Being grateful in the moment... Happiness happens

From ordinary to…

When I started being grateful in the moment, my world changed completely.

I used to be concerned with things that happened in the past. Those painful events were an important part of who I was.  I also used to be concerned with working hard and surviving. I would think about having to really be on my game tomorrow because I had an important meeting for which I spent all day preparing. Then there’s the groceries that I need to pick up on my way home and oh, I’d better check my messages.  All this sort of ‘stuff’ would be milling around in my head constantly.

I would see the pretty flowers and they were nice but my thoughts would immediately return to the stream of ‘stuff’ in my head.

I was also unhappy.

And the one thing that was really clear to me was that I needed a change.  So, I started on a new path on my inward journey…

But what does ‘being grateful in the moment’ mean?

I’ll tell it as it happened – one step at a time.  The part I heard about first was ‘being in the moment’ by reading Ekhart Tolle’s book ‘The Power of Now.’  I’ll circle back to the gratitude part further on.

Being in the moment is completely different than how I used to live. When you’re in the moment, the events of the past don’t exist.  They were real once… when they actually happened… but now, they are only in my mind. If they were real, they would be happening in front of me right now.  Since they aren’t, then by definition, they don’t exist. There is nothing I can do about them now so it’s worthless to spend any time or energy thinking about them.

By the same token, it’s worthless to spend time worrying about tomorrow’s meeting.  Worrying does nothing other than make me tense up and less able to act effectively during the actual meeting.  Since it’s a future event, and I’m already prepared, there is nothing I can do further about how people respond.  And I can’t do anything to change how I’m going to actually act during that meeting. For example, playing out theoretical scenarios in my head is worthless.  You know what I mean right? There’s no people in a meeting in front of me right now… it’s in the future… so by definition, it also does not exist.

I already know I need to get groceries and I can check all my recent messages later in one sitting later instead of one at a time as they arrive.

Okay, so I tried that ‘being in the moment’ thing… so what?

Our mind says “Okay, so I did that ‘being in the moment’ thing… nothing happened.  What’s the big deal? It was boring. How about another round of X-box?”

Don’t expect fireworks on the first try.

Admittedly, some patience and practice was required.  At first, the results I got (as with most people) were subtle and short-lived.  But with practice, I noticed that I started to feel better. I also noticed less drama in my life.  So… I kept it up.

Staying in the moment all the time is a challenge — a worthy challenge.  I worked very hard at forming that new habit but my mind continued to be distracted or I would simply not remember to get into it in the first place.  So, I tried two new strategies…

Tricks make a difference

First, I set my phone to vibrate every 30 mins (or 60 mins) throughout the day.   In this way, I was able to stay in the moment much more often. It was great for creating a habit.  However, I never found this to be a long-term solution because I would start to ignore the reminders.

So, later, shifted my approach and I looked at my habits and found that if I gave myself enough time first thing in the morning to do a very short meditation and then took periodic two-min breaks during the day, I was able to stay in that space for much longer.

It made a huge difference in my life.  There was a huge weight lifted off of me.  I didn’t need to drag my past around with me all the time and I didn’t need to waste energy concerned about tomorrow.  I was much much happier.

However, this process is like peeling an onion.  Once I had pulled off one layer, I discovered there was another layer to explore…

Being grateful in the moment… happiness happens!

There was something else beyond just being in the moment… for me, it was also a matter of shifting away from a perspective of survival and into one of gratitude, and abundance.  I couldn’t just see this moment as the means of getting through my current task until the next one came and so on and so on. I couldn’t just ‘get by’ in the world.

Funny how these things work.  I was able to make the next step through the easiest shift I can imagine.  All I needed to do was to bring gratitude in. When I am grateful for the gift of the flowers that are right in front of me, then I am immediately in the moment.  When I’m being grateful in the moment, I can merge myself with the abundance that is all around me. This same abundance is around all of us.

Being worried about surviving was the old me.

Now, since my focus is on the flowers and them alone – because they are real – because they are here with me right now – I see the flowers for the first time.  Glorious. My day is alive. Everything is alive. And I feel amazing. I am living in abundance and I’m being grateful in the moment.

Why does being grateful in the moment work?

Often, the search for happiness goes to great lengths and involves ideal conditions, complicated procedures, expensive toys or clothes, or flights to Paris.  Our minds naturally think this is necessary, because happiness seems so hard to come by.

Moreover, our minds tend to demand problems to keep them occupied.  So, everything tends to be interpreted through that lens… as a ‘problem’ that needs to be solved.

But happiness is actually found in the simplest aspects of how we live our lives.  Happiness is something we all had naturally when we were young children. What’s changed since childhood?  We didn’t need a trip to Paris to make us happy when we were kids. Of course not. Admittedly, having ice-cream helped but we didn’t need that ice-cream to be happy if nobody mentioned it in the first place.  :-) 

Kids are naturally closer to the state of mind that makes us happy than are adults.  Kids are naturally in the moment and they are excited by what is around them. Their natural curiosity makes them excited by everything.  That kind of excitement is very similar to appreciation or being grateful.

So… being childlike is the key.  We were that way before, so we all know how.  By being grateful in the moment, happiness happens.

Sounds nice but how do you actually achieve it?

I know there is more to the picture.  Everyone has blocks. I’ve had mine. You’ll find more on that in our blog.   Subconscious blocks that create learned-limitation preventing us from going where we want.  These can make it very difficult indeed to achieve happiness. Ever have trouble with a New Year’s resolution? The reason is that you want to go one way but your subconscious mind has learned that a different way is ‘safe’ and is keeping you there.  And to the subconscious mind considers that way ‘safe’ only because it’s familiar. If you’ve been a certain way before and you weren’t threatened, then it’s ‘safe’.

By the same token, subconscious blocks can prevent you from being grateful or from being in the moment.  I’ve had to work through some of those. For example, I was always focused on doing doing doing in order to ‘get there’.  And things come along to knock me around. It’s a journey. There’s no pretense here of having all the answers. But being grateful in the moment is certainly part of the answer.

What’s more, everyone is coming from different directions toward enlightenment.  Each one following their own path. So the ‘key’ thing for me isn’t the same ‘key’ thing for everyone.

From one perspective, this stuff is incredibly simple but it can also be ever-elusive and seem to be an impossibility.

But there is a way to make it much easier.

Satomi and I not only offer instruction on how to do this, but we also can quickly and easily remove blocks that are keeping happiness out of reach. Check it out by scheduling your free breakthrough session.

You deserve to be happy – it’s your birthright. Claim it!