All too often, we forget that each moment of life, pleasant or unpleasant, is a miracle.  Indeed, the breath we’re taking right now is a miracle.  

It’s pretty easy to get caught up in the dramas we create in our minds, isn’t it?  If the drama is exciting, we feel alive.  If it’s dull and boring, we may feel depressed.

This drama can pull us away from the simple truth that our existence in this moment is an absolute miracle.  Think of all the things that had to happen just the way they did, since the beginning of time, for you to be alive in this moment.  Think of the nearly infinite processes that are occurring in this moment allowing you to live.  The sunlight, our atmosphere, and thousands of processes in your own body are all absolutely necessary for you to be alive in this moment.

Although I think it is very helpful to reflect in this way from time to time, we can’t be thinking about these things all the time, right?  We have things to do!

Fortunately, there is a miracle that is always happening, wherever we are, in all activities – the breath.  And, luckily for us, we don’t need to think about the breath to be in touch with the fact that it is a life-sustaining miracle.  All we need to do is be aware of it.  In fact, becoming aware of the breath actually enhances our engagement in the present moment.

Simply being aware of the fact that we are breathing, we can become aware in a deep way, beyond thought, of the miracle of being alive in this present moment.  We see our personal drama in perspective and are freed from its grip.  Our mind and body become united and whole, and we are present for ourselves and those around us.

Surely, the mind will doubt that there can be any value to simply being aware of the fact that the body is breathing.  Nevertheless, I invite you to practice awareness of breathing and see for yourself how powerful such a simple act can be.

You might just find yourself smiling – aware in a subtle, intuitive way, that this moment is indeed a miracle.

This breath is a miracle.

Having an abundant outlook is something I have struggled with a lot over the years.  Opening up and accepting that there is more than enough to go around for everyone seems to go against some force of habit I have to make sure my needs are met before I can think about meeting the needs of others.  This is the scarcity mentality.

Although I’m still growing in this area, I feel as though I have grown a great deal over the last few years and that the growth is taking on an upward curve.

I’d like to share why this is happening.

First, what does it mean to have an abundance mentality?  An abundance mentality, made popular by Stephen Covey in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, is the belief that there are more than enough resources for everyone, which means it is possible to find win-win resolutions.  This is in contrast to the scarcity mentality, which leads to people believing that only one side can truly win in a transaction.  

Second, what are the benefits of an abundance mentality?  The intangible effects on our character occur each time we think and act with the attitude of abundance.   We move closer to reaching our full potential as human beings.  With the exception of feeling good, most the tangible benefits of an abundance mentality are not immediately apparent.  Benefits such as improved relationships, material objects, etc., come much more slowly, but they do come.  This is the law of the attraction so many successful people attribute to being the “secret” to their success.

So how do we achieve this abundance mentality?

Actually, an abundance mentality is not something we gain or achieve.   The abundance mentality is actually an aspect of our true nature.  It has simply been covered it up with the conditioning most of us receive in our natural development as human beings.

The reality is that our minds and bodies are deeply interconnected with the “outside world”.  Although we may know this intellectually, most of us have not had enough personal insight into this truth to break us free of our habitual attachment to the idea that our minds and bodies are somehow completely separate from everything around us.

The practice of mindful investigation of reality can help us to gradually see more clearly the deep interconnection between everything in our world.   In his masterwork, The Law of Success, Napoleon Hill, perhaps the most well-respected expert on success in history, said that the basis for the secrets to success is harmony with all around us, which comes from understanding the interconnected-ness of all things.   

As the truth of the interconnection of “things” becomes more clear, we begin to realize that we are already connected to everything we could ever want or need.  There’s nothing we have to get that isn’t already ours.

CLICK HERE to learn more about the eBook, featuring chapters from John Spence, Jeff Klein, Charlie Kim, Michael Carroll, Ted Prince, David Marquet, and Ben Lichtenwalner.

While I was confined to the brig, my secret to happiness was a simple one: train the mind not to wander so much. 

This week, we’ll discuss some fascinating research by Harvard researcher Matt Killingsworth that points out how mind wandering not only leads to poor performance, but to unhappiness as well.

I think it’s pretty obvious that if we’re easily distracted, we’re not going to perform as well at any task as someone who is not so easily distracted.  However, maybe it’s not so obvious that being free from a wondering mind also increases happiness.

When we are free from being pulled around by our thinking, and are fully present with what we’re doing now, we are no longer victims of the comparative thinking that tells us, “You could be happy if you were just someplace else, or if you just had _____.  You’re happiness will come later, at some point in the future.”

When we are no longer caught up in comparative thinking, we realize that the present moment is usually pretty OK.  In fact, I realized that the present moment is actually perfect.  It is our thinking that makes it otherwise.

Of course, those of us who are skeptics immediately think, “What about when the present moment is inherently unpleasant?  Surely it would be better to allow our mind to wander so that we’re not so aware of the unpleasantness.”

Actually, the research found that people with a wandering mind were actually less happy during unpleasant experiences than people who were more present.

One of my favorite quotes from a great master of mindfulness practice was his reply to the question, “What do you practice?”

The master said, “We practice walking, eating, cleaning, and sitting.”

“Everyone does that!”

The master replied, “True.  But when we walk we know we’re walking, when we eat we know we’re eating, when we clean we know we’re cleaning, and when we sit we know we’re sitting.

Here’s a great TED talk that goes into the research a little more.  Enjoy!