What's the alternative to a life spent while living in the past or in the future?
The answer should be pretty intuitive, and it is quite intuitive indeed.
Living in the present means focusing on here and now. Focusing on what is happening around us today. Focusing on who interacts with us today. Focusing on what is important to us today.
The answer should be pretty intuitive, and it is quite intuitive indeed.
Living in the present means focusing on here and now. Focusing on what is happening around us today. Focusing on who interacts with us today. Focusing on what is important to us today.
Today. Not yesterday or two months ago or two years ago. Not the day after tomorrow or in a month or in a year from now.
Our memories of the past could fool us. Our desires about the future might change. Dystopias, utopias, and having a bad memory are certainly not our friends.
[Why memories are so important, even when they hurt:
Jim Carrey/Joel and Kate Winslet/Clementine
in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
by Michel Gondry]
What happened before matters up to a certain point. The present is only one of the possible versions of the thousand lives that could have originated from our past, if only coincidences and circumstances would have been different. But it wasn't the case, and our present is the only version we have, if we leave aside the "ifs" and "buts". Here and now.
We often forget that the future does not exist. Yet.
That we create the future, day by day, with our choices and actions. That we write the future by interacting with the world around us. Loving, suffering, laughing, working, sleeping, talking, singing, dancing, running, reading, learning new things, traveling, cleaning, etc. Living.
[Here and now are your words
for changing course]
Here and now, three magic words that can set us free from our ghosts.
What has been, has been.
The future begins now, when we stop considering it as such and focus on the present, to be happy now (and possibly in the future too). Here and now we have the chance to make our life better, to do something for ourselves and for others, to change course if we wish to.
Can you cherish this opportunity?
What does your present look like? What about your future?
Above all, how about you here and now? How do you want here and now to be for you?
Tags: Living in the present, Self-awareness, Mindfulness, Self-empowerment, Here and now
What to read next:
Are you trapped in the past, or in the future? Three words are enough for changing course - Part I
One coaching question a day - #29. What's your future?
One coaching question a day - #29. What's your future?
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