This Endless Moment — Live an Amazing Life

Clients come in for ther­a­py because some­thing (or sev­er­al some­things) isn’t work­ing. Yet, on an entire­ly dif­fer­ent lev­el (and the point of this book)—the real issue is not what isn’t work­ing. The real issue is that they don’t under­stand that solv­ing their issue requires that they behave differently.

There is an inter­nal bat­tle going on in each of us, between the seduc­tive siren song of stay­ing stuck in the “way I’ve always done life” and the order­ly dis­ci­pline of doing things in anoth­er way.

Most peo­ple waste their lives doing every­thing they can think of to get oth­ers to do things dif­fer­ent­ly. There is a con­sid­er­able emo­tion­al invest­ment in this effort. (Let me be clear about which effort we are talk­ing about: the effort of try­ing to get the world to coop­er­ate in mak­ing you hap­py. Now, “the world” can be a boss, a part­ner, one’s par­ents or kids, your friends… or even the per­son serv­ing you a dou­ble fat-free latte.)

The first step toward wis­dom is to under­stand that you can’t manip­u­late oth­ers or the world to make you happy.

In a sense, all that I ever “teach” clients (and all I ever remind myself) is this: I am respon­si­ble for me, and I am respon­si­ble for how I choose to approach my life. Noth­ing else is going on. This is such a sim­ple point that it flies direct­ly over the head of 95 per cent of the population.

You will learn the practicalities of living a full and rich life:

Notice what would hap­pen if we under­stood that the world actu­al­ly is phe­nom­e­nal, that it is a series of uncon­nect­ed and non-mean­ing­ful events. We would have to admit that a thing is a thing is a thing, until we make mean­ing about it. To do this requires a leap in our under­stand­ing. The leap is summed up this way: the mean­ing I make about the essen­tial­ly mean­ing­less is mean­ing­ful only to me.

On relationships:

In oth­er words, healthy rela­tion­ships are phys­i­cal­ly expres­sive rela­tion­ships. If I am avoid­ing phys­i­cal con­tact with my part­ner, I am in effect say­ing, “I refuse to make con­tact with you.” The refusal may seem to play out phys­i­cal­ly, but that sim­ply rep­re­sents what’s going on at all the oth­er lev­els — emo­tion­al­ly, spir­i­tu­al­ly, and in the cou­ple’s “cou­ple-ness.”

On life:

I’d like to sug­gest to you that life is meant to be an ongo­ing devel­op­men­tal project. This is a con­cept we accept at work — we “glad­ly” train and retrain, look­ing for improve­ments, effi­cien­cies, oth­er, new­er, “bet­ter” ways to do things. I sus­pect we were meant to be on a sim­i­lar walk in our per­son­al lives, but some­how forgot.

Other thoughts:

At the end of the day, this is the real­i­ty of life. We are born and die alone, and the rest of life is a solo job in a crowd. This is either ter­ri­fy­ing or free­ing. I’ll scare myself with it pre­cise­ly to the degree that I refuse to accept respon­si­bil­i­ty for my life. I will free myself pre­cise­ly to the degree that I allow myself the per­son­al sat­is­fac­tion of pad­dling just a lit­tle more effi­cient­ly and effort­less­ly each day.

And here is the point!

In the end.. you’ll find your­self liv­ing out your life in a con­scious, present, hon­est, and curi­ous way. You’ll take what comes with­out judg­ment and decide what you choose to do next. You will be con­sis­tent and clear. And you will be that most unusu­al (yet not spe­cial) of all humans- a self-respon­si­ble per­son, engaged in liv­ing life to the fullest, while extend­ing an invi­ta­tion to oth­ers to join you in the pad­dle, the dance.