Happiness is Right Here, Right Now!

“Try to be happy in this present moment, and put not off being so to a time to come,—as though that time should be of another make from this, which has already come and is ours.” – Fuller

I should be at the zendo right now, meditating.

Instead, I am here at the computer, writing this blog.

I started off well intentioned. I get paid on Wednesday, and I have NO food in my refrigerator. I wanted to avoid eating out for lunch tomorrow so I ran to the supermarket after work. It’d be closed after zazen and study ended. When I got home, I had maybe 15 minutes to unpack the groceries, get ready then run down to the zendo.

That wasn’t happening.

I could have been late, but being late for zazen is plain rude. Walking through the zendo, setting down my zafu and zabuton and getting myself situated, it made no sense.

There will be next week.

Next week, I will plan my grocery shopping for the day before or after. It’s all a matter of working out the kinks.

Just like the tortoise, I will prevail in the end.

Since I’m home now, I can work on that assignment that I’d been meaning to do for the past couple of days.

I want to talk about some ideas in things I read or listened to in the past couple of days

A recent post on Erika Awakening’s blog, Awakening from the Dream, talks about overcoming emotions:

In an ever-shifting world, how do we keep our inner game rock solid? The best way I have found is paying attention to my feelings, literally moment to moment.

This is also a concept that Eckhart Tolle features pretty prominently in The Power of Now. Once I become aware that I am experiencing a negative emotion, I will become detached from it and easily get over that negative emotion.

At the zendo, we often have philosophical discussions, and someone will always say, “it’s okay to be angry, but it is important to just let that emotion pass through you, do not let it linger, let it pass through you.” This is exactly the same thing.

It is important not to identify with negative emotions, to not let them become a part of you. Sometimes I will hear people sometimes refer to themselves and say that they are “an angry person,” which they don’t realize is something that they choose to be!

I bring all of this up because today I was at work talking on chat with this one guy who was fired maybe two weeks ago. I was bitching about my job to this dude. I was pretty riled up at the time. Then, at one point, I took a step back and was like, “whoa, I am pretty angry right now, and there is no need to be.” I apologized, changed the subject, and felt 10x better!

When experiencing a negative situation or emotion, there are two things to do:

1.) Change the situation.

2.) Accept the situation fully.

In the case of my job, I have to accept the situation fully, because I simply cannot afford to stand up and quit. I am applying for other jobs and am pretty close to getting one as we speak.

Today, I was listening to David DeAngelo’s Man Transformation (can you tell that I love this guy??? Mancrush!) and heard this affirmation:

“Happiness is right here, right now.”

…which perfectly sums up the ideas I have just expressed. There is no, “I can’t wait until…” NO! Happiness is in what I am doing right here and right now. If I am not experiencing happiness, then I must either change the situation or accept it fully. The trick is to remember this when in a heated moment. Man, I should get a poster with that affirmation put right on my wall! My friends are going to think I am some weird self-help geek, but whatever!

Other notes:

- Notice how I started using the first person instead of second in this post. That is a topic for a whole OTHER post, my friends! Until tomorrow!

- If you haven’t already, check out Erika Awakening’s blog, Awakening from the Dream. She has some good articles for the PUA’s out there, from a females perspective, along with some insights on A Course in Miracles, which sounds interesting. Remember what David DeAngelo said about fully understanding another person?

The Importance of a Full Nights Rest

“To be nice, I sacrifice things like no sleep…” – Canibus

I went to bed at 2:30 AM last night.

I usually like to go to bed a little earlier, 12-12:30 at the latest, but there was so much stuff to do that I didn’t make it until then.

This led to me waking up at 8AM this morning.

I thought I could make it up bright and early this morning, I even set my alarm for thirty minutes EARLIER, but no, I got into that nasty habit of turning my alarm off. All of the sudden it was 8:10 and I hadn’t gotten out of bed, yet.

Getting out of bed in my cold apartment was not fun. I kept telling myself, “oh just stay under the covers a little longer!”

I didn’t have much to eat during the day. I had bought a steak and potatoes pizza on Sunday but didn’t realize I only had one slice left and no money for lunch. By the time I got home from work I was exhausted and hungry.

I skipped meditation, ate some dinner and here I am writing this post, trying to make the best of the rest of my night.

Here goes an already used quote: “Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently.”

I read Zen Habit’s Leo Babauta’s blog about becoming an early riser and got some good pointers. It has become apparent that this will not be a goal attained automatically, but slowly over time. As long as I keep hacking away at this blog daily, I will be reminded of the destination and keep trudging forward.

Tomorrow is zazen at the zendo, I will be sure to make it there. Gotta remember to set aside some good socks, no one likes sitting and smelly stinky socks!

More of David DeAngelo’s Man Transformation today at work. Nothing really of note on the third disc outside of an extended debate between audience members on whether a man should have try to have sex with a girl as soon as possible, or should he wait to have a lasting relationship?

The actual point of the debate was for the two audience members to actually understand what they were saying. Too often we get caught up in our opinions and don’t try to understand opposite points of view.

Now that I think about it, it’s actually a great point to make. I know that I often get caught up in my own opinion and don’t try to understand where others are coming from.

Another reason for the exercise might be that the reason some men don’t have the success they want with women is because they don’t try to understand women-they have very limited contact with females and therefore base their whole perception on either that limited contact, or the hypersexualized image they see in the media.

Anyways, this kid made an affirmation in the third disc, and I am going to make the same here on my blog.

“I take 100% responsibility for EVERYTHING in my life!”

There, I just stood up and yelled it.

Yeah, that felt good.

Inevitablility

“So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.” - Christopher Reeve

I started the day off on a good foot.

I woke up, I took a shower, I meditated for 20 minutes, I ate breakfast, I checked a few things online that I can’t check at work, then headed out the door promptly at 8:30am.

I trudged through my day at work, anxiously hopeful that this might be one of my last days at the Bank. I had a job interview last week at a company I worked for. It’s for more money and permanent (I am currently working temp.). I would absolutely LOVE to have this job. I am still waiting to hear back from.

I got home, I meditated for 30 minutes, I put laundry in the washer, I ate some dinner, then headed to my computer. There was an assignment that I wanted to take care of, it’d take a solid 3-4 hours online to complete. Instead, I found myself putting out one fire after another. I thought the domain name for my website had expired (not this website), so I’m on the phone with Yahoo! customer service. I had also just been interviewed by a website and wanted to spread the word. Instead, I come home to find my website is down.

That takes a good hour of my time to fix.

Then, I went to fill out an application and survey for the aforementioned job. This took doubly longer than I thought it would. What should have been maybe a 30 minute task took about 2 hours. I chalked it up to the difficulty of working with Microsoft Word tables, and my total desire to get this job. I’m actually going to leave a little earlier tomorrow so I can get to the library early and fax the application off.

Needless to say, the assignment isn’t getting done tonight, it will have to wait until tomorrow. No worries.

I spent the day at work listening to David D’Angelo’s Man Transformation on my ipod.

I’m only two discs into this set and have already heard a wealth of knowledge.

I have heard David D’Angelo seminars in the past, and was turned off by the esoteric knowledge he spewed throughout. His past programs seemed like they were just random utterances of whatever he was thinking at the time. Not organized at all.

Man Transformation however, is entirely different. First off, it is not strictly about meeting women, it is about improving your life as a whole. Secondly, the first two disc’s were three hours dedicated to discussing the boundaries that prevent us from achieving our goals.

David talks a lot about how there are some of us that, no matter what we do, will find it incredibly different to achieve our goals. He says that these people have problems finding the reason that will enable them to do “whatever it takes” to achieve that goal. You know how some people will go to the doctor and the doctor will say, “if you don’t stop doing x within one year, you will die?” Well, according to David D’Angelo, NINE OUT OF TEN people will simply not stop doing the thing that will kill them! So even in matters of death, many people are not motivated to make the change that will better their lives!

For a very well written article about pretty much the same concept, read Tyler’s post about the “loudness” of your “inner voice,” over at the RSD blog.

David proposes some solutions to rectify these problems. The one that resonated with me the most was called, “inevitability.” How can we make success inevitable? “What is the best way to climb a fence if you’re scared?” David asked. “By throwing our hat over the fence, then you HAVE to go get your HAT!”

With inevitability we set conditions that will make it so that we HAVE to achieve the goal.

An alcoholic steps into the doctors office and says, “Hey doc, I can’t stop drinking, what do I do?”

The doctor says, “Eh, keep drinking. But now, if you want to get a drink, you have to walk five miles across town to the bar, and then walk five miles back.”

The guy says, “okay, I can do that.”

And maybe, for a day or two he does it, but if he lives in Pittsburgh and it’s the winter, he probably doesn’t last very long. He is maybe at his house, bundling up, getting ready to go out into the cold, then says to himself, “aww, that just ain’t worth it. I’m staying inside.” He eventually ends up quitting.

The point here is to set conditions that you personally would HATE to go through. One person at the seminar swore that he would eat dog food if he didn’t practice yoga for 15 minutes a day when he woke up. Now that’s motivation.

D’Angelo also stresses accountability, because afterall, it becomes very easy to cheat if you are only held accountable to yourself. It is good to get 1 or 2 people that will encourage you to keep your goal through inevitability.

Now, some people are going to say, “oh I’ve heard this before, Mystery says to hand your friend $100 and if you don’t open, s/he gets to keep it.” Well, I’ve done this before, and my friend kept the money, and I didn’t feel too bad about it. For real change, it needs to be more drastic.

Which leads me to ask, how am I going to apply inevitability to MY life?

Well, when I look at my own priorities, I believe that women, or lack thereof is the biggest problem. Therefore,I am going to hand a friend a check of my weekly salary and ask him to cash it if I don’t open at least 3 women whenever I go out to the bar.

He will know that I have done my task because 1.) He will be out with me part of the time and 2.) I will post about them on this blog.

I am going to try this for one month. Wow, I haven’t felt this nervous since I first started going out, which coincidentally was the most I have ever opened. I opened then because I went out with lots of new guys from my lair and thought they would think I was not worthy if I didn’t open. Then I learned they were in much the same boat, and my opening whittled down to zero.

Before I go, I want to make a committment to improving the diction of this blog. I have noticed tense shifts, run-on sentences and grammatical errors in many of my posts, which is simply not acceptable. I have the Blue Book on Grammar and Punctuation waiting for me at the library and can’t wait to check it out!