Life of Matt

With the recent Eckhart Tolle craze, being in the moment, or “flow”, has become somewhat of a fad.  Scientific, spiritual, and self improvement ideas are all being bandied about, resulting in loads of bullshit.

If you’ve ever experienced flow, you’ll know that it is very real, and an amazing experience. But it’s hard to separate the theory from the technique, the useful from the bullshit.  This article is going to change all that.

The Three Stages to Getting Into The Moment

Based on everything I’ve read, and all my experience, I’ve managed to break down the whole “in the moment” thing into three discreet stages.  Any of the three stages simply by themselves can be enough to push you into the moment,  but when all three are combined, the state is all but inevitable.  The stages break down as follows:

1.Empty Your Head

2.Engage Your Action Mind

3. Narrow Your Focus

Now I’ll go into more depth, giving specific techniques to aid you in each stage of the process.

Stage 1: Empty Your Head

Thoughts are poison to being in the moment.  The first stage if you want to be in the moment is to get rid of all those persistent, recurring thoughts that seem to occupy a large portion of your psyche.

There are three techinques I have found to work for this:

Have a conversation

Ever had a thought that just seemed to weigh down on you, an invisible burden?  Ever had a conversation which seemed to remove that burden?  I’ve found that if I can make a habit of talking out any such overburdening thoughts, it makes it exponentially easier to get into the moment.

Make a Decision

One common type of recurring thought is an indecision.  The solution is simple, though not easy: Make the Decision.  I may write a post about making decisions in the future; just  know this is a key part of living in the moment.

For now, if you’re chronically indecisive, you’ll want to check it this awesome post by Steve Pavlina on How to Make a Smart Decision in Less Than 60 Seconds.

Make a List

Another stubborn thought type is the self-reminder.  A self-reminder is that voice that tells you to get new AA batteries at the oddest times, or that nagging feeling that you were supposed to do something for someone, or even that exciting idea that you can’t stop thinking about.  Your brain is trying to help, by keeping them in your mind so you won’t forget them.

The solution is to take the burden from your brain, and transfer it to a list.  There are all sorts of self-reminders that are better handled by lists.  Some of my personal favorites include:

• Errands list
• Books to buy list (via amazon wishlist)
• Things I might want to do at some point list
• Blog post ideas list

Integrity in reviewing and updating the lists is vital.  When the list becomes incomplete, it no longer functions as a psychological saftey net.  If you’re like me, and you’re allergic to pen and paper, you can check out mashables 40 great resources for making lists.

When you start the habit of making lists and reviewing them,  your brain chatter will drop dramatically.

Stage 2: Engage Your Action Mind

With the long term thoughts out of the way, the next step is to rid your mind of the more short term chatter.  This includes worrying, labeling, second guessing, and all other forms of self talk.    In the previous step, I focused on long terms solutions, eliminating thoughts at their source.  However, the source of short term thoughts are much more complicated, and involve talks on judging, pain bodies, self-deception, or other complicated ideas.

I promised to keep this article actionable and bullshit free, so I’ll sidestep the issue of dealing with the root of the thinking, and instead focus on how to engage your short term/action mind.

Engage in Free Flow

Free flow is an exercise that mimics the actions of the instinctual mind.  It is my favorite technique  in this article.

Free flow has two simple rules:

1. If you think about doing something, do it immediately.
2. If you any other thought, say it out loud immediately.

This exercise can be less awkward with company, as you don’t have to talk to yourself, but it will work regardless.  The trick to this exercise is momentum.  If you can do one action, the next will be easier.  Likewise, if you censor or second guess even one time, you’ll do it again.

Unfortunately, this exercise doesn’t seem to work for those people who think using pictures instead of words.  If any visual thinkers out there have a parralel technique they use, please let me know in the comments.

Exercise

Smart evolutionary programming means that rigorous physical activity will engage our instinctual mind.  If you don’t have time for a full workout, try any sort of quick powerful movements, such as jumping jacks or pushups.

Shock Your System

This method is about doing something so unexpected that two things happen:

1. Your instinctual mind gets engaged to deal with “danger”.
2. Your mind stops thinking because it literally doesn’t know what to think.

Much of the Zen tradition is based around this method,  with zen masters using deliberate illogicality to “wake up” their students.  In the NLP world, this is known as a “Pattern Interupt”. Some other good examples include:

• Taking a cold shower
• Breaking the quiet with a loud noise
• Making animal noises in the center of a crowded room
• The Bizareness

Use Triggers

This is a Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Concept.  In NLP, it’s known as “anchoring”, and Frued liked to talk about it as well.  Triggers are specific stimuli that bring you into a certain state (in this case, an action state).  To figure these out, it can be useful to keep a log for a little bit of when you get into this action state, and what happened immediately prior to it… oftentimes you’ll find that these triggers are actually examples of exercise or shocking your system, but sometimes you’ll find a unique trigger.  Some of my favorites include:

• Listening to “Wall of Sound” type music such as Bruce Springsteens Born To Run or Energetic Punk Music
• Getting dressed in my exercise clothes.
• Sunlight.

Stage Three: Narrow Your Focus

This step is the hardest for me.  Getting into go mode for me is easy, but taming and focusing it is a whole nother matter.  It’s been translated to english variously as “relaxed alertness” and “controlled spontaneity”.  It’s devoting every fiber of your being to one thing, and basking in the sheer joy that comes from that.  Eckhart Tolle calls this “Rising Above Thought”, instead of falling below (the previous step).

I’ve found that for things which I’m very passionate about, this is not a problem at all… it’s almost an afterthought of the first two steps.  However, for most things, it takes some effort to focus in.  I’ve found four techniques for this.  The first two deal with eliminating other things that may widen your focus, the second two with directing and controlling your focus.

Minimize Distractions

One of the big things you can do to help narrow your focus is to minimize other distractions.  This meanns things that could interrupt you and throw you out of your flow state.  Some of my favorite ways to minimize distractions:

• Turn of the cellphone, unplug the phone, and close outlook.
• Setting “do not disturb” times with my family.
• Keeping my workspace uncluttered and functional
• Closing every application on the computer except what I currently need.

For more on minimizing distractions, check out the Zen Habits post on 72 ways to simplify your life.

Unschedule

This is a method for those of you who tend to get sidetracked when trying to focus, and pulled into other activities like watching TV, surfing the internet, or talking to friends.  Credit goes to Neil Fiore, although I haven’t actually read his book yet (it’s on the way).

The idea here is to plan all those seemingly unimportant tasks first.  For instance, I’m scheduled from 6 – 7 oclock today to veg out and watch tv… this gets just as much weight as a doctors appointment.  The psychology behind this method is similar to that of making lists… your brain knows that the activities have a time and place, so it doesn’t need to think about them until then.

This technique is also very effective when applied on the micro scale.  For instance, Merlin Mann’s ‘(10+2) * 5′ Hack.

Just as with lists, your integrity with keeping to your unschedules is very important.  The moment you don’t honor an unschedule (even if you’re on a role and you don’t feel like taking a break), they lose their power.

Relax

A relaxed state can go a long way towards narrowing a scattered focus.  My favorite relaxation technique involves taking a series of deep breaths, each time focusing on a different muscle to relax as I exhale.  There are several other good relaxation techniques, but all share four common traits(credit Jame s Prochaska):

• A Comfortable Position
• A quiet environment
• an internal focus
• a “letting go”

If you can get those four things, the specific technique you use is inconsequential.

Meditate

There are many types of meditation.  The thing that they all share in common is the concept of single focus, the practice of focusing on one thing at the exclusion of all else.  What’s great about meditation is that if performed regularly, it acts as a form of deliberate practice for the skill of narrowing your focus.  By performing meditation in a controlled relaxed environment like mentioned above, it increases your ability to single focus when there are other distractions present.

I’ve unfortunatley been out of the habit of meditation for a while, so I asked some of my friends and readers what techniques worked best for them.  The most universally recommended technique seemed to be mindful breathing.  This is the practice of taking deep breaths, in a controlled manner, single focusing on only the breathing and the sensations it produces.

Meditating regularly is perhaps the biggest thing you can do to enhance your ability to narrow your focus.  For a more comprehensive treatment of meditaiton, you can check out Pick the Brains article: 4 Reasons You Should Meditate, and How to Get Started.

What Works For You?

The process I’ve outlined above is something that works.  The patterns and techinques  I’ve given you here for each stage are things you can implement immediately, to have a clearer, more action oriented, more focused mind.  And to do it without wading through piles of bullshit.

But these are just things that have worked for me.  I’d be very interested to hear what techniques have worked for you, the reader.  Drop a comment and let me know.

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