We go through life trying to look back at our past success or failures while looking at the future with hope or dread. Neither of these are really true though. Life is only available in the present moment
I remember in a book that I read by James Altucher a couple of year back where he said that we are alway doing time travel. We are never living in the now but instead remembering things in the past and living for tomorrow. Never do this.
Life Is Only Available In The Present Moment
Of course the idea of mindfulness or present moment awareness are really tough for all of use when we start. It seems that the idea is that we just throw away our past learning and we never plan for the future. Seems great but useless doesn’t it. I found though that in starting a mindfulness practice I still had goals and a past but the important thing was not to dwell. The only thing we can really dwell on is this moment in time that we have control over.
This idea of living in the present moment is not really easy though and it takes a lot of practice and focus. When I do meditate and try and concentrate on my breathing (strictly present moment), that I find that my mind wanders to noises, something that happened yesterday, or even what I am going to have for dinner tomorrow… Useless stuff for right now.
Instead, it is really important for us to just try our best to keep that focus on our present moment actions. Work that is done today will help tomorrow and whenever we do actually act on what we really want in our life the closer we get to our best self in the future.
