One of the major obstacles in this pandemic is the loss of momentum. Individuals, students, faculties, companies, small businesses, governments…they all depend on a degree of forward momentum in order to keep up and to maintain viability. At least that’s what we think.
And then there’s the present moment, the great NOW. Eckhart Tolle (author of the Power of Now) says that there’s a difference between having thoughts and thoughts having you. Realizing this may take a moment of quiet reflection.
Right now I find it easier to live in the present by putting brackets around my seeming lack of momentum in my business. My quiet reflections often come when I’m doing housecleaning, cooking, and pulling weeds in the garden. This enables me to focus on the NOW, at least for a few seconds of every hour. My mind gets occupied, not so much with worry as with wonder. What’s coming next and how am I being led to craft my business to address a new normal?
What I try to avoid is dualistic labeling. You and I do it all the time. We’re hard-wired as westerners to think in terms of win/lose, right/wrong, true/false, good/bad, saint/sinner.
The only dualism we humans do experience is birth on one end of the scale, and death on the other. Everything else in between slides up and down in that vast, grey area called “life.”
So in this pandemic, what if you and I were not winning or losing? What if we were simply experiencing the possibility of new opportunities? What if we’re facing the fact that momentum is overrated, and that the loss of momentum is helping us NOW? It is slowing us down enough to live through shades of grey. It is in those grey areas that the new opportunities often hide.
I don’t mean to sound overly optimistic, because new opportunities bring along new challenges, new ways of thinking, new facts, methods, and skills to learn. This can be tedious for many of us. Right now I’m taking an online course on decision making. It’s making me more attentive to when the fight-flight-freeze part of my brain gets activated (the amygdala) versus the rational part (cerebral cortex). New information will change me…I don’t know how yet and I don’t think it will be easy.
As exciting/challenging as new opportunities may be, they may also carry with them a lot of fear. Don’t we all fear wasting time going down a new “rabbit hole”, or not “doing it right”, or having to learn a whole new way of living or conducting business that we’ve resisted in the past? Sometimes the learning curve in new opportunities is scary and steep.
The only way I’ve found to resist using the win/lose label is to ask the great Now: What are you offering me in this moment? Even then, like children shutting their eyes and blocking their ears and making noises, I sometimes resist the Truth in front of me. Yet the present moment has a way of opening my ears and eyes to the best, next step I ought to take.
Being successful is not an event we celebrate with awards and parties. It is recognizing that we’re on a journey through life. Along the way we invite challenges to mold us and we discover how our unique lives can change the world, one person at a time.
Do you feel successful in this moment? Contact me to discuss how you honestly feel about your life or career. I’ll be able to help you shift into a healthier and happier point of departure for the rest of your life. michael@mpariselifecoach.com or text me at 813-449-3904