These assignments are based on the book "The Wave Riders" (order here), and it does help if you have already read the book. Don't worry if you have not as you will find a lot of good information here that will help. If you missed the beginning of the online workshops here is where we started...
http://www.thewaveriders.com/newsletters/jan05.html

Assignment 10. Present Focus
By Indigo Irwin Kennedy
copyright © TheWaveRiders.com™ http://www.thewaveriders.com (PI1205presentfocus)

The concept of "Present Focus" is not new and it is an important part of our mental health. At the bottom I have outlined the assignment for this month. Assignments such as this one may not appear to be directly related to our Wave Riding, however they are key tools that help us to remain middle and present day focused.

How do we learn to Focus on the moment and what does that mean to us?

Focusing on the moment means to me that we are not thinking about one thing and doing something else. We are not talking to our children while typing on the computer and we are not working one job while planning our second job. It also means to me that we focus on what we have right now at this moment and we take time to be grateful. Being grateful means to me that we look at the roof over our head, that we acknowledge if we are healthy right now or that we are not starving. We acknowledge to ourselves that we are good today - as is.

Sometimes we are in crisis and we are in survival mode and we cannot find anything good to focus on. We might be on the streets and starving and at that time need to focus on finding food. Even in the worst crisis if we can find something to be grateful for we can also find things like hope and strength and faith. Many of us we continue the survival mode even though our fridge is filled with food. We continue to hunt, even though our belly's are full and our cave is warm. We continue to focus on the obtaining of goods in our lives. We search our homes for the "What else do we need?" and we waste an opportunities to be grateful.

Do you have everything in your life that you want?

Usually our answer is no. We often feel there is never enough - our wish list continues, we want to buy more because there can never be enough vacations, enough shoes, never enough cars, never enough - never enough. Our thoughts get stuck in the "not enough - need more cycle".

We may be able to acknowledge what we have and we may tie ourselves so closely to what we have that we step over to the other side and instead of worrying that we don't have enough we start to worry that we will lose what we have. We think that we need to keep going or we will lose our home, our expensive car.....". We fall into worry about tomorrow.

Wave Riders are often black and white, up or down, rich or poor, sick or superhuman. We bypass the middle and we bypass grateful.

I have been reading an interesting book titled " Manic depression and Creativity" by D. Jablow Hershman and Julian Lieb, M.D. In the book they studied the habits of highly creative individuals such as Dickens and Van Gogh. Many of the accounts that they studied came from outside observers.

In the book one of the states of depression was a "delusion of poverty".
We, as Wave Riders know that we are sometimes in negative delusion but this thought was was a bit new to my thinking.

I was not truly aware that we can actually have great wealth and not be able see it! Just as we can be loved and not feel it. Just as we can be in a good job that we like but hate it in the downside.

I knew that In the upper states we might think that we are RICH and can over spend but I did not put the negative delusional state together with "thoughts of poverty". For much of my life I had struggled close to poverty...or was it just illusion?

In the past, I did not know that I was pushed by the high energy wave and I did not put my spending habits with my positive up delusion and so I kept spending. In the past I would have never stopped in the middle to look at my life to be simply grateful.

Wow - I am doing okay.

It was always...I need more or I have lots to spend...no balance.
It was always...I am poor and vulnerable or I have lots

I now practice "Present Focus" and have learned "Present Mid-Wave Focus".

To do this I combine balancing to mid-wave through breathing, rest , planning and meditation (small amounts of meditation can be helpful - few minutes or a few hours) and then taking the moment to be grateful with whatever it is that you have.

This simply exercise may appear insignificant but within this act of gratitude are hidden gifts. Our lives have been blessed somewhere and we need to take a moment to say thank you and appreciate these gifts.

Learning to be grateful with Present Focus unlocks the doorway to happiness - without moments of appreciation, peace, joy and fulfillment, can remain illusive.

Your grateful moment may be as simply as an appreciation that you can walk and/or breathe.

My grateful present focus is simply that at this moment in time, I am not hungry, not cold, not in pain and not alone. This does not mean that I have everything I want or see around me and I sometimes have an empty fridge, sometimes have pain and sometimes I am cold or alone (but not lonely).

It means that in a world of, "give me more" that we can learn to stop to enjoy a moment of gratitude.

I was raised in a house without prayer,which meant no moment of thanks at the dinner table. I was unaware of how much that would effect my life. It does not matter what your faith is. It is the process of gratefully acknowledging what you do have in your life, without worrying about what you will or will not have tomorrow, and fretting about what you did not have in the past.

You may have heard this present day focus from a variety of different sources...it is important enough to repeat again here. You joy exists in the moment...one moment in time. The more you focus on one second of joy the more you enable it's growth.

The holiday season is here and some of us will be bunkering down into our homes on a cold winter's day while some of us our enjoying the sun (thinking of you Australia and New Zealand). Wherever you are today, I hope that you will take a moment each day and say thank you. Stop long enough to move your focus from "what I want" and "what I do not have" and "what about me?" to "thank you for" and " I am grateful for"..

You assignment this month is to book yourself with solid activities for two days ( not recommended normally for Wave Riders as exhaustion can send us into depression so make sure you do not push yourself into exhaustion.) The purpose of this exercise is for you to practice present "moment" focus.

You may have be having your morning coffee, thinking about that you have to get to the grocery store in the next half hour and then pick up kids at noon,

In this exercise you will stop yourself from thinking about the future grocery store task and the kids while you focus on how your coffee tastes, how it feels going down your throat and you will breathe in deeply being grateful for the coffee and the time.

or

Perhaps today, you have back to back meetings. You have deadlines and social events lined up in a row.

In this exercise you will stop yourself from thinking of the second meeting while you are in the first meeting. You will take a deep breath and focus on being fully present in the current meeting.

You want to work out when you need to get to the next event but once you are in a current activity then give it your full focus.

I suggested that you overbook yourself a bit so that you will feel the pressure to think about the next thing and really be able to practice pulling yourself back. You could however, walk through a slower day, practicing the same present moment focus. Remember your deep breathing.

If you like writing, try to write down what it is that you are grateful for. See you if you add to your list each day. For those of us celebrating Christmas, let's try to move from "thinking about presents" to "present moment thinking".

Yours in Faith,
Indigo Irwin Kennedy
Beyond the mind, around the heart, fill the soul.
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