Are You Living In The Present?

Living in the present is something we’ve been talking a lot about these days.

If I go on listing out the ‘many benefits’ for living in the present, I can go on for days.

What does it really mean?

It means to focus on and be engage in what's now instead of thinking or worrying about future events.

The benefits?

From my standpoint, it helps me to discover myself even more: my potentials, capabilities and enjoyments.

We’ve all been too busy. Our mind is constantly thinking about what’s coming up next. When this happens, we are unable to live in the present.

What’s the worst thing that could happen to us if we are constantly ‘onto the next”? Sadly, we could never fully discover our full identities.

Don’t fret. I’ve been there like you all do. Here, I will share my story on how I found my unique ways to live in the moment.

In the past, if I wake up a bit late, I felt my whole day get delayed. As a result, I became worried and blamed myself for getting up late.

Self blame never work things out. One thing I noticed that I’ve been doing for so long but really shouldn’t have. It is to ‘assume’. This action is initiated from the brain.

Brain is so powerful that it controls the outcome of everything we do. When our brains tell our bodies that we are going to screw up things, they would eventually do with no doubt.

It all happens subconsciously. When the brain signals the body any negative connotations, each cell in the body would react negatively so that to cause the body to act sloppy. That’s how we fail to complete tasks within our expectations.

To combat with my obsession of worrying and thinking way too ahead, I simply quitted imagining what would happen next.

One trick is to pretend there are no future events, and all I have is the present. That way, you only need to worry about what you are doing at the moment.

In other words, you need to control your brain. Train it in a positive way.

That's how I started to live in the moment. Particularly, I've changed the way I react to things. Read on...

When I enjoyed lying in bed for a bit longer, I wouldn’t feel panic anymore. Instead of rushing trough my morning pronunciation exercise just to hit the target, I took the time to feel the words with my cavity muscle, and always made sure I nailed the pronunciation. Instead of merely targeting on quantity, I placed emphasis on quality.

The result? My pronunciation was said to be improved a lot just in two weeks.

Every time I attended seminar, an event or listened to a panel discussion or presentation, I put my mind into the presentation contents, and focused on what I learned. When I had conversations with others, I made sure I listened what they said instead of thinking of what I would say next.

The result? I enjoyed learning even more, and discovered that I learned better sometimes just by talk to people from all walks of life.

The next time I wrote an article, I no longer feel the urge to hit the public button. I spend time doing the proofread after completing each entry, and edit some articles from a year ago.

Instead of evaluate my progress simply by how many entries I have published, I focused the learning: grammatical mistakes I found, sentences structure, vocabularies, meanings and context.

The result? My writing skills have been improved a lot. I have improvements especially on sentences structure and grammar.

Currently, I’m enrolled in the Filming and TV class. The class I had last week is called “cold read”, where students are given acting material in class and required to performance after reading through couple times. When I was outside of the audition room waiting for my turn, I focused on rehearsing each line on the script without worrying about what if I forgot my lines during the audition. When it’s the time for critics, I listened closely to what instructor about my performance so I could take these suggestions onto my next audition.

The result? The instructor told that was the best work he’s ever seen me performed.

I used to neglect the importance of eating and tried to complete other tasks while I’m having meals. After getting rid of this old habit, whenever I’m having food, I took the time to eat and enjoyed each bite in my mouth, no matter what I’m eating. When I eat, food is the only thing on my mind.

The result? I enjoyed food more and learned nutrition is the key to maintain youthful and radiant skin.

Last but not least, I quit multi-tasking. The reason? It makes me to think too far ahead; beside, our brains are not designed to multi-tasking (brace yourself if you are natural multi-tasker :).

Instead of writing down all those cliché about living the present, I thought I’d bring on some personal stories to show you my ‘before’ and ‘after’.

Once again, the key is to control your mind. Always think positively, then you body will act positively.