Every day we walk outside our door to go to work, the post office, the grocery store or wherever, our mind is already ahead of itself. In many of the mindfulness-based classes I teach we start with Jon Kabat-Zinn’s raisin exercise where we pretend we’ve never seen this raisin before and proceed to bring all our five senses to it. Inevitably people come out saying they noticed so much more about the raisin than they ever knew. Many say they enjoyed it so much more and found it satisfying.

The question remains, how much of life do we miss out on day-to-day as we spend so much attention in the past and future?

Jan Chozen Bays is a physician and Zen teacher and her latest book How to Train a Wild Elephant: & other adventures in mindfulness, she teaches us many practices to engage in week to week, but here’s a simple one to show us how much we usually miss.

In a past blog, A Child’s ADHD Can Stress Your Marriage, John Grohol, Ph.D. cites an Washington Post article stating an increase in divorce rates among people who have children with ADHD.  One person aptly comments that it also could be because one or more of the parents have ADHD and it’s not diagnosed making the marriage more difficult.

Having children with ADHD or special needs is challenging and requires extra responsibility that taxes the family system. There is simply more effort and time required on the parent and child’s part which makes people more tired and when people get tired they tend to get irritable. When irritability is not taken care of, people get hurt, put their walls up and close down. When partners are closed down and aren’t able to feel or detect one another’s feelings anymore, empathy flies out the window, and connection is right on its tails.

Without connection, there is no relationship and so this leads to higher rates of separation.

The quote from the Washington Post that highlights this issue says:

Once in a while I come across a phrase that helps me drop from the chaos in my mind in the present moment, into the now, into what is most meaningful. Psychologist and author Leonard Felder’s latest book is called Here I Am and the title of the book is the practice I connect with.

What do I mean?

In Judaism there’s a phrase called Hineini which means “Here I am.” It epitomizes mindfulness, intentionally bringing our minds to the present moment, without the filters from the past.

Here’s how it worked for me.

In the spirit of this blog I want share you with a song that was recently sent to me by Jim Angus, a Canadian songwriter. As you listen to this you are welcome to close your eyes and just hear the song or keep them open and allow the images to complement the experience.

Enjoy!

In a past blog, Ronald Pies, M.D. wrote about an experience which left him fuming when a local pharmacy lost close to 50 years of “priceless” home movies of childhood summers and memories gone by.  That same day continental flight 3407 went down and the deaths of 50 passengers that day putting everything in perspective. He said “Having problems means being alive” and even though we may struggle in this life, being alive is something to be grateful for.

Days later I learned that a very good friend’s husband was hit by a bus and left in critical condition only to pass away shortly after. He was a great man with a sweet soul and a gentle nature. He loved his animals, his wife, and kids, and seemed to always have a smile for you when in his presence. When I heard the news, I initially felt resistance to the sadness as I had so much to do that day and didn’t feel like I had time to feel it.

I love how more and more research is coming out in the field of neuroscience pointing to neurological correlates of things we’ve all known for years. It’s validating.

One of the number one things that drive us nuts is outside noises we can’t control. It’s the car alarm, the neighbor’s noisy stereo, or a friend’s baby who can’t stop crying.  Cathy Kerr, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School and her colleagues recently found that meditators are quicker and more precise at adjusting the alpha wave rhythms in the brain. These are brain waves that help regulate the transmission of sensory input from the outside and are also a sign of relaxed activity in the brain.

So, as she put it in a recent NY Times article, “If you’re reading something in a noisy environment and you want to be in a bubble, you might use your alpha rhythms like a volume knob, to turn down the volume on neurons that represent sound from the outside world.”

Participants in her study who took an 8-week mindfulness course were asked to turn their attention their left hand or foot. These participants showed quicker and more precise alpha waves than the people who did not practice the meditation.

What does this mean to the rest of us?

A few months ago I was walking with a long time friend of mine who has had a long history of working in the field of personal and professional development. He said something that really surprised me. He had developed a discipline of checking into the present moment every minute of the day. Just for a few seconds he’s check to see where he was, what he was thinking, and how he was feeling. Over a short time he got pretty good at this and his mind just started to automatically bring him to the moment. This may seem extreme, but maybe there’s something for the rest of us to learn here.

What if during multiple moments of the day you had a mini-moment practice where you brought your mind to the present moment and checked in with yourself. What would change?

Once in a while we all come across some information, a person, a story, or a quote that lifts us up for that moment and makes a difference in our day. What you may not realize is that momentary difference goes on to become a difference in many people that you came in contact with during the day.

In their book Connected, Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler make the argument that even our friend’s friend’s friends have an impact on us, that’s how deep the fabric of our interconnectedness goes. We all want to make change in ourselves and our communities and it’s important to be mindful of the fact that in order to get motivated to make change, we need to be inspired.

Recently I came across the website www.weresoinspired.com that is 100% about helping us get inspired for the better.

It started when a couple started sending each other emails every day trying to inspire one another to live “as if it mattered” and then made a life change to make that what they want to help others do in the moments of their lives.

Is it possible that we hold more good within us than we think? Is it possible that our brains are inclined toward looking for negativity in life and breezing over those aspects that are positive? Most importantly, is it possible that with an awareness of how we are wired, we can transcend these conditionings and recognize more choice in life?

Walt Whitman said:

“I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness.”

What distracts us from this goodness?

A funny thing happened to me on the way to work the other day. No really. I was driving and stopped at a red light. The light just turned green and as I was about to step on the gas pedal the driver behind me honked.

The immediate thought was, “What the heck is wrong with this guy?  The light just turned green, people are so impatient.” My shoulders tensed and I was getting upset. “Let it go, let it go, he could be having a bad day already,” I tried to say to myself. As I started moving forward he pulled up to the lane next to me as if to pass me, but then slowed down next to my window. That’s where things got interesting.