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photo by: Hejaab

I know I’m probably not the only one that has suffered from a deteriorating vision. I attribute it mostly to how much time I’ve stared at the computer screen over my life. I’ve tried to develop a few habits and have even started practicing eye asanas to help improve my vision, or at least stop it from deteriorating.

Most of our deterioration of vision is caused by looking at things directly in front of us. When we’re staring at things right in front of our faces for prolonged periods of time, our eyes get strained, they get tired. When we’re working in the same narrow range of focus, the muscles surrounding our eyes have to work harder and they begin to deteriorate over time. The best way we can combat this is practicing depth asanas.

Exercise 1: Place your index finger about 12 inches away from your eyes, gently gaze at the tip of your finger for 5-10 seconds. Now gradually and slowly move your finger closer and closer to your eyes. Don’t poke your eye out! Practice this for 3-4 minutes, a few times a day. Afterwards, blink or squeeze your eyes shut to relax them.

Exercise 2: When you are outside, practice looking at something very close, then gradually move your focus further and further away. This works best for me when I’m walking down the sidewalk somewhere, or in an open area. Practice this for 30 seconds or so at a time whenever you’re outside.

Many of our eye-related problems come from a lack of tone and flexibility in the eye muscles. If we practice eye asanas, yoga for your eyes, we can reduce or eliminate these problems.

Exercise 3: Move your eyes as far upward as you can. Take one breath in and out slowly. Move your eyes as far downward as you can, count one breath. Repeat this 4 times.

Exercise 4: Move your eyes as far to the right as you can, count one breath. Move your eyes as far to the left as you can, count one breath. Repeat 4 times. Remember to close your eyes and rest after each set of 4 repetitions.

Exercise 5: Move your eyes as far up and to the right as you can, find a point in your vision to focus on, count one breath. Do the same thing in the far left bottom point in your field of vision. Repeat 4 times.

Now do the same thing in reverse, top left and bottom right, 4 times. Don’t forget to blink and relax your eyes if they become too strained.

Exercise 6: Now we’re going to practice eye-circling. This is easy, we’re going to start by moving our as far upward as we can, and then moving them counter-clockwise. Do this slowly and make a full circle of your vision. Repeat in the opposite direction.

Palming: This exercise is crucial to relaxing the eyes after we have completed our exercises. It has a very calming effect and relaxes the nervous system.

Sit up straight, back erect, focus on your breathing. Now take your hands and rub them vigorously together for 15 to 20 seconds. Put your palms over your eyes, facing you, fingers interlaced. Remember to breathe deeply. When we do the palming exercise we relax the eyes and send a current of electricity through them, stimulating the nervous and circulatory system, releasing tension and improving our eyes performance.

A few more tips:

• Eat more carrots.. and spinach. Carrots have been known to maintain healthy vision. While they won’t miraculous cure blindness, they will help you maintain healthy eyesight. Spinach is another good source for keeping your eyes healthy, the large amounts of vitamin a and beta-carotene help keep your eyes in shape.
• Move your computer screen right below eye level. This will cause your eyes to close slightly and minimize fluid evaporation while staying at the computer for long hours.
• Turn down the heat in your house. When it’s too hot in an improperly ventilated room, the air becomes dry, and so do our eyes. By turning down the heat, we can save some of the strain on our eyes.
• Blink. Take your eyes away from the computer for a few seconds and just take the time to just.. blink.

More resources on improving your vision:

• 24 Easy Ways to Improve Your Vision
  
• Improve your vision by understanding it better
• Do eye exercises really work? - This in-depth article will tell you all the myths and truths about eye exercises and vision therapy
• Improve your vision instantly with your fist

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photo by: grufnik

We’re very good at preparing to live, but when it comes to actually living, we tend to struggle. We’re willing to sacrifice years in school to get a degree, or 12 hour days in position we’re not happy with to get a promotion. What is really important is realizing the abundance of happiness and joy we have available to us right now, within ourselves.

For a long time I’ve struggled with what it means to be fulfilled. I often associated how much I got done, or how much I accomplished with my personal fulfillment. However, no matter how much I got done, no matter how much external success I achieved, I was left feeling empty. That’s how I realized no matter how much external success I achieved, it was never going to bring me fulfillment. I also realized, the more I did things that were important to me, the more I nurtured my soul and took time to do the things I truly desired, the happier I became. Not only did I become happier, but I also had more energy and more motivation to get things done and make achievements. I started to learn how I could incorporate these two as well and instead of compartmentalizing my life, I began developing congruency. Here are some simple ways you can create more time for the important things in your life.

1. Realize the difference between efficiency and effectiveness. Efficiency is being able to do things really well, in a timely manner, with as little resources as possible. Or with only the necessary means, it’s clean, and speedy. But you can be clean, fast and always on time while going nowhere. That is, if you’re really efficient at creating a 100 folders and rules for all your email and having them all sorted properly and compiled into a nice spreadsheet, that’s great. But is that moving you closer to your goals? Just because you do something efficiently, doesn’t make it important. Effectiveness however has to do with results. How capable your are of achieving a desired result. Realize the difference between being effective and being efficient and you will start to realize what matters and what doesn’t.
2. Eliminate as much as possible. Take an inventory of everything that you do in a given day. Anything that isn’t necessary to achieve your goals, eliminate it. A good rule to go by when eliminating is the 80/20 rule. The 80/20 rule states that 80% of your results come from 20% (or less) or your efforts. If you don’t believe me, test it out for yourself. Take a look and see where most of your results are coming from. It’s likely that they’re coming from a relatively small amount of your actions. After you’ve identified where the most results are coming from, focus on and multiply your efforts in those areas and eliminate any effort in the others.
3. Limit your time. Parkinson’s law states the longer amount of time we’re given to complete a task, the bigger we’ll make it out to be. If we have 3 months, we need 3 months. If we have 2 weeks, we need every day in that 2 weeks. However, if we need it done the next day, somehow we miraculously are able to accomplish what we wouldn’t have thought possible had we been given more time. This is because no matter how much time we have to do something, we’ll always find a way to fill that time up, mostly with doing things that aren’t important. Give yourself time limits to tasks your results will improve dramatically.
4. Establish limits to repeated tasks. They’re a lot of things we do that need to be repeated on some basis. Checking and responding to email is a great example. Email should take up only a small portion of your day, maybe 30 minutes at most. But we get so absorbed in this “need to know” mindset that we develop a mammoth time wasting habit. The same goes for filing, checking voice mail, updating our calendars, checking our calendars, checking stats on stocks or web traffic, all of these tasks can and should be batched. We waste a lot of time simply switching from the mindset of one task to another, so it’s useful to set times for when we’ll do certain tasks. Now we can stop worrying about what our email status or shipping status is and focus on what is really important to us.
5. Fix the cause of the problem, don’t just put a band-aid on it. If there’s a problem that keeps coming up in your life, take the time to find out the root of the problem. This might require journaling about it, meditating, or talking to a close friend. It might take some research online or reading a book. Whatever it is, find the source of the problem and fix it, instead of just treating the symptom. A good example for this could be that you have a problem keeping sustained levels of energy throughout the day. So what do you do? Have another cup of coffee, maybe a rockstar, or redbull. But what’s really causing your lack of energy, is it not getting enough sleep at night? Is your diet out of balance? Whatever the cause is, treat it from the source. This might require some maintenance, but when we find permanent answers to our problems instead of quick fixes, we spend less time worrying about them and free up a lot of wasted energy.

Tools for staying focused on the important and enriching your life.

1. Be mindful, this will enable you to be aware of when you are spinning your wheels, when you are spending too much time on unimportant things. Create a mantra that you will repeat at the beginning of each day, “what is important to me today?”.
2. Always do your best. Remember, to always do your best. Your best will also vary depending on your circumstances. In the morning when you are fully rested your best will be better than after you have worked a full day. Always doing your best is about taking action, and when you put these steps into action you will get results.
3. Stop trying to be a perfectionist. Perfection is an illusion. We strive for perfection because we have an image in our minds of what we should be, but what we are not. Realize that perfection and imperfection are a result of a conflict in your mind, they don’t exist in reality. You have to make mistakes in order to grow, don’t let perfectionism paralyze you. If you’re not failing, chances are you’re not trying hard enough.
4. Get organized. Write your goals and your aspirations down. Write your to-do list, project lists down somewhere you can see them often. Then write a desire and intention list. Cross-reference these lists and see if your to-do actions line up with your desires and intention, the things that are important to you. Ask yourself if there is anything that you need to do that isn’t truly important, that doesn’t align with your desires, if so delete it. Often we know where we want to go in our hearts, but the ambiguity of what actions need to be taken is what stifles and keeps us frustrated the most. Once our desires and dreams are defined, they can be achieved.
5. Ask yourself questions. How often do we talk to ourselves, yet we are not really listening. We go on and on conversing in our own minds aka thinking. But in order to really communicate with ourselves we need to ask questions. Asking ourselves questions helps us to define our intentions and desires and realize the actions needed to make them a reality. Here are a few questions to get your started:

• If I could be the best at anything what would it be?
• If I knew I could do anything without failing, what would I do?
• What strengths do I have that could be best used to make a meaningful contribution to the world?
• If today were the last day of day of my life, would I want to be doing what I’m doing today?

Remember what you created more time for. We didn’t eliminate all those unnecessary tasks and wheel spinning so we could sit idly and do nothing (unless of course you want to become a monk). We did it so we could have more time to follow our passions, to realize our dreams, to fulfill our deepest desires and longings. What we are really seeking is the experience of being alive. Not the fulfillment of to-do lists and completion of projects. When we realize this, that’s when we wake up and start living.

The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.
-Thich Nhat Hanh

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The more I live in the present moment, the more I realize how much more intimate I have become with life. What exactly do I mean by this? I mean that I smile at strangers, I pay attention to the little things, I notice more sunsets and blue skies, I hear the birds chirping more clearly, I see old paint chipping away as beauty. These are just a few examples.

I think that your level of joy in life is directly related to how intimate you are with it. If you are cut off, disconnected and numb, you’re most likely not going to feel much joy. If your mind is constantly full of chatter, you won’t be living in the present, you won’t be practicing intimacy with life. In the same way, if you’re thinking about the future all the time, you won’t be recognizing the beauty happening right here and now, before your eyes. When is the last time you felt your feet and pressure on your soles as you walked along the sidewalk? When is the last time you felt the fresh air, admired the beautiful blue sky and saw the beauty in the trees lining your street? Any answer other than today I think is too long.

One way that I’ve realized greater intimacy with life has been carrying a digital camera with me wherever I go. I recently developed this habit and anytime I’m walking (I walk a few miles at least daily) and I see something I find interesting, I turn my camera on and take a picture of it. I make sure the batteries are fully charged before I leave so I don’t have to worry about seeing something strikingly beautiful and I can’t take a photo of it. What this has done for me is helped me recognize beauty in things I never would have noticed otherwise. I might see some peeling paint on an old wall and photograph it. I might take a picture of an old abandoned building and start to wonder what the story was behind it. I might see an interesting flower or two trees tangled together and be inspired by them. Whatever it is, chances are I wouldn’t have become as intimate, as close to these things if I wouldn’t have been taking their photo. I’m not saying you can’t do this without a camera, I’m just saying that this has been a great tool for me in realizing more of a wonder and appreciation for the world I live in.

Another tool that has brought me closer to and more in tune with life is meditation. When I just let my thoughts go and am not trying to make a story or talk about things in my mind, I’m able to see things as they are. I can see a tree and not have to name it, I can see a bird and really see it, I can see the sky and see that it is much more than the word sky in my mind, I experience it as it is. When you see things instead of thinking about them, you experience them as they are, and life is experienced authentically.

Finally, the biggest way I’ve become more intimate with life is I’ve stopped trying to multi-task. I no longer try to read my email while listening to voice messages and eating my breakfast. I don’t try to work-out, watch tv and vacuum the ceiling. I also haven’t washed the car while reading the newspaper on the treadmill lately. I take things as they come, and not only do I realize greater intimacy and a connection with what I’m doing, I’ve become better at everything I do. When I’m only focused on reading my email and nothing else, I retain information better. When I’m working out and my mind is only focused on the muscles I’m working, I get a better workout. The benefits of only focusing on one thing at a time, to me, are far greater than any time I’ve multi-tasked, having the illusion I’m getting more done when I’m really just spinning my wheels.

I hope you can see how much your intimacy with life can change your quality of life. If you have any other ideas on how to achieve greater intimacy, please share your comments with us.

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What does it mean to live fully in the present moment? It means that your awareness is completely centered on the here and now. You are not worrying about the future or thinking about the past. When you live in the present, you are living where life is happening. The past and future are illusions, they don’t exist. As the saying goes “tomorrow never comes”. Tomorrow is only a concept, tomorrow is always waiting to come around the corner, but around that corner are shadows, never to have light shed upon, because time is always now.

“The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.” - Buddha

Why living in the present will change your life.

If you’re not living in the present, you’re living in illusion. That seems to a be a pretty good reason to live in the present, doesn’t it? But how often are we worrying about things that have yet to come, how often do we beat ourselves up for mistakes that we’ve made, no matter how much time has passed? The answer is too much. Not only will living in the present have a dramatic effect on your emotional well-being, but it can also impact your physical health. It’s long been known that the amount of mental stress you carry can have a detrimental impact on your health. If you’re living in the present, you’re living in acceptance. You’re accepting life as it is now, not as how you wish it would have been. When you’re living in acceptance, you realize everything is complete as it is. You can forgive yourself for the mistakes you’ve made, and you can have peace in your heart knowing that everything that should happen will.

“If you worry about what might be, and wonder what might have been, you will ignore what is.” -Unknown

Start living, stop conceptualizing.

The worst part about living in the past or the future is that you’re giving up your personal power. If you’re not living now, you’re giving up your life. You’re surrendering your power to create. If there are changes you’d like to make in life, it’s best to do it now. If you’re living in the past, you can’t do anything about it, it’s gone. If you’re worrying about the future, you’re living somewhere that doesn’t exist. It hasn’t happened yet. If you want to change your life, the only place you can do it is in the present. But first you need to accept life as it is. When it comes down to it your mind is the only thing keeping you from living in the present.

“There is no distance on this earth as far away as yesterday.” ~Robert Nathan

Why is it difficult to live in the present?

There are many people that can give you their opinion or their advice on why it is difficult to live in the present. Some will say it is because we live in abstraction, we live in the world of symbols. Some might say it is because we have awareness of the passage of time, or the illusion of time, it produces anxiety because we can look at the past and predict the future. I think all of these answers are partially true. Though the biggest reason we don’t live in the present is because we don’t shut up. That is, we constantly talk to ourselves. As Alan Watts aptly put it, “if we are talking all of the time, we never hear what anyone else has to say. In the same way, if we are talking to ourselves all the time, we are never listening, we have nothing to think about other than thoughts, and are never in relationship with reality”.

As humans, we love to create stories. We love to listen to other people stories and compare them with our own. This is beautiful. In a way we could say that the entire universe is based on one collection of stories, a cosmic story. The problem is when we feel the need to create a story about everything, we are living entirely in the world of symbols. We confuse the world as it is, with the way we think about it, talk about it and describe it. Reality though, is not a concept. When we realize this we are able to return to a state of peace and stillness.

A new way, 5 ways to start living in the present:

In order for us to live in the present, does this mean we have to give up our innate desire to write our personal story and share it with others? No, we shouldn’t trade one extreme for another. What we really want, is to find balance. If you follow these simple tips you can start living in the present, and start experiencing reality as it is.

1. Don’t try to quiet your mind

The hardest thing to do when living in the moment is, or trying to simply witness life, is to not have the urge to try to quiet your mind. When we try to quiet the mind, we just disturb it all the more. Instead, simply witness your thoughts as if they are pure sound. Don’t try to judge your thoughts, there are no good thoughts or bad thoughts. Simply witness them as if they were noise.

2. You are not your thoughts

Too often we identify ourselves with our thoughts, we actually believe we are the dialogue inside our mind. However, we are much more than just our thoughts, we are the force that moves through our mind, spirit and body. Knowing this helps us overcome our fear of quietness and silence, we can have peace knowing that when our minds are quiet, we are not losing touch with ourselves.

3. Breathe, you’re alive

For a moment I’d like you to stop reading and simply pay attention to your breath. I’ll wait…

As you focus your attention on your breath, you’ll notice that your breath is neither voluntary or involuntary. It is something that you do, but at the same time something that “does you”. When you focus your attention on your breath, you come back into relationship with reality, because like breath, reality is both something you do and something that “does you”. It is co-creative. Practice conscious breathing to bring your mind back to the present.

4. Music for meditation

There is a lot of great music made to assist with meditation. My personal favorite though is Stan Richardson’s Japanese flute music. Every time I play it I can feel it’s peaceful energy wash over me. Music made for meditation can help us bring our attention back to the present and clear our mind.

5. Practice mindfulness

This isn’t so much of a tip as it is a staple in living in the present. Practicing mindfulness means we practice our awareness in all our actions. Whether we are washing dishes or tying our shoes, our mind is focused on whatever we are doing. We are not thinking about the bills that we have to pay, or the phone call we need to make when we get to the office. We are simply living in the moment.

I hope you enjoyed this article. If you have any more tips or insight into how to improve mindfulness and awareness of the present, please leave your comment below. Thank you for reading!

If you’re like me, you may have struggled with the idea of being positive at one point or another.  My philosophical pursuits have taken me through the various major eastern religions; Taoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism.  One of my biggest fascinations along these journeys was the principle of non-duality.  Non-duality states that while opposites may seemingly be two separate entities they are in reality, one.  The reason we say non-dual though is because anytime you think of one, it’s always in reference to many.

Now what does this have to do with positivity you might ask?  Good question.  If you are a “positivist” or “think positively” and also hold a non-dualistic philosophy, these two paths seem to conflict with each other.  If positive and negative are merely opposites, and they are in fact one, how can you say that being positive is any better than being negative.  This always caused a great deal of conflict within me.  I always thought, I can’t be positive, or strive for goodness, or happiness (what I classified as a positive trait) if it’s a delusion.  I should be striving for nothing, because positivity isn’t necessarily real, it’s just one side of the same coin.  It’s like trying to find the beginning of a circle.  You’ll end up like a hamster on a never-ending wheel.  There is no end.

The whole problem with this thinking is a widespread assumption that positivity equals desirability.  In other words positive=good, wanted, desirable and negative=bad, not good, undesirable.  But what are the definitions really of positive and negative?  To posit something is to assert it, to affirm it.  To negate is to deny.  I think this is the source of a lot of confusion.  In reality, something is not necessarily bad if it’s negated.  You can negate fear, negate anxiety or you can posit despair or weakness.  You can also posit strength and joy, or you negate abuse and addiction.  These terms are not meant to imply a value, they simply describe a state of a given value.  Now, I’m not sure how positive and negative started to be interpreted as good and bad, but for logical people, it can be very frustrating trying to make reality fit into positives and negatives.  In reality there are things that are good and bad, positive and negative aside.  But good and bad are not necessarily precise enough words either.  When it comes down to it, what really matters is desirability.  Desire is independent of being positive or negative, good or bad.  Desire comes from our integrity, desire is what fuels our existence.

The real lesson here is that positivity and negativity don’t really matter so much.  They’re not an accurate way of describing our feelings.  What really important is your level of authenticity.  Your so-called “negative feelings” about the job you dread going to everyday, turned out to be signs that you needed to change course, that your life wasn’t going in the right direction.  Your negative thoughts about obese people, turned out to be inner signs that you had unquestioned assumptions that you needed to examine.  Maybe you even have a fear of becoming obese.  Your positive thinking about your car going to make it all the way to your 3 hour drive to Vegas when the check engine light was on the whole way, turned out to be denial and it cost you $800 instead of $120 if you would have been honest with yourself.

I know I’m not going to change everyones thinking just by writing this article.  My intent is only to better explain the true nature of positivity and negativity to those who are striving for an accurate model of reality.  When you have an accurate model of reality, one that is driven by desire, not division and duality, your life will start to become much easier.   You won’t be striving to “stay positive” or “stop thinking negatively”, you’ll be living authentically.  And that’s what it means to live with integrity and awareness.