Make a choice every 15 minutes

Recently, I have been worrying about the future. I am long over dwelling on the past, but still I feel inferior to what I beleive is my potential. Worry is a killer, a stress maker. I had a lot of it lately.

I’ve just read that the more one lives in the the present, the better one masters life and continues growing as a spiritual being. I’ve lost that somehow recently.

I used to live 15 minutes at the time, the fifteen minute idea is not mine, Peter Drucker wrote about it in Managing Oneself (1999).

For practical purposes, that is about the closest one can go about daily things to constant meditative awarness.

You have to have you priorities straight.
Your values need to be set to know what is right thing to do at the moment. That takes time to develop, you can learn from parents, or smarter peers, or from your own mistakes if nobody around you fits the profile of the mentor.

Let me explain.

Every 15 minutes, you ask yourself “What am I currently doing to enhance my life?”

That can be anything:

• studying for the celebral growth

• watching an educational show

• eating food for health

• exercising for strenght and good mental attitude

• attending school for the diploma

• deciding to go sleep to replenish the energy

• playing with the baby for her sake

• spend time with family and friends

I noticed that if you put this practice to life, you don’t worry about the past and the future because you are already doing the best you can.

Another miracle is that sooner than later you end up achieving more that you have dreamed and the achievment feels effortless, because you did not struggle to reach it.

What you don’t want, is to waste time. When you vegetate in front of TV watching a bad Sci-Fi show, or worse, you just waste life. You don’t rest, you don’t get stronger, you grow weaker.

If you side-track from the practice, you may end up doing stupid things that you will be paying for a long time to come. You do not know why, but you get depressed, discouraged, life becomes an unbearable weight.

Finally, ending on the buddhist note, nothing is inherently bad, nothing is always good, actions just have their own suchness. You can eat your rice with a fork, a hand, or chopsticks. All these methods will serve the purpose.

You should not get attached to any particular one.

The question is which action will you choose at this moment?

If you dine in Japan; learn the chopsticks, in India; a hand, etc. Whole life is full of choices. Be aware.