LIVE IN THE PRESENT

27 August 2023

Good evening.

Do you think we can lose sight of the present? I mean, it is where we live, right? But we can forget that? Instead of living in the present, we can think ourself into the past .... or into the future. This is how worry, stress or anxiety can take over from what should be the fun and games of life in the present moment. 

Instead of enjoying the present - where we might forget ourself with good friends, or enjoy some education program or healthcare or entertainment or a museum or nature and the environment, instead we are pre-occupied with matters seemingly linked to our survival in some way, the survival of our family, we are fearful of things that could have gone wrong or might still do so, we see threats around us. But do we imagine or exaggerate them? Should we get some perspective on these thoughts by putting a little distance between us and them. OK they can circle in our mind but we can relegate them to an outer ring and keep an eye on them out there.

So anyway, if that's true, that these are misplaced or exaggerated fears, you can see straight away that the first thing to do is to confront these fears, look them in the face and they will probably turn out to be not as bad as you thought, and they may well vaporise in the heat of the midday sun of your Clint Eastwood gaze!

It is true that this is not a simple situation for someone to find themself in, it's quite a complicated situation in which we are an unwilling participant. So how can we free our self, get out of this, push to an outer ring and get back into living a fun life in the present?

"Stuck in the past", the problem is we keep turning the same episodes from the past over in our minds. A way out is by drawing lessons learned, from when things have gone wrong as well as when they have gone right, wrapping up the episode conclusively, committing our conclusions to paper, and thus it is possible to draw a line on the past with a decision not to revuew that episode any further.

And "stuck in the future", we tergivise and are unsure or anxious about how things will turn out. The is a way out. It is to complete the plans you have made, sign them off, and then do, rather than leaving things hovering up in the air indecisively. Of course there are risks to any change, things can go wrong, but if the plan includes actions to mitigate any risks that have been identified, you have to press ahead and deal with unforeseens "on the fly" as they might arise.

And overall, it means just getting together some kind of a realistic "day in the life of" regular schedule, where your time is allocated to enjoyment of life in the present, along the lines mentioned in para 1 above, as well as getting all the other things "done and dusted" from the medium and long term. So it is your priorities that dominate, with short term tasks in your daily schedule that decline from the medium and long term. ... ideally!

Thinking of a classic in-tray, the idea is to do what is necessary to take "the file" out of the IN and PENDING trays, do the job, and put into the OUT tray, for filing away. 

This can happen because the issues are resolved conclusively. Worth noting that mentally too, it sometimes takes a good night's sleep for the brain to go through the events of the day and classify them. So that you wake up in the morning feeling fresh, with energy and new ideas, you know how you feel about things, what is important. This is because the matters have been resolved in yiur head, now you know what to do, you have stable emotions, some things are filed away and the case closed and  forgotten about. 

Of course, you want a bit of peace of mind in your life and this comes from balancing all the demands made on you, against your own capacity to supply that demand. This means saying "no" to a lot of people and so you have to be a pretty resolute and tough-minded character to be prepared to go around disappointing and refusing a lot of people who might be important in your life, however diplomatic the ways you find for doing this, but hey, who's more important: you and your family or them?

There are four things, or objectives if you prefer, around which we tend to orient our life. 

One is "success", success in our endeavours. These endevours are linked to survival and education and work and meeting our material needs, a little like Maslow's Hierarchy.

The second one is a rather nebulous idea of "Happiness and Health", which is about enjoyment of our life.

Thirdly we spend time building out a network which provides us with the contacts for material and emotional support, so for the first two.

Lastly, there is this thing we think about, especially as time goes by, which is our "legacy". This means thinking about our family and the mark that we will leave behind after we leave, what we would like to be remembered for.... well that's hopefully very very far into the future.

Key is to talk about this with a calm person ... resolving these kind of things is what everyone goes through and it's quite normal and certainly look around and we'll see that everyone faces these problems and works them out, eventually sometimes it takes decades to work out, sometimes we can get to a stable point more quickly if we have a bit of help: trusted friend, guru, counsellor, mentor...but it does take work, these things don't just go away on their own with the passage of time, if we are not in charge they can run us ragged, we need to actively manage.

Regular "how's your week been?" type meetings can help, not to talk in circles around and around the same things, but to make progress and wrap things up and make a decision and move forward, move on too, and generally enjoy your life.

So to repeat and sum up. The question is about avoiding being stuck in the past or the future, where worry, stress and anxiety lies, or can lie.

Well the past, we can draw lessons from it for the future, but we can't really rewrite it, ok "re-interpret" yes, but just draw a line under it. Rather than having regrets, and turning past events over and over in our minds, we resolve the episode once and for all.

Does this mean we must have only future thinking, where we can pin those Lessons Learned? 

So as to the "stuck in the future", the idea of a Schedule is really good because it contains our plans for the future. It's in our calendar, on our spreadsheet, out on a piece of paper, it's validated, we are committed; it's not in our head so we are not thinking or worrying about it anymore, we just "do".

And this Schedule is in fact the list of decisions that we've taken. Well, once we've taken a decision, we don't question it anymore, you don't worry about it, all we do is DO - we just execute, just do it.

And so, the most important thing is what's called "The Execution Premium" - the extra value we get from the good execution of our idea ... in other words, start with ideas, make a reasonable and balanced work/life plan, then stop thinking and just do, at the end note down lessons both good and bad, for use when making the next plan - this is a good way to avoid worry.

As to attitude, confront our fears, be confident, it may suit to advance incrementally and methodically, live in the present as above and have a fun time, full of humour.

BIBLIO

1. http://www.livingintheair.org/2023/08/live-in-present.html

2. https://youtu.be/l_bJzyXGoFo?si=Gl5w6i4pUQLh_Giz

3. https://youtu.be/FpHxugJWLKs?si=gF6DJHtGRK5zQJb2

4. https://youtu.be/KYJdekjiAog

5. Here's an "inspiring" poem:

Felix Dennis's poem "How to Get Rich", not to be confused with the book of the same name which is also good. It presents a quite different approach to life.

This guy Dr. Martin Rossman is good:

https://youtu.be/FOQKMiD5QJI

And here in a few words is the way he teaches:

https://thehealingmind.org/blogs/the-healing-mind-audio-and-video-sessions/basic-steps-to-deal-with-anxiety-attack

Here's an "inspiring" poem:

Felix Dennis's poem "How to Get Rich", not to be confused with the book of the same name which is also good. It presents a quite different approach to life.