The Key to Success
Along with two million plus other people, I have been reading Eckart Tolle’s book, The New Earth. I am very excited that Oprah has brought Tolle’s work to so many people with the webinar she is sponsoring with Tolle on Monday nights. I haven’t been able to take part in that but I have been reading. In the last couple of chapters Tolle talks about the importance of “being” in the present moment. Actually, the present moment is really all we ever have but it is easy for us to let the big goals and ideas take over and get so excited about them that the present moment is not fully experienced.
I once knew a woman who was a very creative thinker and an extremely dynamic person who was very charming to be around but over the time I knew her she was personally never satisfied with where she was in life. She always talked about her great ideas and what she was capable of doing and how she needed a “breakthrough’ to get her own show on TV or radio or whatever her particular goal was at that time. However, what I noticed about my friend was that she could not stay okay in the present and take the day to day “insignificant steps” that might get her where she wanted to go .
Tolle says that your entire life Journey consists of the step you are taking this moment. That is not to say that you should not have goals or purpose in your life. Goals and dreams are very important too but they need to be of secondary importance. The primary importance has to be s the present step since what you encounter at your “destination” depends of the quality of this one step. I was always so mystified why my talented friend would choose to spend the “coin of her life” talking about what she wanted and more importantly being in misery that she didn’t have those things rather than just take a little step each day that was satisfying, in and of itself, in the direction she wanted to go. Talent alone is insufficient and really the thing you notice is that one never “gets there” since once you get there, there is another place to get.
Along these lines, I have to admit that I have been watching American Idol this season. What I am most interested in is the paths that these young people have taken to get where they are today. Kelly Pickler a finalist from season Five was on the other night and I loved seeing her two years later to see how far she has come. She is a delightful young woman who was raised in a difficult family situation and before going on American Idol she was waitressing on roller-skates at a Sonic Burger in Albermarle North Carolina. Kelly said she dealt with her circumstances along the way with with music and laughter. I can imagine that she was a delight even while doing the roller skating gig.
I am really grateful to have achieved many wonderful things in my life, both with my family and with my career. I feel very fortunate to have the life I have, but in actuality, I have mostly always felt like that even when I had less or was not in the best of circumstances. I try to keep in mind what a wise man I once knew told me ” it is a far, far better thing in life to be able to “want the thing you have”, than to “have the thing you want”. That and putting one foot in front of the other seems to work for me.
