Zen

Be mindful of the destination addiction where you become fixated with the notion that happiness is elsewhere. Until you surrender that concept of happiness is in another place, it is going to never be where you are. So on examination what does this all mean? If you were to answer the question, do you live your life only to get to the end of it? Then most people would say unequivocally no. However in the world today, many people suffer from the belief that success or happiness is the destination. They are always on the run, on the move, and their goal seems to be to get through the day rather than live each day. Such people become addicted to the idea that the future is where success will be found, happiness resides, and that each intervening moment is just a means to get there.

Rather than living in the now, more and more people seem to be living in anything but the now, being psychologically absent and disregarding everything currently in their life. If you find that you are thinking this way, then you are falling into the trap of destination addiction. You continually chase the illusive notion of happiness and literally suffer from your pursuits. In this case, you may find that your goal has not been to enjoy the day, but instead, you have focused on getting through the day. You have always been focused on getting somewhere, foregoing the opportunities to savour the moments of life along the way. When you arrive at the destination, the feeling of success or happiness seems to elude you, as if it has somehow escaped to the next day, week or year. Then the feeling of satisfaction is continually deferred, and you end up living your life in hot pursuit of some extraordinary bliss which you have no idea how to find.

Social media and an era of excess make a major contribution to the pandemic of destination addiction. In the never-ending pursuit of happiness, you may find that you spend increasing amounts of time or money on trying to acquire happiness. But if you are being honest, how often have you found that the happiness so acquired was only temporary? This is made worse by people and companies peddling items and experiences to “totally change your life” or “make you happier than you ever dreamed possible”. Cars with the newest widgets, fancier clothing, more exquisite jewellery or even the latest gadget, can all be symptomatic of this underlying trend to feed destination addiction.

As increasing numbers of us become engrossed in destination addiction, as we tend to rush through as many experiences as quickly as possible. You may find that you start living by the adage of “been there, done that”. Life should not be about destinations or endings; if it were then life would be very different. If life were about the destination then you would only read the last page of any book, have deserts for meals, or only attended graduation day at school or college. Destination addiction is frequently an attempt to get on with life faster, hoping that you will enjoy your life better. Yet constant rushing through life frequently means that you will miss or bypass golden opportunities along the way. In this way, destination addiction is working against you, as you become too busy or too focused on the objective to be aware of life happing around you. It can become increasingly easy to feel empty as if your life is lacking any meaning.

If you are prone to overthinking, then destination addiction is the perfect setup for failure. It can become very common for people to trade short-term gratification in the hope of reaching the ultimate goal. It could be manifest that happiness is the next deal, the next high, the next acquisition, the next drink, or even something seemingly as silly as the next hot-fudge sundae. In all these instances realise that your mind is overthinking and making you believe the proverbial adage that the grass is greener over the next hill. Destination addiction can cause you to become impatient as you attempt to reach your goal. You then end up with little time for yourself and grow evermore impatient as the destination always seems just out of reach.

It is important to be aware that none of us is immune to destination addiction, and we all have times when we have to convince ourselves that better times are ahead. The trouble with destination addiction is that it focuses purely on the end and not on purpose. Fortunately, there is an excellent remedy for destination addiction, but it is often hard to find.

The key to defeating destination addiction is to find happiness in the life you have and to achieve the goals that are important to you, not what you believe will impress everyone else. When you declare that you are content with what you have, where you are and who you are, it is possible to break out of this addiction. You may then find that you begin to live more in the now and savour the full experiences that life avails to you every day. You can then live intelligently with purpose, make the means the end, and also the end the means. Then you may come to the realisation that true happiness never comes from a destination. Happiness comes from within us as you experience and live in the here and now.

Nowadays it is very easy to lose the battle with Social Media such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora, Medium, Pinterest, Tumblr, and various other apps taking hold of your life. Even though you may well have reduced your screen time with digital well-being tools, you might have noticed that your attention span has decreased, or that you become seemingly quickly bored by a topic and feel the need to swipe onto the newest fad. Consider for a moment that it is your mind which is winning the battle, and continues to draw you back to scrolling and swiping through Social Media.

If though, you wish to know yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, your brilliance and dark sides, then you need to discover some quiet time in your life. Discovering some quiet time means more than closing the app or turning off your smartphone, it is about really bringing some renewed focus to your way of thinking. Truly quietening your mind can be extremely beneficial for your well-being and quality of life. Choose a technique such as meditation, mindfulness or the more advanced practices such as cognition that can help you to boost your attention span and at the same time provide you with ways to assist in quietening your mind.

The utmost goal for anyone undertaking meditation is to realise a tranquillity of the mind. However, the majority of us have noisy minds and attaining this preeminent state of a quietness of mind is seriously difficult to achieve. Yet having a noisy mind, does not mean that you cannot meditate, it merely means that you need to take a different approach in which you discover how to become the master of your mind.

If you have a noisy mind, trying to achieve silence of your mind may be tough to achieve. Frequently your very own efforts to quieten the mind will restock your mind with the noise of thoughts comparable to those which you are attempting to remove. Your mind might seemingly inject thoughts such as “I can’t stop thinking” or “I do not know if I am doing this right” feeding the increasing levels of noise as your mind tries to persevere control. This can reveal just how much attention most of us pay to our mind, listening to every single thought which it raises every day.

While you may not have the ability to achieve a quietness of mind at the outset, it is very important that you must not give up. You just need to discover an alternative means to focus your mind. Some people find success in creating a space in between their thoughts of their noisy minds. While others can discover success by learning to become the observer of their thoughts, as if they were being played out on a movie screen. Others may find that listening to a gong or similar tone can assist by the sound becoming the focus of the mind away from the endless stream of thoughts. In all of these ways to accomplish meditation success, the key, whether apparent or not has been on achieving some focus for your mind. The distinction being, that as you come to be that master, you can learn to focus your mind, thereby banishing the noise of your thoughts to the background. So even though your mind is not quiet, you can achieve meditation with focus. Then overtime, you will find that as you repeatedly take control of your mind and focus on meditation, these other thoughts will drift further into the background, so you may attain success.

The flow of energy throughout the human system is essential for your continual health and well-being. With time, your energy pathways, frequently known as “meridians”, can become restricted due to the accumulation of various emotional dross and other obstructions.

The application of Solar Radiance, a cosmic energy of life will enable you to unblock your energy pathways of blockages and other limitations. Unclogging your energy pathways makes it possible for your own energies to run unimpeded to nurture all parts of you and for the Solar Radiance to revitalise and invigorate all parts of your being. A completely self-guided activity available at our webshop furnishes you with the necessary information and procedure to be able to perform this essential cleansing and revitalisation technique.

Kindness is greater than merely an elementary word or a disposable expression. The real intent of kindness is manifest by means of your thoughts and actions every single day. Kindness is personified with the inner countenances of harmlessness, which can aid you to re-establish the balance in your life and redress the karma we all carry. Come to be that individual of true and unquestionable kindness to expand happiness and no hurt into the world around you.

As anyone who practices mindfulness, you must face the challenge of the aspects which you have pushed aside. While it is an admirable practice to improve your focus in life by pushing aside other thoughts, emotions or feelings, you need to take a deeper challenge. The challenge is to realise that pushing aside any thoughts, emotions or feelings, does not make them disappear. When pushing them aside, they continue to exist on the periphery of your consciousness.

 

You need to understand these aspects within your life so that you can then move beyond them. Moving beyond them, you can no longer react to the stimuli which they produce. However, if you leave them unattended within the recesses of your mind, they are like the proverbial Pandora’s box. As such, any emotional aspects not appropriately understood or banished completely from your mind, can lead to many unforeseen problems.

When every little thing around you appears to be rushing by at a frantic pace, stop for a moment. At that point pose the question, is it the world that is hectic, or is it my mind? You may well discover that the truth is, that your mind is cramming your day with countless and frequently unwanted and often unwarranted thoughts.

One thing which is certain in the world is that change is inescapable. The quicker you recognise that changes transpire as an intrinsic and healthy part of life, the more fluidly and in harmony, your life will likely unfurl. A beneficial lesson, which can be grasped on life’s journey, is that you are much better and wiser to take control of your life and circumstances.  Recognise when it is time to make favourable adjustments, and afterwards, proactively make that change take place for yourself.