The Time is Now

The Time is Now

As we enter the holiday season and the end of the year approaches, many people find themselves in a time of both reflection and anticipation. They look back at the year gone by; evaluating successes and failures and beginning the process of determining their focus and goals for the upcoming year.

While I am a strong proponent of both learning from past experiences and of setting effective goals for the future, I encourage people to be cautious of losing the power of the moment they are in.

Many of our students frequently ask “How can I become more effective?” or “How can I improve how I feel throughout the day?” or “How do I remove stress from the situations that I am facing?” I believe the answers to those questions and most challenges people face can be found by focusing on the present moment.

All mental fears, whether that is stress, fear of failure, anxiety, worry, doubt, regret or others, result from focusing on events that have already happened (which you no longer have any control to change) or future events that you image to be unpleasant (which are not real, but simply part of your imagination). The only reality that we face lives in the present moment.

In his New York Times bestseller, The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle states that “80 to 90 percent of most people’s thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its often negative nature, much of it is also harmful.”

While that statement may seem harsh, for most people it is true. How often do most people sit back and calmly think about how wonderful their life is today or how great the future is going to be? By removing harmful or useless thinking, it is naturally replaced with either a focused or open mind. This results in progress from one moment to the next, which leads to remarkable growth and improvement over time.

Being present mentally inserts more care, quality and joy into ALL activities and removes unnecessary concern. So take care to add extra focus to the things that are right in front of you, the things that are REAL, and many of your imagined challenges will begin to fade away.