Don't Bother Trying To Be Stabile

Many individuals looking for greater peace and happiness in their busy lives run into their share of obstacles.

One of the most common is the belief that once you have become aware that more balance is possible, you should somehow become stabilized in this new, improved place and be unaffected by life’s daily dramas.

Perhaps you have established a few simple, daily routines; exercise, quiet times, breath work, meditation, gratitude journaling, etc.   And while the benefits of any of these activities may be subtle, you can immediately feel the difference.

Typically, any of these sorts of practices make a good day great, an average day better, and a bad day more tolerable.  But they do not make you bullet proof.  There will always be certain circumstances or people that will get your goat and catapult you back into reactions that you may have hoped you had left behind forever.

Don’t despair. You are not hopeless. You are just human.

It is an unreal expectation to imagine that your best intentions and practice will somehow stabilize you in some perma-zen state that will leave behind all your old conditioning. (Even Jesus, the Buddha and all the Sages and Saints had their bad days too.)

Forget about trying to stabilize yourself in some perfect state.  Forget about judging yourself as being a master at this or completely hopeless. Your job is to simply remember you are that which is observing the coming and going of all states, thoughts and emotions.

The Mind As an Obstacle to Peace

In my life and business coaching practice, I run into a lot of people looking for more success and happiness in one form or another. Occasionally, some of these clients have concluded that their greater fulfillment is not going to be found in usual playgrounds of additional accomplishment in their; career, relationships, hobbies, fitness, fame, or their bank account.

And anyone who has ever had a deeper calling, who has genuinely longed to find what it true and lasting in life, has inevitably run into a few predictable roadblocks associated with  the limitations of the human mind.  Because changing, reasoning with, convincing, pacifying  or sustainably satisfying the mind can seem like an impossible job.

Fortunately, there are many solutions offered.  Various spiritual traditions attempt to solve this problem by offering the a seeker a particular set of long-established, widely-held beliefs, coupled with the invocation that it is a virtue to have faith and not to question.  This works for billions of people, and yet causes others to flee.

Other spiritual traditions teach elaborate practices to still the mind. This approach can keep many people busy for years. Yet, whatever stillness is momentarily achieved, quickly evaporates and sends the seeker back to do yet more practice.

If you are lucky, and ready, you may run into a teacher that can help you realize that any attempts by the mind, to manage the mind, will at best provide limited and temporary benefit.  Ultimately, the conquest of thought is the simply, direct, recognition that you are not your thoughts.  A thought may seem very close, intimate and personal, yet you begin to notice the real, unchanging you, is what is witnessing thought.

I am pretty sure I read this type of instruction a few hundred times from a variety of sources before I was ready to actually personally explore it.  And finding the appropriate guide is a matter of timing and grace. However, once it is directly verified that you are more than your mind, you will come to see that mind is really not your enemy. It is simply one of the many ways the energy of life expresses itself.  All thoughts and emotions, and all life circumstances do in fact come and go. And there is an unchanging part of you that really does witness it all without affect.  Further, this part of you needs nothing, resists nothing and thus is always quite content.

So, ironically, it is only when the mind stops seeking its own improvement or dissolution, that it is truly at peace.   And it is only when you stop identifying with or trying to control the mind, that you can simply ignore it out of relevance.

It is there. It is useful. But it is not who you are. It is just part of what you experience.  

Proceed With Joy

When I was a child and worrying about something, my mother would often ask, “Aren’t you taking yourself too seriously.”

At the time I simply took this as a reminder that the current problem will probably pass, just like all that preceded it, and that I should not worry too much.

Years later, and after working with over 1100 clients in my coaching practice, I am beginning have a deeper appreciation of this inquiry.

In fact I have come to believe that whenever you are not at peace, not experiencing simple, everyday joy, you are probably taking yourself too seriously. By this I mean, there is probably a part of you that has judged this current set of circumstances to be unfavourable. And so the thinking mind has left the moment and is out in the imagined future somewhere working out plans to overcome all threats. Or, alternatively, the mind has left the present moment and is looking backwards to re-hash, re-play, or otherwise dwell on some event that it is judging as significant.

So here is a suggestion, if you are not at this very moment feeling peaceful and happy, simply ask yourself what do I need to let go of to be at peace?

Yes there are times in our day to day life to evaluate, choose and move into action. But it is not personal. If you have too much stress in your life, or too little joy, chances are you are taking things a little too personal. It’s just life. It happens. Trust you will be able to respond as necessary.  

In the meantime, proceed with joy.       

At The End of Each Day

I talk a lot about choice with my coaching clients. Many are so busy that they simply live out of habit. Each day thinking, feeling, and reacting to their life in the exact same way, making few conscious choices.

This sort of living wears them out and makes them feel unengaged, burnt-out, as if they are not living the life they are meant to live.

The journey to higher awareness involves moving just far enough away from automatic living to make choices, choices that align you with what is most important. (Those parts of life you value most, that engage you, express your unique gifts, and provide meaning to your life.)

At the end of each day you can end up with more in your head, more in your hands, or more in your heart.  What are you choosing today?

Challenge For Today

Just for today, why don’t you conduct the following experiment; do not mind how you feel.

By all means feel what you feel. Just don’t give importance or preference to any particular feeling.

Simply let every feeling appear, do its dance, and move on without choosing to identify with any one of them.

Do not mind how you feel. Simply refuse to label yourself as happy, sad, anxious, excited, etc.

Experiment with this. Let me know what you discover.

Life and Business Coach Steve Mitten

Observing Your Thoughts

Have you ever taken the time to truly observe your thoughts?

You have thousands a day. Many are trivial. Many are ridicules. Some are emotionally charged and can hijack your attention for hours. A few may be sublime.

Have you ever gone through the exercise of simply choosing not to engage or entertain any of the thoughts that are auditioning for your attention?  If not, I encourage you to try it sometime.  Simply sit down in some quiet place and remove your attention from any thought that presents itself to your awareness.

Some thoughts will be easy to ignore. Others will keep coming back.  However if you keep letting them go, keep shifting your attention to anything else  - your breath, an inner feeling of affection, simply experiencing the nuances of a current sense perception; sight, sound, feeling, etc. – what do you notice?  After even 10 minutes of such an exercise, what do you feel?

As Pascal once said, “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” 

If you spend even 10 minutes a day with the intention of thinking less, and experiencing more, it can bring great gifts into your life.  (I have seen this very experiment create a lot of value to hundreds of life and business coaching clients over the years.)  Gradually you can begin to use the mind for practical issues, but not refer to it constantly for a sense of identity.

Coaching And Enlightenment.

Recently someone asked if I thought that coaching could help a client achieve enlightenment.

The short answer is no.

In my experience, a genuine seeker with a longing for “Enlightenment”  (such an overused word) is not going to get what they want through conventional coaching.   They might become more spiritually aware. They might become more aligned with their higher values. They may benefit in a dozen other valuable ways.  But true awakening involves the actual falling away of the part of us that is seeking to get better, or attain some object called “enlightenment”. 

This is not something that you can even speak of effectively, because any concepts simply create more fuel for the part of us that is trying to figure it all out.

In my opinion, 999 out of 1000 people called to this sort of inquiry need to find a teacher and a path that resonates with them.   The right teacher will meet them wherever they are, in their journey to higher awareness, and help them eventually recognize that it is only when the mind stops seeking, that it is one with what is.

For those of you looking a place to start, I suggest you visit http://www.stillnessspeaks.com/ and watch some of the videos of various established teachers.

Good luck,

Steve.