“What you have, now,

At the end of the day,

is all you have.”

from Whether you are twenty or seventy by Ulrich Schaeffer

Where are you in the moment?                          

Are you truly present or somewhere else?

I noticed while anxiously washing dishes yesterday evening before company arrived, that I was not present in the action I was carrying out. I was in the future – rushing to get it done before the guests came to the door.

A healer once told me that I spent much of my time thinking about the past. I guess many of us do dwell back there, on what went wrong, or how things might have been. Now my thoughts are spent more in the present, and I also plan and visualize for my future.

I still catch myself in self limiting and/or self critical thoughts sometimes unsurprisingly. Where I want to be is in the present because when I’m there…truly there…there are no limitations. I have a feeling of calmness and security, a sense of ‘all is right with the world’.

So I remember what Eckhart Tolle says about our minds not being able to think when we concentrate on breathing. I take a deep, soothing breath and repeat this phrase to myself. It’s a mantra of sorts I suppose you could call it, and it brings me back to the here and now:

“This moment”

Where do you live your days? Give my mantra a try and see if it works for you.