Living in the present is a hard concept to grasp.
It sounds great in theory, but if you’re anything like me, it’s challenging to implement in everyday life.
A lot of people will say that in order to live in the present, you need to let go of the past. For example, stop fretting over the fact that you chose the wrong major in college, stop losing sleep over how drunk you got at your high school reunion, and stop worrying about your latest performance review at work.
So far, this advice has not worked for me.
I don’t live in the past. I don’t see the point. It’s impossible to travel back in time and change the past. So why exert the mental energy, pretending I can?
Even if I could go back in time, would I want to? Would I really want to revisit the week before prom when my boyfriend dumped me, forcing me to go with his older brother? I think not.
Even my daughter thinks not. Last week when we were cleaning out the attic, she came across the long, blue sequined dress that I wore to said prom. When she noted that I must have looked “soooooo beautiful” in it, I told her that even if I did, I felt like a loser that night so it didn’t matter what my dress looked like.
Her response was swift and sweet. “Well, if that guy hadn’t broken up with you,” she said, “then you wouldn’t have met Daddy.”
See, living in the past is pointless. Maybe that’s why my anxiety comes from living in the future.
A great example is that I hate getting ready in the morning. It’s so laborious: the washing, brushing, flossing, primping, prepping, plucking, scrunching, picking, dressing, folding, fluffing, and fixing feels like such a waste of time.
To me, these tasks stand in the way of all the other things I need to get done.
They stand in the way of the future.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not capable of simply brushing my teeth. The entire time, in my head, I’m saying things like, “What am I going to wear today? It can’t be too casual, because I have an important meeting, but it can’t be too dressy, because I have five other things to do today. Speaking of which, I need to get to work on time so I can send those emails before the first meeting. Ugh, why can’t I seem to get to work on time? If I could just wake up earlier, I could get to work earlier, and I could get more done. If only I didn’t have to take a shower and brush my teeth every day, I could be so much more productive.”
Sound familiar?
I’m always leaning into the future. I somehow believe that figuring it out will make the future better.
Yet this theory has been proven wrong time and again. Like when I stress about being late, only to arrive at my destination and learn I wasn’t even close to being late.
Mothers are the worst at living in the future. We’re terrified of it. If our kids don’t do their homework, they’ll end up in jail by the time they’re 16. If we don’t spend more time at work, we’ll lose our job, and if we eat that donut for breakfast, we’ll be obese by Tuesday.
The next time you’re brushing your teeth, driving down the road, or walking down the street—and you realize that your body is in the present, but your mind is in the future—try this little trick:
Say to yourself: This is it.
This is the goal. This is life. This is the end game.
The truth is that all we have is the present moment. We’re not guaranteed a second beyond it. And even if we are granted another moment, we ruin the present one by trying to contemplate and figure out the next.
I tried this hack yesterday, and it worked. While I was brushing my teeth, I found myself wondering if I should work out later. You know, five hours in the future.
I caught myself, looked in the mirror, and said, “This is it, this is the goal. This moment is the only thing that’s real.” I must admit, it was liberating. It got me out of the future and brought me back to the now.
My goal is to keep putting this practice into place. It worked well today. Will it work tomorrow?
I’m trying not to think about it.
