Don’t you hate it when you think that you finally understand something… only to realize that you actually have no idea what you’re talking about. I feel like this a lot. I should just stop reading, seriously… but who am I kidding.
I am currently reading “the Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? The cover tells me that it is has sold 3 million copies and that it is a New York Times Bestseller. I have only read the first chapter, and this material is DENSE. The first chapter of the book revolves around the idea that “you are not your thoughts.” This is already a statement I have trouble understanding… perhaps because I’m using my mind to think about it, and that’s not who I am. I don’t mean to invite you into my world of confusion, but in case I have… welcome!
Okay, so here’s the passage that’s gotten me stumped:
“The ego, to the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the mind is so dysfunctional. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it – who are you? It constantly projects itself into the future to ensure its continued survival and to seek some kind of release or fulfillment there. It says “one day, when this, that, or the other happens, I am going to be okay, happy, at peace.” Even when the ego seems to be concerned with the present, it is not the present that it sees: It mispercieves it completely because it looks at it through the eyes of the past. Or it reduces the present to a means to an end, and end that always lies in the mind-projected future. Observe your mind and you’ll see how this works.”
Now, of course yesterday I was talking all about opinions, but now I don’t even know what an opinion is. I mean, if you can’t identify with what you did in the past, and what you want in the future, than who are you? How do you create an identity for yourself? Or is that even important? Isn’t that the question that so many people (including myself) struggle with? The idea of identity, but then what if identity (in the way that we’ve come to understand it) is false.
All this talk about the present moment and then (at my goal setting group) focus, made me look at my desk after getting home tonight. It was a mess of books, papers, and posters that represented what I wanted and dreamed of doing, and what I had already done (ie. the posters of the plays I had acted in back in New Brunswick). No wonder I haven’t been able to make any real progress. My work place was completely lacking in focus. Too many projects surrounded me, and made me feel overwhelmed whenever I sat down.
So, based on the idea that you are not your past or future, I took down everything that did not have to do with the present moment. These next 3 months I have decided to focus only on 5 very specific things
- My Acting Career
- This blog and the Artist’s Way
- My Voice (I want to learn how to sing)
- My body (I want to learn how to dance)
- Fitness and Nutrition
With this in mind, I put all of my books away except for 4 books on voice, and I took down all of the university production posters or anything else that made me feel stuck in my old identity of scared and unworthy Christine. If I am a constantly evolving being, than I need to be prepared to leave the past (good or bad) behind, and having memories (even if they’re good memories) surrounding my work place might actually have been counter productive.
Here is my before picture.
So I spent an hour and a half cleaning and discarding and this is what I was left with. I am typing at my newly uncluttered desk, and I have to say that I feel like I can breathe again. This new work place is decorated only with vision boards, and is absent of anything linked to my past that could inadvertently create a mental block inside of myself.
Is there a space in your home that you feel might be holding you back? Take some time to declutter todyay.
I re-did my office space completely during my trip through The Artist’s Way, and it made such a difference to my work and my ability to focus.
It really does make a difference doesn’t it?
While I like your ideas about organizing your workspace to be effective, I question the Eckhart Tolle commentary. I know that he is very popular currently, but it sounds like he is going over some old ground. This same set of issues was addressed in psychology approximately a century ago, and his conclusions (i.e. “observe your mind”) were discarded. See, also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism_%28psychology%29
While behaviorism is now giving way to cognitive psychology, you might benefit from looking at yourself from a behavioral approach. Instead of asking “what am I thinking,” ask “what am I doing?” (Or, “what am I not doing?”) Ask yourself if your behaviors are in alignment with your goals. (And, you might also ask if your goals are in alignment with your values.)
If you take this approach, you will find that your past has value again. This is particularly true because of an old behavioral maxim: “the best single predictor of future behavior is past behavior” also sometimes stated as “past performance is the best single predictor of future performance.”
See, also:
http://www.indstate.edu/carcen/students/interviewing.aspx
And for counter-arguments, see, also:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/witness/201301/the-best-predictor-future-behavior-is-past-behavior-0
You’ve inspired me to clean out my office!
I’m glad. It’s so refreshing to have all of this extra space. Having my work space more focused is making me more focused.
[…] out old ways of thinking. Get rid of both old successes and old failures. It wasn’t until I took down all the theatre posters from productions I’d done in university (in which, for many of them, I had small roles) that […]