No B.S Friday: You can focus on the pain, or you can focus on joy. The choice is yours.
As I get older, the more I realise that one of the most important life skills is the ability to stay with the delicious.
This is something that came from the yoga teacher at my gym. I was going for a Half Lord of the Fishes pose, but it was coming out more like a Wounded Badger Begs for Mercy pose.
And my inner badger was in some serious pain.
‘Stay with the deliciousness of the movement, Jon.”
“But I’m in pain, here.”
‘Yes. You’re in pain. But there is also a delicious feeling in your body somewhere if you’re willing to look for it.’
I hadn’t really thought about this in the context of physical exercise – I’m from the no pain, no gain generation. If exercise didn’t hurt, you weren’t trying hard enough.
But I get it.
At any point in time, there’s a thousand things going on for you.
I mean, if you ask me how I’m doing, and I say ‘good’, what does that mean?
Maybe it means I’m in good health. Maybe it means that I’m in a good mood. Maybe it means I’ve moved through some challenges and have come to a good place.
We could be talking about anything. It’s all going on at once.
And even within that, I might be feeling good because my wife loves me in her endlessly patient way. AND I might be sad because my footy team lost.
I am in joy and in grief at exactly the same time.
It’s all about where you place your focus.
And I think one of the things that happens as you get older is that the number of things causing your problems in pain in your life tend to accumulate.
At the same time, we become well practised in the strategies that help us solve the problems that life throws up at us.
As a result, we naturally become more focused on the pain. We become problem solvers.
But focusing on the pain isn’t fun. It might be productive, but it isn’t fun.
And so what I think that means is that if we want to stay connected to life’s sweetness, we need to learn the discipline of staying with life’s deliciousness.
It’s about taking time to enjoy the roses that are there. Call it a gratitude practices.
But there’s something else too. Because just as when you’re trying to be a lord of the fishes, focusing on the pain in your life often tends to lock up that area of life.
Where there’s deliciousness, there’s movement and freedom.
And so when life isn’t flowing how you want it to, maybe try move your awareness into the elements that are working – into the deliciousness. Give those some attention and energy and see what unfolds from there.
Don’t give all your attention to how you just don’t feel like you have enough money, for example. Give some attention to the ways in which you feel like a Lord with enormous wealth too.
You might be surprised what flows from there.
JG.