Start Over E-Book

Nikolaj Boesen

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 114

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

When was the last time you were fully present in what you were doing? Nikolaj Boesen's debut novel, "Start Over," presents an easy and simple way to bring more presence into one's life. The book is both childish and mature, delivering with its simple and playful language a friendly reminder of something we all know well but often forget; a mindful presence that is always right in front of us! The book is divided into 30 shorter chapters, accompanied by illustrations, each revolving around a different theme. It can be read from start to finish or opened at random, depending on one's mood.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Introduction

PRACTICE

What is presence?

How do we practice being present?

To recognize presence

Acknowledgement

Looking inward

Curiosity

Gratitude

Weeds become compost

Not striving

Just to sit

ATTITUDE

Flexibility

Change

To train your mind

Trust in your nature

Enlightenment

Experienced wisdom

To know that you do not know

Not as you expect

Yours or mine

Naturalness

UNDERSTANDING

Unchanging self

Identification

Death

The root of the problem

Time

Start over

Control

Freedom

Meaning of life

Nothing more

INTRODUCTION

You want to be happy, don't you? The answer to that question is, of course, a resounding yes! Now try to imagine what your life would look like if you were completely happy. If you're like most people, you immediately start dreaming of happiness as something that happens in the future. Maybe you're lying by the pool with a drink in your hand. Maybe you're sitting with your legs up on the table, at the top of your career. Whatever each of us can imagine, it's a fantasy that relates to the future. For most of us, it doesn't occur to us that we could be completely permeated with happiness right now in this moment. It simply seems completely out of reach.

I believe that it's time for us to think outside the box if we really want to be happy. That's why I started writing this book, hoping to present an alternative way of understanding and experiencing happiness that is less goal-oriented, less fixated on thoughts, and more accessible to you right now. "Start Over" is a book designed to get you to question some of the assumptions you make in your daily life. I hope that this book can bring some of your mental tendencies to light so you can open your eyes to how we all often flee from what actually enriches our lives the most.

"Start Over" is about presence. The book has its title not only because I believe that the way to a happy life for most people begins with a restart, but also because the message of the book in its simplest form is to start over, again and again. That sounds pretty demotivating, I can tell now as I read that sentence... But I really hope that after reading this book, you don't see a restart as a defeat, but as a huge victory and something you want to practice over and over again. I, for one, get a big smile on my face every time I think about starting over, and what a pleasure it would be to pass that gift on.

For a good period of time, I had the pleasure of teaching some young people in the subjects of "Self-insight" and "Mindfulness" at Løgumkloster Højskole(Danish school). Being able to inspire young people who are in the process of finding their own way is one of the most meaningful things I've ever done. I left every class with a huge smile on my face and an eagerness to do more of the same. Often, after my classes, I would go back to my room and begin to write down some of what I had taught. These writings were small text excerpts that embraced the topic we had discussed that day.

As time went on, there were suddenly 30 smaller chapters that became the book you're holding in your hands. I have divided the chapters into three parts: Practice, Attitude, and Understanding. The first part, Practice, is about how to work with your mind concretely and thus experience more presence and joy. The second part, Attitude, is about how to approach a process of change effectively, and how to maintain the motivation to continue. The third part, Understanding, is about how to understand your environment in a way that avoids more confusion and better navigate in life.

To read a book like this, I believe requires a refined balance of curiosity and critical thinking. In between the two, there is a place where we can read in a present way and hopefully experience something new! If we read to acquire a skill that we can only benefit from in the future, we tend to be absent in our reading - it would be a bit ironic if a book about presence ended up getting you further away from where you are right now. Therefore, I believe that you will get the most out of the book if you are present in your reading and read to read, and nothing else.

My advice is also that you don't take the book too seriously - I believe it is best read that way. By this, I do not mean that the book does not have serious content, but that it will enrich you the most if you do not treat it as a cure that can fix your problems, but rather as a good friend that you can be yourself around. I wish you a fantastic good read!

PRACTICE

PART 1

WHAT IS PRESENCE?

Right now, you are reading a book. When I make you aware that you are reading, you become conscious that you are reading. Suddenly, you know that you are reading. You observe yourself reading. Similarly, you can feel this book in your hand right now. When you become aware of how it feels to hold the book in your hand, your experience changes just a little bit. You now know that you are holding a book. If I asked you in a little while whether you had read this book or held this book in your hand, you would not be in doubt for a second. The knowledge is there. Yes, of course, you would know that you were reading the book. But reallyknowing that you are reading and feeling a book right now is a different feeling.

This is what we call presence. One thing is to breathe right now. Another thing is to know that you are breathing right now. It is a subtle difference, but at the same time, there is a big difference between the two experiences. Can you feel the difference?

Being present, attentive, and what else we could call it, simply means being aware of what is unfolding for us right now. We become aware of what our experience is right now at this moment. It may sound simple and obvious, but for most of us, the majority of our time is spent absorbed in thoughts. Often thoughts about the future or the past. This is called being absent. It is rare that we wake up to how this moment is experienced and be completely present. There is nothing wrong with being absorbed in thoughts - but it is a fantastic gift to be able to choose when to be.

Our thoughts can be entertaining and interesting from time to time, but often they create a breeding ground for worry, anxiety, anger, and inner turbulence. If we are very absorbed in our thoughts and find ourselves somewhere else other than here and now, there are good chances that we are not happy. An awareness rooted in the present moment, on the other hand, often brings ease and satisfaction with it. Being present with what is happening in this moment allows us to release discomfort, confusion, and fear. It's simple - but still hard to understand. That's why I wrote this book to help you try to experience a little more presence.

You can try for yourself! Take a moment to focus on your senses. We can, for example, take the sense of touch. What can you feel right now? An easily accessible example could be the feeling of your clothes touching your body. Try to notice how it feels to have clothes on your body.

In the moment you bring your attention to your experience of wearing clothes, your focus moves away from all the thoughts and emotions that usually fill your head. However, most of us immediately begin to analyze the experience and think about how it feels to wear clothes, and then we're back in our stream of thoughts. But in the brief moment of open awareness of the physical contact with your clothes around you, your experience is different than usual. It's not an escape from our thoughts and emotions. On the contrary - we really come back to this present moment and let go of our disappearance into the future or the past.

If it's new for you to be confronted with this quality of consciousness, be careful not to make too many ideas about how it should be handled. So should we just go and feel all the time? Are we not allowed to think? These are fantastic questions, but for now, there's no reason to draw any conclusions about what one should or should not do. We're simply exploring how it is to experience this moment with presence. How does it feel to just be right now, with whatever is present?

So we're exploring what it feels like to be present with our experience, for example, through our senses, and then we can investigate whether that experience creates problems or removes problems. That's the first step. Before we begin to discuss whether presence makes sense and how we can cultivate more of it, we should at least have had the experience of a wakeful, present mind for just a second.

I'm breathing. I know that I'm breathing.

HOW DO WE PRACTICE BEING PRESENT?

“This presence thing seems quite interesting," you might be thinking. If we decide that we want to experience being present more often, how do we go about it? We know from modern research that the brain is capable of changing throughout our lives. If we want to create new habits, it is possible - what a lucky coincidence! And how do we create habits? It's simple! The more we do something, the more natural and effortless it becomes for us to do it. For example, when we first learn to ride a bike, we make a great effort to understand the complexity of coordinating hands and feet while trying to maintain balance. Later on, we can ride a bike without any problems, and the actions we practice gradually become so effortless that they happen unconsciously, without us having to make an effort. Some people can even ride a bike without using their hands (I'm very envious of these people)! In the same way, we work with the mind. At first, we must make an effort to be present in the moment, but later on, it becomes effortless and natural, and we will experience being happier. Suddenly we discover that we can maintain balance even without having our hands on the handlebars.

The more often we are present, the easier our brain gets used to being present. To learn to ride a bike, we must ride a bike. Roughly speaking, our practice is simply to return to a present awareness in the moment again and again. We keep returning to this current moment to help the brain make it a habit. How is your experience right now? And what about now? And now? So the goal and the path to the goal are in many ways the same in this practice.

It's actually very simple when you just think about it that way. To become present, you must be present. It's actually amazingly simple, but your brain will still do its best to distract you from being present. The brain is an incredibly good salesman - it persuades most of us to invest countless hours preparing for the future and avoiding disasters. So we need to be a bit tactical when we start changing our natural state from absence to presence. However, we don't want to go to war with our brains! We just want to be aware of how the brain learns best so that we can offer ourselves the best process of change.

We want to avoid teaching the brain the wrong habits, so we need to be very attentive to what we are presenting to the brain and make sure that it is what we really want more of. We ideally want to present the brain with presence, not thoughts about presence. In the beginning, it takes a lot of concentration to separate the two. That's why we like to sit down and close our eyes. When we have settled down, it's easier for us to isolate the experience of presence. To start with, it can be a great advantage to be in a place where we are free from distractions. This makes it easier to become more comfortable with what it feels like to just be present right now and here. However, the absence of distractions is not a prerequisite for presence.

When we are ready to practice, we investigate how our experience of life is right now in this moment. If your experience of the present moment right now is that there are loud noises and exciting things happening around you, then that is your experience of the present moment. There is nothing wrong with that, so we must not limit our presence to only being able to experience it when we sit down with our eyes closed. But in order for you to experience what it feels like to be present with what is happening right now, it can be helpful for you to start with closed eyes and away from distractions.