It’s natural to not always want to be in the present moment. It can be uncomfortable, dull, unpleasant or it may not fit with our assumption of how our life should be right now. We all do this – it’s universal. This can actually be useful. It can allow us to daydream and think of the changes we want to make in our lives. However, if we find ourselves constantly wishing we were somewhere else or living someone else’s life, then we really not living at all. 

We can see our selves as a train on a track. Our consciousness is the train and the present moment is the track. When we separate the train from the track there is no movement at all, just separation. Our train meanders through speculation, anticipation, trying to fix things that may never happen, or change things that have already happened. The whole time the track is marching on regardless. Until we reunite train and track there is no real sense of movement. We can do this by bringing ourselves back to the reality of the present moment however we find it. Liking or not liking what we find is just our judgement. The challenge is to look beyond our judgement and see more clearly what is really here.

Each time we find that we have wandered from our track is a moment of awareness. This awareness is a gift. It presents an opportunity to choose whether to ponder a while longer in thoughts of the past or the future, or to return to our track and engage with the reality of our life. This doesn’t mean that the purpose of our life it to never separate train from track, for this would be equally as imbalanced. We need to wander and to plan and to speculate. But we also need to balance this with a sense of just being. By spending some more time on track we can begin to redress this balance.

I offer counselling and mindfulness coaching face-to-face and over Skype. Find out more here