“Are you waiting to start living? If you develop such a mind pattern, no matter what you achieve or get, the present will never be good enough; the future will always seem better.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
Waiting can be a habit producing false hope leading to a dead end.
People spend a lot of their lives waiting for:
friends, partners or their spouses to change or get their act together; waiting for themselves to get their own act together; waiting for someone in business to return their call for the deal of the century; waiting for a man or woman to wake up and realize he or she really did love them; waiting for the other shoe to fall; waiting to be happy; waiting for the doctor’s opinion or to feel better; waiting until their schedule allows, and then they’ll have more time; waiting until conditions are just right or to get someone’s approval before pursuing their dreams; waiting until they make more money and then they can really start to live their lives
… postponing their happiness, their lives, their precious time… for something they thought was coming and would alter their lives dramatically for the better… and usually didn’t.
But if today is simply a means to an end then there is no living in the now.
What are you waiting for?
You have a choice!
How can you live more fully and have more fun NOW?
Delivery rooms are highly charged environments, containing the potential of life and death. While going through a particularly hard labor during the birth of her second child, my friend was directed to push.
The attendants’ attitudes and firm voices basically told her we know you’re tired, but stop being so lazy and push.
By the fourth and fifth time of asking her to push, they raised their voices and got abusive and angrier. Don’t be such a baby and a wimp. PUSH!
My friend refused, in spite of what the experts demanded her to do. At one point she told them, “I won’t push.”
Finally, the doctor checked the cord and learned it was coiled around her baby’s neck. He had to physically go in and cut it loose. The baby was born blue and not breathing, but they gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The baby survived and was healthy.
The mother later asked the doctor if she had pushed when everyone said, would she have strangled her baby. He replied, “Yes.”
The mom was the ultimate expert at the moment. She was aware of her body and inner guidance and followed it, although she didn’t know why. She knew she wouldn’t push regardless of what others told her. If she had, the ending of that story wouldn’t be happy.
Her first baby was born at home, by choice, and that delivery was smooth and easy.
Her second baby was different. At night, after hard labor started, she thought how easy it would be to have the baby at home. But because they planned a hospital birth, she went through the motions to fulfill that plan.
She said if she followed her guidance in the first place, her mother’s intuition told her she wouldn’t have gone through the agonizing labor, uterine exhaustion, with subsequent complications for her baby.
The lesson? Trust yourself 100%. She needed not to placate others and what they wanted, but instead take a stand for her baby and herself.
“Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now.
Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
Anxiety and worry reside in many like a low-grade fever that won’t go away. We work, live, and don’t notice it most of the time, but there’s a gnawing in back of the mind that something might happen. It’s a feeling of anticipation, like waiting for the other shoe to fall.
We find countless ways to mask it, such as using power, substances, addictions, sex, control, and anger.
Fear. It’s often fear of the future, the unknown, that somehow, something might happen, and we won’t be able to handle it.
We can never cope with the future. When our mental imaginings run rampant into what danger might be lurking, we incapacitate ourselves.
We can always cope in the now, in this present moment of time. Remember the adage we are only given what we can handle. We always have the ability to make it to the next stage of life.
Always.
“So let me assert my belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
Franklin D Roosevelt
What else can be done to diminish fear?
If you want yeast to multiply, feed it sugar. If you want fear to grow, feed it fear. If you want to reduce fear, surround what you fear with love.
The aim of terrorists is to create fear and terror. Feeling fear makes them stronger as it’s their food and encourages them to create more terror.
Unconditional love short-circuits them. They become like the Wicked Witch of the West and start to melt. Love cannot ride on the fury of anger.
Thoughts, feelings, and prayers are real and are felt around the world. We have the ability to impact life by living in this moment of time with the spirit of love. Right now as you read this, you can offer love and goodwill to the Life force and let it be distributed wherever It chooses.
Now, you just made a difference.
That which we fear diminishes and eventually disappears as we wake up to this awareness.
Who do you trust, a Higher Power or fear? Hint: Who do you know is the biggest kid on the block, every block, everywhere, throughout eternity?
Consider wearing your fear like a rub-on tattoo. If you switch your attention to the now rather than worry about an unknown future, the fear washes off. Fill the now with love, and not only is there no room left for fear within you, but that which you fear dwindles.
There’s a wonderful Zen story about a Japanese warrior waiting in prison after capture. The fear of interrogation, torture, and execution overwhelmed him, and he couldn’t sleep. Then he remembered the words of his spiritual master, “Tomorrow is not real. It is an illusion. The only reality is now.” He fell peacefully asleep.
Your challenge, if you choose to accept, is to live in the moment with love.
Each time fear rears its head, observe your reaction. Recognize that the fear has nothing to do with this moment in time, and redirect your attention to the now. Breathe. Replace the feelings of fear with gratitude, love, and goodwill to Life.
With a zest for Life, Virginia
Success Thought
“Focus on what you want. Dwelling on your fears will bring them upon you…
We need to enjoy what we have right now and live right now. Fearing loss is not living in the now. Fearing loss is living in the future.”
Andrew Matthews, Being Happy! A Handbook to Greater Confidence & Security
“I am old and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” Mark Twain
I was sure I failed the test, and like a bully, worry stalked and tormented me for a week. When the scores finally came in, I learned that I got the highest mark in my class.
Although in third grade, I realized that the agony I created served no purpose. After reflection, I thought another approach to future upsets would be better.
I told myself: Worrying doesn’t feel good. And if what you’re worrying about doesn’t happen, it’s a lot of feeling bad for nothing.
As an adult I learned that when there really is a problem, I’m better off to get clear on the issue and then focus on the solution rather than on what’s not working.
If needed, we can accept that we are worrying, without judging the situation or the fact that we are bothering to worry. By choosing acceptance we are no longer prisoner to our reactive patterns. Freedom greets us as we open our cell door. When this happens the worry-jailer’s job is done.
Consider this:
Our programming for worry is based on past situations that created unfavorable results.
We design our future with our present thoughts and feelings.
Therefore, energizing fearful thoughts with worry is a shortcut to what we don’t want to come into our lives in the future.
“For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.” Job 3:25
Worry projects us into a world of make-believe what-ifs and creates fear. It’s an indicator that we are living in the future, not in present time.
How do we stay in the present? By surrendering to what is rather than what we think something could or should be. Acknowledging what a situation or person is assists us to be conscious. In doing so, we can see more clearly and take more productive action, too.
If there is a situation that needs addressing, being in the present, rather than in a reactive and emotional state, opens us to receive insights and alternatives more easily.
Humans are wired with the ability to handle life’s situations in this moment of time.
However, we can not cope effectively with mental tapes that project hypothetical, fear-based, future problems.
I was delighted when I read a passage in a great book by Satyam Nadeen.
There’s a part of us that simply watches what’s going on, like seeing a play. I sometimes call it the observer self.
Nadeen refers to this aspect as the Witness. It’s detached about what goes on and doesn’t care about the drama that monkey mind, others or our own, creates about a situation. This drains the life force from worry. In fact, from this vantage point, what we’re worrying about can be rather humorous.
“Each of the countless times a day that the mind or some other person asks ‘why’ about any and every situation that arises (just as a good little mind is supposed to do), the Witness always responds: ‘Don’t know, don’t care!’”
Satyam Nadeen, From Seekers to Finders, The Myth and Reality about Enlightenment
How can we change a pattern of worry? Decide to let it go. Let worry go. Choose to release the habit. Ask the highest part of ourselves to release the pattern and replace it with awareness to navigate through life in a different way… living in present time with grace and ease.
“Nothing can be attained without suffering but at the same time one must begin by sacrificing suffering.”
Gurdjieff
Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to look at a situation that’s causing you worry from a perspective of “Don’t Know, Don’t Care.” Consider a viewpoint where letting go of worry supports you to find peace and resolution to whatever is concerning you.
With a zest for Life, Virginia
Success Thought:
Mark Twain once said that one way of getting a silly tune out of your head is to put in another. Instead of the worry tune, you can use Bobby McFerrin’s melodic approach of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”
“In every life we have some trouble But when you worry you make it double Don’t worry, be happy Don’t worry, be happy now.”
Virginia Goszewska (go-SHEF-ska) awakens people to be richly compensated doing what they love by aligning with their Soul’s goals.
Based on decades of extensive research and personal discoveries, Virginia created the unique mastermind and success program Soulgoals: A Step-by-Step System to Do What You Love – even if you failed before, lost hope, are afraid, stuck, stressed or confused. The mastermind is an energy created when two or more gather in harmony for the attainment of a shared, definite objective.
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