focus

Start Again

05/26/2017 by John Leave a Comment

Many years ago I attended a ten-day silent meditation retreat. At the beginning of every meditation period, the teacher would instruct us with his hypnotic Indian accent to “start again, start again, start again”. His further advice when feeling distracted during meditation was to “start again”.

My teacher’s advice to start again is once more resonating in my consciousness. I made a commitment to myself to post a piece of my writing once a week during 2017 and last week I failed to do so. I once wrote about maintaining healthy habits while traveling, but during my current trip, I have found it difficult to follow my own advice, at least where writing is concerned. I am a person who thrives on routine, which is ironic since I don’t like to be in one place for too many months at at time.

It would be easy enough at this point to just forget about my commitment to post once a week and save myself the trouble. This is the way good habits die: you miss one day and decide you have failed, so why bother. But progress comes from not letting ourselves off the hook so easily.

Fall down nine times,
Get up ten.
Zen Proverb

And so here I sit, with keyboard in front of me, wanting to be doing something less difficult but ultimately less rewarding. In my mind, I hear a familiar voice slowly repeating:

“Start Again. Start Again. Start Again”.

A Blank Canvas

04/07/2017 by John 1 Comment

My work for the winter season is done. I am not scheduled for any more paid employment until late July. The blank canvas of the next few months is stretched out before me. The empty space is exciting, but also intimidating.

The life that I am currently living allows me to have large blocks of unscheduled time sandwiched between intense periods of work. When I am in the midst of working, I long for these periods, thinking about all the things I hope to do and accomplish while I am gainfully unemployed. But once my mini-retirements begin, I often find myself paralyzed by the amount of freedom I suddenly have inherited. My choices about what to do with my time seem limitless to the point of being overwhelming. The blank canvas stares back at me, demanding that I do something with it.

I have been employed in situations where I worried that I was wasting my time by being there. But what I have learned is that I can just as easily feel this way while on my sabbaticals. I have a need to find purpose and meaning in my day, and this can be difficult both within and outside of the work that I do.

So what will I do with this blank canvas? Will I paint a picture I can be proud of, or will I look back at it and see only a bunch of random, disconnected splotches of color? Will I do something that will provide me with a sense of purpose, or will I simply flitter away the time doing things that will leave no lasting impression on myself or anyone else? It is up to me to decide.

I hope I choose wisely.

Saying No

03/31/2017 by John Leave a Comment

Knowing what you want out of life, and who you want in it, means nothing if you can’t also say no to everything but those people and things. Until you cultivate the ability to say no to the things that fill your life but not your soul, you’ll never have the space to bring into it the things you desperately want to say yes to.
From How To Live a Good Life by Jonathan Fields

Many of us were brought up to say yes, accommodating others needs before attending to our own. We have extended this invitation to the vast influx of information that is now available to us so that we are always saying yes to someone else’s agenda whether we realize it or not. Meanwhile, the things that are important to us get pushed to the side to be done at a vague time we call “later”. But later never arrives until we start to say no today.

There are so many demands on our time and attention. Hours disappear saying yes to reading just one more news article, responding to another email, or to just kicking back to watch a few short videos on YouTube. The people in our life also give us plenty of reasons to say yes. Yes to another pointless meeting at work. Yes to going out and socializing. Yes to listening to a friend go on for the umpteenth time about how they hate their job, relationship, whatever.

But what if we started to say no more often? What if we decided to delete the news apps from our phones and pledge to check email only once a day? What if we demonstrated to our employer that we could be more productive if that meeting is eliminated from our schedule? And what if we compassionately told our friend that we would be happy to help them work through something they are struggling with, but that we do not have time to listen if all they want to do is blame and complain and not take any action?

Saying no is actually saying yes to other things.
Patrick Rhone

If we did these things, we could say yes to those things we think we never have time for. We could get outside more or work on that passion project. We could spend time with people who inspire us or who truly need and want our help. We could do the things that give us joy and provide a sense of meaning and purpose; the things that make us feel whole, and from this place of wholeness, we can become more capable of serving others.

What are you saying yes to? Is it to things and people that are adding value to your life? What could you be doing if you said no instead?