Hey Bloomers! đŒ If you crave more peace in your life, train yourself to focus on the present. Putting your energy into obsessing over the past or worrying about the future is adding nothing valuable to your life. All that itâs doing is removing from your peace. Peace is in the present. Repeat those words to yourself when you deviate from simply focusing on where you are NOW. This post will discuss why itâs important to focus on the present.
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Thoughts of the past and future may stress you
Do you know why? Because usually, you have no control over it. The past has already happened and guess what? Thereâs nothing you can do to change it now. Looking at the past or future should only be done when itâs serving a purpose (more on this later). But looking back just for the sake of torturing yourself should never become a habit. Yes, youâre torturing yourself because youâre preoccupying your mind with matters that canât be changed. Additionally, youâre allowing yourself to relive negative experiences over and over again.
With the future, some things may actually be in your control. This is where you separate the things you can control from those you cannot.
If you can, then great. Work on it. But not being able to control something is not a reason to start worrying about it. If you convince yourself that it is, youâll fall into a very dangerous trap. This trap is dangerous because weâre human beings and we have been given the gift of imagination. This gift, unfortunately, can sometimes become a curse. The problem is that we can create numerous negative scenarios about the future when we start worrying. We convince ourselves about SO many things that could go wrong. The crazy thing is that most of these things wonât even end up happening. Youâd have just spent a ridiculous amount of time worrying about things that never came into fruition. But even if they do occur, youâd have suffered even more by putting yourself through the same bad experience twice. Youâre precious, donât do that to yourself â€ïž
Looking at the past or future should have a purpose
Two words: reflecting and planning. The practice of not only focusing on the present is healthy when used for reflecting on the past and planning for the future. Note that I used the word reflecting and NOT obsessing, as well as the word planning and NOT worrying.Â
Reflecting is one of the most important things you can do for your life. Through reflecting, you donât allow past situations to define you, but rather, you take lessons away from them that you can use going forward. Like I said, reflecting and not obsessing. Obsessing over the past involves you putting yourself through a bad situation over and over again with no real benefit, just pain and stress. But reflecting comes with multiple benefits such as learning. This could be learning about yourself, or the world at large. It puts you in a better position than before because it offers you wisdom to handle other situations that will inevitably come again in life.
Reflecting can also allow you to begin a journey of healing. You canât begin the process of healing without acknowledgement and reflection of what caused you pain.
Secondly, looking into the future to plan is also helpful for your life. As the saying goes, âprior planning prevents poor performanceâ. Having an idea of how youâre going to tackle things makes life a little less overwhelming. However, do remember that things donât always go according to plan. Sometimes the universe has plans of its own. So in your plans, leave room for the universeâs. That way, you wonât be disappointed when things donât go exactly the way you planned them out (which is the case a lot of the time).
Back to the present đ
However…
As beneficial as focusing on the present is, I do believe that it is easier said than done. That fact MUST be acknowledged. Itâs easy to tell yourself or even someone else to âjust stop worrying and focus on the presentâ. But the execution of those words? Thatâs the difficult part. Of course, thereâs a scientific and psychological reason behind this. The reason why itâs so hard for us to live in the present is that our intelligent cognition simply denies its existence. Our mind views time as a continuous and linear process. Because it is continuous, any millisecond before the present moment is already past and any millisecond later is already a future (Psychology Today).Â
On the brighter side, because weâre human beings (and not just animals that lack awareness), we donât simply have to accept this fact. There is a lot that you can do to train yourself to focus on the present. One of these techniques is embracing the multi-selves paradigm. This is a whole other topic, so make sure that youâre subscribed because there will definitely be a future post discussing HOW to train yourself to focus on the present. Itâs not enough to know why itâs important to focus on the present and not understand HOW to implement this into your life.
Encouragement
I will leave you guys with some encouragement from the Bible and the Qurâan, on the topic of worrying. If youâre subscribed to my blog and belong to any other religion (or no religion), please do email me and let me know! đŒ I would love to learn about ways I can encourage you and your community too. For now I am only able to write on the Bible (because Iâm Christian) and the Qurâan (thanks to my wonderful friend đ).Â
And who of you by worrying can add one hour to his life?
Matthew 6 vs 27
Donât worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.
Philippians 4 vs 6
Verily with every hardship comes relief.
Surah 94 vs 5
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