Living the Zen Life

There is no rush

There is no rush

There is no rush


“Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It’s the courage to continue that counts.”
—Winston Churchill
 

E

ven The Buddha practiced until the day he died. There is no destination. Success isn’t the end. Death may, in fact, be the end. It’s what you do between now and then that counts.

My story is not the typical “success story.” I wasn’t down-and-out, hooked on drugs or alcohol, depressed and miserable. In fact, my story was the exact opposite. I felt like I had everything I should in order to be happy. I had the perfect job, the perfect partner, the perfect home, the perfect life. By all rights, I should have been happy and satisfied. But I wasn’t. And that’s what drove me to train in a Zen monastery. I needed to figure out how to fill the bottomless hole inside of me that could never be filled.

I didn’t always succeed. Being a monk was not easy. I struggled a lot. But I found the courage to continue.

I was coaching a client who admitted that he needed to see things a few times before he understood the process behind how he was struggling. I laughed and told him that I was very thick-headed and it took me seeing the same thing hundreds of times before I learned the process!

So there’s no rush.

Having the spirit of inquiry and the joy of learning is so incredibly helpful in life. It’s what allows you to see setbacks as springboards to possibilities. Things that aren’t going your way are happy-blessed-mistakes. Life happening in its own way is a wondrous mystery and game to be played full out.

For the sheer joy of it!
 

In lovingkindness,


If you enjoyed this article, you can find a version of it in my book, Living the Zen Life: Practicing Conscious, Compassionate Awareness (Volume One).

If you enjoyed this article, you can find a version of it in my book, Living the Zen Life: Practicing Conscious, Compassionate Awareness (Volume Two).

If you enjoyed this article, you can find a version of it in my book, Living the Zen Life: Practicing Conscious, Compassionate Awareness (Volume Three).

If you enjoyed this article, you can find a version of it in my book, A Shift to Love: Zen Stories and Lessons by Alex Mill.

If you enjoyed this article, you can find a version of it in my book, Meditation and Reinventing Yourself.

If you enjoyed this article, you can find a version of it in my book, The Zen Life: Spiritual Training for Modern Times.

 


  Alex Mill trained in a Zen Buddhist monastery for nearly 14 years. He now offers his extensive experience to transform people’s lives and businesses through timeless Zen principles.

He is the creator of three powerful 30-day programs, Heart-to-Heart: Compassionate Self-Mentoring, Help Yourself to Change, and Your Practice, as well as the online Zen meditation workshop, Taming Your Inner Noise (now offered as The Zen Workshop).

Alex has also written seven books on Zen awareness practice. The latest are entitled A Shift to Love: Zen Stories and Lessons (Get some FREE sample chapters here) and the 3-book series Living the Zen Life: Practicing Conscious, Compassionate Awareness.

He is a full-time Zen Life Coach who offers guidance and life-changing support to his private clients worldwide. Book a call.