Life Is Not Waiting For You: Learn To Live In The Moment

Life is not waiting for you. Life is something that is happening to you right now, here and now. Things are happening right now. Opportunities are constantly coming, as if they were trains traveling to your station. But beware! Maybe they will never stop there again! Do not postpone the happiness you deserve today until tomorrow. We need to learn to live in the present.

This message, which in itself is both inspiring and successful, contains a nuance that we may not have thought of before. Most of us know that the best opportunities exist right now, but we do not always see them. Or worse, we do not feel prepared for them. We lack the courage to defy fear.

Open doors

So, what is the reason for this indecision or “blindness” to see the doors that open for us every day? The answer lies in our cultural heritage and how we were raised, and in the way we have been educated. In this way, almost from childhood, people have convinced us that there is a place waiting for us where we will be happy. They tell us that based on our efforts, our confidence and our desire to succeed, there will come a day when we achieve the goal we have set ourselves.

This may be true for some people. But if there is one thing that characterizes the world around us, it is uncertainty. Sometimes those who struggle the most do not always get what they want. Those who struggle the most to “sow” are often the ones who end up harvesting the least. In essence, many of us spend half our lives waiting for “something” that will never happen. In this way we “dilute” our hopes and expectations while waiting forever for the answers to our dreams.

Let us therefore dare to use a new strategy. Let’s stop focusing on the future, and let’s learn to live in the present a little more. Let us invest in a here and now full of quality, by opening our eyes, our minds and our hearts to receive exactly what we need.

Appreciate the present and invest in happiness

For many, clinging to what is happening here and now is an irresponsible way of living. To explain it, we must understand that to live in the present does not mean that we must adopt a hedonistic vision of life where we are only able to enjoy the moment, as if tomorrow did not exist. In fact, the opposite is true. By living life to the fullest today, we are also investing in the future.

Paul Auster put it in a good way when he said that people must learn to live in the now, because “it does not matter who you were yesterday if you are aware of who you are now”. This is the key: Knowing who we are today, remembering where we are, what we need and where we want to go. A very common type of patient that psychologists treat daily in their clinics are those who are “disconnected” from themselves and from the here and now.

Confronting “threats”

There are many who only interpret experiences of difficult emotions, complexes or problematic emotions as “threats”. Once they have categorized them in this way, they choose to look the other way. They comfort themselves by saying that “there will be a new day tomorrow”, “tomorrow I will feel better” or “time heals everything”.

This is a very limiting attitude, and all it does is divide conflicts and frustrations for itself, as if someone is continually easing burdens on your shoulders. They avoid all the responsibility that they should have taken on themselves, without realizing that the one who participates in their emotions here and now invests in an intelligent way in their own happiness.

Practice living in the now

Our mind is sometimes like a hyperactive child traveling by car. It needs toys, something to do, something to look at, something to think about, a distraction, something to worry about and even something to become obsessed with. Our thoughts never stop, and most of them are focused on the near future. We are like the child in the car asking the famous question, “Are we coming soon?”

We forget that life is not a goal; life is a journey. There are moments and experiences to enjoy here and now that we often miss. One way to improve our approach is to practice mindfulness. This helps us to slow down the car and we can enjoy the view a little more. To achieve this, we must train our minds through appropriate strategies. Let’s look at some examples.

Practice mindfulness, appreciate the here and now

• Use the following affirmation on a daily basis: to live is to do the best we can with what we have at all times.
• A calm mind is synonymous with a clearer life. To achieve this state of internal balance, it can be helpful to practice meditation, yoga or breathing techniques.
• Do not let tomorrow worry you today. Any complex emotions, anxiety or problems need to be resolved when we feel them.
• Work with your focus, pay attention to everything you do and what surrounds you right now. Avoid multitasking.
• Walk at least half an hour every day in a beautiful setting.
• Exercise gratitude, appreciate everything you have and everything around you.

• Learn to listen better.
• Eat slowly, enjoy every bite and every taste.
• Share quality time with your loved ones.
• Nurture hobbies that you find interesting and that arouse your creativity.

To conclude, learning to live in the present requires first and foremost a strong will and secondly a desire to work with it on a daily basis. No one can change focus from one week to the next. But as we begin to pay more attention to it, we learn to appreciate what exists around us much more: What we can touch, feel and enjoy, here and now.