It is well known how unproductive it is to live in the past as well as in the future. How do you stay in the now?

asked 27 Oct '09, 01:11

T%20A's gravatar image

T A
3.2k525

edited 27 Oct '09, 04:58

Barry%20Allen's gravatar image

Barry Allen ♦♦
11411


Practice, practice, practice!

For me personally it took like 2 years and now i'm ripping the benefits of it.

Don't try to hard. Let go. Relax. Be en-lightened. Lighten up on yourself.

Check your belief systems. What are the incongruencies in your life? If you do something now that doesn;t serve you, STOP!

To be in the NOW don't let past pull you in. Forgive your follies. Thatnk them for the gifr they gave you.

Stop planning to much for the future. Expect the unexpected. You CAN'T plan everything. Be excited if some unknown oppoturnity comes up. You attracted it to yourself, now you have to figure out why.

Stop judging yourself and others. Breath deeply and rythmically. Do some meditation technoqies, that's what they are DESIGNED to do.

Follow your excitement, your passion, your bliss. That's really the ONLY thing you have to do in life.

Surround yourself with people that inspire you to be better. Inspire others to be better.

Read, learn, practice.

Practice, practice, practice!

You lose only when you stop trying.

A warrior never stops trying. Every failure is an opoturnity to get beck stronger. Every circumstance is just an experience for the warrior.

Their's only ONE person who can stop you from achieving ANYTHING you ever dreamt possible.

If YOU are being that person, STOP!

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answered 28 Oct '09, 00:34

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wildlife
(suspended)

By being fully and completly present with all your senses. Feel like you just got behind your eyes for the first time and looking out at everything anew.

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answered 27 Oct '09, 08:43

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Gary
513

edited 27 Oct '09, 09:03

Here's what works for me. Focus and discipline are my primary techniques. I'm not very interested in revisiting the past. Remember, this is not necessarily advice for others, it's what works for me. I've made enough dumb mistakes in the past that I'd rather not focus on that with all the attendant unpleasant emotions. I've integrated the lessons of the past into my current attitude and approach toward life so I don't need to keep "going back". And I absolutely refuse to allow anyone to shackle me to past mistakes. When my mind drifts to the past, I return my focus to the matter at hand. I find meditation is helpful in "centering" myself and keeping my focus in the here and now. I should add that I do take time to enjoy good memories of the past from time to time, but I don't want to get bogged down getting excessively nostalgic because I've found too distracting.

The future is something I must do some thinking about if I want to move toward a goal, so I set aside time for brain storming, planning and such. Once I have a course charted, I focus again at the task that I need to accomplish now. My mind has always had a tendency to drift, so it's definitely a discipline to keep focused, but whenever I drift toward the past or dwell to much on the future, I return to center again. Finally, I use self-affirmations a lot. There are many forces around us and within us that distract us and pull us off course. When I speak words of affirmation to myself, it reinforces what I believe about myself and my path I am on, so that the distractions of past, future, and even present distractions, fade away. One footnote-- I find that when I'm physically fit, properly nourished and well-rested, I keep better focused, too.

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answered 28 Oct '09, 07:49

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John
4.2k11240

You can learn from the past mistakes or experiences that you or others have had. But the only time you are living is in the present. Someone once told me that there is no past nor no future that God gave us NOW and that is why it is called an present, for it was an gift from God.

So, you have to just look around at your present moments, environment, life situations, thoughts you are thinking and speaking and stop and focus on the now. You have got to realize you can not change the past you can learn from it, and the future depends on what you do in the present. But that you are always really living in the present.

Make your choices God gave you that free will to do that don't let it be by default.

The main thing is to always be aware and focus on things that will improve you and your life's situation and circumstances for the choices we make each day effects us and others so we must learn to make wise choices and realize that we are making choices everyday whether we realize it or not. Don't let others make choices for you and don't you reach out there by what others say to you that is negative and bring it on inside of you and make it real. Rebuke the negative and start creating the postive thoughts causing chain reactions in your life for the better.

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answered 27 Oct '09, 01:39

flowingwater's gravatar image

flowingwater
7.1k63197

The reason I think you want to look at the past is because there is something you think you would have done differently if you were given the chance to go back and do it again.

You need to realise that whatever you have done before, every single thing makes you who you are today with added hindsight. If you keep focusing on the past, then the future is only going to reflect similar things but instead if you focus on the present and on the new experiences ahead, you are setting the scene for your future to be different and better.

Treat life as though every new experience is going to be better than the previous one and always keep in mind that all of these experiences is being added to your portfolio of experiences to make you a more rounded person as the years go by.

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answered 27 Oct '09, 17:09

Pink%20Diamond's gravatar image

Pink Diamond
29.2k73683

I would also say practice and persistence. For me it is taking the most mundane tasks and giving them my full attention. When I do this I have found that instead of doing them in a perfunctory way, I actually begin to enjoy what was previously tedious or a chore. Like anything we do, the more we practice the better we become.

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answered 28 Oct '09, 12:17

Michaela's gravatar image

Michaela
35.0k22277

it's not that simple. what you think is ''now'' is only the result of the past. so actually, to stop living the past means to stop living or experiencing whatever you have ''now''. and what you have or what you do now, is the cause of what you are going to experience in the future. so they are all connected in away that would make it impossible to break or seperate. instead of that, try to mentally/spiritually transform the past to experience what you want to experience now. and mentally/spiritually transform what you experience now to get what you want next. that's how you live in the now. not by seperation. but with focus and control. seperation means to freeze or die. that's not spiritual in any way or even healthy. instead, realize the connection between now, yesterday and tomorrow .. and take control, now. when you do that you will start to realize that the three are one. and what we call a time line is in fact, a dot. not a circle, but - a little wide - dot. that's what it means to live in the now.

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answered 29 Oct '09, 08:53

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Adel
2.0k149

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