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This Week's Personal Development Article

Single-Mindedness for a Better Life

I recently pointed out to a group of clients that, as you develop your “clarity of mind”, you will not be upset by or react to bad stuff that happens in your life, nor will you be over-exhilarated when really good things happen.  One of my clients remarked that that surely is a recipe for living a boring, unemotional, “antiseptic” life.    Not a bad point when you consider that another member of the group observed that, on the night Barack Obama won the US Presidential Election, “he was so calm giving his victory speech, that he almost looked bored!”
Let’s just get a couple of points clear.   People with “presence” – and Obama appears to have plenty of that – appreciate what is actually going on.  Because they are more present than normal people they will never be overly swayed by outside events.   Like sailing a yacht in the Volvo Ocean Race, they are unlikely to be bowled over when they’re on the crest of the wave and will certainly not capsize in a deep swell.   They simply ride the waves on a “natural higher” than the rest of us – never too high, never low.

So it is with any of us who learn how to develop our natural and innate ability to focus in the present moment, because that, quite simply is what presence is.  Research shows that the average person – 96% of us – are not present but are constantly subconsciously re- and re-living our formative years in the mistaken belief that the events that then impressed us are re-happening in the here and now.  This illusion means that the average person is, perhaps, only 1% present.

If you do, however, develop your presence, you will realise that whatever has arisen passes on – whether that is today’s crisis or tomorrow’s high, whether that is our perceived humiliation in the playground thirty years ago or our elation at captaining the winning under-10’s team.   To use an age-old Buddhist expression, everything arises and passes away.   That is not only a great consolation to someone to whom something bad has just happened – it will pass, everything does (just think about, if you can remember, what you might have been worrying about this time last year!) – it grounds those of us who experience the highs that success brings. Indeed, this truth applies to everything – all bad stuff, all good things, all the normal things of everyday life.   Everything arises and passes away.   Get yourself too attached to bad stuff and you become a depressed victim, get yourself too attached to the good stuff and you become a “legend in your own lunchtime” and a junkie for all that “good stuff”.

It is said that you need to be single-minded to achieve success but I would suggest that that single-mindedness needs to be turned towards a fuller and more involved experience of what is going on here and now.   Only in the here and now do you experience what the University of Chicago calls “flow” – what athletes call being in the zone.   Truly successful people – the hallmark of whom is their presence – are single-minded, not on the achievement of their goals, but on “going with the flow” in the present moment – for it is only in the present moment that you can do and be.

Your goal, therefore, should be to become single-minded – to the point of obsession, because your life depends upon it – in the pursuit of being and doing more fully in the here and now, in the pursuit of presence.  When present, in flow, you, yourself are cool, calm and collected, best placed to do the very best you have to do in every here and now – regardless of what’s happening around you.   That kind of presence creates greatness.   Neither you nor I have to aspire to be another Obama, Gandhi, Mandela, Ali.  But surely we can aspire to living our own lives extra-ordinarily.  Otherwise, what’s the point?  What’s the point of going through the motions and wondering, as we lie on our deathbeds, did our passing through make a damn bit of difference.   You can make a huge difference in your own life right here, right now – the only time and place you have.  We can all be great.   We are all born leaders, we all have the inherent ability to be present – after all, we were expert at it as children.   All we have to do is tune in to the present moment, be present, have presence and make a real go of the here and now.  Your life will be much the better for it.

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