Staying here. Staying right here is something we have to practice. We wish our lives away while we’re waiting for breakthrough in business or relationship. A breakthrough would be changing how you think about the present moment by thinking about the present moment…. “Ughhhh I can’t wait to be on stage…. I can’t wait to finish this degree… I can’t wait until these deals go through… I can’t wait… I can’t wait… I can’t wait…”
Breathe dog! Calm down.
If all you do is wish for tomorrow, you’ll never experience today.
My good friend, Pastor Dave Guinn, talks about life being a series of moments and that the time in between those moments lasts a lot longer than the moments themselves. “Moments are momentary,” he’ll say. We can’t keep wishing, waiting, and wanting only moments. Our lives will be void as we attempt to fill an un-fillable tank. Filling ourselves up with “what-will-be” as opposed to “what-is” will never work. We will always be onto the next thing, the next mountain, the next great feat, chasing moments that have vaporous lifespans. It seems to make sense that we would try to find peace during the times of our lives that lasts the longest, like all the time in between moments.
This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have hope in our future and a desire to meet awesome moments in our lives, but we can’t live ONLY for those moments. There is a lot to be picked up during those in-between times. During the down times when things seem bleak or just the times that nothing spectacular is happening, you’re in training. You’re learning. You’re growing. Unless you just think constantly about where you will be and learn only minimally about where you’re at.
You know, a bad moment lasts just as long as a great moment. They’re both momentary and pass as a vapor. But we have somehow conditioned ourselves to stretch the worst moments of our lives out far beyond the time it should have taken to learn the lesson we were meant to learn from them. Why don’t we work on reconditioning ourselves to refocus on the great moments when we had met achievement? The moments our work toward some end was accomplished and we were triumphant.
I want to challenge you with making a list of twenty or so wins that you’ve had over the course of your life up until this point. If you can’t think of twenty, that’s ok, and if you think of more than twenty, that’s ok. The challenge doesn’t end there. Every day for the next ninety days, read over the list in the morning and at night. Just a quick read-over, if you’re moved to meditate on a particular moment that you really enjoyed, let it happen. But just introduce that list to yourself every day, twice a day, for the next ninety days.
You’ll remember the toil you went through to get to some of those wins and you might even find yourself missing the toil. There are times that I miss studying Organic Chemistry with my friends while at the same time, saying how bad I couldn’t wait to finish college. Now, I’m missing the work that went into the end, not the end. What work are you doing right now that you might miss once you’ve accomplished it’s end?
There is no peace outside of the moment you’re in right now.
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