Live, Live in the Present !

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The importance of living in the moment is regularly emphasized by all self-improvement gurus. They say  living in the present is all about living like there's no tomorrow. Guess what, that does makes a lot of sense. After all, thinking about past only makes you regretful, and worrying about future makes you uncertain.

“Live in the present” is something you’ve had heard many times. A Google search of the phrase shows around 90, 40,00,000 results, pointing to the fact that a majority of people want to know how to live in the present, but they just can't do that.( If it were as simple as reading an article on internet, two or three would have been enough!) The reality is it’s very difficult to just start living in the present( like someone says you to do it, and you start doing it.) No, it doesn’t happen like that! You need to learn to live in the present. What teaches you best to do that? It's your experiences!

I had recently gotten a contact lens for my eyes which turned out to be a poor fitting one. After a day of use, it’s caused me a medical condition called “corneal abrasion” in the left eye where you have painful, watery eyes that cause a lot of discomfort, especially when you blink. After having prescribed ointments and eye drops by my ophthalmologist, I was relaxing on the bed with eyes closed. Suddenly, a great thought came to my mind, like a flash of lightning! I thought: We humans are seldom obliged about the things we have. Right now, my left eye is out of function, and all I want is to have it become normal again. All that will make me genuinely happy is a pair of normal eyes—something I never bothered about earlier!

 I got up right away, got my infected eye patched, plugged earphones into my ears, turned on the music, and sat down to write this post with one eye open. I was in a state of flow, enjoying every moment of it. It was such a great moment that hours passed away like minutes.  It was a self-actualizing experience! I realized, I was living happily with what I am blessed with right at that moment. I realized I was living in the present!

You got eyes to see the words, feel happy about it. Feel happy and thank full about the simple things you have in life. It’s the first step towards living in the present.

Your experiences will best teach you how to live in the present! First you need to believe that “you can really do this”, and start doing things which people usually do when they say they are living in the present—dancing like nobody’s watching, being optimistic about everything, focusing on whatever you’re doing, and being thankful for simple things you have in life. You’ll then have experiences that will lead to a positive surge of emotions. Now any behavior that leads to a positive flow of emotion is repeated again.( Psychologists call this phenomena “operand conditioning” where the upbeat emotions attached with such experiences act  as positive reinforcements causing you to engage into such experiences even more.) The more you engage in such behaviors, the more reinforcement you'll get. This will initiate a chain reaction, and the result will be a richer, fuller life!