Hello,
and welcome to a new week in our lives! We all
have a new
set of days in which we can make decisions that will
help us to be
the best people we possibly can be--decisions to
love and to encourage
and to help others as much as is realistic and
possible in our worlds!
That
was one of the saddest things about people--their most
important thoughts and feelings often went unspoken and
barely understood. -
Alexandra Adornetto
Respect
children because they're human beings and they deserve
respect, and they'll grow up to be better people.
-
Benjamin Spock
The
best cure for worry, depression, melancholy, brooding, is to go
deliberately forth and try to lift with one's sympathy the gloom of
somebody else. -Arnold Bennett
Ask
not that events should happen as you will, but let your will
be that events should happen as they do, and you shall have
peace. -Epictetus
There is just one more agreement, but it’s the one that allows the other three to become deeply ingrained habits. The fourth agreement is about the action of the first three: Always do your best.
Under any circumstance, always do your best, no more and no less. But keep in mind
that your best is never going to be the same from one moment to the next. Everything is alive and changing all the time, so your best will sometimes be high quality, and other times it will not be as good. When you wake up refreshed and energized in the morning, your best will be better than when you are tired at night. Your best will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick, or sober as opposed to drunk. Your best will depend on whether you are feeling wonderful and happy, or upset, angry, or jealous.
In your everyday moods your best can change from one moment to another, from one hour to the next, from one day to another. Your best will also change over time. As you build the habit of the four new agreements, your best will become better than it used to be.
Regardless of the quality, keep doing your best — no more and no less than your best. If you try too hard to do more than your best, you will spend more energy than is needed and in the end your best will not be enough. When you overdo, you deplete your body and go against yourself, and it will take you longer to accomplish your goal. But if you do less than your best, you subject yourself to frustrations, self-judgment, guilt, and regrets.
Just do your best — in any circumstance in your life. It doesn’t matter if you are sick or tired, if you always do your best there is no way you can judge yourself. And if you don’t judge yourself there is no way you are going to suffer from guilt, blame, and self-punishment. By always doing your best, you will break a big spell that you have been under.
There was a man who wanted to transcend his suffering so he went to a Buddhist temple to find a Master to help him. He went to the Master and asked, “Master, if I meditate four hours a day, how long will it take me to transcend?”
The Master looked at him and said, “If you meditate four hours a day, perhaps you will transcend in ten years.”
Thinking he could do better, the man then said, “Oh, Master, what if I meditated eight hours a day, how long will it take me to transcend?”
The Master looked at him and said, “If you meditate eight hours a day, perhaps you will transcend in twenty years.”
“But why will it take me longer if I meditate more?” the man asked.
The Master replied, “You are not here to sacrifice your joy or your life. You are here to live, to be happy, and to love. If you can do your best in two hours of meditation, but you spend eight hours instead, you will only grow tired, miss the point, and you won’t enjoy your life. Do your best, and perhaps you will learn that no matter how long you meditate, you can live, love, and be happy.”
Doing your best, you are going to live your life intensely. You are going to be productive, you are going to be good to yourself, because you will be giving yourself to your family, to your community, to everything. But it is the action that is going to make you feel intensely happy. When you always do your best, you take action. Doing your best is taking the action because you love it, not because you’re expecting a reward. Most people do exactly the opposite: They only take action when they expect a reward, and they don’t enjoy the action. And that’s the reason why they don’t do their best.
For example, most people go to work every day just thinking of payday, and the money they will get from the work they are doing. They can hardly wait for Friday or Saturday, whatever day they receive their money and can take time off. They are working for the reward, and as a result they resist work. They try to avoid the action and it becomes more
difficult, and they don’t do their best.
They work so hard all week long, suffering the work, suffering the action, not because they like to, but because they feel they have to. They have to work because they have to pay the rent, because they have to support their family. They have all that frustration, and when they do receive their money they are unhappy. They have two days to rest, to do what they want to do, and what do they do? They try to escape. They get drunk because they don’t like themselves. They don’t like their life. There are many ways that we hurt ourselves when we don’t like who we are.
On the other hand, if you take action just for the sake of doing it, without expecting a reward, you will find that you enjoy every action you do. Rewards will come, but you are not attached to the reward. You can even get more than you would have imagined for yourself without expecting a reward. If we like what we do, if we always do our best, then we are really enjoying life. We are having fun, we don’t get bored, we don’t have frustrations.
When you do your best, you don’t give the Judge the opportunity to find you guilty or to blame you. If you have done your best and the Judge tries to judge you according to your Book of Law, you’ve got the answer: “I did my best.” There are no regrets. That is why we always do our best. It is not an easy agreement to keep, but this agreement is really going to set you free.
When you do your best you learn to accept yourself. But you have to be aware and learn from your mistakes. Learning from your mistakes means you practice, look honestly at the results, and keep practicing. This increases your awareness.
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Many, many years ago I was doing some weeks of intensive meditation retreat practice.
In those days I not only used a cushion to sit on but also kept a bench nearby so I could switch to the bench if I got tired of the cushion.
I had a lot of anxiety that my body might hurt me, and I felt I needed to have every possible aid with me.
I also sat against the back wall of the meditation hall so I could lean on the wall for support if I needed it.
One afternoon, I was sitting quite relaxed at my spot near the back wall, on my cushion with my bench right next to me.
Suddenly, I heard some rustling movement near me.
I opened my eyes a tiny bit and saw a hand reach down, take my bench, and walk away with it.
Then I saw the person who took it put it down at some distance from me and sit down on it.
The person was a new arrival whom I had not yet seen at the retreat.
A volcano of irritability exploded in my mind.
It was very “righteous” irritability. He had my bench!
At that moment it didn’t matter at all that I had a cushion and that my body was quite comfortable.
Nor did it matter to me that there were extra supplies of cushions and benches that I knew were available from any of the retreat managers.
That person was sitting on my bench. I spent many agitated hours composing recriminating notes in my mind, addressed to the person who had taken my bench.
I never wrote a real note, but my mind relentlessly devised every possible note that I might send.
The notes progressed from coldly cordial to mildly sarcastic to outright demanding.
Every day the same man sat on my bench, clearly not giving it a second thought.
Each time I entered the meditation hall, my anger rose to a new level.
As days passed and my bench showed no sign of returning, a new worry that this person would actually take my bench home with him further escalated my anger.
I started to dislike every single thing about that person.
I disliked the way he walked, how he sat, and how he ate his food.
One day, just after a lunch when I had not liked the way in which he’d washed his dishes, I returned to the meditation hall for the afternoon sitting and found that my bench was back in its original place right beside me. The person who had used it was gone.
He had apparently arrived at the retreat late and left early.
Suddenly my mind cleared. It was as if it had been filled with a storm for five days, and now the storm had suddenly passed.
It had been filled with a storm for five days.
I realized I had spent all that time in a storm over the whereabouts of a bench I didn’t need.
The whole experience felt bizarre. I had used up incredible energy.
I was amazed. I thought to myself, “Is this the way I do my whole life?”
Living
Life Fully, the e-zine
exists to try to provide for visitors of the world wide web a
place
of growth, peace, inspiration, and encouragement. Our
articles
are presented as thoughts of the authors--by no means do
we
mean to present them as ways that anyone has to live
life. Take
from them what you will, and disagree with
whatever you disagree
with--just know that they'll be here for you
each week.
Life has no
other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it,
than to
accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes
to,
everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate,
or
despise,
serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty,
painful,
evil,
can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength,
if faced with
an open mind. Every moment is a golden one
for those
who have the vision to recognize it as such.
Henry Miller
Becoming a Gifted
Observer
In some ways, living a full and fulfilling life all boils
down to this—being able to witness the world and experience it
in its fullness and splendor without judging it, without
artificial expectations that bring us down horribly when they’re
not met.I wish I were
better at it because almost everything that I’ve read about
being happy and being at peace and about living life fully comes
down to being able to be here on this planet as a human being and
witnessing all there is to witness without letting it get to us.
When
someone insults you, for example, why does that tend to cause you
stress?Why do you
worry about it?The
insult says much more about the person who insulted you than it
says about you, so why do you allow it to ruin your day, or your
hour, or ten minutes on a nice Tuesday afternoon?As an observer, you would be able to witness the insult and
recognize it for what it is—a simple word or five spoken by a
person who is feeling angry, frustrated, or insecure, and who
wants to upset you to make him- or herself feel better somehow.
It’s
not worth it to feel insulted, though.And there’s no need for it—it accomplishes nothing at
all In your life except to make you lose a certain amount of peace
and equanimity that you really shouldn’t sacrifice for the sake
of some person whose goal is to make you feel bad about yourself
or your life.
Pay
attention. It's all about paying attention.
Attention is vitality.
It connects you with others.
It makes you eager. Stay eager.
Susan Sontag
And that’s just one example.Our lives are filled with situations in which we face the
choice to merely observe or to become involved, lose our cool, or
make judgments about the nature of what we’re seeing.When my students act up in class, I have the choice between
reacting to their actions and simply witnessing what they’re
doing, trying all the time to be a responsible witness rather than
trying to control them through my reactions to their actions.Of course, there are certain behaviors that I need to
control, and when I’m in that situation it becomes impossible
simply to be a witness—then I must take part in the drama and
try to exert influence rather than just learning what I can by
watching and listening closely.
In
the self-help world, you’ll see people talking and writing about
mindfulness, awareness, the present moment, etc.Focusing on these things should help us to be happier
because we come to appreciate what we have here in the present
moment rather than worrying about the future or regretting
something from the past.Being
an active and effective observer does the same thing:it keeps us focused on the present moment even more when
we’re making a concerted effort to see all that we can, whether
we understand it or not.
And
whether we “understand” it or not is completely irrelevant,
when all is said and done.Watching
that woman doing what she’s doing can help us to be aware and
mindful, or it can give us the opportunity to judge and to
diminish that which we witness, turning it into something other
than what it truly is.
Mindfulness
means
paying attention
in a particular way;
on purpose,
in the present moment,
and nonjudgmentally.
Jon
Kabat-Zinn
The truth of the matter is that we’re constantly trying
to figure out motives for other people’s actions.That guy just offered her a hand because he wants to hook
up with her, to get something out of her.That kid just took that money from his parents because
he’s a thief, and he’s incorrigible.That woman just helped that old man across the street
because she’s kind and considerate—though we’re not aware of
the fact that she just stole his wallet.
What
few of us seem to understand, though, is the extent to which these
judgments shape our reality.Our
world is a good place or a bad place partly due to the ways that
we see it.We have
peace of mind or we’re constantly stressed out because of the
ways that we observe what happens to us and around us—and if we
were impartial observers, what happens to us and around us
wouldn’t affect us nearly as much as it does when we’re
passing judgment. So
what does it mean to be an observer?And how can this possibly help us?It seems like a very passive way to approach life, allowing
life to go on all around us but not contributing to it in very
positive or productive ways.
But
that’s just how it seems. The
truth of the matter is that a whole lot of people will appreciate
the fact that you’re able to observe without passing judgment,
for your resulting voice will be a voice of reason, not a reactive
one.
Many
situations that would have set you back will now simply educate
you: Relationships. Jobs
and work. Politics. Conflict. School.
Mindfulness
can be summed up in two words:
pay attention. Once you notice what you’re
doing, you have the power to
change it.
Michelle
Burford
I’ve done an awful lot of reading on many different
topics over the last thirty years, and I’ve done my best to let
the concepts and ideas that I’ve read sink into my mind to join
everything else that’s in there.I’ve tried different strategies and plans, some of which
have worked quite well, others of which haven’t worked at all.As an observer, I try not to get attached to the things
that I’m trying because I know that if I do get attached, it
will be much harder to stop attempting a particular strategy if it
isn’t working out.Attachment
means that we’re no longer simply observing—rather, we’re
basing a part of our happiness or fulfillment on a strategy or a
rule that we want to work.And
if we want it to work, we may lose the ability to learn from it
and about it, and we may stick with it long after it’s proved to
us that it’s not at all effective.
Most
of the texts that are written about Buddhism discuss detachment at
great length.In
today’s world that seems to value and reward attachment above
all else, detachment may seem to be an ideal state that can’t be
reached.In fact, it
can feel quite foreign and uncomfortable to us because of all the
teachings that we’ve received our entire lives long—teachings
that encourage us to be attached to outcomes and to things.There are times when I make a great effort to remain
detached because I know it’s for the best, but I’ve felt like
I should be doing something, anything, to try to make a situation
better—even though I’ve known that the situation isn’t mine
to make better or worse.
In
those situations, I’ve done my best to observe, and then to
share my observations.I
remember a meeting I was having with a parent of a student once,
and she was telling me, “I need him to be getting better
grades.”Her son was
doing quite well in school, and his grades were very decent, and
quite accurate, it seemed to me.Rather than try to convince her to lighten up on her son, I
simply shared with her what I had been observing—her son did all
of the work asked of him, he was a kind and courteous young man,
he got along well with other students and teachers, and I really
enjoyed working with him. Then
I told her the interesting thing that I had noticed about what she
had said, over and over again:“I need him to. . . .”I didn’t try to psychoanalyze her, and I didn’t try to
explain to her that her son was living his life, not hers.I just told her something I had noticed, and we had a nice
talk from there.
This
is one of the greatest powers of being a good observer:You’re not telling people what they’ve done wrong;
you’re simply telling them what they’ve done.Where they go from there is up to them, and in my
experience, pretty much everyone has a good idea of where they
want to go and what they want to be, even if that idea isn’t
fully in their conscience mind yet.An observer allows others to live as they will, without
trying to control them or their outcomes.Just as a psychoanalyst must be a good observer and
listener in order to help their patients help themselves, so can
we become extremely helpful resources for our friends and family
by becoming effective, caring, and compassionate observers.
We can be thankful to a friend
for a
few acres or a little money;
and yet for the freedom and
command of the whole earth,
and for the great benefits of
our being, our life, health,
and reason, we look upon
ourselves as under no obligation.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Imagination
is a flame that ignites the creative spirit.
Imagination lights up your mind by stoking mental
fires. It can be stimulated from the outside
through the senses, or from the inside through the
driving power of curiosity and discontent.
Imagination
stimulates your thinking power by giving your mind
abundant data with which to work. It opens the
gate to dreams and fantasies so that you may become
receptive, as a little child, in exploring the
Kingdom of Ideas.
Imagination
guides you in your contacts with individuals and
crowds, so you can discover new concepts and
approaches.
Imagination
inspires you to look at everything with fresh eyes,
as though you had just come forth from a dark tunnel
into the light of day. Imagination becomes for
you a magic lamp with which to search the darkness
of the unknown, that you may discover new goals or
chart more productive paths to old goals.
Imagination
helps you to recognize the reality of facts, but
then to go beyond them, to penetrate beneath them,
to rise above them in your search for creative
answers to problems. Imagination "stirs
up the gift of God in thee." Through your
imagination you touch and express the inspiration of
the Infinite. Imagination, in the words of
Shakespeare, "gives to airy nothing a local
habitation and a name." You reach into
the heavens to grasp an idea, then you bring it down
to earth and make it work.
But what is happiness
except the simple harmony
between a person and the life he or she leads?
Albert Camus
Yes, life
can be mysterious and confusing--but there's much of life that's
actually rather dependable and reliable. Some principles apply
to life in so many different contexts that they can truly be called
universal--and learning what they are and how to approach them and use
them can teach us some of the most important lessons that we've ever
learned.
My doctorate is in Teaching and Learning. I use it a lot when I
teach at school, but I also do my best to apply what I've learned to
the life I'm living, and to observe how others live their lives.
What makes them happy or unhappy, stressed or peaceful, selfish or
generous, compassionate or arrogant? In this book, I've done my
best to pass on to you what I've learned from people in my life,
writers whose works I've read, and stories that I've heard.
Perhaps these principles can be a positive part of your life, too! Universal Principles of Living Life Fully. Awareness of
these principles can explain a lot and take much of the frustration
out of the lives we lead.
Explore all of our
quotations pages--these links will take you to the first page of each
topic, and those pages will contain links to any additional pages on
the same topic (there are five pages on adversity, for example).
™
