Being Impeccable With Your NOW
For the greater part of my adult life, I have played a role built on helping others with enhancing performance. More specifically, helping individuals increase production and income in the job/career portion of their lives. As a society of achievers, we are constantly looking for certifications, course completions, sales competitions, and acknowledgement of doing. So what happens when the results aren’t what you want? When your instant gratification isn’t fulfilled? When you feel like you should be further along in your progress by now?
Recently, these feelings and questions have been rising to the surface more and more among those I am honored to help along the way. How do I help them? What can I do to jumpstart the engine?
And then I was reminded of a story I would like to share with you now:
A young Buddhist monk approached his teacher and asked the Zen Master, “If I meditate very diligently, how long will it take for me to become enlightened?”
The Master thought for a moment, and then replied, “Ten years.”
The student then asked, “But what if I work very, very hard and really apply myself to learn fast. How long then?”
The Master replied, “Well, then it will take twenty years.”
“But if I really, really work at it. How long then?” persisted the student.
“Thirty years,” said the Master.
“But I don’t understand,” said the disappointed student. “Each time I say I will work harder, you say it will take me longer. Why do you say that?”
The Master replied, “When you have one eye on the goal, you are left with only one eye on the work. This lack of focus will mean it will take even longer to get there.”
This story instantly brings a smile to my face and I hope you can understand the irony of me, someone who earns a living helping others achieve goals, sharing a story with you about not focusing on the goals.
It isn’t that the goal is ever lost. Rather, it isn’t allowing an attachment to the goal to become a distraction instead of its original intention of being the solution.
I would like to encourage you to shift your perspective ever so slightly, even if it is just for a few days. A perspective I refer to as being impeccable with your NOW.
To be impeccable with your NOW is to understand it is not about doing and achieving, but being and becoming.
Being impeccable with your now is bringing focus into the present. Sure, you can still keep your charts and projections, your goal sheets and year to date reviews, but you focus on what you can do at the moment. Based on the education, environment, support at home, financial situation, etc. of the moment, what is the best choice I can make now? 45 minutes before a 2-hour meeting that could have been an email?... What is the best choice I can make with the time? Find yourself coming to after 30 minutes of social media scroll and a ‘what kind of Dorito chip are you’ quiz?...what is the next best choice I can make NOW with this awareness?
This frame of mind puts you in the driver’s seat and removes the distraction of what has happened in the past and how far off the future may seem. For those of you self-professed perfectionists, this takes away the debilitation of striving for perfection and shifts the focus to striving for excellence.
With a slight cringe as I use a sports metaphor, what can I accomplish now that by the end of the day I will feel I left everything on the court? Based on everything going on in my life today, how can I strive for excellence?
An ancient take on this would be Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras mention of practice and non-attachment. As it applies to this post, when we can focus on the present moment and be impeccable with our NOW, we can be intentional with our work(practice) and know the results will follow (non-attachment).