Being Fully present with future Goals.

Thoughts on how to balance contentment with ambition.

[Be] desireless with desire… -Ashtavakra Gita

Many people I speak with want to live in the present more fully, be more engaged with their loved ones, enjoy activities, gain a greater sense of peace while at the same time reach for goals, fulfill ambitions, and live up to their full potential.

For many, this can be difficult to reconcile:

Being fully present and being ambitious and goal-oriented.

One major pitfall seems to be becoming too goal-oriented, focusing too narrowly on trying to reach some far-off ambition that is believed to ‘bring happiness”. Ultimately, for many, that narrowed future -oriented focus, causes one to pay too much attention to the discrepancy between where they are versus where they want to be. Paradoxically this lowers the quality of present moment activity which can and often slows progression of goal achievement.

The relationship to the present moment ends up:

Merely a way to get to the next thing

Never treated with importance, and given that vital intention and energy

Lacking Enjoyment and met with a sense of frustration, boredom and impatience

The other side, are those who don’t set goals which can lead to a lack of sense of control and direction in life and after months and years pass feel as though they have been just drifting through life, and feel unfulfilled.

Goals are an important part of our overall sense of wellbeing.

They increase motivation, enhance focus, help us to strategically develop skills and tools, while strengthen our self-reliance and confidence. Being goal-directed can also be a way to develop introspection as we have to reflect continually on how we’re doing and adjust accordingly, noticing whether the barriers are internal or external and learning how to resolve either.

The challenge lies in finding the right approach to being connected fully to the here and now while directing our attention and energy forward towards our goals.

Fully Engaged living

This last week Tuesday was 4th of July, and for fun my family went kayaking. We kayaked from the Dunedin Causeway to a small island out in the Gulf. My son and I sat in one kayak while my wife and daughter were in the other. At one moment as we were drifting from the port, in mid-sea, towards the small island, this perspective became even more clear to me. We were there fully enjoying the waves and the bumps and the laughter and the challenges and the struggle of kayaking, taking moments to stop and jump in the water, then back on the kayak, all the time keeping our mind and our eyes towards a small island that we were navigating towards.

Sometimes having to paddle hard on the right as the waves pushed us off course and then sometimes hard on the left as again the waves were pushing against our efforts, always redirecting and always adjusting course in the moment as we were fully present with the joy and struggle of the felt experience of kayaking- never truly taking our gazes off the island in the distance, fully enjoying this whole process, this whole journey.

I thought,” yeah, this is what I got to do in life”, continue:

to cultivate this feeling of embracing and enjoying the daily challenges and struggles while directing myself towards these goals.

Alignment with Values:

There seems to me to be a balance of these two types of consciousness, that fully present, all embracing floodlight consciousness that takes in all as it is here and now and also a sense of that spotlight consciousness, that’s focused forward in a particular direction or towards a few particular objects that we want to pull into our world or move towards.

A framework that is helpful in being able to maintain this balance is:

first to align with our values, being able to identify really what’s important to us on a broad scope of things. What are some core values that we have that we want to be living out in the present moment?. How do we want to show up in life? And then from this aligned, centered place of living out our values, we

pick a goal that we want to work towards that is connected to that value. And finally,

create action steps that are in alignment with those goals.

Here are some steps suggested by management expert Brian Tracy that I’ve found helpful to model after once I’ve identified a goal aligned with a value.

1. Write it down clearly and in detail.
2. Set a deadline on your goal and set sub deadlines if necessary.
3. Identify the obstacles that you will have to overcome to achieve your goal, and identify the most important one, internal or external.
4. Identify the knowledge and skills you will need to achieve your goal, and the most important skill that you will have to become excellent in.
5. Identify the people whose help and cooperation you will require, and think about what you can do to get their help.
6. Make a list of everything you will have to do to achieve your goal. Add to the list as you think of new things to do.
7. Organize your list by sequence and priority, by what you have to do first, and by what is most important.
8. Make a plan by organizing your list into steps from the first to the last, and then resolve to take action on your plan, every single day.

As you focus on setting these goals it’s important to pull your attention back to the here and now. This can be done in a few ways. One of the most powerful is through a sense of appreciation or gratitude on a daily basis and focus on the small wins and the small experiences of joy daily.

A good daily statement of intention can also help. For example:

I intend to be fully engaged, moment by moment, as I stay focused on my goals.

Micro-moments of Mindfulness:

Another strategy is to pay attention to the small gaps throughout the day. Maybe you’re going from meeting to meeting, from activity to activity, coming in or getting out of your car. Use these moments for pauses to notice and check in with your body grounded wherever you are. Focus lightly on noticing your breath and allowing your breath in those moments to sink down into your lower abdomen, and at the same time, notice the weight of your body resting, wherever it may be momentarily, connecting with the earth underneath you. This micro realignment can have a tremendous benefit on balancing out your nervous system and discharging some excess stress that you may have picked up during the day.

…plan for the hard while it’s easy,

work on the great while it’s small

the hardest task in the world begins easy

the greatest goal in the world begins small

therefore the sage never acts great

he thus achieves great things…

-Lao Tzu