“Narrow your life down to this moment. Your life situation may be full of problems—most life situations are—but find out if you have any problem at this moment. Not tomorrow or in ten minutes, but now. Do you have a problem now? When you are full of problems, there is no room for anything new to enter, no room for a solution. So whenever you can, make some room, create some space, so that you find the life underneath your life situation.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 63)
Beyond the Quote (53/365)
Empty your cup. Before you can make room for new tea in your cup, you need to empty what tea you already have. If you keep pouring, your cup will keep overflowing and you will never be able to drink your tea because your cup will still have tea being poured into it! That, plus, the space around you will quickly start turning into a terrible mess which will result more in panic than it will tea drinking. You need to stop pouring the tea, place the kettle down, and focus on drinking what you have. You need to create some space. And the same is true for your life situation.
Your life situation may be full of problems—most people’s life situations are. And as long as you continue to pour life problems into your cup, your cup will be undrinkable and will eventually overflow into an uncontrollable mess—a feeling that many of you might be able to relate to. Taking a step out of the narrative of the mind and narrowing your life down to the present moment allows you to stop the damn pouring and begin the act of sipping what you already have. Not only does this allow you to deal with what is most immediately a problem, but it also creates openings and more space that solutions will more freely be able to flow into.
And when you really boil down your life to the singular moment of the present, you might find that many of the problems that were overwhelming you—that were outpouring from your being—begin to dissolve or even disappear. Not that they go away, but that they are no longer being poured into the cup of your mind. It’s as though you might feel a weight being lifted from your mind. This mental alleviation gives you the space you need to begin to empty your cup and settle from the panic of overwhelm. After all, how could you NOT panic when your cup is overflowing? It doesn’t take long when you witness a person over-pouring a cup that you snap into a panic to stop the mess—it happens almost instantaneously! But it’s a reaction that just doesn’t happen at anywhere near that speed for the mind.
Stopping overflow of the mind is a reaction that is slow cooked, requires conscious practice, and is difficult to recognize—but it is an effort that is none-the-less worth it. For me, for example, I found myself utilizing this principle during a few key moments throughout my day today. My mind, like your mind I’m sure, is an expert at creating and filling my life with problems that are many times, stupid, arbitrary, cyclical, and useless. When I focused on narrowing my life down to the present moment, however, rather than feel the overwhelm of an entire spectrum of problems, I found that all that was really there was sleepiness and a touch of soreness. And that was about it. And when those were my only problems in the moment, well damn, life felt pretty light all of a sudden!
I stopped focusing on how much more work I had to get done, on the trivial things that were bothering me from my day, on the deep underlying problems that would usually be lingering in the back of my mind. I felt my smile go up easier, my walk felt a little lighter, my mind felt a little sharper—I was in an overall better state of mind. And that moment carried me to the next and it was through that chain of more present moments that I was able to keep a better mental state and was able to finish my day with more grace and joy than I otherwise would ever have been able to.
So how about you? Do you have any problems at this exact present moment? How many of the “problems” floating around in your mind are immediately relevant? Which ones can you put down and forget about until later? How might you put down the kettle and stop the overflow of your mind? The power in this practice can’t be understated. You’d be amazed at what a little space in your silly tea cup will do for the overall situation of your life. Cheers!
Read Next: 20 Quotes on Overcoming Obstacles to Help You Face What You’re Facing
Don't Let the Motivation Stop There...!
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