WE LIVE in tough times right now. Any place on earth.
To truly live, learning how to live in the now is the most difficult, and the most important skill, in the world. It is being here, physically, mentally, right now.
The present moment is all there is on offer to be lived, and there is nothing else. Yours and my ability to live in the now is determining the quality of our lives every passing moment. The past is gone and is a part of history now. The future cannot be lived right now.
The choice we have as human beings is to either live in the now or waste it. Most of us end up wasting it, for we may physically present in the now but we aren’t mentally present. Our minds are either in the past or the future, and the moments that we can live now keep slipping us by, moment by moment. What a tragedy!
We struggle to live in the present moment because we are so full of yesterday’s regrets and worries about tomorrow. The truth is that yesterday is gone forever and there is nothing left of it, besides the lessons it taught. The future, when it comes, won’t be the future- it would be the present.
But we struggle because we don’t quite practice living in the now. There is theory that we all know, and then there is practice, that only a few of us do. In order to enjoy every day and every moment of our lives, there is nothing more cardinal than being able to live in the now.
While you are reading this article, are you really reading it, or are you doing something else on the side. If you are doing something else, you are not doing justice to either this article or to the other task you are on, no matter how frivolous or important.
Life is short; moments and days keep slipping us by every day, NEVER to return again.
If you are an adult, your childhood will never come back. If you are in your 50s, your 20s or 30s or 40s are NEVER going to come back. They are gone forever! People who were important to you, and things you cared about during those times, are gone and meaningless now. They are all but a memory, good or bad.
The past is dead – the good, and the bad. The future is an assumption. The present moment is all we have.
If we get to see the future, we will only be living it in the now, or the present. It will be present, and not the future, when it is not hypothetical anymore. You and I cannot live the future right now. In the now, we can only live in the now.
The future is really an assumption.
You can make amends. Life is short. Don’t waste time on meaningless activities which tend to distract you and feel like a waste of time. You think a meeting is meaningless – walk out of it.
You went to try a new restaurant and the food is not up to your standards – leave.
You started reading a book and after reading a few chapters, you feel it has no value – drop it.
You can’t fix a relationship after trying your best to do it, walk away.
You are stuck at a dead-end job where your boss or larger stakeholders don’t appreciate you – leave and find another one.
I know all of this is easier said than done, but I have done this a few times. Every time I have taken a major risk to improve the quality of my present moment, I haven’t quite succeeded. But I have succeeded enough that I have far more meaning in my life than a lot of people in the world. One day, I will reach a point where every moment is meaningful.
Be brutal with your time. Although your schedule needs some flexibility, build that in. Make time for rest and recuperation. Call it that – time to rest, so if you don’t feel agitated about it, if you are as restless as I am.
Make sure that the time you are spending doing whatever you are doing makes you grow, personally, professionally or socially, whatever you value in the moment.
To live in the present moment or to live in the now, we need to practice mindfulness. That is, we need to learn to do everything we do, with our full and complete concentration, unless we are talking about meditation which is essentially the opposite of concentration.
Work mindfully, which means completely dedicate yourself mentally to the task at hand.
Listen mindfully, which means pay full attention to the person you are listening to so that they feel heard.
It is impossible to live in the now without being mindful. Mindfulness is the key to living in the now.
There is no way you can live in the present moment doing multitasking as you will try to focus on multiple things at a time. Our mind cannot focus on more than one thing at a time. So, if you want to live in the present moment, get rid of the idea that you can multitask.
All of us can multitask but we cannot live in the moment doing that.
Make some time for silence and meditation in your every day schedule. Meditation isn’t quite concentration. Rather, what you try to do is to focus on your breathing while letting your mind wander and observe the thoughts that come in a non-judgemental way. It is not taxing for your mind because the mind is free to do what it wants.
However, you are sitting in a silent state while you focus on your breath and nothing else. It improves your ability to live in the now because that’s exactly what you are doing. I will write a separate piece on the differences or overlaps between meditation, concentration and mindfulness. However, this piece on mindfulness and concentration may provide some perspective.
Throw your phone physically away, put it on silent/airplane mode.
Life is a roller coaster.I wrote about it years ago. Pain and joy are part of life, we cannot avoid them.
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Email: doringklaus@gmail.com or follow me on Facebook or LinkedIn or visit www.germanexpatinthephilippines.blogspot.com or www.klausdoringsclassicalmusic.blogspot.com/PN
