How can you be anywhere except where you are right now? There’s no way! Right here, right now is the only place you can be. As much as you may wish to be somewhere else, you are bound to this moment, and in this moment you are right where you are. You cannot be anywhere else.
And I hear you asking, Part 1? Yes, this is part 1 of a two-part series. Part 2 will deal with the immense weight of THIS moment, while in today’s newsletter, we’ll look at how to become AWARE of this moment.
I’ve been thinking about this whole concept for quite some time, but a couple of different influences spurred me to write the two-part series.
The first influence came from lyrics from the rock band TOOL. The second influence came from the Indian Mystic Sadhguru.
TOOL has been around for decades and most of its members were in their 50s when they created their latest album Fear Inoculum.
The fourth track, “Invincible” has a line that goes, “Bellow out loud. Bold and proud of where I’ve been. But here I am.” The song itself deals with aging and one’s mortality, but this line stuck out to me because it was an honest admission that regardless of where I’ve been or what I’ve done, right now, I’m here.
Granted, this song has the feeling of standing one foot in the grave, but the idea is that whatever past experiences are being reflected on, they can’t change the fact that all there is is this moment. Whether the experiences were good or bad, it doesn’t really matter, because we all too often visit these moments in time more than we should. But our mindset should be, “Here I Am!”
This is Where and Who I am Right Now.
That person back there is no longer me. It was a different person, and now I find myself standing where I am whether I like the outcome or not. If we truly want to move forward, we have to leave that caricature of ourselves behind.
Upon getting older I realize how letting that piece of you go comes with a sort of grieving. In one way, you’re grieving your youth and the fact that you are closer to ending your march than you’ve ever been.
On the other hand, you may be grieving choices made, things left undone that should have been remedied, or a desire to give yourself instruction to help keep you from straying off the path,
OR
You’re stuck reliving your glory days and wishing you could go back in time when life was better.
However, if you want to change, the only way to do it is by accepting that where I am right now IS my new beginning. This is the only place I can start from. I only have this moment.
Most People are Stuck in the Past or the Future
It’s hard to break out of the mindset of would have’s and could have’s and should have’s and accept where you are now. It can also be hard to break out of the mindset of reliving your glory days because you feel like that time and those experiences were better than what you have now.
It can also be equally hard to break out of a mindset that is constantly focused on the future and potential problems or issues you may face. This is why many people struggle with finding joy in their lives. It’s because their lives aren’t really their lives.
Their lives are fraught with reminiscing about the past, whether good or bad and as a result, they miss out on the amazing things that could be happening right now. Or maybe they’re focused on how it will get better in the future, but they aren’t working towards a better future, they’re waiting for it to magically show up for them.
By not living in the now, we miss out on so many things that could bring us joy in life.
If you have kids, you know that many times they can drive you crazy. Part of the reason is because, for the most part, they are NOW oriented. They are focused on this moment.
As a parent, there are many times you are focusing on a future moment and your kid needing your attention is pulling you from the future.
This can be extremely annoying, but if you can keep yourself from getting frustrated with them and bring yourself to the same moment they’re in, you can find some beautiful things there.
Joy and laughter, love and comfort, generosity, a deeper understanding of your child’s needs, and just a few seconds of extra time to be truly present with one of the people you love the most in life.
Future endeavors can wait. Past reminiscing is futile. The present is what matters because that’s where life is happening. We’ll discuss this more in the next newsletter.
Why do we always look to live in the past or the future though? What’s there that holds our attention in a stronger grip than the present moment?
Could it be because unless we are doing something exciting, the present moment can seem to have dull experiences?
If I’m driving in the car to a place I’ve been to a million times over, what’s more exciting, staying present for the duration of the trip or freaking out about how to pay my bills, or what the doctor said, or how upset I am with my partner because we got in another fight?
Remember in the Newsletter, “Centering Yourself When You Feel Like You’re Spinning Out of Control” I know, that the title is short and sweet, where I talked about how we are addicted to our thoughts and emotions?
Essentially, that’s what keeps us from staying grounded in the present moment. We need to feel the anxiety, depression, hate, anger, etc. for us to feel like ourselves. For most people, to have joy, peace, or love as the baseline just isn’t fathomable because they’ve spent so much time steeped in their favorite negative emotions.
There are people out there, family members, who won’t speak to each other over something that happened 10, 20, 30 years ago. They can’t let go of that bitterness or resentment. And how could they? It’s guided them along so well over the past few decades, why let go of it now?
Staying stuck in that mindset doesn’t benefit you though. There’s no benefit to latching onto a negative emotion for a prolonged period of time. It degrades everything about your life. For one, you are constantly setting aside space in your mind to allow that person, situation, or circumstance to fester within you on a regular basis.
Second, constant stress breaks down the body and causes mental and physical issues that cost you both time and money to try and bring peace to your life.
The Benefit of Stating, “Here I am”…
…is that it grounds you and lets you know there’s no other place you can be right now.
That can change in seconds though if you decide to be somewhere else, but even while going somewhere else, you are still where you are right now. That cannot be changed in the physical sense. In the quantum realm, it may not necessarily be the case, however, access to those states is rare unless you teach yourself how.
Learning to be here, to be present, can help ease your mind drastically. Can you be stressed if you’re not worried about the future or bitter about the past? Most of the time, no.
Think about this, where you are right now, reading this letter, are you worried? At this exact moment are you worried? Most likely not. BUT now that I bring it up, there may be something out there that could distract you from reading any further. Care to indulge yourself a little before coming back?
You may have been worried before starting to read this letter, you might be worried after too. But if you are truly involved in reading this letter, you can’t be worried about anything else because IN this one moment, those things don’t exist.
Someone may object and think that staying in the present moment is impossible. How are you to fix problems without thinking of solutions, which may require visiting either the future or the past, or both to find the answers?
If my loved one is dying of some disease, how can I live in the present moment when I know they’ll be gone soon? I’m too worried about the day they depart.
How can I be in the present moment when there are bills to be paid and I’m barely scraping by? If I can’t or don’t pay them, I could lose so many things.
All of those things may be true, but what does worrying about them do for you other than cause you to dump adrenaline and cortisol into your system (stress)?
This is why Jesus said,
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”
Jesus, Matthew 6:25-27 (NIV)
“If you can solve the problem, then what is the need of worrying? If you cannot solve it, what is the use of worrying?”
Shantideva
Learning to be in the present moment is one of the things that helped me overcome 20+ years of depression.
My problem is I love to think. I’m addicted to thinking. I love to dream and reminisce. I love the future and the past for both good and bad scenarios that either did or didn’t happen or may or may not happen.
Where things started to go wrong was when I started thinking poorly of myself and started rehearsing a narrative I convinced myself to believe. The addiction to thinking was still there, but it started turning negative and inward.
I Started to Consume Myself from the Inside Out.
I lied and told myself that I wasn’t all the things I was and that I was all the things I wasn’t. Now, to be fair, the best lies contain a certain amount of truth, so in reality, I was both the good and the bad. But that doesn’t mean the bad outweighs the good. It doesn’t mean only the bad part is true, and vice versa.
We are a conglomerate of intricately woven emotions and personality traits, and we can choose who we want to be.
It doesn’t matter if you’re young or old. The decision to be happy is yours. The decision to be upset is yours. No one can make you choose it.
Returning back to the present moment, we have the choice to make those decisions right now. In ten seconds, you have the choice again. In an hour, you’ll have the choice again.
Every single time we make a choice to think or feel a certain way it is happening in the present moment.
Most of us are on autopilot though, so it doesn’t feel like we’re making a choice. It just feels like we’re living our normal lives.
That’s how I felt. I never thought I was making a choice to be depressed. I just thought I was depressed so what choice did I have? None.
Becoming more and more aware of the present moment helped shift my perspective on how I viewed myself and the thoughts I let run rampant through my mind.
This awareness helped me catch the thoughts I didn’t want to think and replace them with thoughts I did and do want to think.
Awareness didn’t sprout overnight though. It took a lot of work to get to a point where I could catch those thoughts, stop them, and replace them with something else.
There were many days when I didn’t catch the thought. Awareness of the moment was completely lost in the barrage of clutter and noise in my mind.
I was too worried about whatever it was that sent me spiraling to even consider other alternatives that could help break me free from the prison cell of my mind.
“People go through life as prisoners of their own mind. The only prison anyone lives in is their own perspective, their own point of view.”
Peter Crone
How do We Learn to Live in the Present Moment?
- The first step is to teach yourself to become aware, and not to just become aware but to stay aware. It’s one thing to have a moment of realization only to be plummeted into the depths of unconscious thinking, and a completely different experience to make yourself aware and stay aware.
- A great way to do this is through breathwork and meditation.
- Drawing and painting, working out, writing, and playing music are also things you can use to teach yourself to be aware.
- When it comes down to it, we are aware all the time, when it comes to things that don’t concern our thoughts or emotions. People are experts at being aware of daily hobbies and tasks, so why not use that to your advantage?
- Start becoming aware of being aware, then transition that idea to your thoughts and emotions.
- Become aware of those as well. Become aware of them as you are doing your daily activity.
- The second step is to learn how to focus. When you become aware, how do you keep your wits about you to stay aware? Learning to focus will help.
- A couple of things you can use to help you focus are breathwork and meditation.
- You can also practice by picking an object and holding your gaze on it for as long as you can, then increasing the time each time you do it.
- In meditation, there are multiple ways to focus.
- You can let go and work to empty your mind,
- You can also hold a singular thought or image instead.
- You can slow everything down to become as still as possible.
- You can focus on different areas of your body.
- You can hold a particular emotion and feel that emotion for an extended period of time.
This last part is where we want to start when becoming aware. If we think back to some of what we’ve already discussed, the problem is we aren’t aware of our thoughts and emotions, they have free reign most of the time. But once we start to become aware of life, the present moment, and ourselves, then we become aware of our thoughts and feelings.
When we become aware of our thoughts and feelings we can start to change how we think and how we feel.
We can begin to create a new life for ourselves because we no longer allow ourselves to stay trapped in an outdated mode of thinking.
The fact is, the person you are right now is different from the person you were a few years ago. The problem is, we don’t see that change because we continue to hold onto the old programming that got us to where we are today.
But by that logic, if we continue to hold onto that programming then even when we’ve changed again in another few years, it will still be the same.
Becoming aware allows us to escape from this cycle to change how we show up to the world.
So…practice becoming aware. Practice every day. Practice while you’re driving. While you’re eating. While you’re taking a shower. While you’re going to sleep.
When you become aware that you are aware, then catching yourself going headlong into an emotional trainwreck becomes easier and easier. You can get to the point where you stop the train before it has a chance to derail.
In doing so, joy and peace become more apparent in life. The more apparent they become, the less you want to lose them, so you work to become even more aware. This becomes a new cycle that you embody, and hopefully one that’s much more pleasant.
Regardless of whether you decide to take the journey to become aware or not, just remember this, you can either cycle through negative emotions that drag you down, or you can cycle through pleasant emotions that lift you up.
Either way, when it comes down to it, all you can say at this moment is, “Here I am!”
Remember to share this with someone who may need to hear it.
Much love to you all,
Josiah
