Living in Ten-Second Increments

I often talk to people about living in ten-second increments. The idea is being present for every moment of your life. If you live in ten-second increments, you create being in the present moment. Most people, rather than living in the moment, try to create a plan and a system for the future so it will show up the way they want it. They create the plan and think they don’t need to be aware any longer. But there’s only one place we can live—and that’s right here, right now. Anything else kills you. You don’t get to have a life. You miss out your own life.

If you live in ten-second increments, you can start to break down the conditioning that has you figuring things out and planning in advance. You can learn how to choose in each moment. You can’t judge in ten seconds because it’s here and it’s gone. We prolong our agony in life by judging ourselves and trying to fix what we have judged. This is especially true of the way we parent.

When you do something that you think is bad, how long do you punish yourself for it? How long do you obsess about it? Days? Weeks? Months? If you’re living in ten-second increments, you can’t do that. What if you just said, “Oh, well, I did that for ten seconds, now what would I like to choose?”

If you practice the art of choosing your life in ten-second increments, you will begin to create choice and infinite opportunity. Most of us parent out of a sense of obligation. We say, “I’ve got to do this, and I’ve got to do this, and I’ve got to do this.” But are those things we’d truly like to do? Usually not, but we keep choosing them. Why? Because we think we have to. We think we’re obligated to do them and that if we don’t, we’re bad parents.

When you live in ten-second increments, you get to choose and then choose again. You don’t have to stay stuck bad decisions—or good decisions.

When you practice the art of choosing your life in ten second increments, you will begin to create choice and the opportunity to receive infinite possibility.