127 Hours LATER

Early this week (or last week, depending on when you are reading this), Julie Manriquez, one of my esteemed guest posters, wrote a fantastic post, called One Hour or 127 Hours: BE in Every Moment.  Julie is a deep thinker, dedicated to daily work toward personal growth and enlightenment, as well as humble (she’s much more talented in so many areas than she’ll ever admit) service to others.  And like is often the case, her message was one that was needed.  Not only by me, but by many others, evidenced by the tremendous response and appreciation she received from other readers.

Her message was pretty simple.  Be in every moment.  Stop making excuses not to fully participate in life. Stop asking for a “hall pass” so you can skip the learning lesson that goes on every day of your life if you’ll just reach out to those who are more than happy to teach.  She went so far as to even dare us to be an active participant in our lives. And if you know me, I never saw a dare I didn’t like.

But 127 (or so) hours later, I’m really, really struggling.  I didn’t realize how seldom I allow myself to BE in the moment.  I can and do FORCE myself into the moment.  But even that doesn’t happen enough.  I realized this past week that almost everything that occupies my thinking, and ultimately my doing, is outside of the moment.  And that is ridiculous.

I blame it all on two evil twins- Worry and Regret.  I worry about the board meeting next week.  I worry about my daughter’s talent show.  I worry about my wife’s stress level at work, about my taxes being due and not finding enough time.  I regret not spending more quality time with my family, I regret not seeing my brother and sister more often, not taking one more shot at playing professional football, at not giving my first business one more year to see if we could make it work.  And I regret that I didn’t know then what I know now- about networking, about raising capital, about business development.

But like a wise man (or woman) once said, tomorrow will never come and we can never get yesterday back.  Worrying about tomorrow or regretting things from yesterday do me no good.  I know this.  But it’s so hard, at least for me, to keep myself in the moment.   One thing I try to do is reduce my time window of focus.  Instead of worrying about the long term impact of whatever I’m doing –If I don’t play with my kids now, will it affect our relationship later?, If I don’t stay up late this weekend, I’ll be further behind in learning this or that–I reduce the window to the ‘next thirty minutes’ or the ‘next couple of hours’.  Then I look at what is important to me.  So there is no confusion, I’ve created a hierarchy (of importance) that includes my family, my spiritual growth and service to others, and my professional development.  Weighing my decision against this list–again, in the short term window-helps me decide what is most important.  Right now.  In this moment.

But again, I’m not always able to force myself to go through that, or any other, exercise to ensure that I am in the moment.  But, as is the purpose of this blog, I’m always working on it.

If you guys know any tips or tricks or have your own methods of making sure you are always in the moment, please share.  We are all in this game called life together.