Right now as you read this and no matter what your future or past is, this is now. Your focus is shifted to reading this and now is where your focus remains. You see, when you live in the now the past and future are just labels. Its like being on a train thinking about when your going to reach your stop without just relaxing and enjoying the ride. You know that when you arrive to your destination you will go from there but for now you are just enjoying the scenery.
Alot of people get stuck in this past and future way of thinking because its security. It makes them feel like they know who they are by knowing where they have been. In a way it is true, your past was once the now and that is how you got here but its not anymore. When we put labels on time it messes with our focus on living right at this very moment.
The ability to tell time and use a calendar are all man-made. They are only methods of counting things. When it comes down to time, it really doesn’t exist. The only thing that exists is here, now as you read this. “Time is” meaning it’s continual but its not something that holds physical form or something you can touch right now. When you make time an object, you will be placing yourself out of the now and into a visual time line. Into a time line that just sucks you out of living now and ignoring the present.
This way of thinking distracts you out of the now mode. Thoughts that take you out of the now are known as disruption’s or distractions. On top of thinking that time exists physically, there are other things that take our focus away from living now. These things are anything that takes our focus off of something and keeping us thinking about things in the future or past. Television news channels recap old things over and over and over, especially when someone had died. When we watch television particularly news driven things it takes us out of the now and into a state of past or future. You must be conscious about what distractions take you out of the now.
If living in the now is a new concept for you, its going to be very thought provoking because lets think about this, you lived your whole life using time as a way to gauge life events, counting down days etc. You gave the past and future as if they are physical items.
In order to shift your mind from that way of thinking, you must classify things as they are now. You must know that there is no time line, all you have is right now, as you read this you are living in the now. When you are conscious of this way of thinking it can be a real shift, it makes things slow down in a beautiful way.
Right now you have the full control of your body to take advantage of every minute as you please and not wasting this time on worrying about future things that may or may not exist. Living in the now means being here now and not having all your thoughts focusing on something that is hypothetical or something happening in the future.
When you live in the now your brain starts to slow down, it becomes silent and still. Your thoughts aren’t racing and you can have a clear mind. Not a mind full of distractions and thoughts that only cling on to the future what if’s. If you think back just a day or two, did the thoughts you had a few days ago really help you today? Did they really make things any better or what it wasted energy that could have been spent on doing something of true worth?
If you are worrying about a presentation, thinking about it all the time isn’t going to do anything, its worthless. Its about the same value as raking leaves from one end of the yard to the other, its pointless, regardless to what side the leaves are on the problem is still there(the leaves are still there). Meaning no matter what day the presentation is on, you still have to do it, so putting in that worrying energy isn’t going to make things go away. AT ALL!
When you live in the now you can be conscious about your presentation and then you can turn your focus to right this second. When it comes, it comes but don’t start worrying about it early on because you are worrying about the inevitable, yes its going to happen and no your not there yet. If you live in the now, you will notice you have gained a mysterious amount of extra hours in your day. With all this time you will easily get your presentation made and put to the side until you need to carry it out. Its just like that, with confidence.
Treat things as they are today, The sky is the sky. The sky is there and its existing in the now, we don’t know if it was there 20 thousand years ago or if it will be there 20,000 years from now but we know one thing it is here now. That is living in the now in the nutshell.
Your life gets so much better when you adopt to this way of thinking, it literally takes the stress out of everything. The reason why this is true is because WE create the stress, no one makes it but us. People may be on our backs but its our choice to stress about it. When you live in the now, people can be on your backs and you can be carefree because you know that stressing out isn’t going to put more money in your paycheck nor move you up to a higher level. Only living now and conquering stress will do these things.
Another example of this is If its Monday morning and I am constantly thinking about Friday, my week is going to be unproductive and go by super slow. It is as effective as looking at the time to much, the more you look at your watch the slower time will go by because you are focusing your attention on whats going to happen after your here and not on the now. You are too worried about 5 o’clock when right now its only 12pm.
When you live in the now there seems to be more time in a day and somehow the days go by faster because you are keeping yourself busy rather than slowing yourself down with all those what if’s and dreams. You know certain things are going to happen therefor you don’t have to spend all your time thinking about them. You know that your thoughts cannot stop things from happening nor can they make things happen. If you are too focused on things that are going to happen in the future you miss great things that can be obtained now in the present.
Tips to get you living in the now:
- If you notice yourself to focused on the future stop whatever you are doing and take a couple deep breaths and tell yourself to “live and focus in the now, now is my future”
- Keep your mind focused on what you are doing now rather than whats going to happen later on
- Whenever you catch yourself too caught up in whats going to happen tomorrow, simply tell yourself that it is ineffective to worry about things when they are going to happen (bills being paid etc)
- Its smarter to think of a solution now, for a worry that may come later down the road.
- Its not entirely bad to think about things that are going on the future as long as you don’t focus all your time thinking about them. Dreaming is good by no means am I saying that its not but if you only dream and don’t try to apply some of those dream now, then its a waste of time.
- Shifting from your old way of thinking and into living in the now takes practice, you aren’t going to master this with one try but the more you do it the more automatic it is.
- Focus wherever your body is. The future doesn’t exists yet so your body doesn’t exists in the future either, only now.
- Another way of getting tuned into the now is to focus on every little detail for each second of your life. Use every sense in your body and enjoy your surroundings. By doing this you will realize how special every little detail our creator has made. For me just looking at my hand or looking at my chest rise as I breathe air is more than enough to bring back into the now.
- Sometimes you have to turn everything off to realize what now is. Meaning turn off your radio or TV computer, whatever that is causing your thoughts to clutter with noise. It can be difficult to be able to be conscious without any distractions but practice.
For me living in the now makes you feel like everyday is the weekend because you aren’t stressing and you are constantly focused on what is now and what is real. You are focused on the actuality and not the skepticism. Now is all you have so make every minute count, do what you want now!
Why are you still reading this, this is now don’t waste time 
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