Making Life Easy Is so Darned Difficult!

How to Shift from Friction to Ease in 2 Easy Steps

At the outset, I want to apologize for a delayed post. Missed the Sunday deadline as I was travelling. Also, this is a slightly longer post than my usual ones. I hope you enjoy reading it. As always, would love to hear from you!

Being at Ease is what Life is all about, isn’t it?

• We outsource all that we don’t want to do. It could be nasty housekeeping, difficult homework, or a company outsourcing its “non-essential” functions. We streamline our lives and make it more efficient, so that our daily activity list is easy.

• We eat healthy and work out regularly so that our physical and mental health is easy.

• We work hard to earn money. We spend it judiciously and save pennies (and pounds) arduously so that we are financially easy.

All our efforts are directed towards the ultimate goal of making life easy

We aim for ease, but …..

The process of making life easy is, however, not so easy.

• External situations don’t cooperate with us. There are petty squabbles over nothing, frequent misunderstandings, and endless delays

• We stress, worry, and keep popping pills for our different ailments

• We crib, whine and groan our way through life, grumpily and grudgingly

In other words, life does not flow easily.

It encounters resistance and has no choice but to slow down.

Physics defines friction as a force that opposes motion. It is this same force that gets us stuck, derails plans and leaves us feeling angry, irritated and frustrated.

What Causes Friction and How Do We Eliminate It?

Friction is caused when two objects rub against each other, resulting in a loss of moving energy, which gets converted to heat energy.

In life situations, that means something interferes with your intentions, causing friction. This, in turn, creates hurdles in moving ahead in your life. That something could be another person, external situations or it could be something within.

While we now appreciate the scientific reasoning to not rub people the wrong way, mastering people handling skills will not be enough to reduce friction in our lives.

How we behave with the outside world depends on the friction that we generate within. Through our repeated thought patterns, suppressed / repressed emotions and mental conditioning.

The good news is that we can bypass these challenges if we can consciously practice the following 2 steps.

1. Be in the Present Moment

Do you remember the last time when you were fully present in that moment?

• Not while you were imagining, planning, or worrying about the future

• Not when you were ruminating, regretting or re-living the past

Just giving that moment, and what it contains. your full attention

Unfortunately, in our hyperactive world, where action is glorified, just being in the present moment, seems a waste of time. The present moment, is at best, a means to get someplace else or worse, to be avoided.

Yet,

we can only be in the present moment. It is the only moment that we experience.

But we choose not to.

Notice that our goal that I spoke of at the beginning of this article was, to make life easy. We are not too bothered about being at ease in the present moment. Some would even argue that being at ease in the present would result in complacency. They fear that their hunger for success, or enthusiasm for life would be severely impacted. People get addicted to stress to get their adrenalin rush, without which they cannot work.

So the present moment is something to be used to get to the future. Because, we want to get to that someplace else, which is not here, right now, in the present moment.

But, that someplace else never arrives, because when it does, we have a new someplace else to occupy our minds.

The first rule for being at ease is to be aware of the present moment. And accept whatever it brings. Without any resistance

Which translates to :

• When we make a mistake, we accept it and not compulsively slide into a defensive reactionary mode

• When our partner is late at work and can’t keep the dinner date, we accept it and not erupt into an uncontrolled rant

• When our promotion gets denied, we accept it and not let it embitter us

In other words, we suffer the fact, in that moment, and then, let it go. We experience sadness, anger or irritation for those few moments and then we let it go. We don’t attach ourselves to that moment and carry it with us in the form of resentment, grudge or anger. This way, we don’t allow whatever happened to keep hurting us, often in perpetuity.

Don’t mistake this for a passive acceptance. Understand that this enables a dynamic response!

When we carry the bitterness of the past, only we (and the people around us) suffer.

We nurse and nurture our hurt and anger. And that just results in friction building within us because every interaction is colored by that angry lens.

When we release that moment from our memory, as it has been from reality, we allow ourselves a fresh start and a new perspective.

For example, we can choose to forgive our errant partner, or express our displeasure. We can choose to talk to our bosses or invest our efforts in looking for another job.

Equally, when we are enjoying a magnificent sunset with our loved ones, we can choose to be happy, grateful and extend that moment longer.

Only when we are in a state of calm acceptance, we enable ourselves to look at possible options and respond accordingly. Not otherwise.

2. We Accept That We Are Little Somethings and Are at Peace With That

Be honest with yourself. Isn’t this the biggest struggle that you go through everyday? Proving to yourself that you are SOMETHING. That is what we are conditioned to aspire for since early childhood. You have to grow up to be an astronaut, a CEO, a genius. Society demands that life has meaning, is useful and has a “Purpose”, that transcends immediate self and family.

What does this pressure do? It inflates the ego. The “I” yearns for recognition, respect and acceptance by bosses, influencers and family. For that, “I” has to stand out, and, as a consequence, “you” have to go down. If you notice, most conflicts at work or home, are triggered by the “I vs you” syndrome.

Unfortunately the world today is afflicted with the “Look at me, I am something” malaise.

The pressure to stand out from the crowd and be “Something” is so great that if the person does not make it to what s/he aspires to, the ego goes into an endless loop to figure out why. And that engenders victimhood. Which brings its own share of separate suffering.

It is not very difficult to accept that we are little somethings, when we are aware of our mortality. Or when we know that our positions, titles or status have limited shelf lives.

When we see ourselves in relation to the larger creation, it is very easy to see that we don’t really matter. Unfortunately the magic of creation is largely invisible to our eyes. We only see the people around us, and our ego reminds us, “I am better than s/he”. “I am right, s/he is wrong”. “I am modest, s/he is proud”. “I am good, s/he is bad”.

If we can accept that we are little somethings, then we free ourselves from the pressure of being Something. We don’t have to:

• always prove that we are right; we are able to accept other points of views

• worry about coming first in the race

• suffer the hurt that we inflict on ourselves in our efforts to becoming Something

We enable us to become the best versions of ourselves, because we are no longer under the pressure of being Something.

We can just Be.

It is unfortunate that we don’t speak more about being at ease. With the Present Moment. With Ourselves. With our Family. With our Work. We celebrate Conflict as a possible Accelerator to Change.

Life doesn’t work that way. If we want Life to have a certain Momentum, then we need to develop Stillness within.

Don’t forget that the mightiest rivers, gushing to the sea, spring from the majestic but still mountains.

Life is that River.