When was the last time you heard yourself, or someone else say something like “I don’t know where the time has gone – it’s just flown by”.
We all know that time hasn’t gone any faster! We’ve just been so busy or preoccupied with other things that we haven’t stopped and noticed how time is passing.
Time must be a popular topic if the number of songs that talk about it is any measure!
“If you’re lost and you look – and you will find me. Time after time….”
“If I could save time in a bottle…”
“Rock around the clock…”
“Oh, oh, oh for the longest time…”
“By the time I get to Phoenix…”
And on the list, goes.
I don’t know about you, but I like to forget about the fact that we all only have a certain amount of time to live our lives and just get on with living. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not!
But one thing I do know is that it’s important to be present in each moment that we have, because time is limited.
If we’re not present in the circumstances and lives we are in now, we miss experiencing our own life.
I know this might sound a bit stupid – of course we want to experience our lives!! But how many of us spent most of our time worried about what might happen in the next minutes, hours or days? Or how many of us can’t let go of the past and those things that caused us pain; or can’t let go of the loved ones that aren’t with us anymore?
It’s not bad to remember or to plan for the future, but the question is how good are we at living in the present?
If you were to rate yourself on how well you live in the present using a scale from 1 to 10; 1 being bad and 10 being excellent; where would you put yourself on the scale?
Are you present when your little one is speaking to you, even when you have no idea what they’re trying to say?
Are you present when your friend is telling you what life is like for them and how they’re struggling?
Are you present when your partner is telling you about their promotion and how great it is to be appreciated at work?
How present are you when your grandmother tells you about her youth and all she got up to?
We can be so busy DOING everything we think we have to do, that we miss BEING the person we are, and we miss BEING WITH those around us on this journey.
As we come up to Christmas, it can feel like the past months have been a blur. The bad news is – it usually gets busier!
So how do we live in each moment? Here’s a few things that might help:
- Stop whatever you’re doing and look around you. Whenever you think of it, stop what you’re doing and thinking and look at the people you are with and remember why you are with them. If you’re on your own, enjoy the moment and remember why you’re doing what you are. If you think, I want things to be different, that’s okay, but acknowledge where you are now.
- When you can, sit down in a comfortable chair, close your eyes for a minute and allow yourself to slowly and steadily breathe in and out. In and out. Make sure your shoulders are relaxed and your neck isn’t too tense. Gently roll your head around in circles. Slowly and gently. After a minute or two, slowly open your eyes and look at where you are. See the colours, the shapes and the beauty. Hear the sounds around you. Are they noisy or distant and soft?
- Acknowledge your feelings and choose whether to allow them to control you now. We can make choices about whether to stop and dwell on them now, or whether to move on and come back to it later. At times it can seem that our feelings control us, but we can choose how much we allow those feelings to affect us in any moment. Name the feeling: “I’m feeling tired”, “I’m feeling sad”, “I’m feeling happy”.
If feelings keep rising unexpectedly and leave you confused it might be good to journal about it or speak to a counsellor about what’s behind it.
How will you live in the time you have today?