It’s time to get real with you all.
I've found it incredibly difficult to write blog posts this
time around. I’ve dabbled in blogging before – sharing terrible recipes with
even more terrible pictures/sharing my thoughts and rants – and the posts were more conversational (and often littered with curse words). I wanted to stay
professional this time around because a.
I’m a grown up now, b. I’m trying to
turn writing and educating into a career, and c. I know how to write relatively well, I might as well use what I
learned in school.
But here’s the thing – I’m not in school anymore. You guys
aren’t my professors. And rather than feel professional, I felt pretentious and
fake. And overwhelmed.
I want to talk about real things. Things that might be
controversial. Things that might tug on your heartstrings. Things that I might
not have all the answers for – hint, pretty much everything. And
finally, things that might bore you, but that I need to get off my chest.
I started this blog as a resource for people to use for
health, fitness, nutrition, and motivation; but I also started it as a release.
I’ve been through some ups and downs, peaks and troughs,
mountains and valleys – you get the
picture – on my transition from a relatively decent student in Animal
Science to an unemployed, out-of-school, writer and philanthrapreneur (made it up, sorry 'bout it). And
guess what? The downs are really hard. They’re emotionally taxing. I’m
experiencing a range of emotions I never thought possible. Do they make me want
to give up and go back to a world of security, validation, and comfort? Sometimes, hell
yes. Am I going to? Absolutely not.
I’ve been reading the book Talent is Overrated by Geoffrey Colvin and central to Colvin’s
argument that Talent is, in fact, overrated, is Ericsson’s concept of ‘deliberate practice’, which is
essentially what the best and the successful do differently than the norm
(Ericsson et al. 1993).
One of the best points about deliberate practice that
Colvin describes is that it must exist outside of your comfort zone if you ever
want to achieve anything great. You must practice things you’re not good at,
push yourself, and attack your weaknesses.
What
does this have to do with me and my downs? In order to succeed, live the life I
imagined, and follow my bliss – I need to get comfortable with being outside my
comfort zone. Sometimes, I’m going to edge into the panic zone and want to
retreat back into the comfort zone, which is fine – it’s human. But I can’t
stay in there long. And as I keep pushing the boundaries of my learning zone,
I’m going to make the panic zone smaller so that one day all that exists is
infinite learning potential, success, and happiness.
During my downs, my times of panic, and my moments of
insecurity and fear, I’ve had people question whether or not I’m happy. I hate
that. Happiness doesn’t exist on a yes or no continuum for me. It exists in the
here and now and is dependent on what I’m working towards. If I’m doing
something that’s going to ultimately lead to some unfulfilled, comfortable
existence – then in the present moment, no, I’m not happy. However, if I’m
working towards something that’s challenging, in line with my goals, philosophies,
and ideas of bliss, then even if I appear distressed, panicked, sad, or fearful
I am still happier than I would be if I were in the first situation.
But these distressing emotions are something I need to
learn how to handle. They’re not normal, they’re part of the panic response and
they can be managed. So I've come up with 3 Alan Watts Inspired Zen Ideas to refocus my perception. Why Alan Watts? Well, I've seen this video (below) kicking about recently and it happens to be one of my favourite lectures. Of course it's about finding what you love and following it with all your heart. But it's nice to see it getting some popular culture, viral PR and it inspired this post.
1. Don’t
visualise the millions. Enjoy picking up the pennies.
The end
goal is important – don’t get me wrong. But when I focus all my attention on
making it to regionals, founding a fantastic charity that transforms the youth
population in the UK, staying in the country, celebrating my 50th
wedding anniversary, and penning a best-seller – I lose the enjoyment that I
get from the smaller tasks that made me love those things in the first place.
Workouts
become a chore to get to something larger; the planning of the charity becomes
stressful and full of what-if’s instead of why not’s; figuring out how to stay
in the country becomes more a problem of time instead of enjoying each day I
have here; visualising a 50th wedding anniversary causes one to
forget that each day, each moment must be spent in love and in effort if you
want to eventually reach that day; and I have to enjoy every word I write, not
labour over them because of insecure feelings.
“For unless one is able to live fully in the
present, the future is a hoax.
There is no point whatever in making plans for a future, which you will
never be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will still be living
for some other future beyond. You will never, never be able to sit back
with full contentment and say, "Now, I've arrived!" Your entire
education has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing
you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.”
There is no point whatever in making plans for a future, which you will
never be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will still be living
for some other future beyond. You will never, never be able to sit back
with full contentment and say, "Now, I've arrived!" Your entire
education has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing
you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.”
-
Alan Watts
-
2. Looking
behind is a sure way to run straight into a big, fat, metal pole.
If I’m constantly looking behind me
and going over every mistake, every thing I might have done, every person who
has hurt me, every lift I’ve missed, every word I’ve misspelled, every day I
didn’t post, every time my trust has been violated – guess what, I’m going to
run straight into something I didn’t see coming because I was so busy creating
problems from the past. And it’s going to hurt. It’s that thing about something
blind-siding you on an idle Tuesday that we’ve all heard before. The worst part
is I set myself up for it. Constantly dwelling on the past causes the past to
morph into the present – because there is no past, there is only the present
and if you think of the past the past becomes your present (did you follow
that? Because I’m not even sure if I did).
Not only that, I’m going to miss
out on awesome things and opportunities that are walking right in front of me
because my head was too busy turned downwind. Nothing good ever goes downwind. Pumba’s
friends knew that. Yes, that was a Lion King reference.
“We think that the world is
limited and explained by its past.
We tend to think that what
happened in the past determines
what is going to happen next,
and we do not see that it is exactly
the other way around! What is
always the source of the
world is the present; the
past doesn't explain a thing.
The past trails behind the
present like the wake of a ship
and eventually disappears.”
- Alan Watts
3. Remember
the title of the damn blog.
By not visualising the millions, we
avoid developing tunnel vision into the future. By not looking behind us, we
avoid dwelling on the past and bringing it into the present for us to run into
over and over again. When we avoid doing both of these things, we allow
ourselves to do the most important thing:
Live in the present – every moment,
on the minute.
It seems so simple! And yet even I
have trouble doing it. Now that’s embarrassing. I need to practice what I
preach. I’m going to enjoy writing every single word for you all. Forget about
the mistakes I’ve made. Forget my time limit in the UK. Attack every workout
with the same enthusaism and ecstatic fear as I did when I first started. Love
completely without expectations or resentment. And remember that I am human.
I am experiencing the rapture of
being alive by existing outside my comfort zone. Acknowledging that sometimes
things are going to suck and I’m going to panic. Remembering that the past and
future will try to penetrate my thoughts, and that sometimes that’s ok. And
developing the strength to push the limits of my learning zone further than I
ever thought possible.
“We are living in a culture
entirely hypnotised by the illusion of time,
in which the so-called
present moment is felt as nothing but an
infinitesimal hairline
between an all-powerfully causative past and an
absorbingly important future.
We have no present.
Our consciousness is almost
completely preoccupied with memory
and expectation. We do not
realise that there never was, is,
nor will be any other
experience than present experience.
We are therefore out of touch
with reality.
We confuse the world as
talked about, described,
and measured with the world,
which actually is.
We are sick with a
fascination for the useful tools of names and
numbers, of symbols, signs,
conceptions and ideas.”
- Alan Watts
With all that said, when times get rough repeat after me:
Be
present, be vulnerable, be open – immerse yourself into the current of life,
which has and will forever be the now.
This moment. This minute. Time is ticking. Don’t be afraid.
There are these two young fish swimming
along and they happen to meet an
older fish swimming the other way, who nods
at them and says
"Morning, boys. How's the water?"
And the two young fish
swim on for a bit, and then eventually one
of them looks over at the other and goes
"What
the hell is water?"
- David Foster Wallace
