4 Life Lessons I Keep Forgetting

We’re living in a wonderful time. Over the past 30 years, great teachers have emerged to teach us how to manage life’s struggles: Thich Nhat Hanh, Eckhart Tolle, Pema Chodron, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Tara Brach, among others. I read their writings and watch their videos and say to myself — Yesss! That is how I want to approach life! And for a day or so, I can keep it all front of mind. Until.

Then I’m faced with one of those things. A worry, a grief or fear. A struggle. And where is Thich Nhat Hanh when I really need him? I forget. It’s hard to keep all the things I’ve learned from these great teachers at hand so I can use them when the going gets rough. Hmmm. Can’t keep two thoughts in mind at the same time.

But I’ve been thinking — how can I fully integrate the things I’ve learned so that they become second nature? How do I not go back to the default position of reacting to things like I did throughout my childhood and early life? How can it feel like the kind of person who embraces mindfulness is really truly me?

I’ve heard these great teachings a hundred times in a hundred different ways but now I want to find a way to make them stick. Here are the four things I want to incorporate into my cells:

This too shall pass

My mother used to say this and it always annoyed me as a kid — like she didn’t want to deal with whatever was making me grumpy at the moment. But it turns out, she was right. Most things do pass, or at least, the intensity of them does soften. If I can keep that in mind, it makes the hard times more tolerable.

Stay in the present moment

Sometimes it feels like there’s an engine revving inside of me — I’m so anxious to move on to the next thing. Or ... I’m dreading the next thing. Either way, my mind is in the future while my body is here in the living room. If I can breathe and embrace the present, whether it’s pleasant or not, I can release myself from that constant internal anxiety and feel more rooted and relaxed.

There’s good and bad in everything. Choose to look at the good.

This is something I learned from Alice Sommer, who was the oldest living Holocaust survivor at the time of the making of the documentary about her life, The Lady in Number 6. She said just that: “There’s good and bad in everything. I choose to look at the good.”

We all do this. We gravitate to the bad. It jumps out at us. But to locate the good, we have to dig. For example, a client told me that he sold his house in March of 2020 and then when house prices skyrocketed mid-pandemic, he was heartbroken; he wished he’d hung on for another six months. But he was completely overlooking the fact that he’d sold it for double what he’d paid for it. He could choose to focus on either the money he didn’t make or the great price he got for his house.

The obstacle is the way

That’s the title of a book by Ryan Holiday about the stoic way of viewing the world. Basically, it says that you can extract value from even the bad or, especially the bad, because it forces you to bring up those character traits you’ll need to get through hard times with grace. Or, as Alice Sommer said, “Even the bad is beautiful if you know where to look for it.” So I don’t want to rage against life when things are hard but rather, welcome it as an opportunity for growth. After all, you need friction to rub something smooth.

So how do I affix these four principles so that they become the first place my mind goes when trouble arises instead of the last? I got it! I’ll make a beautiful needlepoint, like women did in the 19th century, and stick it on the wall in my bedroom so it’s the first thing I see in the morning and the last thing I see at night. After all those meditative hours of work cross-stitching, those concepts are bound to stick! I’m sure Thich Nhat Hanh would agree.