Your Power in the Present Moment

Most people spend 90-92% of their thinking time reviewing past events and anticipating future events, while barely attending to events happening now. Consequently, they create unnecessary stress in their lives. As John Lennon sang, "Life is what happens when we’re busy making other plans." It is easy to see how people feel at the mercy of luck and the motives of other people. How can they cope when they are barely present? In this article, I hope to show how you can become aware of this problem in your own life, and what you can do to restore self-mastery.

The first thing to do is to become aware of your own tendency to think other where and other when. Stop reading for a moment, and wait for the first thought that comes to your mind, which is independent of this article.

I mean it! Stop and observe yourself.

You may have found yourself remembering an event, which frustrated or delighted you when it originally happened. You may find yourself mulling over what you need to do later today. In either case, you were unlikely aware of the sounds in the room right now, or the sensation of your own body, or the sight of familiar things in the room. Being aware of the sights, sounds, warmth or coolness of your environment, and other sensations, which you have become accustomed to in the past few minutes, is a survival mechanism. You have millions of bits of information entering your unconscious mind at any moment, but you are only capable of attending to a tiny fraction of them – about 2,000 bits per second. It is not necessary for you to be aware of the sensation of your clothes on your body, to cope with events which will affect you in more pressing ways. How do you choose what to attend to?

Mental habits channel your attention. Neurologically, neurons that fire frequently build stronger networks with neighboring neurons. As a result, these networks draw energy more easily. It is similar to the development of a riverbed: The longer a river exists, and the more water that passes through it, the larger and straighter the river beds get. Like water, energy takes and enlarges upon the path of least resistance. Nervous energy translates into biochemistry and behavior. Your can observe you mental habits in conversation and daily routine.

Friends who know you well know what to say to get a desired response, because they are aware of how you usually respond. Try stepping back in a conversation, as if you were watching a movie, with yourself and your friend as principal actors, and try not to respond in the usual ways. Not only will you find it difficult to do so, but also your friend will suspect that something unusual is happening.

You can observe your habits while alone, doing mundane tasks. Do you brush your teeth with your right hand? Switch to your left hand, and observe your emotional and physical response. Do you usually put your pants on, left leg first? Switch to the right leg, and observe. Not only will these mundane habits suddenly become much more difficult, but you might find yourself responding with irritation or alarm to the interruption of routine.

As you can imagine, the very fact of unusual activity, which takes the place of habits, will focus your attention on the moment. Change enhances present moment awareness.

Our habits assist us by allowing us to direct most of our attention to things that affect us strongly. The things that we find most interesting have a strong emotional impact. When you look back over time, you remember the emotional events rather than daily routine. Thus, our sense of personal history, or our sense of our ego, our identity, is composed of a series of emotional events. It is no surprise, then, that even in the present moment, we attend to emotional events that have already happened, or to what we anticipate in the future. In addition, attending to a constant revision of our daily to-do list anticipates that when the moment comes, we can move through life more efficiently – freeing up energy for the more important things.

Unfortunately, this places us in the position of barely being present now. Since the past and future distract us, we rarely focus on events happening right now. We rely on experience, on memory and habit, to cope. Consequently, we rarely appreciate the world around us, or the opportunities that we have unconsciously drawn into our lives.

If the emotional events that we had focused on were positive, encouraging, and appreciative, they might have the effect of making us stronger and bringing positive events into our lives. However, the negative affects people strongly. Why is this? We define ourselves as not other-than. This is I, and that is not I. It is easier to make this distinction when the not-me is quite different from me. Since it is human nature to view ourselves as right, correct, and justified at all times, then that which we focus on the most outside of us is that which we fight. The negative defines our ego. Thus, we spend a lot of time making judgments – often negative – about other people, things and events. We react with pleasure to praise, but react much more strongly against criticism. We focus on the negative, on worries, embarrassments, irritations, ridicule and opposition. Consequently, we draw negatively charged events into our lives. By worrying about the past, we ensure that the future develops exactly the same way.

A simple example can show how fear and worry can create a bad future. Racecar drivers know that you will drive towards that which you focus on. If the car skids out of control, and you look in terror at the looming wall, that is the direction you will drive. If the car skids out of control, but you focus on the open road ahead of you, you can regain control of the car and bring it safely out of the skid. You move in the direction of your focus.

If you examine your own life, you can find numerous instances similar to this. For example, you may have anticipated a bad event and the bad event happened just as you feared it would. You can observe the same thing with the woman who experiences a series of violent relationships, the perpetually poor man, and the constantly bullied child. Other opportunities are available for all of these people, but they draw the negative into their lives with the focus of their haunted memories and fear.

The world is full of the entire range of potential human experiences, for every person who lives. While some people are born into extremely poor circumstances – for example, the child born in a war-torn, Aids-infested country in Africa – the opportunities are always there to better their lives. Other people are born in much better circumstances but persist in lives bereft of happiness or growth. It is a matter of what people focus on.

So, what can you do to get out of this rat race?

First, become aware of your mental, emotional and physical habits. Ultimately, your emotional habits guide all. The emotions are the key interactive point between the physical and the non-physical for humans, the point where energy forms into matter. Therefore, the most important thing is to become aware of your emotional habits. Notice how much the past and future direct your energy and how little is actually invested in the present moment at any time.

One easy way to do this: Stop reading right now, and wait for the next thought to enter your mind. What is it? Is it positive or negative? When is it about? Write it down. Then do this, every hour on the hour, for about a day. Set a timer to go off every hour, and write down a few key words to capture the nature of your thoughts at that moment. In one day, you will learn more about your emotional habits than you had ever previously known.

Next, choose a moment. Focus on all of your senses, one at a time. What are all the sounds you can hear? What are all the touch sensations you feel? What are all the things you can see? What smells and tastes can you detect? If you jot down key words, you will find that this list is much longer. You might be surprised at what you routinely ignore.

Notice that in any particular moment, your life is good. You are reasonably comfortable, well nourished and pain-free. This is only true if you can focus on exactly now. As soon as you let in wandering thoughts, you will cast off your peace of mind. How could you have lived your life so long without being aware of the goodness that is present in your life at any moment? Appreciate the moment.

Notice that you cannot control events from the past or the future. The past is past, done, over with. You cannot change it. The future has not yet happened. The only moment you can have any direct influence on is this present moment, right now, the moment that constantly slips away. Focus on this moment, and you will find that negativity eases.

Know that what you focus on, you will bring into being. If you focus on good things, you will bring more good things into your life. If you focus on bad things, misfortune and bad luck will plague you. Appreciate the good in your life. Appreciate your friends, your family, your comfort, your body and your life.

Some people might object that if you never think about the past or the future, then you cannot learn from the past, nor can you prepare for the future. This objection misses the point.

In the past, when you perceived yourself to have made a mistake, it was the present moment then. If you were completely conscious and aware in that moment, your chance of making a serious error would be much less. You would be paying attention to events as they occur, and dealing with them immediately. If a mistake occurs despite your vigilance, then you would soon recognize it. Some learning from errors is not only necessary, but also desirable. The key is to learn, incorporate the new knowledge to modify your understanding, and move on. Rather than dwelling on the past, continue to focus on the present moment as much as possible.

It is also important to occasionally look into the future. Know your deepest desires, choose goals, create a plan, and then return to the moment. Focus only on the next step of your plan as you come to it. Overcome obstacles as they occur. Do not draw obstacles into your life by anticipating and trying to thwart them – this will only ensure that you draw them into your life. Do not dwell on the final goal in the distant future. Make your choice and act on it. If the plan is flawed, you can always choose an alternative. Understand that the choice is always yours at any moment. Choosing a goal and a plan is good, but you will not get there without action. Only during action will problems arise, if any, and then, in that moment, will the solution or alternative choice be clear. The final goal should be the target towards which you aim, but the path to that goal is only practical in the moment of action, the moment of life and the only moment of power, the present moment.

Now is the moment of your ultimate power. Choose freely and act, knowing that you can always choose differently if you want. Without denigrating this moment, you can apply the lessons from the past to the action you are taking now towards the goals you have chosen. You can experience the reduction of stress and the inflow of abundance. Appreciate the life you are living now. This is the only moment that counts.