Many people heard the claim that not living in the now, is the main reason for anxiety, worry and unhappiness, but what does it actually mean to live in the now and why is it so important and true?
Are you worried and anxious about something right now? if so, stop and think for a second, why are you feeling anxious and what is it that makes you feel that way? 99.9% of the time, we are feeling anxious about an outcome that you fear may happen, but hasn’t yet. Your anxiety is based on a hypothetical scenario that you don’t want to happen. For example, maybe you fear losing your job, maybe you heard that your management is planning a restructuring of the business and employees. So now you have this fear that you might be one of those who is going to be made redundant. You think “I have a mortgage to pay” “How will i pay for this and that” ” what if i don’t get another job and they take the house away from me and my family will be without a place to live” and so forth.
Now lets look at what’s really happening.
In the now, you haven’t lost your job and your family still have a place to live. You still get a pay cheque and you still meet your mortgage obligations to the bank, so right now, everything is fine right? but your monkey mind, which belongs to the ego, is telling you a morbid story about what would happen if you’ve lost your job, so you start worrying about a possibility of a bad outcome, you are making yourself lose sleep, causing your blood pressure to rise, you feel depressed and low and all based on something that hasn’t really happened and most likely won’t happen.
Now look back at a time where you had a similar scenario, where you feared the worst and had anxiety attacks and extreme worry that something would happen, what happened then? did your fears come true? or did you come out on top and winning? i bet you did come out on top. The trouble is, most people don’t trust that this will continue throughout their path, they think that maybe up until now, they had a good run of good luck and the reserves of “Good luck” would dry out. The reality is, this has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with milestones along the individual path, in other words, it is something that is meant to happen whether you’re worried, anxious or hopeful. If your life path is to work a particular job until the end of that milestone, then whether you want it or not, the next milestone will unravel itself and for this to happen, the old door needs to close to allow the new door to open.
Now here’s the most important part:
Your higher self knows your path and where you’re going next, but it will not reveal more than you need to know right now, it will reveal the appropriate guidance to you in small increments so to not overwhelm you and this is why trust is so important, when you trust and understand that the higher self will only reveal its secrets at the appropriate time, you are more at peace with changes and less anxious about the unknown because the ego needs to know more.
Martin Luther King once said “Take the first step in faith, you don’t need to see the whole staircase, just take the first step”
The ego wants to see the whole staircase, but your higher self will guide you one step at a time and that step is in the present moment..
This is why living in the moment is so important, because the next step for you to take, is revealed in the moment and by worrying about the future, while experiencing anxiety and fear, you will not be perceptive to the revelation of the next step as you are too occupied and focused on the future. The good news is, you will also not miss this opportunity because it will keep knocking on your door until you open it, the difference is, by that stage, you have made yourself miserable and lived in an unnecessary pain and turmoil.
Let me put this to you in a different way, in a more three dimensional way if you will.
When you set your GPS to your destination, imagine what would happen if the voice in the GPS was calling all the turns as you start driving. What do you think would happen? that’s right, not only you will forget the order of the turns, but i guarantee you will think that this GPS system is stupid and useless. The GPS was designed to call the next turn out as you approach it with just enough time for you to act. Your higher self is the same, it will call out the next action to take just in time for you to act, not too soon so you don’t forget and definitely not to late so you don’t miss it. Not living in the now and worrying about everything in the future, is the same as wandering off into space and not hearing the GPS calling out the next turn.
Your life is happening in the present moment, it is not happening in the past and it is not happening in the future, the former no longer exists and the latter hasn’t happened yet, when you’re watching a movie, you are watching what is happening at any given present moment and thinking about what already happened in the movie, or trying to guess what will happen next in the movie, will make you miss out on the new developments in the movie that leads to the punch-line.
Your life is a movie that has been scripted specially for you, so don’t try and guess what’s coming next, just trust that one section will be joined with the next section all the way to the end, and the most important and joyous time in that movie of your life is the present moment.
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