Simply Making Our Future Selves Proud
While we are living our daily lives it’s really easy to get task oriented and just go from task to task, never stopping to “smell the flowers.”
“I am not my thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and experiences. I am not the content of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which all things happen. I am consciousness. I am the Now. I Am.”
-“Stillness Speaks” by Eckhart Tolle
It’s very important to take time out to just breathe, enjoy the moment, and feel gratitude! This actually takes some practice. I have been practicing a way of being for a couple years now called Mindfulness.
I’m sure you’ve heard of it because it has become a buzzword over the last couple of years. Buzzword aside, Mindfulness is an actual meditation practice that has been practiced for a long, long, long time.
Mindfulness has also been scientifically proven to have many health benefits, including lowering blood pressure, helping with anxiety, and getting better sleep at night.
When I first started I would try to be Mindful for a couple of minutes. I would practice it while walking, while driving, while sitting still, even while doing the dishes. As I’ve gotten better at being aware in the moment I’ve lengthened the time I consciously become Mindful.
The first thing I began to realize is that most of my thinking that is taking me out of the Now is not even necessary. Wasted energy on pointless rumination, or Monkey Mind.
The second thing I began to notice is how incredible the present can be, and how grateful I am to be alive.
Lastly I began to realize that the very act of experiencing the Now is basically a miracle. It’s a miracle that we all, including me, take for granted. The odds of life even existing are astronomical, let alone advanced, self aware, life, that can truly enjoy the beauty of a flower or a sunrise.
So let’s take three deep breaths and be Mindful for a couple of minutes!
-We Can Stay In Touch With Our Friends
“By removing the physical distractions around us, we’re able to look inside ourselves and begin the process of mental, emotional, psychological, and spiritual decluttering.”
- “Love People Use Things” by The Minimalists
One of my favorite minimalist sayings is, “the most important things in life aren’t things at all.”
This saying goes right to the heart of what minimalism is truly about.
When we are content with the possession we already have, we are free to find out what life is really about.
Our relationships with others quickly comes to the forefront of what is truly important. We are all in this thing together. The friendships that we discover as we blindly stumble along our individual paths are worth much more than gold.
Gold can’t listen to Us when we’ve been having a difficult time. Money can’t give wonderful advice when we have wandered off our paths and are lost in the woods. Possessions can’t be there with us to give us courage when we need it most.
Love and friendship are the greatest gifts we can give to another!
No matter how long it has been or how far away we are I can always call my best friend from my childhood and catch up as if no time has passed and no distance exists between us.
So let’s keep in touch with our friends and call or message them whenever we think of them!
-We Can Have The Courage To Express Our Feelings
“Even when we have no idea where we are or where we’re going, with the right map, we can find our way back to our heart and to our truest self.”
-“Atlas of the Heart” by Brené Brown
I’m an introvert so expressing myself verbally in the moment can be challenging for me. I also learned to not “upset the apple cart,” so it’s difficult for me to say things that others may find upsetting even if it’s the truth.
I really learned how much I had to work on my communication skills when my Wife and I got married and we had our Daughter. I have the greatest difficulty communicating my feelings and emotions, because I’m also very cerebral and logically minded.
Sometimes I don’t even know how I feel about some new information until I have time to digest the information fully. I have discovered that it is far better to talk about any dilemmas or issues I may have than keep it to myself, even if by saying a thing it causes some discomfort.
For me, it takes a lot of courage to broach certain subjects, but when the dust settles I always feel better. Even if I stumble and stammer through a conversation, I still feel proud I expressed myself.
If it’s a really important subject I write down what I want to communicate, so I can get my thoughts organized and in order.
If the people we are trying to communicate to respect and love us, they will hear us out and try to be helpful in solving our dilemma or issue. If they are not receptive to open communication that tells us something also.
So let’s work on being expert communicators about our feelings!
-We Don’t Have To Work So Hard
“Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.”
-“Essentialism” by Greg McKeown
This is an interesting one, because I grew up being told that we are rewarded if we work hard all our lives, so that’s what I did.
I started working when I was ten years old, and worked and studied really hard for years. Then when I was going through Medic training in the army I heard the saying, “work smarter, not harder.” At first I thought it was a ridiculous thing to say, but as my Medic training progressed I learned to prioritize what was truly important in order to accomplish the mission.
My time in the military was actually my introduction into living a minimalist lifestyle. Everything is streamlined, everything has a specific use, and everything has a specific place. We had to always be ready to pack up our rucksacks and go at a moments notice. Tell any soldier or veteran about minimalism and they will probably tell you that they learned to be minimalists in the military.
When everything is put away in a specific place and there is no excess, doing things becomes much easier. Also when we work in a group of people with a singular focus things become easier.
I continued to practice my minimalist work ethic after leaving the military. I would prioritize the essential actions that were needed to accomplish specific jobs, then I would rest.
Several years ago I dove deep into learning how to grow wealth by decreasing expenses and increasing the acquisition of assets that grow in value or pay out dividends. I learned that assets can work for us. By letting assets work for us we have a lot more free time to do what we really enjoy doing, whatever that my be.
Let’s work smarter not harder and enjoy more of what little time we have on this planet!
-We Can Have The Courage To Live Lives True To Ourselves, Not Lives Others Expect Of Us
“What is the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”
-“The One Thing” by Gary Keller
This statement sounds apocryphal, but it’s possible to live a life that aligns with our core values.
Life can be lived in so many different ways!
We can choose how we want to live our lives. The reason I believe we can all create our ideal lives is because I’ve seen it.
My father was an artist and a yoga instructor, my mother was a renowned message therapist, my step father climbed mountains for a living, my uncle is a successful artist, my other uncle and aunt were educators, and my other aunt was an ER nurse, all of the people around me in my formative years had jobs that were true to their core values. All of them were happy in their work. All of them had the courage to live lives that were true to them, not what others expected of them.
So if you are lucky enough to have a dream, go for it! It may be a lot of work but it is work you can be proud of.
Just remember, “if you never give up, you never fail!”
We Only Have One Life
“Don’t wait to start living. Live now! Your life should be real in this very moment.”
-“You are Here” by Thich Nhat Hanh
Truthfully, what it all comes down to is, all we have is the present moment and time goes by so fast. In fact time is perceived to speed up the older we get. For some reason that’s how our brains work. I remember days seemed to last forever when I was a child, now my days go by “in a blink of an eye.”
Life is so precious we don’t want any regrets at the end of it!
One of my favorite quotes by Eleanor Roosevelt goes like this, “today is the oldest you’ve ever been and the youngest you’ll ever be again, so make the most of it!”
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