Are You Always Racing To The Next Moment?
If
you are like me, you may be faced with choices which represent an
uncertain future. Big whoop, life is uncertain and that’s the whole
point of the adventure! That’s what the heart says, but often
times, the mind is used to want a guarantee of something that “makes
sense” before taking a step, or try to overanalyze with “shoulds
and shouldn’ts”. Am I too impulsive? Should I take my time? Is it
going to work? I didn’t plan to take this move! Or maybe nothing is
presenting in your life and you’re freaking out about being stuck
here forever. The thinking mind may try to take charge, but whether
or not you are in the process of making choices, remember this:
Step-by-step,
moment by moment. You don’t need to know what the next step is
going to look like before taking the first one, you don’t need to
know anything about the future because it doesn’t exist. It is to
be created moment by moment, and is always aligned with what you need
for your evolution anyways. All you need to is be in the moment of
whatever step you are taking NOW, and be fluid with whatever new
options will present when the time comes. Stress and tension is
nothing but the unconscious state of wanting to escape or rid
ourselves of the moment we are currently in, or cling on to our
comfort zones because of a scary movie we play out in our minds of
how difficult the future may be. Anticipation is also a form of
stress, but we instead attach a positive polarity to the end goal and
therefore become so focused on the “grand prize” that we forget
all about accepting and living fully in the present.
Forget
about future thinking, past dwelling or obsessive anticipation;
you’re making it all up. Here & Now is the only place you’ll
ever be in, so why pretend you are not? Why live in an imaginary
“there” when you are here?
Learning to Hope by Daisaku Ikeda
Optimists
and pessimists inhabit different worlds, reacting to the same
circumstances in completely different ways. Dr. Martin Seligman,
former president of the American Psychological Association,
identifies three characteristics of pessimistic thinking. He
describes these in his fascinating book Learned
Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life.
The
first is permanence. This means regarding temporary, passing events
as lasting and unchanging states. For example, your boss berates you
about something. You react by thinking, “I really hate her,” and
you go on from there to think of all the things you don’t like
about your boss. Your boss’ reprimand is a single, passing event,
but you turn it into something permanent, by thinking, “She’s
always like that. She’s not going to change.” On the other hand,
the optimistic person thinks, “The boss is in a bad mood today. She
must have something on her mind,” limiting the event to that day
and not extending it any further.
The
second characteristic is pervasiveness. When one thing goes wrong, a
pessimist thinks that everything is bad. This is like thinking that
you can’t handle any school subject just because math is hard for
you. When someone points out a mistake to a person with this
attitude, they think, “I’m no good. I can’t do anything,” and
become dejected instead of simply thinking that here is something
that has to be fixed. Individuals like this think that their very
worth as a person has been denied. A single spot grows into a huge
black cloud filling their mind. They lose confidence and make more
mistakes, creating a downward spiral.
The
third characteristic of pessimism is personalization. That is,
thinking that anything bad that happens is your fault and anything
good must be credited to other people or to chance. For example, when
an optimistic athlete or team loses a game, they think, “You win
some, you lose some” or “The other team was really on top of
their game today.” They don’t simply blame the loss on
themselves. But when a pessimistic athlete loses, they think, “I’ve
lost my concentration, I let so many good ones go by,” or “With
hitting like that, we’ll never win.” When two teams are of the
same level in ability, explains Dr. Seligman, the optimistic team is
more likely to win.
Of
course, we can’t lose sight of reality and, in an extreme version
of optimism, cheerfully blame everything bad that happens on others.
However, pessimism causes us to criticize ourselves needlessly.
When
I met with Dr. Seligman during his visit to Japan in 1997, I
expressed my thoughts on his views. The mind, I noted, is a wondrous
thing. As Milton wrote inParadise
Lost,
“The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heav’n of
Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.” Buddhism teaches that the quality of our
lives ultimately depends upon our state of mind. Buddhism is a
psychology of hope, and hope is my favorite word. Nodding in
agreement, Dr. Seligman leaned his large frame toward me and said:
“Optimism is hope. It is not the absence of suffering. It is not
always being happy and fulfilled. It is the conviction that though
one may fail or have a painful experience somewhere, sometime, one
can take action to change things.”
According
to Dr. Seligman, optimistic people are more likely to succeed at work
and in personal relationships. They are healthier and live longer. He
notes that the impact of our attitude on health becomes more
pronounced from the mid-forties on.
Dr.
Seligman’s theories are based on the idea that people can change.
By changing our way of thinking, we can change our lives. During our
discussion, Dr. Seligman commented that psychology after World War II
was mostly concerned with those who had profound psychological
problems. He explained, however, that he aspired for what he called a
“positive psychology”—one that gives people courage, hope and
strength.
Dr.
Seligman confesses that he himself was a pessimist by nature; he had
to learn to be optimistic. When he was only 13, his father suffered a
series of debilitating strokes that left him paralyzed. His father
lost all hope and plunged into a terrible sense of helplessness. He
remained in that state until his death several years later. Seeing
this, Dr. Seligman says he decided to investigate what it is that
makes people feel powerless and whether there might be some way to
overcome these feelings.
Perhaps
because he was originally motivated by these sad events, Dr.
Seligman’s scholarship is imbued with a warm humanity, the noble
aim of helping others. His “psychological revolution,” based on a
deep confidence in the positive potential of human beings, has been
called by some the most important development in psychology since
Freud.
Dr.
Seligman emphasizes the need to become aware of the explanations we
make for events, the unconscious dialogue we conduct within ourselves
when we run up against some kind of problem. We tend not to
notice the quirks in our own thinking because over the years they
have become habitual.
One
method Dr. Seligman suggests for people to become aware of these
thought habits is to write down what we are thinking to ourselves
when we encounter some minor frustrating situation. If we find that
we tend to react to events pessimistically, we can practice
“disputing” our own negative beliefs to
overcome that tendency. For example, let’s say you rang and left a
message for your friend to call you, but he doesn’t return your
call. People with pessimistic thought habits will explain the
situation to themselves by thinking, “He must be ignoring me.”
When the conversation is just between us and ourselves, we seem to be
ready to believe the worst. This is why learning to objectively
dispute your own negative beliefs can be helpful: “As a matter of
fact, he’s always been nice to me. He wouldn’t ignore me. He said
he was having a busy week.”Or you could try saying to yourself:
“Even if he is ignoring me, what about it? I can’t be perfect in
everything and not everyone is going to like me all the time.
Whatever others may think, I’m doing my best. I’m going to give
myself credit for trying at least!”
Dr.
Seligman says we should practice this kind of optimistic thinking,
inscribing optimistic phrases in our minds. Prayer or meditation can
also engrain positive habits of mind. Once we have acquired the skill
of being optimistic, it’s a lot like learning to swim or ride a
bicycle.
