Living in the moment or for the moment?

This is the *extended article first published in The Press York on Tuesday, May 22nd 2018

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/16234934.COLUMN__Live_in_the_moment__not_for_the_moment/ 

Those readers who use Facebook, will know that about once a week, they will post a memory reminder. It will be text or a photo from some years before. Always a surprise, the reminders can induce a variety of emotions. Quite often I have forgotten the event I was writing about or am shocked at the passing of time since making the posting.

This week, the memory reminder was from 2011. “I stepped out of the back door, still wearing pyjamas, fed the birds, looked at the flowers and trees and breathed in fresh air. Then realised I had spent over half my life in flats. I hope I never take my home and life for granted. Carpe Diem!”

Seven years have passed and I still count my blessings every day.  *Well, I try to. The best self-inflicted 'kick up the backside' is to remember some very dear friends who haven't been as fortunate as I have been, to make it this far in life. 

There have been many changes in circumstances during that time, happy, sad, concerning and exciting ones. Very little has been planned.

* In situations when we think nothing will change, we need to remind oneself that change is a constant and that much that has happened in the previous week, month, year was not planned. I've quoted John Lennon before, but it's worth repeating, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

The terms, ‘living for the moment’ and ‘living in the moment’ have different meanings and different outcomes. Finding happiness and contentment is more elusive in ‘living for the moment’. 

Expectations can be unrealistic, outcomes disappointing and happiness missed in passing moments. Many of the clients I helped, were ‘living for the moment’. The moment when there would be resolution for a past event in their lives, often an event in childhood when they were left with a feeling of ‘not being good enough.’ That moment had either never happened or didn’t provide the resolution if it had done so. It couldn’t do. The people, places and context have changed.

* If resolution is about revenge, the result is not always was was wanted or expected. Short-term gain can lead to long-term pain.

A man was explaining his frustration at continually failing to find resolution to a feeling from childhood. I said, “Well, you won’t, because it’s a hopeless task, like chasing rainbows. The pot of gold is only an illusion and you are becoming deluded chasing it.” “You’re right,’ he said.  "It feels like I’m running backwards and forwards to a well, trying to fill a bucket with water, that can’t ever be filled.” This is why my book is called, “Are you Chasing Rainbows?’, rather than ‘Are you Filling Buckets.’

That morning in 2011 I was ‘living in the moment’ and without trying, was also experiencing Mindfulness. Those moments haven’t stopped and are precious. They cost nothing. Simple pleasures.

©AlisonRRussell2018

Taking control over the emotion of memories

This is the *extended Wellbeing column, published in the York Press on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2015.

As yet, there is no link to the York Press website. No doubt due to staff on holiday.

This is the last column for 2015 and I have been asked to continue writing a monthly column in 2016, my third year of writing for York Press. So see you next year!

..........................................

“Strange how potent cheap music is.” Noel Coward.  Private Lives.

If music, cheap or otherwise, was not potent, then it wouldn't be used by advertising agencies to sell merchandise. At this time of year, we seem to be assaulted everywhere by Christmas music. Our brains block out most of it, but for many, there are one or two tunes that will ‘hijack’ our emotional brain and makes us stop and reflect on a memory that has come to mind. Perhaps our eyes become moist or we inwardly smile. Then most of us will stop the train of thought that is usually heading back into the past and get on with whatever we are doing in the present.

Personally, Chris Rea brings smiles from a warm memory, while choirs singing carols can bring tears of loss.

At home or in the car, I can listen to music of my own choosing. There is little choice elsewhere and I can be ‘emotionally hijacked’ in seconds.  The first thought cannot be helped, but there is control over the second.  If I wish to be self-indulgent and dwell in self-pity, it’s my choice. On rare occasions I will chose to continue to listen to music that makes me feel miserable, through the memories it evokes. Bittersweet memories.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is often offered to people when their thoughts and subsequent behaviours are unhelpful. People can be helped to take control and change their thoughts, internal dialogue and actions. A thought will be triggered by an emotional reaction to something sensory. A smell, sight, taste, feel or touch. I’m writing about music, but it could be anything. Sometimes it’s not an obvious memory and we can often wonder why we’ve reacted in certain ways. 

It’s this brain function that can make Christmas time such an emotional time, with its variety of sensory triggers. Many people don’t like it for that reason. It’s also a time for trying to recapture the past, which is impossible and can cause disappointment with unfulfilled expectations.

If I was granted a wish by the Christmas fairy, it would be to have the family at home, around the table on Christmas Day.  This is logistically not possible, so this year we arranged to have a pre-Christmas gathering in late autumn instead. I looked at the extended family interacting and dwelled on the ‘if onlys' and ‘what ifs’. I was living in the past. It felt sad. Then I changed my internal dialogue. If I focused my mind on the past, I was going to miss what was happening in the present. I had the opportunity to make new memories. It became a cognitive exercise, not dissimilar to Mindfulness. I changed my train of thought and enjoyed the moment. I was making new memories. I felt happier.

*Over the Christmas period, I have been 'emotionally hijacked' on many occasions.  I always had a choice of where I took the train of thoughts and what mood ensued. Sometimes I indulged myself, because a duvet of self-indulgant misery can be strangely comforting at times. But only for the short-term. 

None of us know exactly what tomorrow will bring, let alone a whole year. I wish you all the emotional strength to manage whatever comes your way, bad and good, sad and happy, despair and elation, failure and success, pain and pleasure and all the ordinariness of in between.  

Here's to 2016 with my favourite quote.

"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us." Helen Keller

©AlisonRRussell2015

A Christmas blog - memory lane.

Just one more day to go before Christmas Day.  All being well, my body will be present and celebrating Christmas Day 2013. But my mind? I wonder where that will be? Where has it already been over the last couple of weeks of preparations?

Two weeks ago the box of Christmas tree decorations was unpacked. Some of those decorations are from the 1950s and my own childhood Christmases. Good memories of older relatives visiting, dislodging the tree when I tried to find our whether the fairy on top was real, chocolate selection boxes, Mickey Mouse lights, making paper chains and watching my first Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film. Also memories of being poorly and my mother being exhausted returning home from work on Christmas Eve, laden down with the turkey.

The 1960s - a different house, but similar tree and decorations.  Same elderly relatives, but a change in the family dynamic through divorce and now being a recalcitrant teenager. My mother was still exhausted and the memories are more of all the household tasks that needed to be done (or did they?), rather than of any joy in the proceedings. 1967 and I was on night duty in a Children's Home.  That was good and not that I knew it then, but I met my first husband too. 

1970 and I had been home for a day from hospital with my week old baby. Friends had decorated the flat, but those tree decorations were still at my mother's house, where we continued to spend Christmas Days. 

1975 and with a move to a bigger house, I took over hosting the family Christmas.  My mother downsized and I gained a few of the decorations. I was amazed to find that despite the effort required, preparing the meal didn't have to be as stressful as I had been bought up to believe it was.

The rest of the 1970s and 1980s.  We had good Christmas times. The children have good memories. A house that was only decorated the night before my daughter's birthday on the 18th, to help make it special, despite being so near Christmas. Relatives, nativity plays,  carol concerts, good food, visitors, fun and laughter. Except, sometimes, behind my smile... 

1990s. After the years of tradition, I'm not sure there was one Christmas like another.  Family breakdown, children growing up, moving away and divorce. In 1994, my new husband asked why I was insistent something had to be done a certain way. I replied that it was because it always had been done like that, it was tradition. "And that's a very good reason to change", he replied. But I was clinging to the past wasn't I? A past through rose-coloured glasses.

2013. It's been 18 years since my last 'family Christmas'.  Logistics make them impossible. But if we haven't all got together at Christmas time, we have for autumn birthdays and more recently my mother's 90th birthday in December 2010. But this year, my mother died and my husband was taken ill just before the family gathering and we couldn't attend.

The Christmas tree has gone up and the decorations placed lovingly on the tree. I played CDs of John Rutter carols, allowed some moments to become tearful for the past (the good bits) and tried to remember that I have a choice. I can't choose the first thought, but I can change the second and subsequent. On occasions I have chosen to indulge myself and not bother to change the second thought.  There's nothing like a dose of self-pity for distorting the truth of the situation.

I also remember that, I can change what I do today, I can change what I do tomorrow, but I can't change what I did yesterday.

My favourite quote, which comes at the end of the book is:
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”

Helen Keller 

With Happy Christmas wishes to all the readers and see you the other side of the door of December 25th. Have fun.


©AlisonRussell2013