Focus on Life™

Talking with David McMillan about Me, myself and I, worrying, and Who am I?

 

 Episode 4 [23:15m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Everything happens in the moment. Still we slip away from the awareness of it—many times a second. The mind wonders to the past or longs for the unhappened future but all these are realised in the moment, now.

Most of us are not awake even while not sleeping. The drowsing happens while living the daily life. We live out of our memory and not out of our creativity (imagination) like Les Brown once phrased. Living in the past means that we are repeating ourselves. We reproduce the thoughts, emotions, and actions from our past moments. All this happens over and over again. We are happy to stick with what we already know. Or as the case most of the time is we are swimming in the negative thoughts of fear extrapolating possible future events based on our past experiences.

Drifting away from the moment is nothing more than dreaming. And sadly this state is so heavy that it seems that nothing can create a state of waking up—even for a few split seconds. Fortunately everyone has those moments of being in the moment. Those intense feelings of being truly aware of presence carry a lasting memory print for a long time. Some experience them while doing sports, others by walking in the nature, and even encountering a close-by situation can trigger a heightened awareness.

Bu how to live now? In essence it’s very simple—you just focus on the moment 100%. This means that you do not think about the past or project a future, and keep on being in the moment only one moment at a time. Some call this meditation and indeed your life becomes a continuous mediation. And like any practise persistence makes a master. Don’t except quick wins or fast results. Actually more you expect the less you can be in the moment. Life is not about achieving but experiencing second by second.

The great news is that everybody can only live now. So there is nothing to learn or become—only to realise. The biggest hurdle is to overcome one’s fears. Our past haunts us, and as long as we have not dealt with it we are distracted from the moment. Living in the moment requires that we are in balance—exactly in the middle between the past and the future without any tilting to either direction.

We are conservative by nature. We tend to enclose ourselves.
Some of the fences we build are physical and more tangible,
while others are more abstract. We want to protect ourselves
from the outside world and its renewal.

External fences are easier to conceive. They have many
faces, from muscle building to creating physical security
measures, all the way to building wealth and monetary riches.
Mental fences are harder to pinpoint and the most difficult
for us to realize. We hide behind our own habits, traditions,
mental and conceptual principles and rules, ways of behavior,
and subconscious patterns. These mental barriers limit our
perception and understanding of the realities of the world.
They filter the outside world for us and give us our sense of
security and control. But by doing so, they also prevent us
from renewing and developing ourselves. Our existence is
based on our self-perception, and the fences are guarding us
from anything that is not known and familiar to us—the
unpleasantness of the external world.

When are we very positively surprised and overwhelmed?
When something out of the ordinary and unexpected hap-
pens, something we have not thought about—something
fresh and new to us. This happens outside of our (previous)
experience and knowledge, and it makes us happy and joyful.
We would love to be more spontaneous, but it is so hard and
difficult. Why?

We love to plan things. It is great to think ahead and imag-
ine the details and occasions we want to accomplish and live
by. Planning is something we do naturally. Most of it is done
purely for practical reasons and for everyday routines. We
need to schedule and arrange our life in a way so we can take
care of our obligations and duties. Worrying is a special type
of planning—it concentrates on the negative issues and their
potential occurrences. We are not actually “planning” for an
occurrence, but being afraid and speculating about all the pos-
sible outcomes and issues that could happen. A positive type
of planning is dreaming. We dream about great things that we
would like to achieve and gain, moments and experiences that
we think would make us happy. Nevertheless, all of this is just
our mind game. Some of it is practical and necessary, but
most of it is a total waste of energy and effort. Actually, it can
prevent us from experiencing more and greater things than
we are ever capable of dreaming (or planning) about.

Our plans are derived from our experience and knowledge.
They project the future as we can imagine it. This makes the
future predictable and “ordinary” for us. We can imagine it
and dream about it—live it in our mind beforehand. It cannot
include anything that we cannot know about. Certainly it has
nothing to do with the reality. We have no means to plan the
future. Still, planning often makes our life “boring.” And it
makes it feel like every day is the same and repeats the same
patterns over and over again. No day is any different, and
nothing new happens. Sound familiar?

When we plan things, we are preparing to live according to
our plan, which means that we are not open for the moment
or anything new. We live according to our already thought
through plan, merely executing and implementing that plan.
Like robots that “think” what happens next and follow the
preprogrammed plan, we do not actually live in the moment.
This makes life boring and predictable. We “hypnotize” and
make ourselves believe our plan, and then we see and hear
what we want to hear and see—according to our own manu-
script—we create a catch-22. How can we experience some-
thing new if we always live according to our existing
knowledge?

Sometimes we run into an interesting person or do some-
thing crazy. These are the times when we live in the moment.
We are not planning but experiencing and letting life carry us
forward. Life offers us many great surprises and opportunities
every day, but we have to be awake and ready to acknowledge
them. Often we appear too busy or occupied to carry out the
daily activities we have planned and expected to accomplish
everything. But it is too scary not to plan. It implicitly tells us
that we might not be in control, something we prefer not to
experience. We would rather plan and know what to expect. It
is safer this way, even though often our mind creates the mis-
ery and sadness because we are too afraid to welcome some-
thing new. It is the unknown we are so scared of, that which
we cannot plan for or know beforehand.

This is the great step we have to take. Once we make it
over the threshold, we realize that all the worrying was for
nothing. Life actually becomes more interesting and exciting
when we are open for the opportunities. Plans are unneces-
sary because life often turns out differently than how we had
imagined it. Being free and living in the moment give us a
tremendous amount of energy to experience and observe
because we are not tied up in planning for the future. Reality
is an even better planner than we are; it is the only thing that
can give us positive surprises. We cannot plan our own joy
and happiness—and we are even less capable of planning to
surprise ourselves! Plan less and experience more. Is that a
plan?

We are in the garbage-creation business. The products and
results are our own creation, and the consequences are observ-
able around the world. Most of the garbage is all in our own
mind. The dumpster in question is not a physical one in its
original form—its derivations can be, however. This huge
dumpster is called our mind. It’s the creator and initiator of all
the garbage. Simply, that is its pure existence and raison
d’être. How does this polluter work?

We live only in the moment—now time. Nothing else is
available to us. Nevertheless, we can do various things with
this now time but still everything happens in the moment.
For example, we can think back through our memories and
reflect on everything that has happened. We can also project
the future and wonder or worry about the next moments.
Still, all of these actions are happening in the moment. Our
sole decision is just how to use every moment. We can either
concentrate on the moment or opt for escaping from the real-
ity, either to our past or into the projected future our mind
creates for us.

There would not be any dumpster if we always live in the
moment. We would take life as it comes and make the neces-
sary decision as is required. Very simple, no worries at all.
Things just happen, and life would be only the issues that
emerge to us, some good and some less desirable—all the
same because we can only take them as they come.

The above is unfortunately not the way we live. We prefer
to be in “control.” Therefore, we have to know what happens
next. Otherwise we could not have this control illusion. How
much control do you have if you cannot predict the future
outcomes? Well, this is exactly the paradox. In practice, we are
not in control, but we believe we are. Our way of living is
based on the trick our mind plays on us. And the results are
the huge dumpster we are dragging behind us.

Our mind knows only what we know. It is limited to its
own boundaries and it is not objective where we are con-
cerned. It cannot exist without us. We produce the mind.
Therefore, it is also the one who creates for us the future—the
illusion of time in the moment. The mind works very simply:
It fabricates the future from our personal experiences and
knowledge. In other words, it extrapolates the past and the
current moment to the future based on its previous knowl-
edge. It’s very logical and nice; it’s also very real and accept-
able to us—after all, it’s a familiar future to us. We have
created it and can understand it. It is easy to accept and fall in
love with. How can we not like our own creation?

Our mind provides us with illusions of the future that we
take for granted and as true to us. These snapshots create dif-
ferent kinds of feelings, emotions, and sensations in us. The
mind projects usually either good or bad outcomes. The previ-
ous we dream about and the latter we are scared of or worried
about. These outcomes cause new feelings, and the snapshots
or pictures start to have existences of their own. They can also
create new outcomes and sensations in us. Often, the outcome
is that we cling to these illusions and feelings that arise in us.
We forget the actual projected route to the future moment and
see only the “prediction of the future. “Now it’s true to us. We
are sure it is going to happen, no doubt about it. It must hap-
pen. How horrible or how wonderful.

This is the moment when we produce the garbage. After
seeing the beautiful outcome we cling to it. This is something
we definitely need or want. Yes, no doubt about it. We are
urged to direct our actions toward this outcome. At the
moment we are not yet there but for us it is possible because it
seems so real for us, thanks to our mind. Now we have two
different points to compare: the current moment and the pro-
jected future outcome. An urge or desire has been aroused in
us. Now we know what we want. This can happen in various
of forms: greed, anger, frustration, jealousy, self-justification,
and so on, depending on our projection and the gap between
the now time and the imagined future. From this point
onward, we live in the moment only in a manner that is
directed and geared toward the outcome we illusioned. In
other words, we have accepted the future our mind projected
and are compromising in our principles and behavior in order
to make sure that the future will happen the way we desired it
to occur.

You still remember how all this started? Our mind fabri-
cated a future for us based on the experiences and knowledge
we have at the moment. It did not have any capabilities to
provide us any directions or predictions of the actual reality
that will emerge. Still, we believed the nice or horrible sce-
nario it provided us with and now we are living like if these
illusions are as sure things as our past memories. The compro-
mised garbage is all the things we produced in our mind and
now desire. These compromise and corrupt our behavior and
actions in the now time. Our mind offered us this great future
picture and catered the table with good reasons and justifica-
tions to make it happen.

We no longer observe the world as it emerges. We observe
and see the world only through the lenses our mind produced
for us. We expect our projections to happen. Disappointments
and regret emerge from the realization that the future
occurred some other way than we expected. We are not in
control. We could have even given up and sacrificed some of
our humble and noble principles in our quest to perceive and
“force” the illusioned reality to happen.

The compromised dumpster accumulates and reminds us,
thanks to our mind. It accumulates these memories and fabri-
cates more future outcomes. More garbage coming in—until
we catch the litter itself and get rid of it, just ignore it totally.
We give up our very mind and start living with mindlessness
in the moment. We take life as it emerges and base our actions
on the reality as it comes. What a fresh and pure existence!

We claim to be so busy. What does it really mean, and is it
actually possible?

Being busy means that we are occupied at the moment.
Therefore, we are intensively carrying out the task at hand
and focusing our undivided attention to accomplish this task.
If we really are occupied and in a hurry, we need to concen-
trate and get rid of the tasks one at a time in order to move to
the next one. A metaphor from the computer world would be
a processor who is either idle or busy, never in between.

In ordinary language, our busyness (any relation to busi-
ness?) means something else. We mean that we should do or
achieve a lot of things in a certain time period. Most of the
time, however, we are not actually occupied in a way that
requires our undivided concentration and attention. Our
busyness has nothing to do with achieving and accomplishing
things. We simply mean that there is something in the future
we would prefer to be doing than what we are doing at that
particular moment. For instance, we have been occupied in a
meeting and now we are headed to the next task. We get stuck
in traffic, but we are not occupied by the traffic because our
mind is urging us to jump ahead and skip this unproductive
moment. Being in traffic is something we would rather not
do—we would much rather be accomplishing the next task.
This is how we are kept “busy.” Similarly, when we are finally
taking care of the next task, we are often not occupied here
either, but thinking about yet another task on our list.

Busyness is our own creation. It has nothing to do with the
real world and actual accomplishment and achievement.
Busyness simply consumes our time and makes us worry
about the future. We trade the current moment for something
we have no influence and control over—the unknown future.

We ignore the now time and, above all, get stressed over
something we can, at that moment, do nothing about. “Being
busy” does not help speed up the traffic while we drive to
another meeting or fast forward the current appointment if
we would prefer to be at the next occasion. Paradoxically,
when we are really accomplishing something that requires our
attention, we cannot be busy—we have no time to think
about “being busy”—we just carry out the task. Therefore, we
should forget the whole concept of busyness and focus on just
doing the things we have at hand.

Looking at our daily life from the outset, we are not really
occupied. Most of our time goes to moving from one place to
another or physically doing something—seldom is our full
and undivided attention required to do something. We actu-
ally have plenty of time to enjoy the moment and observe the
world around us. Stop being busy and occupy yourself for the
actual moment—you might even learn something new.
Busyness directs our attention to the future, which is just an
illusion created by us—it’s not real since we can only live in
the moment. And you are not busy if you have time to think
about being busy.

Many times it looks like we live for our worries. They sur-
round us and follow us everywhere we go. There might be a
lot to worry about or just many tiny issues that pile up and
make us uncomfortable. Worries are always subjective and
they also evolve over time. We learn to cope in life and do not
stress about the same things over and over again. Our subjects
of worrying change, but the basic concept remains intact—we
keep constantly stressing about our future and survival.

We build up expectations and then start to stress about
possible future outcomes. What-if scenarios with different
variations fill our mind and we cannot get past the mind’s
loops. Some of these worries may turn into obsessions and
even disturb our sleep and daily activities.

We worry because we cannot imagine anything else that
we are aware of. This means that our limited perception and
knowledge does not allow us to solve the puzzles our mind
has put in front of us to solve. Often, we are going around
with our thoughts that are dependent on factors that are
beyond our control. We desperately would like to know what
happens before the actual reality materializes. We cannot
stand uncertainty. Actually, we are only afraid of the uncer-
tainty. Even knowing what is going to happen, no matter how
bad, is more bearable than the great uncertainty.

We can continue worrying about everything in our life
nonstop. We can never know the future and, therefore, there
are always possibilities to come up with new unknown issues
or situations. This is not necessary, however. We do not need
to stress about life—it’s totally unnecessary. The paradox just
is that we have to realize this first and then we are liberated
from the catch-22. It is the same with most of the important
facts of life—we have to live them true, gain an insight first.
We have to see the pattern that our mind repeats every time.
It identifies some unknown issues and starts to process them.
This way, our mind keeps us busy—after all, our mind exists
only when we think.

The process to stop worrying can be started by gradual
steps: accomplish the small things first and move to bigger
and more significant items later. When we start to realize that
things do get sorted out and worrying really is unnecessary,
we will finally stop worrying altogether. Worrying has a lot to
do with self-confidence and acceptance. We have to know
and trust ourselves. When we are confident that we can han-
dle and manage in life no matter what comes our way, this
inner confidence will guide us and provide us with inner
peace. We stop worrying about other people and their
responses and thoughts about us. Our greatest concern will
then be to act according to our own intuitions and feeling
about what are the right choices and actions in the situations
at hand. As well, we realize that things that are beyond our
control should not be worried about at all—we simply have to
accept them, as they are and without any denial or resistance.
Facing the facts is often the most difficult part. We do not
want to admit the reality, even though we might somehow
realize it. It is just something too painful to accept.

By worrying we lose a lot of energy. Our mind keeps us
occupied and in the negative thoughts that tie us in a destruc-
tive loop. Instead of finding solutions or positive outcomes,
we are trapped in a loop of thoughts that lead nowhere. The
time we use wondering about our possible future we cannot
then use to find and identify new opportunities that may
bypass us in the meanwhile. Often, the very answers we look
for are offered to us but we simply cannot see them—we are
fixed in our thinking patterns and projected outcomes. In
other words, we are too busy worrying and life, and many
good moments and opportunities as well, passes us by.

Those people with great wisdom have always said that we
should stop worrying. Still, we do not believe them. Our life
has taught us that it will give us unpleasant surprises and liv-
ing hurts. We are afraid of the outcomes. Therefore, we con-
stantly try to avoid any imaginable disturbance or negative
incident. Still, these incidents come when we least expect
them—we cannot avoid them. We even die one day—no
matter how much we worry or think about it. Worrying does
not help us to live. Actually, it does not allow us to experience
and enjoy life as it comes, and it keeps us obsessed about some
future incident that potentially can happen or may not hap-
pen at all. The only one who loses in this game is us.
Worrying is time wasted without any positive outcomes
expected—one of the great lessons to learn in life.

You can see it from the outset. Some people have lots of wor-
ries and they have a large weight on their shoulders; they are
almost buried under the burden. Most of us, however, are
somewhere in between. We have some concerns and troubles
that create stress and tension, but we manage with them. Still,
we cannot say that we are entirely free as a bird and inde-
pendent of any worries. Why is that?

Our life is like a freely flowing river. It has a tremendous
energy but while it can flow without any obstacles, we cannot
feel the power. Every one of us has the same amount of
energy in us. What makes us different is the way we use this
energy. If we just let it flow without any obstacles, things are
easy and there are no worries. We are happy and free of any
burdens. We can do tremendous things and share the happi-
ness with other people as well. We radiate and people love to
be around us. For a few, this is the case. The rest of us block
our energy flow and create bigger or smaller obstacles for our-
selves. These barriers are like a dam. It requires static energy
to keep the water blocked. But when the current gets too
strong, the dam gives way.

Our own resistance and denial create these dams. We want
to be in control and turn our life in the direction we desire; we
refuse to live life as it happens. Or even better, we would like
our life to stay still. Our internal dams are the ones that create
the tension and the bad feelings in us. The greater the disrup-
tion, the bigger the amount of energy required to keep things
status quo. This is the burden we feel on our shoulders.
Sometimes our worries are so big that they start to fill our
entire life. We are really depressed. We are disappointed in
our life. Life has not turned out the way we planned it.
Finally, we accept the new situation and move on. We destroy
the dam and let life flow again. We feel free and anything is
possible—for a small while. Then we start to resist again with
small incremental steps.

If we realize that resistance does not solve anything, it only
postpones the inevitable, we could jump out of the cycle. By
purely accepting the undeniable flow of life without any pre-
dictability, we can set ourselves free. We do not have to resist.
We can just let go and take every moment as it comes—with-
out any expectations or reservations. When there is nothing
to wait for, there is nothing to be disappointed in either. No
surprises. Nothing to stress about. No tension or discomfort.
Only pure living, with the rich variety of entirely new
moments and possibilities every moment.