A New Year, A New Opportunity to Be Present
Ah, January. A time for fresh starts and new beginnings. Instead of talking about New Year’s resolutions, in this blog post, I would like to talk about something that we can and should all practice as often as possible: being in and accepting the present moment.
How often do you hear the following (either said by yourself or others)?
‘Ugh, Mondays.’
‘I can’t wait for this week to be over.’
‘I can’t wait for my holiday to [insert destination].’
‘When I get out of this job and start my next job, then I’ll be happy.’
‘When I find the person I’m meant to be with, then I’ll be satisfied.’
These all sound quite normal, right? I’ve said these things, you’ve said these things, people you know have said these things. But should these things be considered ‘normal’? When we say these things, what we are effectively saying is that our present moment is not satisfactory. We wish we were somewhere in the future (or, in some cases, even the past!) where we believe things will be (or were) better than they are now.
Granted, there may be times when our present situation contains challenges, but if a challenge does arise, we each have the ability to deal with said challenge. We also need to be careful to distinguish between a situation (which is always neutral) and our story about the situation (which we skew to be either positive or negative). Most of the time, if we feel that we have a problem or something is not going our way, it is due to our mind-made stories and not the actual situation. And if there is something unfavourable in our present moment, the least that we can do is accept the situation.
We have a delusional tendency to think that the next moment or the next ‘thing’ will always be better than the present moment. When we live like this, the present moment merely becomes a means to an end. We just want to get ‘there’ and we forget that the journey to get ‘there’ is actually everything. When we constantly live feeling like the present moment isn’t good enough or always wishing the next moment was already here, our whole life will pass us by and we’ll never have really lived. There are not many big things that happen in life, and even when there are (e.g. buying a house, getting married), remember that the big things always consist of many small things.
This is not to say that we shouldn’t set goals or make plans for the future (holidays, major events, or otherwise). It just means that while we are sitting down writing out our goals or plans, that we focus solely on the task at hand. Then, when it comes time to fulfill each step, we focus solely on that step without wishing we were already at the end.
This is true even (and maybe especially) for everyday mundane tasks, like making the bed, brushing our teeth, and washing the dishes. These are things we do everyday, so we might as well practice being present while doing them instead of wishing these tasks would just hurry up and go away. I personally find that when I am more present during the day, the day tends to feel longer (none of the, ‘Where did the day go?!’) and I also tend to remember more of what happened that day because I was more aware and focused on everything that I was doing.
It takes awareness to realise the moments when we are not present (and believe me, there will be a lot of those moments!). It takes practice to continue to bring ourselves back to the present moment. But remember that everything happens in the now. When we think back to the past or imagine the future, we are doing these things now. Nothing actually ever happens outside of the present moment. Being here now is really the only way to live.
How often do you practice being in and accepting the present moment? Would you like to read more posts on the topic of mindfulness? Let me know in the comments!
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