Presence and Being in the Here and Now

How important is presence in your everyday life? It's absolutely everything. Applying presence in your life during the day as much as possible is everything. It could change everything. It could help you make better decisions. It could help you to avoid getting into needless arguments. It can assist you in making better food choices as well. What kind of decisions are we making when we are stuck in the past, reliving events that happened to us recently or decades ago? We are making decisions based on past experiences and past emotions. The events of our past have nothing to do with the present moment and if we continue to live our present life through the lenses of the past or obsessing about our future, we will never truly know our true self and what decisions and situations we may entertain or be a part of by living in the present moment and honoring our true selves.

No one said this was easy. Sometimes living in the present moment can be very painful. It's hard to experience things in our past that come up when we get triggered by a certain event or even triggered by a word or a name that someone said. Somewhere in our past, when we lived through certain situations that disturbed us, we learned to push down and repress the actual moment because it was too painful to experience and we didn't think we could handle it at the time. That's why when someone speaks that person's name or you see a building or a car that reminds you of someone or something that upset you, you feel really bad. That's okay, you are allowed to feel bad. The operative word here is "feel." If you are willing to go through the present moment and live through the bad feelings for just a small moment and relax into the feeling, I promise it won't stay. I'll even go one stop farther and tell you that you will be a stronger person because of it.

When you continue to feel and deal with your emotions on a daily basis, you learn to stay present and a magical thing happens. You start experiencing life as it was meant to be. You feel lighter, happier and more joyful and you start to notice more of it. You see situations in a different light as you're not superimposing your past experiences on to them. This is the way life was meant to be lived, present in your day to day activities and enjoying the moment. Not reliving the past or anticipating the future, just living in the moment. No amount of money in this world can buy you that peace of mind, joy and happiness.