3 Alan Watts Inspired Zen Ideas to Refocus Perception & Enjoy Life

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 50^th 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 50^th 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.”

-      Alan Watts

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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