What is your Moment? We hear that around and about; be in the moment, stay in the moment, I lost the moment, etc. I say our moment is doing what we like to do, and maybe it’s what we love to do, and I know we all have our moments; Cooking, Shopping, Family, Crafting , Accounting...You get the idea? These moments come in many shape and sizes, and clearly no one moment fits everyone, which is why we have our own moments.
However, things can get in the way of all our moments; life things, time things, technology things, “thing” things. To make it even harder to enjoy our moment to its fullest it seems like there is a universal push to speed up all of our moments by significantly changing our moments, and dare I say, even trying to eliminating parts our moments...That’s right MLB, I’m watching you!
I have always tried to stay in the moment when I’m in a moment, let me explain. For about 7 years back in the 90’s I had a commute that was over 2 hours each way. During this commute I would find small moments along the way that I could call my own. Here’s one; I would catch the 6:17am train out of St. James, and hardly anyone was on the train...yet.
We had 15 stops before our final destination, and this train was always full by the time we got to our last stop at Penn Station. When I boarded in St. James I had with me a newspaper, coffee and a breakfast sandwich. **Quick side note: Long Island absolutely has the best breakfast sandwich in the US...Challengers please come forward!!
Anyway, I would always board the the fourth train and seat myself at the end window seat, it was magic. I was able to make camp there, enjoy my breakfast, get through the sports section, and take my first few sips of coffee. For the next 5 stops I had this seat to myself, which I savored everyday. When the time came for the commuter intrusion I was ready and welcoming...What a moment.
Technology is a good thing.
I embrace it, I use it, I look forward to the next amazing milestone. Technology is also killing the Moments around us. More and more we are being pulled away from our moments because we are being bombarded by “better” opportunities, which make us feel like we might be missing something better than what we are doing in that current moment. We then hurry though our moment to get to the next moment only to hurry through that moment to get to the next moment...and so on. Suddenly we don’t have time to do any of the moments we are trying to do and we then look back and years have gone by and we have not done anything to get back to our moment, that moment that we loved to do...STOP…
Find your moment, set aside the proper amount time, add an hour to that, and do it. We have the time, we just need to control all the current influences telling us to speed up, move to the next thing, do more, etc. Here’s another example of mine; I’m trying to play more golf tournaments these days
to improve my “pressure” game. I joined a tournament and we were playing @TildenPark (www.tildenparkgc.com) a course I had wanted to play for 15 years.
My foursome was scheduled to tee off at 10:05, and I also had a birthday party to get to at 3:30...we teed off at 10:55. I was doomed. My whole round was wrecked because I was watching the clock the entire round. I shot poorly, but most importantly I really didn’t even see the course’s beauty, and of course I was late for the party. Lesson learned; choose one thing and be in the moment.
My Moment is out on the golf course; clearing my mind of life's chaos, listening for the sounds of nature, and seeing the contours of the course and surrounding views. At the end of each round regardless of how the score card reads, I feel a noticeable clam and an internal recharge preparing me to embrace all challenge with positivity.
What is your Moment?