Living in the Moment
One of the great discoveries of personal development was first articulated in Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist imprisoned in Nazi death camps during WWII. His awareness came as a result of observing the impact that the camp had on its prisoners. What he found, and later proposed in his teachings was that it wasn’t the events of our life, but rather the interpretation of those events that most impacted our life experience. In other words, it wasn’t what happened to us that mattered so much as what we made that event mean.
Since that time, many have continued to study and support those findings. So why does this matter to us, and how can we take benefit from Frankl’s insights? By being present enough in our lives to choose our perspectives in away that serves us. What I mean by that is too often, through our addiction to drama, we frame things in the most horrifying way. By doing so, we may feel significant, even though that significance comes from the immensity of our perceived challenges. While immediately serving the need for significance, the long term consequences can be tremendously negative. Through this lens, we see a future that is fearful. This fear disconnects us from our resources and limits our ability to respond.
The reason this is so critical is that out of fear we lose our ability to reason, and instead act out of fight or flight. And as we know, when decisions are made from this limited level of resourcefulness, we frequently make choices that are not in our best interest.
How do we break this pattern?
1. Raise our level of self-awareness. Take time to reflect on the situation and to discover not only what this means to us, but also to develop our empathy by observing how our actions are impacting others. By stepping back and observing the situation from multiple perspectives, we gain a greater understanding from which to act.
2. Engage our imagination. Reaction versus response is all about a lack of imagination. We fail to consider other options and act as if we have no choice. Furthermore, even when we do stop to consider our choices, we tend to focus on fixing what is broken, rather than creating what is possible. This is an opportunity for us to learn to ask better questions.
3. Filter our choices through both an intellectual and emotional process. By believing we need to act immediately, we often create scenarios that take us far more time to correct. What this means is that we must take time to think through the likely consequences, both positive and negative, of our actions and check the degree of alignment of those outcomes with out purpose and principles.
4. Finally, we need to take action. Paralysis by analysis keeps many mired in the challenge rather than beginning our progressive path toward successful resolution. Even if we are moving in the wrong direction, it is easier to correct course, energetically, than to start from a stand still.