Workweek...Weekend...workweek...weekend...workweek...weekend...
Life can be very repetitive. How does one break the monotonous nature of life?
My life can be quite boring. I work, work out, eat, sleep, spend time with my dog, and repeat. It appears that we often spend a lot more time on the things that we don't care that much about than the things that are closest to our heart. If you think about the happiest moments and times, they seem to go by very fast. There are high spikes of high adrenaline and happiness balanced with a lot of time getting through life and getting stuff done.
How do we get more enjoyment from life? I have a tendency to drive forward in anything and everything I do. My drive has carried me on and helped me get where I am now, and at the same time, it is also my biggest enemy. My drive can often make me feel like I'm driving through life without any feeling of satisfaction. The focus on moving forward can be very productive but also very unsatisfactory. When my "driver" gets very active, the only thing it focuses on is to drive forward to the next thing faster and better. It hinders me from being fully present and enjoying the moment. I stop paying attention to the joy or suffering I am experiencing at the moment. Yes, there can be something good about suffering too. As such, I become typically unhappy when I "achieve" the goal I set my mind onto as I am not accurately forecasting the value that the plan has for me. Once I achieve it, the goal becomes close to meaningless. Anyone else had that feeling?
I have decided to practice presence which is my way of tricking my mind into becoming more still and aware of the moment. Be mindful of what I feel and what I think. I acknowledge the feeling and thoughts for what they are and then let them go without any judgment. Judgment has been pre-wired in us since the history of humankind and what had kept us alive when we had to protect ourselves from stronger preditors. Judgment gets engraved into our minds since we are kids. Ever since we come into this world, as kids, we are taught and reminded by adults what good and bad means and what it represents. What if we were able to strip off the label of what good and bad mean? How would it change our perception if we were to not judge experiences as good or bad, but we could take them for exactly what they are - an experience and a new opportunity to learn. Would we be happier? Would we learn faster or slower? Would the world be in a bigger or a smaller chaos?
