Live in the Now (But Have Something to Look Forward to)
We keep hearing about living in the present moment because the present moment is all you have. That’s true. But what does that really mean?
First off, it’s not living in the past. This is tricky. Why? Because sometimes the past lives in you so deeply, and the past keeps coming out to haunt your present. When your past is interfering with your present, the point is not actually living (and re-living) in the past. The point is to work out of your body and mind the thing(s) in your past that are interfering with your present.
It’s also not living in the present so much that you’re not looking forward to anything in the future. The point is to have some longer-term vision of what you want to create in your life, without it being so certain that life’s realities make that vision difficult to actually accomplish. The vision for what you want to create in your life should have a “cone of uncertainty”. The further out you are looking (see the bridge in the picture above), the more coarse-grained your vision is. But it’s not invisible. You can see hints of it out on the horizon. You can see little bits of it shaping up that get more solid the closer you get to those things being in the present.
It’s also not living in the future. You’ve heard this bit. “Once I get this, then I’ll be happy.” OR “When my kids are x, then I can be y.” The deal is, no one really knows what the future holds. Start creating the life you want right now, even if it’s a little tiny corner of what you want. When you start now, you’re actually building out pieces of that coarse-grained view of your future vision.
When living in the present, you’re also “In the experience of now.” That means instead of thinking about what you’re going to say about the experience when you tell the story later, you’re actually just experiencing what is happening. Then later, when you tell the story you can simply recall what happened and describe the highlights as you remember them. When you’re in the story of now, you might find yourself thinking, “I can’t wait to tell so and so about this experience.” This is actually living in the present moment through what other people are going to think about your experience rather than allowing yourself to experience the moment. Stay in the experience and feel the feelings of now. Your future self can do the remembering later.
And finally, have something to look forward to in that vision of yours. You can’t magically manifest everything right now, but you can start right now so that the things you are doing now are creating a tiny piece of that coarse-grained future you are building. Enjoy those things. Give yourself a pat on the back for doing those things that help refine that vision just a little bit more. When something you do today (or don’t do) creates a roadblock for that future vision, brush yourself off, give yourself a hug and a pat on the back and get right back up and do something small to create the life that you want.
Right now.
