Now Power

Quite often we can find ourselves rushing through a certain task. Whether it’s preparing food, driving to work, getting dressed or brushing our teeth, our thoughts tend to wander to a potential future deadline or event or we may ponder and evaluate past occurrences. We can get lost reliving the past or imagining what the future holds. Similar to when we read a book and find ourselves glancing over a paragraph without any focus on the words we’re reading - we allow our minds to take us to past events, or future tasks, or we may even still be digesting information from the previous page. When we realize that we’ve missed out on understanding the words because our mind is distracted, we may choose to reread the current paragraph and stop the mind from wandering, or we may choose to put the book down and allow the mind to process whatever other thoughts are consuming its resources. When we catch ourselves mindfully unaware of the present, sometimes even then we don’t stop ourselves. We get caught in a loop. We may tell ourselves that when we reach a certain point in the day, we can then focus on our present moment and determine how we feel physically and emotionally and evaluate our thoughts. The trouble with this approach is that we tend to build up a queue of items to be processed and we don’t always give ourselves enough time to do so. Things start to pile up and get back logged. We may not even realize how much time is actually required until we start feeling out of sorts, potentially heading towards being burned out. With consistent practice and awareness we can allow ourselves time to process our lives in the moment rather than waiting long periods of time in between. Yes, it may be awkward initially taking this time -even in the midst of a conversation - but in doing so, our amount of duplicate efforts begin to diminish, the flow of our experiences return, and we feel free, open, passionate, and alive again.