Your Mental Wealth

Most of us spend our day thinking about the past or ruminating about the future. Do you let your past define you? Do you suffer the emotional burden of shame, resentment, or disappointment from a past you can’t change? Or, do you live in the future? Are you consumed with worries, anxieties or apprehensions about what may come? Are you stuck in a world of “what ifs” or “if only… thens”? Do you forego your happiness today for a vision of a future that may be “better” or “worse” than the present?

There is a big difference between pain and suffering. Pain is what happens when we are hurt, such as when we stub your toe, or when we are mistreated by someone we trust. Pain is immediate. It is right now. Except in the case of chronic physical pain, it is typically short in duration. Pain lets us know something is wrong and inspires us to take action to protect ourselves. We know how to deal with pain, and for the most part can do so effectively. Suffering is a different matter entirely. Suffering is what happens when we live in the past or future, being attached to what has happened to us and letting it define or limit us, or abandoning our present happiness for an imagined future in which things will be different. In contrast to pain, suffering can last a lifetime.

While there are many roads to getting there, there is only one cure for suffering– the present moment. The good news is that since you are creating or at least maintaining your current suffering, you have the power to change right now. If you embrace the present moment, you will find peace, wholeness, and fulfillment. It has been said that it is impossible to be fully present and unhappy at the same time. You don’t have to join a monastery or sit in the corner staring at the wall to learn to embrace the present moment. Fortunately, there is a practice of enhancing present awareness in daily life designed for people like me, who can have some trouble sitting still. It is called mindfulness. Here are some tips for helping you open your present today by practicing mindfulness:

Get out of your head and come to your senses. Make a commitment to do something different today. Pay attention to your routine. Get into it. Experience it. As you shower, shave, or brush your teeth, do so consciously. Feel the water on your skin. As your mind wanders, bring your attention back to focus on what you are doing, feeling, seeing. When you walk out of the house, take a deep breath. Smell the air. On your way to work, catch yourself anticipating your day and turn your attention to the sights and sounds around you, nature’s beauty, the wind in your hair, the sun on your skin. You get the picture. Come out of your habitual, mindless trance and experience the moment.

Eat mindfully. A Zen Buddhist monk and mindfulness mediation teacher was once asked his advice on how someone could lose weight. He responded, “Eat half as much.” When asked what one should do when they are still hungry, he said “Eat twice as slowly.” This monk knew that when we eat mindlessly, we have a tendency to eat more. Instead of eating unconsciously today, stuffing down a burger on the drive home from work or eating with the television on, take some time to eat mindfully, even if just for a few minutes. Eat slower. Smell your food. Take a bite and put down your fork or chopsticks. Focus on chewing your food twenty times before you swallow. Pay attention to the taste of your meal. Spend time appreciating the food you have.

Movement meditation. Practitioners of such arts as Yoga or Qi Gong use movement to help foster awareness, consciousness, and improve health. However, you can begin a similar practice today with just a few tips. You will engage in some type of movement today- walking to the refrigerator, blinking, breathing. Instead of walking mindlessly to your destination, slow down a bit. Pay attention to the feeling of shifting your weight from one foot to the other, transferring energy from the heel of your foot to your toe as you roll your foot forward. Focus on your breathing for a bit, slowing it down and taking a few deep breaths. Feel the air coming into your lungs and your trunk expanding and contracting.

Perhaps you have heard the old adage that “life happens while you are making other plans.” It is true. Time flies when we aren’t paying attention. Taking time to really experience the present moment opens us up to a sense of wholeness, gratitude and happiness we can never achieve by living in the past or the future. Spend a few minutes today opening up to your present. As you let go of ruminations about the past as well as worry about the future, you will like what you find in the moment. The past and the future are just mental constructions. The present moment is all that we really have, and is ours to create.