The power of living in the moment
The power of living in the moment
There is always some
prejudice when someone talks about people living in the moment. Some people are
afraid that if they live in the moment that would mean being hippies with no
money and no place to live. Therefore, people have the idea that it is better to
have their lives sorted out; and thereby, it is necessary to live in the
future, anticipating anything that might mean a threat to that plan. Others
think that they owe a great deal of their lives to someone or something in the
past, and they keep going back there, worrying about it all the time.
Similarly, there are people who are afraid of their past and cannot get over
it, meaning they are stuck in those past experiences that caused some
discomfort before and simply cannot let go. All these things are preventing
people from enjoying what they have in front of them right now. Well it sounds
really simple when put like that, but what does it really mean to live in the
moment? Would people really end up with no money and homeless?
Contrary to most
people’s understanding of it, living in the present moment does not mean to
leave everything to chance, it does not mean that we are not to have a plan for
our lives. It just means to have it planned, to do everything we can in order
to achieve it, but at the same leave it on the table and not going on and on
during the day about all the probable problems it might have. There is when the
problem emerges; people start living their life daydreaming, mainly worrying,
instead of paying attention to what they are doing presently. A study posted on
The Guardian in 2010, conducted at Harvard University concluded “that reminiscing, thinking ahead or daydreaming tends to
make people more miserable, even when they are thinking about something
pleasant.”
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| Quote from unknown blog |
Human beings have the
extraordinary ability to think about what might happen and what did happen in
order to learn from the past and anticipate the future, we have the ability to
imagine something in our heads that might never occur. Now, if we did that
productively, it would be great, but we have to consider that most of us tend
to overthink situations that might never happen and stress about it before it
has even occurred. Our attention tends to wander from the present moment even
to thoughts like whether or not we closed the front door from our apartment
that morning. We put too much mental attention to something which is out of our
reach at that moment and we stress.
It is
not all bad news, there are ways of preventing this kind of ahead thinking. We
can use meditation for example. A Mayo Clinic research was made on meditation,
and they found out that "When
you meditate, you clear away the information overload that builds up every day
and contributes to your stress." On the other hand, we need to learn how to be amazed again, we need
to learn how to be like a child. Even if we are driving in our cars, we can
still be amazed with all the architecture of the buildings around us or the
plants and green spaces. We can look at a tree and admire its beauty, we can
work at our normal jobs and be amazed by how technology works. We should never
stop being amazed, because that will force us to live in the moment, to pay
attention at what you have in front of you.
Here's an inspirational video:
References:
