One of the benefits I've found in trying to live more fully in the "now" is that when I'm doing so, it allows me to let go of a number of anxieties about my future that tend to weigh on me--and some of these can get quite heavy! When you're weighed down by stress, it makes it harder to be productive...to be efficient. Letting go of all that extra unnecessary "stuff" allows me to use MORE of myself in the present...allows me to be myself more fully...allows me to be more present IN the present, rather than just haphazardly showing up to make an appearance.
My latest focus in training myself to live more fully in the present is to focus on choosing joy. I think we have a lot more control over our attitudes than we often allow ourselves to believe. Not that unfortunate things don't happen or we don't ever get sad, or angry, but we have options in what we are going to do with all of that in the aftermath. Will I cling to the anger, or put myself in position to learn to let go of it?
As I was walking on my lunch break the other day, my ruminations on choosing joy developed into a concrete scenario. I was able to simplify it into a single, literal question:
If I were to die right now, am I dying "happy"?
It was later that I fleshed this idea out into the three-second rule. I needed to clarify when "right now" was. If I wasn't "happy", of course, I needed enough time to supposedly "fix" the scenario before the actual death moment. So, asking the question with zero seconds on the clock made no sense. I considered five or 10 seconds. How long does it take to choose joy? Now, to some, 10 seconds may not seem like a long time, but it can actually be an eternity. I reflected on my workout from the day before, when Bob Harper was counting backwards and I was in fact literally about to die: that count-down was only from eight seconds! So, zero was too short, and eight was too long. Five seconds? Three seconds? How long does it take to let go of what we're stuck on in the moment and pick something that makes us happy?
That's when I realized something key: Choosing joy does not mean fixating on some particular thing that "makes us happy". It is found in the letting go of all those things that create a joy dam.
Isn't it human nature to want to be happy? Certainly, our longings for joy often get distorted by all our dysfunctional behavior, but at our core I believe that desire is the same in all of us. Thus, I believe there is a reservoir of joy in all of us--a wellspring just waiting to be tapped, if we can learn to let go of all our "dam" crap. It's not being joyful that requires effort--the work is found in the removal of all the things that impede our natural predisposition for joy.
Now, if it turns out that we are still alive in seconds four and five and beyond, then we are free to move on and address any and all these topics more fully--we've managed to escape death this time around and have the luxury of returning to address any of those things that came up for us during those three seconds when our life passed before our eyes. Being in the now does not mean the future is not important. Learning to let go, in the present moment, of those things that impede our happiness is also what helps free us to be able to have the courage, and strength to be able to deal with those very same issues in the long term.
But for now, let's just keep it simple. You've got three seconds left. It's time to choose joy. Are you with me?
