Noah Elkrief - A Guide to The Present Moment

A Guide to

THE

PRESENT MOMENT

How to Stop Believing the Thoughts that Keep You from Feeling Free, Whole, and Happy

Noah Elkrief

Noah Elkrief

www.liveinthemoment.org

Copyright 2012 by Noah Elkrief

ISBN: 978-0-9859534-1-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form, or by any means without the prior written permission of the copyright owner other than for fair use as brief quotations in articles and reviews.

Contents

I ntroduction

Do you want to stop holding on to anger, sadness, or guilt about something that happened in your past?

Do you want to stop worrying about what others think or stop feeling the need to seek others love, approval, and appreciation?

Do you want to stop judging others, getting angry at people, or feeling resentment in your relationships?

Do you want to stop jud ging yourself, feeling unworthy, or sensing that something is missing from your life?

Do you want to stop struggling with anxiety, stress, or fear about the future?

All these emotions seem inevitable and even inescapable while youre in their grip. But if youre willing to look at your life with real honesty, it is possible to discover that they are all created by thoughts in your mindthoughts about yourself, your relationships, your situations, your past, your futureand each of them can vanish in an instant if you just stop believing these thoughts to be true.

If a random person tells you, The world is going to end tomorrow, and you believe them , how would you feel? You will likely experience fear. But if you didnt believe them , then how would their comment make you feel? You almost certainly wouldnt feel any fear. If a co-worker tells you, I deleted all of your emails!, and you believe them , how do you think you would feel? You would probably get angry. But if your co-worker told you this, and you didnt believe them at all because they are always joking around, then how do you think you would feel? You almost surely wouldnt experience anger because there would be nothing to be angry about. If you are watching a tragic scene in a movie, and you believe the actors , how would you feel? You would likely experience the sadness of the movie. But if you didnt believe the actors at all , then how would you feel? You almost certainly wouldnt feel sad.

These scenarios demonstrate that when you believe someones words to be true, they create emotions. But when you dont believe someones words, their words dont have the power to create emotions.

The same is true of the thoughts (words) in your mind. If you believe a negative thought about yourself or your life, that thought will create an unwanted emotion. However, if you dont believe that thought, it quite simply wont create the unwanted emotion.

This book will help you to experience the peace and happiness you want in life by providing you with 5 steps that will enable you to identify and disbelieve the thoughts that create all of your unwanted emotions. As soon as you disbelieve a thought, you stop experiencing the emotion it created, and you automatically stop giving attention to that thought.

Ive seen this process bring peace to the lives of people facing every conceivable kind of challenge. I have watched a man break free from anger towards his parents for the way they treated him as a child. I have watched a woman shed her sadness about her divorce from her husband of two decades. I have watched people stop worrying about what others think and experience the freedom to act how they want for the first time. Ive watched dozens of men and women get rid of the anxiety about what may happen in their jobs, finally allowing them to enjoy their time at work. Ive watched countless people come to feel whole, loved, and worthy as never before, solely because they were able to disbelieve the thoughts that made them feel unloved, unworthy, and incomplete in some way. Ive watched people finally stop beating themselves up about the way their lives are, simply by disbelieving their beliefs about the way life should be.

In the pages ahead, youll discover for yourself how to dissolve your unwanted emotions and experience the peace of the present moment through engaging with the 5-step process. First, though, Ill tell you how I discovered this in my own life.

About me

I was born and raised in Hastings-on-Hudson, a small town just north of New York City. From the time I was born, my father would bring me to meditation retreats on almost every vacation. While at these retreats, I learned many different types of meditation practices and really just enjoyed myself. These meditation practices quickly became a very important part of my life, as I started to do these practices on my own every day when I was six years old. Since I was a young child, and already very happy, I didnt choose to meditate to try to make myself happy. I dont know why, but somehow I had a really strong longing to know the truth about life. I knew that what I was seeing and experiencing wasnt the whole story. So I did these meditative practices because I believed that they would eventually expose this ultimate truth that I was looking for, a concept I often referred to as spiritual enlightenment.

The idea of enlightenment became the most important thing to me from a very young age, so much so that every wish I ever made was only to know this truth (except one time when I wished to kiss my teenage crush). In order to progress towards my goal, after college, in addition to my daily meditative practices, I decided to minimize my distractions and spend as much time in silence as I could. I stopped watching TV and movies, stopped listening to music, kept my apartment internet-free, spent most of my leisure time alone by choice, and spent three months mostly in silence on a meditation retreat. Seemingly as a result of all this, my daily meditative practices began creating such intense experiences of happiness that they frequently made me cry. Eventually, I began to also have these experiences whenever I encountered beautiful sights and sounds.

Besides my goal of enlightenment, I also had many other goals, which often took up a good deal of my time, energy, and effort. I wanted success, wealth, and a job I enjoyed; I wanted to go to amazing parties, to date beautiful women, to prove I was smart, and to see the most beautiful places in the world, and I wanted people to love me. That was what I wanted in life, so that was what I pursued. Somehow, at a relatively young age, I managed to get everything I ever wanted. I was working in a prestigious and high-paying job that I loved as a corporate strategy consultant in London after a stint working on the trading floor at Goldman Sachs. I traveled around the world, saw more incredible scenes of nature than I could have imagined, enjoyed unbelievable parties in exotic places (always sober), dated beautiful women from all around Europe, was later accepted into Mensa, and everyone always seemed to love me. All of this led me to have an incredibly high opinion of myself, and I honestly believed I was the happiest guy in the world.

Yet I still wasnt content. I had an endless drive to keep improving myself and my situation. I constantly needed to keep myself busy. I was always spending my time, money, and energy searching for more fun moments. I frequently judged others in order to maintain my relative opinion of myself (as smarter, funnier, cooler, and happier than others). I forced myself to play soccer and to go to nightclubs (among other things), even when I didnt feel like it, just so that I could keep thinking of myself as a soccer player and as someone who is fun. Even though I already believed everyone loved me, I still worried about their opinions of me, because I needed to make sure I maintained or even further improved their opinions of me. I often didnt do or say what I wanted to do because I was worried about what others would think. All of this prevented me from feeling relaxed, free, whole, loving, happy, or peaceful.