Towards fulfilment. Not the magic switch that goes ‘poof’ like the genie in Aladdin — who doesn’t want one of those switches, but unfortunately they don’t exist. it’s an endless reworking of self that brings life change.
Here’s some musings on the subject:
Find your self-discipline
We all know those times when you have one beer too many and end up regretting it; how many times do you end up not doing something that you wanted to do the next day because of the drinks from the night before?
If you don’t regret it then brilliant, but if you do, then maybe start to cultivate the practice of self-discipline?
I say start to cultivate because I feel like there’s this notion that self-discipline should already be a trait of a human being. I feel like we tend to have this tool kit that we imagine adults are given when they reach adulthood —It’d be great to actually get given a goody back of characteristics when you turn 21! Self-discipline, gratitude, the ability to love unconditionally, these are things that we hope the people around us can provide, but the reality is that they are learnt behaviours like every other behaviour.
Start small, I know I did, I started by saying no to the 4th round of drinks at the pub (Brits drink a lot!), no to the cigarette my friend offered me in our break (don’t smoke, it’s bad for you), no to a glass of coke, or watching the evening news before I went to bed.
The small things add up sooner than you think.
Find yourself a discipline.
If finding discipline in your daily life is a challenge, then try bringing your life to discipline and see if you can then transfer those skills back over to daily life. Create a feedback loop.
I personally follow Karate, I train once a week when I can, and it teaches me many things. It’s not just about fighting for me, I feel that that’s another example of a westernisation trivialising an ancient eastern practice; it’s about fluidity, spirit, balanced and natural mechanical movement, confidence, strength, purpose, efficiency in that purpose, a respectful hierarchy based on wisdom; skill level, and most likely, but not always, age, camaraderie, as well as self-defence and competitive sparring.
There’s a really important concept in Karate called Kime (pronounced ki-may), the root of the word in the Japanese language comes from the verb “kimeru” which means “to decide” but the essence of the meaning in Karate is ‘power’ or ‘focus’. It’s how to achieve this kime that is so wonderful for me, it’s all through the breath.
The aim of performing any technique is to let it be smooth, fluid, and relaxed until the point of contact where the breath joins the end of the technique to form a tensed, purposeful, body.
It’s efficient, but also when I started to get good at it, I realised that it’s a wonderful example of energy flow. As soon as you finish the technique, the body is completely relaxed again.
Another concept in Karate is to let the thinking mind, and the moving body integrate. Essentially when this happens you move into a meditative state where the thinking mind feels like it dissolves, when actually it works in harmony with your body.
Karate promotes respect, you bow to your senior grades; you bow to your teacher; you bow to the space that you practise in (the dojo). Creating sacred, respectful, bonds between you, a space of learning, and a group of people is so essential to happiness, in my opinion.
I love karate because it’s a routine that I follow, and you can never get to the end of the knowledge base: there’s always more moves to learn, and more set move routines (katas) to improve, and more things to learn about yourself as you go.
Don’t bring your past into your present
This is an interesting one because it’s so common and necessary to remember the past, it just really depends on how you do it.
It’s so important, especially for men, but also for women too, to look at the darkness inside of them and understand the ways that those fears and experiences of the past are contributing to the mindsets that carry forward into our present lives.
An experience of the past might stay with us, we might go through something that was unsettling and then decide we don’t want to go through that again, so we rationalise and internalise thought and belief processes to keep us from coming up against that thing again. Now, this is wonderful if it’s actually a thing that we don’t want in our lives; something really unpleasant that could cause us harm, but it’s not so good if those beliefs leak into other areas of our life. Areas where we want to achieve.
It’s common to never achieve a goal that is desired because of a limiting belief such as “I’ll never be good enough.” Or even: “I’m not worthy.” These beliefs are justified by memories of past experiences. There is a multitude of different limiting beliefs that you could be telling yourself. The advice that I’ve learnt over the last few years of seeking answers to these stagnant states of being is to explore what it is that I am telling myself, perhaps in a stream of consciousness journal, and then to turn those things around, perhaps in a gratitude journal.
Remember that the past is the past, it only exists in our memories, and it can only be brought into the present by our present actions, however, we can allow the past to help the present, in understanding. We learn more about who it is we really are.
If we justify the limiting beliefs that we have around events from the past, and they stop us from achieving what we want to achieve in the present, then the past is dominating our present, and the present disappears; or in other words, the past gets perpetuated in similar, cyclical, behaviour.
Don’t bring your future into your present
This one is so common for western society, we’re always scheming and plotting our next big success; our next goal; our next process towards fulfilment (that’s pretty much what this article is about.)
It’s really awesome to have a direction, a goal to work towards, and really essential to know who you are and what long term goals you have to work towards to fulfil you. However, that doesn’t mean you have to live in that headspace.
I’m terrible for this, I’m always looking ahead to the next goal before I’ve achieved the current one, I’m always dissatisfied with what I’m doing because I feel like I can do it better. Lately, I’ve been making a conscious decision to be aware of those times and to go through all the reasoning that allows me to realise that I’ve achieved a heck of a lot in the process already. When I exist in the future goal, I’m not giving myself the fulfilment of doing the things that I’m passionate about at the moment, I’m not enjoying being lit up by my excitement and enthusiasm; my joy.
My girlfriend quite rightly says that I demand too much from myself.
Now I choose to envision the big goal intensely for a short period of time (usually in the morning) and then whenever my mind drifts back onto it, I can recollect that condensed feeling, and know what it feels like. Then I forget about it, because I know that I know about it, and I have faith that the small steps that I take in the meantime will have to move me closer to that goal, or not even that goal, but a goal that I haven’t even thought about that’s way more exciting and aligned with who I am.
And anyway:
Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. ~John Lennon~
You may as well enjoy it, presently.
What is the subtlety of the present?
Once you start to be able to be present and not be masked or confused by outside stimulus you’ll start to open up to the subtleties of the present moment. The beauty of the bird that hops around your garden, how it balances on a strong breeze, the subtlety of a textured leaf, the colours in a blossoming flower.
It’s the recognition of the infinitely diverse beauty of nature, and therefore the universe, which brings me the most joy.
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Previously published on Medium.com.
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Photo credit: By Vania Riveros on vaniariveros.tumblr.com
