “overrides” their negative stuff in terms of their bad moods. Why do some people just wake up happy? They create a lot of enjoyable moments for themselves, notice them, remember them, and are grateful for themselves. Over time, the brain remembers all these noticed, positive or enjoyable moments.
The next section of this essay is in some ways the most challenging, and yet the most potentially useful. From child rearing experiences, from school, reading, religious training, etc., we have all incorporated a ”web of foundational beliefs” with which we interpret, analyze and judge ourselves, other and the events of our lives. In effect, this conceptual framework functions like eyeglasses through which we view our life experiences, moment by moment. Also, these beliefs may be out of our awareness right now. For chronically anxious, gloomy and/or depressed people, these self-defeating beliefs are often self-punitive, and joy destroying. Such negative beliefs create chronic problems for people, unless and until they are changed. Now I’m going to offer substitutions for “enjoyment-blocking beliefs,” some of which you may not now understand or agree with.
On a one-to-one basis, I have helped many chronically anxious and depressed people to enjoy more by changing their negative belief system. By listening carefully to them, they’ve taught me how distorted, self-punitive beliefs can cause both depression and anxiety, and decrease enjoyment. I’ve observed and learned about this during my work with people. Moreover, in my opinion, the beliefs I’ll be discussing are not just a point of view. To me, they describe how things really are! Life doesn’t really care if you accept its rules or not. Please don’t get your back up. I don’t mean to lecture you. Only you and those around you will suffer, if you don’t learn to surrender to, and accept how things “really are” in life, at any given moment of time.
1. Remember that you only need to accept life “a moment at a time”, and future moments really are unpredictable. You can trust that life will surely keep changing. This very moment really is, the way it is, whether you like it or not.
The following are Core beliefs, which I’ve found to be accurate and useful for enjoying life, which you could use to replace your self-defeating beliefs.
In any moment, the “truth” means: “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”. I’ve never met anyone who can infallibly observe the truth (in this sense) during every moment of their lives. However, with repeated effort, we can gain this skill more and more. Then the events of life of each moment will become our personal teacher, if we will surrender to accept their wisdom.
You can only do your best of the moment. That’s different than the best moment of your life so far; i.e., very different than your “life time” best. Many times people will say and truly believe, ”I could have done better.” They will try to explain away (or defend) “mistakes” by saying, “I was in a bad mood”, or “I didn’t sleep last night.” But those conditions existed in that moment, and they affected us. That moment of a “poor performance” or a “mistake” still counts. If you could have done better in that moment I’m sure you would have. Did you really, intentionally choose to make a mistake? If you think so, did you intentionally choose the motivations that drove you to fail?
Try asking for 100% of what you want, 100% of the time. This is essentially an invitation to try living more assertively. Notice, however, that if you find yourself demanding, anything, ever! you’ll be creating: suffering for yourself, and also probably for others around you. Understanding the difference between asking and demanding is subtle, but essential. You may need to do “research” by noticing the operation of your own mind, moment-by-moment, in terms of learning to distinguish the results of wanting versus demanding.
What has been called “existential guilt”, hurts. By “existential guilt”, I’m referring to the inescapable, emotional pain associated with not living true to your deepest wants and preferences. To say it another way, it comes from coping out or not going for, what your heart and gut tell you, that you really want. Often it feels risky to go for it.
Although the past definitely affects us, and we can remember it, right now, it’s gone forever – it’s just mental stuff called memories. Moreover, the future has not come yet. You can only directly experience the “external now”.
Every “moment of now” counts. (Both the ones when you judge that you were a superstar, and the ones when you decide you were a schmuck). Also, past moments are just memories. You have to keep creating new actions again and again. You are neither continuously a hero, or always a schmuck. Being a hero is just a concept related to a past action. What about now!
In any given moment, past, present and future, when you consider everything, without leaving anything out, (and you can’t really omit anything), you’ve always been doing your best in each moment. Often it’s hard for people to understand, and thus accept this. You’ll have to do your own research on your moment by moment experience to check it out. Use your ability to notice yourself (self-awareness) during “moments of now” to see for yourself. For example, you can’t exclude the factor of being tired, of being inattentive, or of being ignorant. In any past moment, if you knew those factors were there, you would have eliminated them if you could have.
Just because you like or even love someone, doesn’t mean you enjoy them. Being around people you can’t enjoy makes a big difference for your enjoyment of your life. Do you mainly choose to be around people you enjoy? Can you learn to enjoy more people? Do you limit your contact with people that you feel obligated to if you don’t enjoy them, or do you feel too guilty to do so?
Pride in accomplishment, or feeling good about being the best at something, isn’t the same as enjoying an activity (i.e. doing it “just for fun”). It’s theoretically possible to really enjoy doing something that you are very unskillful at and vice versa. Pay attention to how the activities that you do “just for fun” affect your enjoyment of life.
Who would you rather be around – someone enjoying their life, or the opposite?
At the deepest level, all humans have equal value or worth and have equal basic rights. This was stated in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. Abraham Lincoln also reiterated this in his Gettysburg Address. If you don’t believe this, you will be dangerous to others if you assertively pursue your self-enjoyment.
“Healthy entitlement” means you feel that you deserve as much as anyone else, but no more. Excessive entitlement is narcissism or self-absorption, and it means you feel you deserve more than others (for example, Ken Lay of Enron).
Actions speak louder than words. Abide by this both as you notice your own behavior and as you notice the behavior of others.
You will suffer if you violate your own value system.. and deep inside, you always know when you’re violating your value system. In other words, you can’t really get away with anything. That’s the true meaning of KARMA. Karma doesn’t mean subsequent punishment. For many depressed people, their value systems are overly demanding, perfectionistic, unrealistic and hence inhumane. If your value system is inhumane (for example, overtly perfectionistic), change it!
Learn to accept your limits – learn to be humble, as opposed to feeling inappropriately humiliated. If you’ve done your “best of the moment”, it’s emotionally inappropriate to feel humiliated, although you may have been deeply conditioned to react that way. You can learn to endure and ignore “inappropriate” emotions: that your habitual conditions still (temporarily) causes you to fee; i.e., shame, guilt and humiliation (also pride). Involuntary moments of painful emotional patterns may be triggered in us by life circumstances. Accepting the pain and feeling and allowing the body sensations of the moment without suppressing or attempting to bury those reactions will make you strong and fearless. Eventually, step-by-step, you can learn and change, so you don’t feel those old patterns anymore. Unfortunately, it usually takes time to change chronic emotional habits.
We are human beings, not human doings. Love is in the dimension of being. Praise, shame, blame, and guilt are in the dimension of doing. “Your being-ness or spirit or vitality has always been perfect, can never be broken, does not need to be fixed. I don’t wish to provoke a religious argument or offend, but I personally don’t believe in original sin.
Hate the sin, not the sinner.
Goals versus aspirations. You can aspire to be saint-like. However, it’s a painful and totally unrealistic “quarterly goal” to expect yourself to be a saint, anytime soon.
Remember, don’t confuse your “best of the moment” with the best of your lifetime.
In order to produce results, it requires both repeated effort and skill.
Learning to recognize and accept your limits is the end of a heavy burden. As you do this, you will become naturally humble, and avoid inappropriate humiliation.
“Why” questions provoke intellectualization. Instead, try noticing what is going on within yourself moment by moment, (i.e. what thoughts, what emotions, what body sensations). Ask other people “what questions” during conversations instead of “why questions.”
Learn to recognize and overcome inappropriate or unjustified guilt. You may have been taught to feel guilty when you aren’t really responsible for something or couldn’t control things. It makes no sense to hold yourself accountable or responsible. It commonly requires the feedback from others to see this in ourselves, and change it.
You will gradually lean its value if you practice “being in the moment”; i.e. practice being aware of your life, moment by moment. Practicing emotional acceptance of “moments of now” will also be a profound teacher for you. Notice what mental activities take you out of the moment. Often it’s obsessive thinking about the past or future.
Clarifying your intentions helps you “spend your psychic energy wisely.” Allow your intentions to become conscious. Admit to yourself honestly your intentions. Sometimes you’ll have conflicting intentions to resolve.
Try asking yourself in times of uncertainty, “All things considered, what am I willing and able to do, about that, right now? When stuck, ask yourself the above question. Try to accept whatever answer pops into your mind, including, “Right now, I don’t know.” Who says, “I don‘t know right now” is an unacceptable answer. Certainly, it may be inconvenient and uncomfortable. Surrender to the answer that pops into your mind as the truth of this moment.
Assuming that you are ethical and moral, and you already know that all humans (and really all being) are created equal, then it will be a good thing for you (and for the world), to try to get what you want, while you are alive. Of course, you won’t always get what you want. Most people (except saints) get angry, depressed, frightened (i.e. UPSET!), in moments when they don‘t get what they want. For non-saints, that’s normal; it’s just human! Many people don’t let it go at that. Instead of just dealing with their momentary upset, their mind instantly jumps to an unwarranted conclusion, namely that there must be something wrong with them; or with the people around them, and/or with life itself, when they don‘t get what they want. That’s totally made up. It’s not true! It’s only your personal attribution into a moment of life that you didn’t want and don’t accept.
A more skillful (and learnable) response is to take what just occurred in a given moment as feedback, provided by life, that you still lack the skill and/or effort to get what you wanted. Reconsider and try a different approach. Life can be conceptualized as an opportunity to “gain skill at learning”, how to get what you want. At the worst, you are ignorant… not defective, broken, bad, etc. There’s no sin in being ignorant. Given ethical people, with healthy entitlement, this works not only for the individual, but also to the benefit of society at large, and for the rest of life (ecology). Wouldn’t you rather be around happy people who are getting what they want in moral and ethical ways.
Try seeing life as an ongoing experiment. I live my life by trying out a plan, based on my current, best wisdom to try to get what I want (enlightened-interest), not self-centered). The subsequent moments of life real the success or failure of my plan. I then revise my plan and experiment again.
Notice that you’ve already outgrown many old pleasures. For example, “Sand boxes don’t do it for me anymore.” Based on my cumulative life experience (not on learned rules or commandments), “spiritual” things turn out to be the most enjoyable for me. In my opinion, if we keep noticing our moment by moment life experiences, as we get what we want (or don’t), we will discover our own personal path towards ultimate reality (GOD, NIRVANA, GODDESS), or whatever descriptor you want to use.
Learning to be assertive is a skill that will help you with the inevitable conflicts of life. Some people are overly passive (doormats). Others are too aggressive (i.e., bullies – either verbally or physically). If you recognize the essential equality of all people, (the equal rights of you and your “partners”), you can learn to calmly communicate to each other about differing points of view, while you both ask for 100% of what you want, remaining true to yourself, and intending to create win/win outcomes.
As you gain skill in noticing all the reality of the various moments of y our life (separate instants of “now”), try doing some research on your own life experiences to discover what you can control and what you do not currently have the ability to control. Here’s my current observation and conclusion based on my observing my own life experiences. I don’t ever have total control of the total outcome of any moment of now. Despite my best pure intentions, my maximum skill and my best effort, I’m always in partnership with something, which is always there and which I can’t control. It seems to me that many call this partner, God. Many people’s parents told them they could do anything they set their mind to, and they’ve believed that to be literally true. I don’t think it’s accurate. I challenge them to instantly end world hunger.
I’ve also met many people whose faith in life has been at least temporarily shatter4d by being confronted with something horrific, over which they did not have control. The only solution for them, I believe, is to become wiser… to understand that total control is never an option for any human. The good news is that it’s not necessary to have total control in order to have an enjoyable, gratifying, meaningful and serene life.
It’s comforting me to ask a strange sort of question, “Could this very instant of time, including all that’s occurring simultaneously, in the whole universe, be a mistake?” I don’t see how. Therefore, neither you nor anything else right now can be a mistake in the ultimate sense. Life is always, potentially enjoyable, workable, cope-able. You are up to it, just as you are… and yet you can certainly learn to create a more and more enjoyable life for yourself.