The Challenge is Now

In life, we tend to focus on future goals -- things that are hopefully going to happen tomorrow, or next year, or maybe even a decade after that.

What many people don't realize, is that an obsession -- and yes, it is an obsession -- with future-oriented goals is, in essence, a tactic that the mind uses to avoid the present. It's a diversion. Yes, it's sometimes a nice diversion -- thinking about that vacation three months from now may be a pleasant thing to think about -- but it's still a diversion nonetheless.

This is actually one of the BIG problems with "goal setting." There is, of course, nothing wrong with setting goals. In fact, it's easy to agree that goals are very important and quite beneficial -- why not? If becoming healthier is a goal, improving the quality of what you do is a goal, finding a better job...whatever. These are all good goals.

But when these goals start to become diversions, then it becomes a problem -- because it's not about the goals anymore. It's about the diversion.

Goals that pull you out of the present moment -- and obsessively drag you -- are not actually helpful. Rather, they numb you against reality -- which is, possibly, a short-term strategy but hardly a healthy way to live an entire life.

Are you replacing reality with "goals"?

Be careful -- because if you do that, then rest assured: you'll never achieve your goals. As soon as you come near one, a new goal will emerge -- because, again, it's not about the goal -- it's about diverting you from the present moment.

It's about keeping you away from yourself -- which is what you want (regardless of what the advertisers tell you :)

Slow Down to Speed Up!

Modern civilization – which in many ways is not modern and hardly civilized – is obsessed with SPEED. And this obsession has made its way into the very fabric of our lives. It’s almost like a kind of…scent. Even things that are not designed to be exploited for speed, often end up becoming crushed beneath the wheel of “how fast can we do this?”

Unfortunately, this obsession with speed has not been accompanied by an increase in quality. That is, instead of doing things faster and better, we tend to do them faster and faster, and spend whatever “time we saved” in our speed correcting errors that would not have been made if we weren’t going so fast! :) Funny, isn’t it? Sad, too.

Start to see if speed is dominating YOUR life. Are you focused relentlessly on “the next thing” that you have to do – the next thing on your list that needs to be crossed off – that you really pay little or no attention to the present moment? Are you living, essentially, in the service of your to-do list?

Remember: life is short! Even if you make it to 100 years…really, that’s not even a blink in the eyes of time – if you read a history book, 100 years doesn’t even get a chapter! And if you believe that speeding up your life will somehow help you get more OUT of it, you’re belief is quite incorrect. Speeding up your life to the point where you sacrifice the quality of the present for the promise of the future (which never comes, by the way – there is no such thing as “future”), is not going to help you get more out of your life. In fact, just the opposite will happen: years will FLY BY and you’ll miss them. It’s a paradox. The faster you live your life, the more of it you miss.

Take a lesson from folks who haven’t been…infected by the speed virus. Slow down. Simplify. Clarify. Enjoy the experience of being alive right here, right now. Because that’s all you have: here, now. Everything else is an illusion.