Designing Your Life

Live in each moment

// August 14th, 2008 // Personal Development

Do you look forward to your weekend? Does it feel like the week drags on and on? You are living for those few moments that are few and far between. This isn’t a way to spend your life. Your life is made up of 365 days a year, then you shouldn’t only feel like you are living for 104 days of them which are two days a week. This is a good sign that you haven’t found out all the benefits of living in the present moment.

Life isn’t about the past

You can’t change the past, so why worry? You are living in the past when you think about past events. That beautiful boy that never talked to you or that job you didn’t take. These things were important, but they aren’t of any use to you now. If you keep living in the past, then you will miss the new opportunities that are present. You can’t be fully happy if you are still obsessing about the speech you messed up last week. Those events are gone, so there isn’t any benefit to thinking of them.

Life isn’t even about the future events

This might be a harder pill to swallow, but thinking about the future isn’t going to solve your problems. Sure, I love to think about a year, 5 years, even 10 years into the future, but I often find that this isn’t very productive for me. I am often not putting anything into effect. But you must be wondering how you can achieve your dreams if you never think about them. Well, you can think about them, but spend most of your time in the present. This is where the goals will start to materialize. You aren’t going to get on a plane and backpack through Europe by thinking about it all the time. You got to get up and get your bags packed. You have to buy the tickets. These things are done in the present moment. Planning is good, but dwelling in the future leads to dreams staying only dreams.

How this can make you happier in the long run

If you are living in those 365 days instead of only 104 days, then you don’t have to worry about too little time. We are likely to wonder where the time went. Where did our youth go. It only fades faster when we are only present for a few days a week. The here and now isn’t so bad, but you can’t notice it until you slow down and enjoy the moment. You still have to go through these moments, so why not enjoy the ride.

Jump into it right now

You want to live in the moment, then there isn’t a better time to do it but this moment. You can’t just plan to live in the moment tomorrow, after work, or even wait till the weekend. If you have some free time, you can do it right now. OF course, you don’t need the free time. You can do it anytime, but this might be a little harder than you thought. I find one of the best ways to start is by cleaning. I am sure there is something that needs to be cleaned. Your bathroom? Room? Even the dishes are a good place to start. You don’t have to clean everything, but you can just do it for 15 minutes. Everyone has 15 minutes to spare. Can you wash the dishes and truly be present in the moment? Focus on the movements, the feel of water washing over your hands, the smell of the soap, the different kinds of dishes you have. There is so many things that are there that we often don’t find the time to pay attention to. The world is quite a big place, challenge yourself to notice more of it.