The single best thing you can do for your happiness is to try to live more mindfully, more focused on what’s right in front of you.
“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have,” writes Eckhart Tolle, “Make the Now the primary focus of your life.” Being a central idea of philosophies such as Buddhism for thousands of years, it’s advice that has stood the test of time.
But in the busyness of everyday life, it can be tricky to put it into practice. That doesn’t mean, however, we can’t take several steps in the right direction.
I’ve found three guidelines to be particularly helpful in doing so.
1: Change your mindset
There’s a time and place for goals. They certainly have value. They show us we can control the chaos around us and help us improve our lives and those of others.
But they’re not where we find happiness–at least not the kind that is durable. Our expectations quickly adapt after achieving an objective. We want a bigger house, a nicer car, a better salary. The highs of past victories quickly go away as we turn our attention to the next milestone to reach.
Instead, the process is where we’ll find true contentment. The day-to-day struggle. The steps along the way. Goals only give us direction. “[The] peak of the mountain is important only because it justifies climbing” says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “which is the real goal of the enterprise.” After all, the climb is where we spend most of our time, not the peak.
2: Pursue challenging craft
Anything can be a worthy object of attention. A cup of tea. The birds in the sky. Our breath. It’s possible to immerse yourself in the present anywhere and anywhen.
But some activities tend to be more immersive than others. There’s a particular type that stands out: challenging craft.
It doesn’t really matter what it is–knitting and boxing are as fair game as woodworking and painting. What does matter is that the activity requires developing and using increasingly complex knowledge and skills. There’s just something special about doing so. We can look at both the micro and the macro to see why.
In the micro, craft provides ample opportunity to use our skills to solve difficult but not impossible challenges. As Csikszentmihalyi argues, optimal experience requires balancing ability with difficulty: we aren’t overwhelmed with too much challenge or bored with too little. Only then do we achieve flow, a state in which we are engrossed in what we’re doing.
In the macro, there’s a unique kind of satisfaction involved with investing the time and energy to become really good at something and weaving that activity into your day-to-day. This isn’t just about matching skills with challenges. Rather, greater skill itself drives greater satisfaction. The better you get at something, the more passionate you’ll become, and the more deeply you’ll immerse yourself in it.
3: Choose your moments
A common prescription is to try to be present all day long. Not only when meditating, but when cleaning, when eating, and when doing pretty much anything.
It’s a worthy goal. But it’s not one most people should aim for.
Focusing is mentally taxing, and most people’s concentration muscles aren’t (yet) strong enough to focus on the present all day long. In my experience, our brains have a balancing feedback loop. Push your concentration too hard over a couple of days or weeks and you’ll be more distracted than usual down the line. This is counter-productive to living more mindfully. You’re much better off setting a more achievable objective and building your way up over the years.
At the same time, even if you could be present all day long, it might not be optimal. Most people benefit from zoning out for one to two hours every day. It’s an important tool for high-level mental performance. It gets you ready for more bouts of focused work and helps you be more creative and solve difficult problems.
So you’ll probably need a dual-approach, and the key is to be intentional about it. Know when you want to be absolutely mindful. And know when you want to loosen the reins and let your mind wander and recharge.
Choose your moments. Don’t let them choose you.
Notes
The Eckhart Tolle quote: The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
Comments