A lot of life is working towards our flow. It’s simple. We do things every day that are good for us and don’t require a lot of strain or anxiety. It’s about asking, “What works for me? What is just naturally good for my soul?” and listening closely to our honest answers. If we love gardening, then we have to make time to garden, and that should be a big part of our lives. If we love nature and animals, then we should be involved with them. Find what resonates with us, what satisfies us, what sparks our passion. What activity or interest adds to us and doesn’t take away from us?
How do we discover what we love to do? An easy way to determine this is to ask, “After I do this activity, in the long term, do I feel better or do I feel worse?” We have to figure out what satisfies us in the end and not just in the fleeting moment. The short-lived pleasure ultimately causes us pain, and we want to avoid that. It could be something like coming home, unwinding with a couple of glasses of wine, and watching mindless shows on TV. Another example could be coffee every morning to get our day started.
We’re looking for the flow that works best for us right now that we don’t have to fight. If we’re not a morning person, then we need to move in the direction of making our lives less dictated by mornings. Or if we’re not an evening person, our days can wind down earlier. Again, we have to first figure out what works for us so we can find the best rhythm for our lives.
Once you have that answer then work in the direction of making these things happen. That can seem overwhelming at first, but here’s a 5 percent rule that can be helpful. Just make a 5 percent improvement at a time, and soon enough, that 5 percent becomes 100 percent change. If we take on a monumental task, especially in changing ourselves, it overwhelms us, and we often quit before we’ve barely begun. But if we move in the right direction and do a little bit at a time, we make incremental changes and success. We see we are making a difference, feel internally rewarded, and continue making advances.
For example, we say, “Hey, I’m going to go to bed ten or fifteen minutes earlier at night by so I’ll wake up in the morning a little bit more refreshed.” Or perhaps we say, “I’m not ready to give up my two glasses of wine in the evening for a walk. Instead, I’ll start walking on the weekends. I’ll go around the neighborhood for a block or so, make that my normal routine, and then carry it over to the weekday.” With little changes that you gradually increase, you will see that you will have moved into the direction of having some great self-care and flowing with life.
In flowing with life, we flow with happiness. This is an easy way to increase the things in our lives that are good for us. Know that they are simple things, like walking. By making room in our lives for these simple activities, we must say no to some other things, which are not enhancing our lives. Part of flowing with life is a simple life, one not cluttered with activity.
What I’ve done in my own life is to say no to things all the time. I am regularly invited to social events, give talks to groups, visit, be part of the media, and so on, but I say no to them quite often. I do this because I’ve learned that for my life to flow well I need time for walks. I excuse myself by simply saying, “I’m busy.” And that is the truth. That busyness might be that I’m spending time with my kids. That busyness might be that I’m meditating. Or it might be that I’m walking the beach. People accept that simple “I’m busy,” and in return, I can stay with my flow and remain happy.
You can do this too.
Flowing is good for us. We have to listen to our bodies, listen to our souls, and flow with life so that happiness can settle on our shoulders like a butterfly.
Chapter Eleven
Meditation: The Path Away from Addiction
Why are addictions so powerful? Why do we turn to them? How we can turn away from them, as we must, because of the negative consequences they ultimately deal out?
Addictions come in all shapes and forms. We can all think of stories about people who are addicted to drugs and alcohol. These types of abuses are very common throughout the world. One of my uncles, with whom I grew up and of whom I was very fond, struggled with alcohol. He was a very giving, loving person, but the years of drinking alcohol truly destroyed his life. He was a very handsome, fun person to be around, and he used to train animals for Hollywood. One summer when I was a boy, he drove all the way to Iowa with a lion that he pulled in a trailer behind his car, stopping at our home for a visit. It was very exciting for me and formed a wonderful memory in my mind. But his daily use of alcohol shriveled his body, aged him, and cut his life short. Before he died, he lived by himself and had turned into a mean, unhappy man. My memories of him go back to his good years, but it’s sad to think how his life and happiness were so cheated by his addiction to alcohol.
What are addictions? Addictions are basically emotional pain killers. When we have something inside us that is upsetting, disconcerting, and emotionally charged, we have two options. The first is to feel it, get over it, heal it, and get better. The second option is to stuff it, repress it, hold the feelings in, and keep it inside ourselves. Just as if I have a physical ailment such as a horrible cut, I can go to the doctor, get stitches, and heal it the proper way. If I instead just take painkillers, neglecting the cut itself, it won’t hurt anymore, but it will only get worse, perhaps getting gangrene and possibly even killing me. Emotions work the same way, but slower. We need to feel our feelings, get over them, heal, and move on. It’s pretty simple actually, but it’s very hard for many of us to do. Why?
Again, the answer is simple. In the short term, addictions work; they take away the pain now. When you have to feel something, like that cut, it hurts at first. It can hurt quite a bit to clean it and take care of it properly. It can hurt quite a bit to clean out that emotional wound, too. We often don’t want to do this; we’d rather just not feel any pain, and if we turn to our addictions, they’ll turn off the pain almost instantly. Maybe they won’t turn off the pain completely, but they’ll turn it off enough that we don’t have to feel it, at least for now. Addictions are anything that turn off our emotions now.
There are an infinite number of addictions. We all know the big ones like drugs and alcohol, but there are many more. Others include working too much, being constantly busy, and striving for success. For example, Albert Einstein once said that when anyone he cared about died, he got very busy with his work in order not to have to deal with the pain. There are also more subtle forms of addiction. Some people I know put all their energy into raising their children so they don’t have to deal with their unhappy marriages. Others deal with a problem by avoiding it and moving on to something else. They leave the friendship, the job, whatever the problem is, hoping that going on to something else and not dealing with the problem or pain at hand will make it go away and that all will be well.
Addictions can be very subtle. Many people turn to sleeping pills because they can’t sleep. Perhaps they can’t fall asleep because they are on such a hectic, tight schedule that they need something to calm their racing mind at night. That little pill to help them sleep, instead of being something they need tonight, slowly becomes something they need every night, and it quickly begins to dominate and control their life. It becomes an addiction.
Turning off our feelings doesn’t work. Masking them with addictions doesn’t solve our problems; they remain . . . unresolved. It’s important that we face our feelings and the problems behind them. Just as we wouldn’t ignore a serious cut, it’s important for us not to ignore serious emotional wounds. Even subtle ones matter.
There’s a friend of mine who, every time she has a serious problem with her boyfriend or intimate partner, just leaves him. She doesn’t deal with the issue, she doesn’t work it out, and she doesn’t process it; she just ignores things and moves on to the next relationship. This approach isn’t healthy for her because she’s building up all these emotional wounds instead of facing them. It’s important for us to feel our feelings. It’s not hard to do; we just need to face them.
Addictions are very tricky.