Decision making is probably the most important thing that separates human kind from other species that live on Earth. Opposable thumbs, too. I will leave the importance of thumbs to anthropologist and talk about doing things.
Jon Kabat-Zinn says:
"Our world is so much about doing that the being gets lost."
What he is saying that we are driven to do things by our societies and our cultures. From childhood days we are conditioned to find things to do, and we see our parents go to work every day. We go through schooling with the clear goal to prepare ourselves to get a good job. Since most of us are being raised that way, it is unrealistic to expect of us to be different. It is very difficult for modern human being to just be in the present moment and do nothing. It is contrary to all that we have learned in our lives.
Should we just sit around and do nothing then? I will not presume what is the right do-be ratio because it is different for everyone. Doing nothing is just as good as doing something. In some situations, doing nothing is really beneficial. For example, while we sleep we do not do much. We sleep and our brains do the maintenance work, resting and preparing for the next day. Should we do nothing while we are awake? Yes we should. Paying non-judgmental attention to our surroundings is very useful. If we do that - we live. While we are lost in our thoughts and emotions we miss out on life, and it is the only thing we should not miss out on, because we do not have more than one life to live.
Meditation is one exercise of doing nothing. Actually, we concentrate on our breaths, or on sounds and smells, or action going on in our body like pulsating of our heart. That activity grounds us in the present moment and we can see what is going on around and inside us. We let our thoughts and feelings slide by. By doing nothing we gain a sense of clarity and concentration. This is essential to have and use in our other activities.
How being in the present moment helps productivity? It is not meant to help productivity, but it helps anyway. It helps you to live a mindful life, and if you decide to spend it doing things - it is good. Moments of clarity should also help you make decisions. When all the distractions are accepted and filed for later, we are able to see where we are, which is the most important thing to know if you plan to go somewhere. When you know where the destination is on the map, it is of no use if you do not know your location. It sounds a bit corny, so I will explain it by example. Let's say you want to find a better job. You are not satisfied with you current position, your tasks and projects, your ability to improve or whatever might the reason be. You change the job and suddenly realize that you still are not satisfied with you current position, your tasks and projects, your ability to improve. It seems that you carried something in yourself on that new job. That something is what you need to know about before you decide to make a significant change. You need to know your location. It might be that you are not satisfied with yourself, and that the consequence is you wanted a change. Unable to look inside yourself clearly, you made a poor choice.
What you need to do is to accept the reality. It means you have not to refuse what is. If you do you will certainly be unhappy, because what happened before and what is happening at this moment is something you can not change. You can influence only the next moment with your actions. Without acceptance you will not clearly see what needs to be done. You will see things through a number of filters like current mood, previous experiences, other people opinions and projected results. With filters on you will have very difficult task to act in the right way. By accepting current mood, previous experiences, other people opinions and projected results as something that is present and let them go, you will take off the filters and see the real world as it is now.
With that clarity of mind you will be able to act in a right way. You will see your core values, your sense of duty towards yourself, your family and your community. Then you will have a choice to act in a right way, wrong way or not to act at all. What you choose will be something that you will be responsible for, and that is why you will choose the right way most of the time. That sense of responsibility will come from accepting that it is completely your decision to make.
Fear is one big obstacle that prevent people from acting. There are others, but this is a major one. People are afraid of many things and acting presumes change. Change is one of the most frequent reason for fear, since people do not like to change and do not like when other things change. Change elicits a sense of inadequacy, a feeling that things were better before. It implies making an effort to adjust to new, to learn new things. Changes are usually contrary to our plans and our projections what future should be like. We also know that our decisions bring out the same feelings in other people, and we love to be loved by others.
Fearlessness is something that can be cultivated by meditation. With mindful observation of anxiety that you feel you can at least understand it better - if it does not go away. Get familiar with your anxiety and see that at that moment there is absolutely nothing in your environment that warrants it (except if you are sick at home or in hospital bed). Contemplate for a moment how will you feel about the thing that is causing fear in a year from now. Will you still be afraid then? Try to remember what you were afraid on this date six months ago. I bet you do not have a clue. That is how important your fear is, and how much impact your anxiety has in your life. Neither fear nor anxiety is of no importance to you (unless you are facing wild animal with sharp teeth in the desert).
If the thing you want to do is not illegal, will not hurt anyone and will not get you in jail - by all means, do not listen to your filters and your fears. See the benefit that it has on your life and life of others - and act!
Meditation is one exercise of doing nothing. Actually, we concentrate on our breaths, or on sounds and smells, or action going on in our body like pulsating of our heart. That activity grounds us in the present moment and we can see what is going on around and inside us. We let our thoughts and feelings slide by. By doing nothing we gain a sense of clarity and concentration. This is essential to have and use in our other activities.
How being in the present moment helps productivity? It is not meant to help productivity, but it helps anyway. It helps you to live a mindful life, and if you decide to spend it doing things - it is good. Moments of clarity should also help you make decisions. When all the distractions are accepted and filed for later, we are able to see where we are, which is the most important thing to know if you plan to go somewhere. When you know where the destination is on the map, it is of no use if you do not know your location. It sounds a bit corny, so I will explain it by example. Let's say you want to find a better job. You are not satisfied with you current position, your tasks and projects, your ability to improve or whatever might the reason be. You change the job and suddenly realize that you still are not satisfied with you current position, your tasks and projects, your ability to improve. It seems that you carried something in yourself on that new job. That something is what you need to know about before you decide to make a significant change. You need to know your location. It might be that you are not satisfied with yourself, and that the consequence is you wanted a change. Unable to look inside yourself clearly, you made a poor choice.
What you need to do is to accept the reality. It means you have not to refuse what is. If you do you will certainly be unhappy, because what happened before and what is happening at this moment is something you can not change. You can influence only the next moment with your actions. Without acceptance you will not clearly see what needs to be done. You will see things through a number of filters like current mood, previous experiences, other people opinions and projected results. With filters on you will have very difficult task to act in the right way. By accepting current mood, previous experiences, other people opinions and projected results as something that is present and let them go, you will take off the filters and see the real world as it is now.
With that clarity of mind you will be able to act in a right way. You will see your core values, your sense of duty towards yourself, your family and your community. Then you will have a choice to act in a right way, wrong way or not to act at all. What you choose will be something that you will be responsible for, and that is why you will choose the right way most of the time. That sense of responsibility will come from accepting that it is completely your decision to make.
Fear is one big obstacle that prevent people from acting. There are others, but this is a major one. People are afraid of many things and acting presumes change. Change is one of the most frequent reason for fear, since people do not like to change and do not like when other things change. Change elicits a sense of inadequacy, a feeling that things were better before. It implies making an effort to adjust to new, to learn new things. Changes are usually contrary to our plans and our projections what future should be like. We also know that our decisions bring out the same feelings in other people, and we love to be loved by others.
Fearlessness is something that can be cultivated by meditation. With mindful observation of anxiety that you feel you can at least understand it better - if it does not go away. Get familiar with your anxiety and see that at that moment there is absolutely nothing in your environment that warrants it (except if you are sick at home or in hospital bed). Contemplate for a moment how will you feel about the thing that is causing fear in a year from now. Will you still be afraid then? Try to remember what you were afraid on this date six months ago. I bet you do not have a clue. That is how important your fear is, and how much impact your anxiety has in your life. Neither fear nor anxiety is of no importance to you (unless you are facing wild animal with sharp teeth in the desert).
If the thing you want to do is not illegal, will not hurt anyone and will not get you in jail - by all means, do not listen to your filters and your fears. See the benefit that it has on your life and life of others - and act!
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