The One Way To Live Your Life For The In-Between Moments
We often seek life's greatest moments, at the expense of life's most significant seconds.
Our life is full of junk time.
You see it everywhere. Go to dinner and watch the couple sitting at the table across from you.
They're ferociously scrolling their social media in a desperate attempt for someone to pay attention to them, or they may have an intense fear of missing out.
The couple can hold each other's hand and chat about life.
They could share stories about what their children did that day that made them laugh.
Anything.
It's these small moments that lead us to who we are.
Neglecting them, we begin to lose ourselves. We lose our way.
"I don't need any special days. I mean they're all special. We spend a lot of time together and I enjoy every second of it. Again, I'm a believer in the ordinary and the mundane. These guys that talk about "quality time" – I always find that a little sad when they say, "We have quality time." I don't want quality time. I want the garbage time. That's what I like. You just see them in their room reading a comic book and you get to kind of watch that for a minute, or having a bowl of Cheerios at 11 o'clock at night when they're not even supposed to be up. The garbage, that's what I love. - Jerry Seinfeld."
Here's how to cherish life's most important moments.
Take an active role in observing your life.
The constant barrage of thought after thought, complaint after complaint, stress after stress.
People miss out on their life because they're trapped in their heads. Our mind has taken us hostage.
We need to gain control.
We need to quiet our mind, escape the noise, and focus on the present.
It's simple to do.
Begin to observe what's going on around you.
If a thought pop's in your head, breathe through it. Focus on what's in front of you.
Don’t get distracted. Don’t believe you’ve become bored. Stay present. Watch. Listen. Notice the smallest details of what’s going on around you.
Here are some recent examples from my life on how we can observe seconds and create a memory for our lifetime:
As my two sons play with each other, my oldest walks over to his younger brother and kisses him with pure love.
Hiking in nature, I notice the incredible beauty of it all. In these moments, I realize, nature is where I need to go to become centered.
Chasing my children around the house, while listening to their giggles radiate my soul.
Letting my oxytocin levels explode as my wife and I hug.
Video chat my mom, being thankful she gave me life.
Video conference calling my sales team, and I notice everyone's incredible smiles, which changes my mood.
I notice when I get triggered during specific situations and work to become less emotional in the future during these situations.
When you observe what's going on around you, you cherish life's greatest moments, and you learn incredible lessons along the way.
"So both at work and at play, life went on in many places other than the room where I wrote, in other words; there were memorable moments and unmemorable moments, and as far as my sense of being trapped is concerned, it was the unmemorable ones, the apparently random and everyday ones, that turned out to be the key moments, the key that let me out of the trap at last. - Frederick Buechner"
