This seems to be the question the other ones dance around: what can we do to live each day—and life itself—to the fullest? We can thank Roman lyric poet Horace for the popular phrase carpe diem, which he included in a poem in 23 BCE. Loosely translated, it means “seize the day,” or in the context of Horace's poem, “pluck the day, putting as little trust as possible in tomorrow.” It's a mentality a lot of us don't think to adopt until we come face-to-face with mortality, our own or someone else's—and then once we realize it, we often let our awareness get the better of us. The same mental faculties that understand the present is all that's guaranteed whittle away at today with analysis, worry, and judgment. Sometimes we get so bogged down trying to make every day count that we miss out on the day in the process.
Conventional wisdom suggests we should live every day as if it's our last, which isn't exactly the best advice. It might make sense if each day occurred independent of every other, but they do, in fact, connect to form a complete life. Accepting that tomorrow might not exist doesn't change the fact that it quite likely will. If you live the average life expectancy of seventy-eight years, you have 341,640 days—meaning that a tomorrow will arrive 341,639 times. If we lived every day as though we'll literally die at the end of it, a lot of us might assume a hedonistic lifestyle—we'd eat, drink, be merry, and drain our savings and 401Ks in the process. We probably wouldn't work toward any long-term goals. Why bother when today is all there is? Why work harder for an early retirement when retirement isn't on our radar? Why go back to school to advance our career or increase our earning potential when we only need enough for our pleasure today?
To live life to the fullest, we need to balance two simultaneous needs: the desire to reach our full potential and the instinct to enjoy today. We need to allow ourselves every opportunity to blossom over time while creating possibilities for joy in the moment. Sometimes we have to delay gratification but that doesn't mean we can't feel gratified in whatever circumstances we choose.
This year has arguably been one of the fullest of my life. In February, when my unemployment benefits expired, I took on another work-from-home web writing job and set four goals for my future: secure a book deal, transition to self-employment, move in with Ehren, and spend at least a month in Boston with my family. I decided that accomplishing that first goal would give me the green light to do the rest—that if I could just get the book deal, I'd quit my job, move out of my place, and give myself permission to disconnect from my West Coast life for travel and a prolonged East Coast stay. That's precisely what happened in May 2010.
Once I got the contract for this book in my hands, I dropped everything else and started making plans for a summer adventure, including time in Vegas, Sedona, New York, and Cape Cod, as well as a month with my family in Boston. I essentially tossed a wrecking ball into my life, and then decided to let the ruins simmer while I played and explored for a while. This may sound like an act of bravery, but remember: deconstruction is the foundation of my comfort zone. I've wiped the slate clean many times before. Some people thrive on consistency; I've always felt far more comfortable with none, my life a tabula rasa that I can pretend will one day be written with only good things.
The real act of bravery was deciding to enjoy the leap instead of dwelling on whether or not it was smart to have faith—to find reward from moment to moment instead of seeing the risk as a means to a better end. That's always what it's been about for me. Everything I did, everything I wanted and grabbed, and everything I eventually released was an attempt to create a perfect life that would be worth fully enjoying. This summer I decided to appreciate what is instead of worrying about what might be.
I watched my sister's face light up when she saw the Vegas strip for the first time and remembered how beautiful the world is when you're not obsessing about yourself. I meditated in a Sedona vortex, like a tiny pebble nestled high above the vast red rock canyon. I slurped oysters with my dad on the Cape and relaxed poolside with my mom while we sipped vodka and sodas and twirled our hair in the same compulsive way. I climbed to the top of the Eiffel Tower with Ehren and his family and, thankfully, didn't hyperventilate from excessive height-induced panic.
And I explored Thoreau's cabin in the woods with my brother after a hike we'd talked about completing for years but had never made the time to take. Standing in that cramped space where Thoreau lived alone for two years and two months—focusing only on the sound of silence, the serene view outside the window, and my gratitude for time with my brother—I understood simplicity more clearly than ever before. It has little to do with access to shingles and bricks and everything to do with the capacity to be fully where we are.
It wasn't hard to do that while traveling and using other people's time-shares, or staying in my parents’ house. Sleeping in a bed I didn't have to buy, eating food I didn't have to work for, and anticipating relaxing days with the family members who missed me easily evoked a sense of appreciation. What I didn't know was how to carry my mindfulness with me through the fall when life got busy again. If the past was any indication, it was entirely likely I'd crawl into my turtle shell with to-do lists lining the interior and only occasionally pop out my head to reinsert my caffeine drip. I very well could get tangled in obligations, responsibilities, possibilities, and stresses and eventually collapse under the weight of my ambitions and perfectionism. I saw the meticulous writing on the wall, and hoped that maybe I wouldn't have to choose between a peaceful today and a limitless tomorrow.
At first, I let my plans and action steps sweep me away in a tornado of busyness. On week one back home, I was drowning in goals, thinking maybe the smartest thing was to have no goals at all. It was so much easier to feel satisfied while traveling, when I had nothing to do but be me with the people I love. It was easier to be me in a time without objectives, when I didn't have to worry about not doing a good enough job, or doing my best and failing anyway.
Then I decided to consider a new possibility: maybe I could have a lot to do without stressing about where it was leading. Maybe the most exciting possibility was the possibility of being and enjoying things exactly as they are even while working toward what could be. There will always be twenty-four hours in a day. Whether or not those hours feel overwhelming and harried is completely up to us. It's taken me several years, multiple exhausted panic attacks, and far too many Red Bulls to realize it, but it is possible to work hard without completely losing myself in the tasks. It is possible to get everything done without pushing through each moment, chasing a carrot on a stick that will always be just slightly out of reach.
Over the last few months, I've written from coffee shops and the beach instead of creating a me-shaped dent in my couch; I've bisected the workday with hikes, burrito runs, and exploratory drives in my new neighborhood; and I've given myself permission to do nothing when there's still lots to be done because, as my own boss, I am the only person who can tell me to stop and take a break.
Today Ehren asked me if I wanted to play basketball with him down the street. At 5′1″ and with the upper body strength of a toddler and the coordination of a basset hound on skis, I instinctively mumbled no and continued clacking away on my laptop keys. After all, I'm still not finished with this book and my inbox won't empty itself. Then something compelled me to stop and try something new. So what if he destroyed me on the court and I felt bored in about twenty minutes? Just getting outside was a choice to open up to possibilities.
After we arrived, he tried to teach me to play defense, which I tailored into a combination of shirt grabbing, tackling, and forced piggybacking right before he went to shoot. For a while I sprinted, dribbled, and pretended to learn, but I didn't do that because I wanted to be able to play basketball beyond the HORSE game I grew up playing with my brother. I did it because I know he loves the sport, and sharing it with him seemed special, albeit clumsy and a little embarrassing.
Like clockwork, I lost interest just shy of a half-hour in, but that was actually perfect timing. A real game was developing across the way, which Ehren could join, and an impossibly green patch of land was pulling me like a grassy magnetic field.
As I nestled myself into the earth beneath a mammoth tree, noticing shards of sunlight on my arms from the space between the branches and dozens of shadows strolling across the lawn, I felt blissful and calm. It was a lot like the way I usually felt when I quit an unsatisfying job or purged myself of all responsibilities. It was the same sense of lightness and ease, and yet I knew there was still so much I didn't know—if my work was paying off, if I was working smart or just hard, or if the life I was creating would work for me better than the one that I had prior. In this moment of time, everything was working right, and yet the moment didn't depend on my circumstances. I felt a genuine sense of freedom, and it had nothing to do with what I did or had to do.
I suddenly realized I could have been anywhere. That tree could have sat outside my parents' house, where it's undoubtedly freezing this autumn day; it could have grown from an unlikely sliver of earth in Times Square, like a beacon of stability amid the urban chaos; it could have sprung through the pavement of the Golden Gate Bridge, placing me smack-dab in the middle of swerving traffic; it could even have been a prop on a movie set near my current home in L.A. Regardless of where that tree sat, where I sat beneath it, and what went on around it, I would have felt satisfied with being. My peace didn't depend on a specific locale or activity. It grew from a place deep inside me—a part of me that consented to be part of the world, even as it changes like the seasons around me. A part of me that had finally learned fully living starts with fully being.
John Lennon said, “Time you enjoyed wasting was not wasted.” While I've learned there is nothing more valuable than the capacity to value your own time, I have to admit it's not easy to do on an ongoing basis—both because life inevitably involves struggle and because the mind likes to cling to problems, stress about them, and experience even more of them while planning to avoid them.
There's no reason to look back on a happy moment as somehow misallocated, but this idea does bring up some questions. Is enjoyment the sole barometer for a life lived fully? If we can simply take solace in enjoying our time, then how do we know when to push through discomfort to open ourselves up to something new? At what point do we sacrifice our enjoyment for someone else's or for the greater good? Looking back on the moments that we didn't enjoy, should we ascertain that they were all wasted? And is enjoyment as simple as choosing to enjoy or does it require some type of advanced planning?
With these thoughts in mind, I asked on Twitter, “How can you make each day count?”
Make each day count by forgetting the past and not expecting the future.∼@Scottstimo
To make each day count, simply realize that it will never again be today after today. ∼@ILivin
Be present in the moment and observe the wonderful things happening around you. ∼@littlemsgg
Stay present to how very small we are in the universe, yet how beautiful. Live in the beauty. ∼@rmcoplon
Live life with love and compassion. Live it like it's your last day and live it to the maximum. Life is sweet so make it sweeter! ∼@lifeofhappiness
If you agree that time is precious and each day matters, you could surmise that you squandered the days that you spent bored, isolated, angry, resigned, or in any other way disconnected from joy. From there, you can get caught up in what you should have done and let even more time slip away while you rehash, assess, and judge how and who you've been.
One of the most common misconceptions in life is that what we did yesterday has to somehow dictate what we can do or be today. It doesn't. We never have to be limited by who we've been. At any time, we can decide to be or do something different and totally redirect the trajectory of our lives. In order to do this, we need to know that we are the only one keeping score, and we truly can wipe the slate clean not only on any morning but also at any time. The “day” when we decide to live out loud can start at any moment.
The late John Wooden, a UCLA basketball coach, once received a piece of now famous advice from his father: make each day your masterpiece. It's an interesting choice of words, because artists are famously perfectionist about their work. In my mid-twenties, I modeled for life-drawing classes in an attempt to heal my relationship with my body. I never met a single painter who felt satisfied with the canvas at the end of a class. There was always the thought of another glimpse at the model, another stroke, or another touch to bring the work to life. Paul Gardner wrote, “A painting is never finished. It simply stops in interesting places.” The same is true of our days. There will always be more we could have done, and yet to truly live the next day to the fullest, we need to let go of worries about what we did or didn't do the day before.
Perhaps the best advice is not to make every day your masterpiece, but instead to come to your canvas every day. Just show up. Instead of dwelling on what you didn't do yesterday, do something about it now. Instead of analyzing the choices you could have made, make better choices now. Instead of giving yourself a hard time for what you should have done, realize you did the best you could and decide to do the best you can now. At the end of your life, the moments that you will remember won't be the ones when you sat judging your life and yourself. It won't be a montage of times when you curled up alone, contemplating the mistakes you made or the things you should have done. The memories you'll have will be visions of action—the activities and events you enjoyed, the time you spent with people you love, and the moments when you engaged with life in brave and daring ways.
I've started jogging at a park near my home where there's a track, a field, and a playground. Every time I go, I fight with the instinct to stop running and instead jump on a swing and wait for someone to come give me an underdog—less because I want to engage in childlike play and more because I always told myself I'd never run unless I was being chased. I just don't enjoy it, but I took up the hobby because it was a simple, free way to exercise, and that seemed like my only option.
It takes me several minutes to get from my starting point on the track to the point directly in front of the playground, and only a few seconds to pass that little oasis of fun. It's a struggle every time as I notice waddling toddlers, rambunctious preschoolers, and even chubby little babies perched in strollers, looking carefree and oblivious to the fun they're missing. The other day, I saw a little girl sitting by herself in the sand. She was tossing it around in handfuls—getting it on her clothes, in her hair, and on the adjacent cement. If it had been a floor, I'd be desperate to Swiffer it. If she'd been my child, I'd feel the need to disinfect her.
In a way, I should be grateful for my OCD-cleaning instincts because they eventually compelled me to stop running and take a closer look. I sat myself on a swing to the left of that child and stared peripherally—didn't want to alarm a nanny or parent. I was fascinated. She had a Band-Aid on her head. I imagined she must have toppled over the day before, learning to walk maybe. Or perhaps she already knew how but, like all toddlers, she wanted to move faster than her drumstick-like limbs would take her. Regardless of what might have happened yesterday, she was completely immersed in the tactile experience of playing with the sand. She wasn't reacting to yesterday's boo-boo; she was getting messy in today's slice of fun. She appeared amused, entertained, and even fascinated by what she could make with her pail and the dirt. The idea of not coming out to play probably had never crossed her mind. In her resilience, enthusiasm, and filthy mindfulness, she was a masterpiece.
Obviously there's a lot to be said for no longer being a toddler, including more socially acceptable bathroom habits and the capacity to assess feelings before wailing or having a tantrum. But a childlike way of being can be empowering. Kids explore the world with eyes of wonder. They give hugs like they're going out of style. They get messy without worrying about losing control. They say what's on their mind and then leave it behind them. They're endlessly amused by the simplest things—an interestingly shaped rock, a snow cone on a hot day, or a paper towel holder that could be a million different things, from an instrument to a telescope to a house for fairies. They roll with new ideas like there's no alternative to being creative. And they rarely choose to sit around feeling bad when they could get out and find some fun. They know that every day won't be fun, but the only way to find out is to take a chance and go.
If you frequently feel like you're just going through the motions:
Give yourself time to explore without any objective or agenda. This might mean taking a walk without anywhere specific to go, or learning something new even though you don't actually need that skill. Simply allow yourself a window to forget about time and instead follow wherever your interests and instincts guide you. Think of this as adult playtime and practice so you can fully show up more often. Exploring is the destination.
Let yourself get messy. This doesn't mean dump sand on your head, although it can, if that's your choice. It simply means loosen up! Resist the urge to wield control over every aspect of how people see you. If you feel like trying something new but you're afraid you'll look silly, do it anyway. It's a whole lot easier to be present when you're not suffocating your presence with fears.
See the new in the familiar. You may very well see a lot of the same things from one day to the next, especially if you follow a routine for work. Make it a point to notice the things that you would otherwise tune out—how there are new flowers growing in front of the house you walk by every day, or the way more people are having lunch at the restaurant near your office. It's difficult to notice these tiny changes when you're caught up in your head. When you actively choose to look for them, you will naturally be more present within your surroundings.
Do something different, completely unnatural to what you would usually do. After a week, “usual” stops existing! ∼@ArnaudJolois
Step out of your comfort zone, take at least one small risk, and do at least one thing that no one says thank you for. ∼@AlexaEldredge
Grab every chance with both hands. It might not be there tomorrow. ∼@squishy3000
Don't live each day as if it's your last—live each day as if it's your first. ∼@cobbwt
Look back with respect and humor, forward with delight and wonder, and enjoy the little things along the way. ∼@JosetteN
With all this talk of being childlike, it's worth mentioning that there are certain faculties we develop in adulthood that serve us well. The other day I read about research related to adolescent brain chemistry and risks. According to cognitive neuroscientist Russell Poldrack, teenagers are especially sensitive to the pleasure sensations they experience when something turns out better than they anticipated. Poldrack and his colleagues at the University of Texas suggest it has to do with positive prediction error—when you expect an experience will end badly but instead you end up pleasantly surprised. Apparently, fourteen-to-nineteen-year-olds receive a greater release of dopamine—the chemical associated with the brain's reward center—when something that could have been catastrophic ends well. This could explain why teens are more likely to experiment with drugs, binge drink, or drive way over the speed limit despite knowing the related risks; the possibility of reward outweighs the fear of consequences. In a very literal way, teens have a lot less fear than adults do.
As adults, most of us are far less likely to take dangerous risks, which is a good thing, so long as we don't let the pendulum swing too far the other way. I've met a lot of people who seem to swaddle themselves in bubble wrap each day, trying to avoid the possible bumps, bruises, and aches associated with vulnerability. One friend of mine actually told me she has decidophobia—the fear of making decisions. She has a ton of regrets about her past, most centered on having missed out on life while she was in a long, unhealthy relationship. She's so terrified of making another decision that she'll later consider wrong that she feels paralyzing anxiety whenever she has to make any decision—even the smallest one. l've seen her have panic attacks over what to do on a Friday night. Sometimes this means she ends up doing nothing at all, feeling secure in the knowledge she didn't make the wrong choice. But no choice is still a choice.
The truth is we can't ever know how something is going to turn out once we take a leap. We may like to think we knew after the fact—the hindsight bias thing—but we can't know. All we can do is trust our gut, find the courage to take action, and then trust that if it doesn't turn out how we hoped, we can handle it. We can take whatever strokes we've put on the canvas and work with them to make something beautiful.
It's not an easy thing to do, and it's why a lot of us get stuck waiting for the right time to act or for some type of sign that it's okay to act at all. When I was deeply entrenched in a waiting place, a voyeur to everyone else's lives, someone told me that life is like driving a car. If you were to get lost, you wouldn't just pull over and wait it out, intellectualizing what the roads might look like in different directions and questioning whether or not you're really qualified or ready to go down certain streets. You'd either start driving and gauge as you go, or you'd get directions and trust them enough to get back on your journey. If you still don't like where you're going, you ask for more help and get right back behind the wheel.
The key is choosing to go—to see what's down those streets. To take a chance. To stop waiting for a guarantee that you know what you're doing and start realizing no one does. We are all learning as we go. No one has it all figured out. No one goes to bed at night feeling fully confident in her decisions. No one knows for sure that a risk is going to pay off. No one can foresee what's coming. That's the beauty of life. It's not a straight line; it's more like an EKG monitor with peaks and valleys. It's a choose-your-own adventure that we can write as we go. And if we get bored, we can pull out the page and start again.
We can also trust that as we move forward and learn, we'll be able to take even smarter risks. According to Howard H. Stevenson, coauthor of Make Your Own Luck: 12 Practical Steps to Taking Smarter Risks in Business, “Every decision is a bet. The question is, how can you make better bets?” Though the book is geared to business-related risks, it offers wisdom to improve our “predictive intelligence” in all areas of our lives. We can get clear about our intentions—what exactly it is we're hoping to create. We can make efforts to understand possible outcomes, so we'll be able to stay open and keep moving as we experience twists and turns. We can connect with other people on our journey so that we're not alone with our risks. And we can prepare well in case a risk doesn't pay off—have a plan B, so to speak—so we can cut our losses and move on if necessary.
One of the perks of running a website that publishes posts related to happiness is that I have access to the analytics of inspiration. I've noticed that some of the most popular posts on TinyBuddha.com are the ones related to risks and possibilities. Someone quits his job to pursue what he really loves or someone takes a sabbatical to travel the world, and the retweets go through the roof. We all want to find the courage to do something that we only dream about—even if it doesn't involve making a massive change in our lives. We all want the motivation to do one of the things we only talk about—to actually write the book instead of just imagining it will be a best seller, or to make the film instead of stopping with the fantasy of an Oscar. Sometimes we're just too afraid of what might go wrong to plow full speed ahead toward everything that could go right.
The truth is, the future could unfold in any numbers of ways—it could be everything we imagined, or nothing like we'd hoped. Even still, the latter could be pleasantly surprising. We can't possibly know until we're there. It's natural to be somewhat afraid of the unknown, and a little caution is healthy. What's important is that we learn to take smart risks in spite of that little voice that says, Go back. It's too hard. It's not worth it. When we're honest with ourselves, we know more often than not, it's worth the risk.
If you feel like you've been playing it safe and you'd like to make a change:
Identify the big things you dream about but think you can only do when you have more money. This might include backpacking in Europe, taking a trip across the country, or quitting your job to do something that you enjoy far more. Forget about what sounds reasonable—let yourself imagine possibilities, the type of things you'd put on a bucket list to do before you kick the bucket.
Start with acceptable alternatives. There's an astronomically inaccurate but powerful quote that reads, “Reach for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.” Even though the stars are actually farther away, the point is that if you try, you may not get where you wanted to go, but you'll get closer than you are now—and it might be equally amazing. Landing among the stars is also a good way to ease into living the life you dream about. If you can't afford to backpack through Europe, can you start with a shorter trip somewhere else you want to go? If you can't quit your job and pursue your dream full-time, can you scale back and start volunteering in your dream field on the weekend?
Commit to making the big things happen. In a post on TinyBuddha.com titled “On Making the Unreasonable Possible,” Jamie Hoang referred to this concept as “issuing yourself a life ticket.” When you get a driving or a parking ticket, even if you don't have money put aside, you find a way to pay it because you have to. Maybe you cut back on luxuries for a while, or sell something, or borrow from someone you love. You do it because not doing it isn't an option. Think in the same terms about the things you really want to do with your life, and find a way. I don't have the answer as to how—that's up to you to find.
Be thankful you woke up and can go to sleep. ∼@thornlord
Practice gratitude. It's the easiest way to feel the love and get perspective. ∼@atpce
After waking up each morning, greet each new 24 hours as a present and vow to be present to life. ∼@nobodhi
Find a good thing in the bad things thrown to us every day. ∼@acceva
Be grateful for what we have, the relationships, the peace, the work we enjoy. Spread the joy around. ∼@alwayslovely
When I was younger, I found it annoying when someone told me to be grateful for what I had. It seemed like a moral judgment—like people were trying to guilt me into accepting negative situations by implying good people were thankful they were even alive at all. Gratitude seemed less about recognizing actual good things and deeds and more about feeling indebted for the gift of life. Appreciation wasn't about feeling; it was a virtue I seemed to lack.
I later realized that feeling gratitude is as much a gift to myself as it is the ability to recognize gifts in the world around me. Gratitude isn't about ignoring everything that could be improved; it's about shining a light on what's already working, which creates positive feelings about now while enabling positive plans for later. In a very real way, gratitude is the antidote to fear. Fear views events as insufficient, obstructive, and unfair; gratitude sees circumstances as useful, empowering, and ultimately positive. Fear implies there's something to hide or run from; gratitude suggests there's something to embrace. You can only experience positive emotions and results when you're willing to be responsible for creating them—that means tapping into the part of you that recognizes the good both in what is and in what can be.
Positive psychology has positioned gratitude as a doorway to emotional well-being. Research shows that people who regularly express gratitude experience less stress, feel more in control, cope better with life's difficulties, and handle change more effectively than do people who don't. They also focus more on dealing with problems than on stewing in bitterness about having them.
Rumi wrote that “being human is a guest house” and our job is to welcome new arrivals, whether they bring joy or sadness. Some guests, like disease and tragedy, seem a lot less worthy of a warm reception than others, but our fear won't change the fact that life will inevitably involve pain. Refusing to open the door won't send unwelcome guests packing. Once we consent to let them in, we create the possibility of working with them.
A new friend named Alison Miller recently contributed an article to TinyBuddha.com about dealing with challenges in life. Alison always dreamed about the freedom of flying, so she decided to pursue aerial acrobatics as a hobby. If you're familiar with Cirque du Soleil, you've seen this activity before—it's the art of dancing and contorting thirty feet in the air with only silk fabric for support. One day while gearing up for flight, Alison accidently rigged the fabric incorrectly. From fifteen feet up, Alison began plummeting to the ground, and she hit it, shattering her wrists, breaking a foot, and fracturing her spinal vertebrae. Although she acknowledged that she wouldn't go back and relive the event, Alison wrote that she would never in a million years trade the personal growth she experienced—the injury became an awakening.
It took her four months to get back to her life, and in that time she often felt frustrated by the regression in dependence. But she also decided to find opportunity within adversity. By choosing to see her challenge as a teacher, she eventually realized that deep down she felt lonely, insecure, and afraid—that she excelled at giving but struggled with receiving. She had been filling her hours with busyness to avoid experiencing the pain of those feelings. This forced hiatus from life provided an ideal opportunity to receive love, caring, and support from other people. She fell again, this time into a deeper understanding of what her life was lacking. By being grateful for what she got, she was able to give herself more of what she needed.
When we think of seizing the day, we're more apt to visualize ourselves dangling from the silk fabric, feeling invigorated and euphoric, than we are to imagine ourselves lying in bed, feeling grateful for falling. The former is obviously a lot more exciting than the latter, but both are choices to live life to the fullest. Living a day fully means maximizing the possibilities within it. That starts with accepting the day as it is and then finding ways to leverage that for a sense of peace and forward momentum. It's about finding value in the way things are and using that awareness both to live mindfully today and to shape tomorrow.
No matter where we stand, there will always be somewhere else that looks a little brighter. It's only natural to want to get to those places. Most of us know that we tend to regret the things we didn't do more than we regret the things we did and, understanding that, we want every opportunity to do the things we want. When we feel held back, we get angry and resistant. The reality is that there will be some days when we soar and others when we have to stand still. We can choose to feel fully alive regardless. Living life to the fullest means realizing there is something to appreciate and enjoy in both flight and stillness—that regardless of what we're doing, we can choose to feel positive emotions about who we're being.
There are still things in my life that I would like to change. I don't believe that everything is a miracle just because life itself is. But I no longer think gratitude has to correlate with specific events in life. Seizing the moment isn't about creating a particular positive outcome. It's about being responsible for nurturing a positive one. Gratitude isn't about being good. It's about recognizing that we can fly regardless of what happens to our wings.
If you don't feel grateful for what's in front of you today:
Actively choose your circumstances. This might sound strange, since I prefaced this by saying that you wouldn't actually want what's in front of you, but the reality is, you have to play the cards you have whether you explain it as the hand you've been dealt or as the hand you've chosen. Instead of consenting to accept this and let things happen to you, actively decide you can handle the challenge and use this to help you make positive things happen. Instead of being the resigned victim in the story of today, be the empowered protagonist.
Look for tiny gifts. You might not feel as though your whole situation is a gift, and that's fine. You don't have to lie to yourself and pretend you love being unemployed or you're happy about being sick. But if you look for them, you can find small opportunities within any set of circumstances—tiny possibilities that hinge on the way things are right now. Unemployment gives you an opportunity to figure out what you really want to do with your time. Sickness gives you a forced hiatus from life and an opportunity to reflect on anything that might not be working for you.
Use the gift in some small way today. Whether today's a day for standing still or for soaring, you can reflect on what you've learned about being the person you want to be and then do something small to accomplish that. If your gift was a reminder to slow down, choose to focus solely on what's in front of you and enjoy it, regardless of your struggles. If the gift was a reminder to be a more active part of your family members' lives, take the time to call them solely to listen and be there for them. In this way, you'll create positive emotions for yourself and for the people around you and, in doing so, set the stage for even more gifts down the line.
Don't be too hard on yourself. Every day is a different best and a different energy. ∼@YogaStudioSouth
Do everything that you can and don't fret over what doesn't get done. ∼@Simplylibra
Trust your instincts and believe in yourself. ∼@Sam_Ho
Do less. And take every day to grow into being more you and into being inspired. ∼@2inspired
When your schedule is busy, don't worry about what you have to do next. Think “Today I'm just doing what I'm doing today.” ∼@RoisinO
Life may be what happens when we're making other plans, but it's also what happens before and after we make them. Life is every moment, in the striving, the struggling, the accepting, the enjoying, the hurting, the waiting, and the going. Life is every last action and every last choice. Life is both the extraordinary we often chase and the ordinary we ignore while we're running.
It's everything—every day, every hour, every moment, and every second—which can seem overwhelming if you think about life as a whole that's inevitably too short. How can you possibly ensure your life looks beautiful in the end, as you step away from all the dots and see how it shapes up as a complete picture, when you can't possibly know when the end will be? How can you use each day wisely if you don't know how many you've been allocated to complete the task of making your life count? How can you possibly let yourself relax when you can never know for certain what needs to be done or if you're doing it well?
The other day while procrastinating in a coffee shop, I decided to play a little game of Human Concentration. You might remember Concentration from your childhood—the game that requires you to remember upside-down cards that you've previously flipped over so you can later find a match. As I sat clutching a soup bowl—sized coffee cup, I decided to identify congruous feelings in the people around me. I knew that regardless of how inert they may have all seemed, the vast majority of them were going over and over things in their head, as though those thoughts were Baoding balls overwhelming their hands, except without the health benefits. I'd recently seen the premiere of the TV show Lie to Me, which centers around our ability to recognize lies by noticing people's microexpressions—the tiny knee-jerk facial expressions that reveal what we're really feeling. So in this moment, I looked for those microexpressions and other body cues. Disconnecting for a bit from my feelings of busy self-importance, I devoted myself to identifying which people were feeling something that someone only a few feet away appeared to be feeling, too.
I saw a man typing so furiously on his laptop it seemed he might be punishing his keyboard. Recognizing his furrowed brow and labored breathing, I imagined he felt overwhelming pressure to get something done. After surveying the room and making a few other observations, I decided a woman near the door was feeling similarly. She was staring at her computer with that same shallow breath and stress-contorted face, apparently considering the implications of an email or task. There they were: two people existing in the exact same space, sharing an external experience while also experiencing something very similar internally, parallel stress over something not of that moment. A man and a woman each struggling under the weight of something that may have seemed insurmountable or at the very least annoyingly difficult—something I imagined concerned getting somewhere good or away from somewhere inadequate. At least that's what they would have been experiencing if they were feeling what I did when I made those expressions.
Near the bathroom door a woman was staring at her shoes. Even while looking down, her eyes darted around, as if to catch people who might be looking at her. With her shoulders hunched over and her hands in her pockets, she exuded awkwardness. This, I thought, was a woman who felt insecure—out of place, uncomfortable, and certain she didn't like standing where so many people could see her. Not more than five feet away, I saw a guy sitting across from a girl he appeared to be with. Even while reading something on his computer, he repeatedly crossed his arms, uncrossed them, looked at his companion, looked down, looked back at her, crossed his legs, and uncrossed them. Here was yet another person wanting a certain level of approval and feeling anxious about the potential to not receive it.
While people watching within a dangerously confined space, an emotion voyeur and apparent amateur psychologist, I eventually fixed my attention on someone who appeared to be staring at me. I doubted he was playing the same bizarre game of feeling observation, but I felt certain he'd figuratively crawled into my brain and was poking around at its inner workings. It was amazing how quickly I shifted from objective and open to subjective and defensive. Then I decided that this was a challenge, and I would not look away first. I would figure him out before he deconstructed me. Maybe he also wanted a break from the work in front of him. Maybe my pheromones wafted his way, and he didn't recognize that I was sitting directly across from the large, albeit gentle, man I call my boyfriend. Or maybe, as his sudden soft smile and head nod revealed, he was simply being within that space and happened to lock eyes with mine. Maybe he wasn't feeling anything but the utter freedom of being.
I've been the furious typer, the consumed reader, the anxious waiter, and the nervous admirer many times before, as I imagine we all have. We've all worked toward goals, pondered the implications of our actions, obsessed over other people's opinions, and wished with every fiber of our being we could control them. We've also sat firmly rooted in a space, fully aware that we can let go of everything that keeps us from being where we are. It might seem like we don't have a choice when we consider everything we want to accomplish, how we want to be perceived, and how productive it seems to think about all that in overlapping thoughts in our heads. But in the end, we always have a choice in what we do right now, both with our minds and with our bodies. At any time, we can decide to be fully where we are. The only way to explore what's possible is to first be willing to be.