Satisfaction Guaranteed
I just read the latest post by Rosa Say & it really got me thinking (particularly the question she leaves us with). My thoughts go something like this:
So often
- … we rush on to the next thing without enjoying what already is
- … we reach a milestone but see it as a measure of how far we still have to go
- … we tell our coaches and mentors and supervisors and spouses and friends what we have achieved, and they respond “Great. What’s next?”
If 2006 had a theme for me, it was this: “Live in the present.” A valued coachee kindly sent me a short book about it for Christmas, without knowing this had been a constant challenge all year; the challenge to stop striving for what I didn’t have at the expense of enjoying what I already have. It was a nice (not-so-subtle, God!) punctuation mark at the end of my year.
Enjoying what we have; living in the present; savouring the moment; consolidating our victories. There is so much good in my life, so much already there to explore and extend. Yet I (like many of us) seem addicted to “next“.
Rosa, thank you. I was going to write that I’ll make a commitment to practise the present for 6 weeks … but then again, I think I’ll just enjoy tonight.
Aloha Pete, thank you so much for continuing this conversation here on Great Circle. The picture you’ve added now gives ME pause to think of the beauty I may be missing because I’m focused on the open trail of the New Year, when I simply need to look up and see what’s already all around me!
In the retreat I mentioned in my post, one of the other things we talked about when ending it (besides the staying power of the 2006 victories), was how to package the experience we had all just had for the managers who couldn’t join us. That hiker could snap a picture, but how else could she convey the peace and majesty of the moment? I think that her full enjoyment of it - the savoring, and living in the moment of which you speak, is the crucial first step.