Living in any other point of time except the present
When is your life going to be great? When is it all going to start happening for you, tomorrow, 3 weeks from now, 3 years, or what about in 10 years time? How much time do you spend living in the future? Constantly thinking about a time when your life will be preferable to what it is now, a time when you won’t worry as much or perhaps will have more money.
Is this time will spent? I have heard it said that people spend as much as 97% of their time living in either the past or the future. Does that mean that only 3% of the time is spent in the present?
What exactly is wrong with your now?
People always seem to be striving for something other than what they have at this very moment, the mortgage to be paid off, the money saved so they can buy a new car, the summer to arrive so they can enjoy their holiday. Doesn’t this way of always living for the future set you up to be unhappy for a fair amount of your life?
I am not talking about forgetting the future and not make any plans or anything like that, it is just that when you live too much for the future the current moment becomes just a means to an end.
The future along with the past doesn’t actually exist except in your mind.
All that you ever have or ever will have is this very moment. Nothing you have done or will ever do will occur outside of your current reality (now).
“Did you know that you will always be able to cope with the now, but you can never cope with the future, nor do you have to?”
Eckhart Tolle ‘The power of Now’
Wise words, and reassuring to. For somebody like me who lives a great deal of his life in his own thoughts, either worrying about the future or re-living the past. It is nice to know that I never actually have to worry about the future, because of course it never arrives.
All I and anyone else has to do is concentrate on the ‘Now’ and make it as enjoyable and pleasant as it possibly can be.
You see it is all about living this moment right now and not constantly living in your mind, be it past or future.
So are you living in another point in time other than right now? Never mind your life 5 days ago or in 5 weeks time, get back to your life right now! What is wrong right now?
Life really is about the journey and not the destination, if your goal is to be wealthy that’s great, but if every day that you remain poor you are miserable and unhappy then what is the point of it all. Are you really prepared to let your life pass by in misery until sometime in the future when all will be well and you can start to live and be happy?
That point will never come, remember the future actually never arrives.
It really doesn’t make much sense to put all of your focus on something in the future at the expense of the present moment. I am not saying don’t have goals but the point is to realize that more effort should go into making your current reality better or more enjoyable than to think about, theorize or just plain wonder what the future will bring or indeed how you wished the past could have been different.
All that you, I or anyone has or will ever have is the present moment. Anything we ever do or achieve will always come from the present moment.
Nobody has anything to worry about at this very moment, that is the beauty of it. Most people are constantly somewhere else, always thinking about stuff, forever carrying thoughts around with them, baggage, you can see it everywhere around you, most people are miles away, head down completely lost in their own thoughts. I think it was Mark Twain that said ‘I have had many problems in my life, none of them real’, or something similar. Does that ring a bell? I know it does for me.
People spend a lot of money to get away from it either by going on holiday or something similar but unless you learn to be more present you will never be able to escape from your thoughts, no matter how far you travel.
Don’t always be at the mercy of your thoughts, when they start to run riot don’t let them take over your life. Learn to silence them so you can become more aware of your present moment.
If you are suddenly consumed by your thoughts, start focusing on your breathing, look around, observe your thoughts understand that the thoughts are not you they are separate.
Don’t always try to be somewhere else, if it starts to happen learn to bring yourself into the present moment, the more your mind attempts to take you somewhere else (into the future, or back to the past) take this as a signal to focus your attention into the present.
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