Live in the present

On Mondays, we dream about weekends. We image our next vacation months before, and right after it ended we start to miss this fantastic break in our lives. Even on vacations we sometimes worry about its shortness and nervously count days to the end.

Sounds familiar? Yeah, I am guilty too. My sin was the massages. I started to suffer about the end of a session right after its beginning.

Could you count how many times per a day you miss something that’s gone years ago? Or dream about something in the future that will make you happier someday? I bet it would be a lot. And can you recall that feeling when you read a book, sitting in a cozy chair, or watch on a bonfire somewhere on a beach? Can you remember that calm and peaceful feeling inside you, that comes so rarely, but it’s so good? It’s the present. It calls “living in the moment.” But “living in the moment” doesn’t mean it lasts a moment. The moment is the present. It’s today, now. It’s our real lives.

The past is gone. Even 5 minutes ago is the history already. You cannot return it; you cannot change it. It’s gone. The future has not come yet. There are a lot of variations of the future. There are a lot of chances it wouldn’t come at all. I don’t want to be pessimistic, but would you spend this day as is if you knew it’s your last day?

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying you shouldn’t think about your future or care about it. And I am not saying you shouldn’t think about the past as well. You should! Think about it, make plans, analyze the past, just don’t live there.

What is the difference? It’s quite simple. As soon as you started to regret, miss or feel some nostalgia for something in the past – you live there. The same is with the future. As soon as you worry about the future or feel the excitement of that you don’t have yet – yep, you live there!

Why is it so important? So, compare all these “missing,” “regretting,” “worrying,” “nostalgia,” “someday it will make me happy” feelings and that calm and peaceful one, that comes so rarely. What would you choose?

The present is your gift. Don’t mess it up. I was that guy, yes, I was! I was thinking this “living in the moment” is something seldom that comes just in special moments of my life. I was spending my life worrying about my future too much. It was poisoning my present. And now I have been living in the moment probably longer than I did it in a whole my past life.

So if you are still reading it, probably you are suffering and want to know how I changed it. Do you? Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts and magic medicines for that. But the cure is simple. Not easy, but simple. Just stop it. As soon you start to live in the past or the future – stop it. Do you miss something that happened in the past? Don’t. It’s gone. Do you regret something that you have done? Learn the lesson, but don’t regret. If yesterday doesn’t give you something helpful for today, so leave yesterday in yesterday. Dreaming about your next vacation? It’s going to be fantastic, I bet! But it’s going to be in the future. It will be your present soon, but you have another present right now.

The first step is awareness of your actions. As soon as you feel that you are moving in the past or the future, catch it and observe it. You need to learn how to recognize it. How to separate living from thinking. If you worry about the future – you live there. You live the problems that are not your problems yet and maybe will not be yours at all. If you just plan your future, think how you can improve it and make it better – it’s nice, you live in the present.

As soon as you started consciously to recognize these feelings, go to the step two. Grab these feelings and take a look at them from a distance. Separate them from you, throw it away. The award for that will come. It would be a calm and peaceful feeling of living in the moment, that happened to you so rarely before.

And don’t escape the present, even you don’t like it. It’s your present. You are here because you made it in your past. And your future depends on your actions in the present. Today is what we did yesterday, and tomorrow is what we are doing today. So if you want to change your future or to keep what you have, live in the present and act in the present. Tomorrow is your next today. And it will happen tomorrow. But you live now; you live today.