You Can't Stand In The Same River Twice

Written By Bart Berkey | Founder of Most People Don't

ALL OF THIS IS TEMPORARY

A week before my guided meditation class last weekend, I asked the instructor if I could record her next session, and she agreed.

It was partly because I wanted to give her a gift, her teaching deserves to reach far more people than the ones sitting in that room, and partly as a gift for myself.

I have spent too many times in her classes trying to hold on to her meaningful lessons and wisdom, while resisting the urge to reach for a pen.

The following week, I arrived early and set everything up. My plan was to share the video with her, and bring it home with me, so that I could review and apply what I learned through the coming weeks.

The first thing I noticed when she walked in was her shirt, which said:

"All of this is temporary"

And then said it again, and again, and again. Line after line, all the way down the front of her shirt, as though saying it once would never be enough...

All of this is temporary.

All of this is temporary.

All of this is temporary.

All of this is temporary.

All of this is temporary.

As I was sitting there listening to her and reading the words on her shirt, I thought about how I've been living with back pain for about four months now, the kind that quietly works its way into everything, to the point where I can barely remember what it felt like when it did not hurt.

So a shirt, silently telling me that all of this is temporary, felt like a hand-written note someone had left there specifically for me.

Then she started the class.

Within a few minutes I realized that the session I was about to capture on video was about how life itself does not come with anything you can capture and replay.

THE STUDENT WHO CAME BACK

She began with a story about a student who had come back to her for another private session and said, "I feel like I am in the same place that I was the last time I came to see you. I don't know what to do."

And she remembered telling the student, last time, "I'm not here to tell you what to do, I'm here for you to tell me what you're going to do."

I smiled when I heard that, because I recognized myself in it right away, and I suspect you might too.

"Most People want the cheat sheet," she said. "If its this, Do this. If its that, Do that."

"But that's not the way it works, because life is dynamic."

Her answer to that student was not a set of instructions. Instead, it was an invitation to arrive fully in the present moment, because the part of us that actually knows what to do, she said, "never speaks of yesterday or tomorrow. It speaks of right here, right now."

There I sat with my carefully planned recording running, holding onto her words so I could play them back later, while she explained that the answers we are looking for only ever show up live.

NEVER THE SAME RIVER

Then she reminded us of an old saying, that you can never stand in the same river twice, because the flow is different and the water is different. "And that's our life," she said. "It's never the same."

That is when I thought about her student, and then about myself, because "I'm in the same place as last time" is exactly the same thing I have been telling myself about my back pain.

I wake up most mornings and the first thing I do is check whether it still hurts, and when it does, I file the day under the same heading as the hundred or so days that came before it, same pain and same place and same river...

Except it is not the same river, because the water has been moving the entire time. My body is not the body it was in the spring, and I am not the person I was in the spring, and while the feeling of being stuck is completely real, the idea that I am standing still is not.

That was what the shirt was trying to tell me. It was never promising that the pain would end on any particular schedule, it was pointing out that the feeling of permanence is the part that lies to us.

IT RUNS IN BOTH DIRECTIONS

I heard Tom Hanks describe almost the same idea in an interview recently, when he talked about how he has handled a career that most people could only imagine.

He leans on the phrase "this too shall pass," and he uses it in both directions, meaning that when the failure comes, it will pass, and when the multimillion-dollar offer comes, that will pass too, which is what keeps the hard stretches from crushing him and the great ones from inflating him.

Most of us only reach for that phrase when things are going badly.

We never say it about the promotion or the standing ovation or the record quarter, and that is exactly when we start to believe the good version of ourselves is permanent and quietly stop doing the things that earned it.

Leaders feel this from both sides, because a tough quarter starts to feel different than what your dream team typically achieves, and a great first start to the quarter feels like it will last forever, and both of those feelings could talk you into worse decisions than you would make if you remembered the water was still moving.

WHY THE SHIRT SAID IT OVER AND OVER

By the end of the week I finally understood why her shirt repeated the same line all the way down.

Knowing that everything is temporary is easy, and every person reading this already knows it, while remembering it at the moment it matters is the hard part, because whatever you are feeling right now, whether it is pain or pride, is very convincing about its own permanence.

You do not feel it at first, it seems like the feeling will last forever.

So you tell yourself again, "all of this is temporary", and then you tell yourself again.

I am still glad I made that recording, and I have gone back to it more than once this week, although not for the reason I expected. It does not tell me what to do next.

It simply brings me back to the present moment and reminds me that whatever I am standing in today is not the same river I was standing in yesterday.

Three Things to Try This Week

1. Listen for "the same place." When you or someone on your team says "we're right back where we started," stop and name one thing that is different now, because something always is, and noticing it is how you step into the river that is actually in front of you instead of the one you remember.
2. Say it on the good days. The next time something goes very well, say "this too shall pass" to yourself just like Tom Hanks, not to shrink the win but to keep your feet under you and to remind yourself that the habits that earned it still have to show up tomorrow.
3. Begin again. She closed the class by telling us that whenever there is intensity, we can pause, take a deep breath, exhale, and begin again, because "you can always begin again." Use it before the hard conversation, after the meeting that went sideways, and on the fourth month of anything.

Somewhere this week, something is going to feel permanent to you, whether it is the pain or the setback or the win you worked so hard to earn.

What would change if you remembered that you have never once stood in the same river twice?

Most People Don't... But YOU Do!

Bart