Why Writing on a Notebook Challenges Us to Live in the Present
And other things I want to share this week
Recently, my life sunken into an existential crisis.
I destroyed a 12-year-old life together with the love of my life
Notebooks are being the foundation of my writing, and now a fundamental part of my healing process.
I slap every darker thought into it.
"Keep a notebook, travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it, slap into every stray thought that flutters up into your brain" - Jack London
"Each of us will, in our lives face crisis." says Ryan Holiday, "A moment where the whole game depends on us. In these situations, we must be truly present, empty our mind of preconceptions take our time, sit quietly and reflect, reject distraction, weigh advice against the counsel of our convictions, and deliberate without being paralyzed."
Living in the present moment is a gift. Even if I'm going through one of the darkest moments in my life.
It's a trying experience. We never know but it could be our last.
That's why I embrace the present. Writing in a notebook forces me to do just that.
It reminds me of why I'm through this process, and what I have done wrong in the past, It helps me discover patterns, and know myself better, and it helps me fall in love with my life again.
Being present in the moment, even those darker ones, demands all of us. It's not nothing, it may be the hardest thing in the world
But if you fail today, you can try tomorrow. That's the nice thing about the present.
It keeps showing up to give you a second chance.
Book I'm reading now: 'Stillness is the Key' by Ryan Holiday
Ryan is a master at distilling wisdom from the greatest leaders, makers, artists, and fighters ever lived.
It has helped me better understand my life, what mistakes I made, what I overlooked, and why I walked the wrong path.
Every page I read from this book is an eye-opener. I feel so ignorant about life and overlooked what matters the most to me.
It was the right book at the right time when I needed to heal from my deep wounds.
Here are some highlights and words of wisdom from Ryan Holiday's book:
"We are overfed and undernourished, overstimulated, overscheduled, and lonely"
"In our own lives, we face a seemingly equal number of problems and are pulled in countless directions by competing priorities and beliefs"
"If the quiet moments are the best moments, and if so many wise, virtuous people have sung their praises why are they so rare?"
"Each of us will, in our lives face crisis. A moment where the whole game depends on us."
"Being present demands all of us, it's not nothing, it may be the hardest thing in the world."
"What we are experiencing now is a gift, even if it is a stressful, trying experience - it could be our last".
Meditation was always something that intrigued me for years.
But I never practice it. Kieran Drew comes with 5 thoughts from a 4-day walking meditation he did.
For 4 days, he walked for fours backward and forwards along a 15-meter concrete platform - you're barefoot and you don't know the time.
Kieran in his newsletter, shares his thoughts about meditation
"The core benefit of this practice is disconnecting from your thoughts.
“Meditation is observation. Observation leads to understanding. Understanding leads to change. People try to skip ahead to the change part without doing the work, but that’s like sticking a bandaid on a gaping wound—it ain’t gonna work.”
Meditation is like a glass of muddy water. “Only when you let things settle do you begin to see clearly."
Why walking meditation?
For 4 reasons. Kieran says walking increases clarity and creativity. It's easier to keep going - moving helps you not fall asleep. Turning so we don't fall from the platform brings you back to the present. If you forget to turn at the end, you’ll fall off.
And it hurts. Your mind makes many excuses. Your feet hurt, you don’t know how long is left, and your back gets sore.
Here are 5 thoughts that stuck with Kieran:
'Follow your gut' is good but flawed advice because your gut will lie to you if you don't understand what's real
Fear is life's biggest challenge. Everything you want is on the other side of it. Fear is real but is not fatal or final it is an emotional stress response, and you get to decide how to respond
When you think positively, you make better decisions. You're more fun to be around. You have more energy. These things create positive outcomes which leads to more positivity.
Stupid short-term decisions lead to long-term hell. Behind every bad outcome you've made a bad decision along the way, awareness helps you realize the tug of poor incentives.
Society has gotten success wrong. From birth, we've been told to think a certain way, chase a certain goal, and believe a certain ideal. We've boxed ourselves in with the language we use, the media we consume, and the company we keep.
As Kieran says "We don't know or we don't have a clue how long we have left to live".
"Be right there, right now. Every day doing things for the joy of doing them. What Greeks call Eudaimonia."
Eudaimonia means achieving the best conditions possible for a human being not only in happiness, but also virtue, morality, and a meaningful life. To become better people - to fulfill our unique potential as human beings.
So you stop wasting time of your life chasing things you don't need to impress people you don't know and most likely they're just thinking of themselves.
Chat soon… more insights coming your way…
This post was written on: 💻 Typeshare
I've discovered similar results in my own process since restarting the nightly scribblings into a notebook.
We're primed to think and recombine our experiences with our knowledge constantly to create variations of the human condition.
In order to do this properly, we force ourselves into awareness of the now without fully realizing its implications until farther down the line.
Keep sharing. You're lighting the way for others.