Staying Present

Its fall! Seeing trees change color, loose their leaves, for a girl from the desert, it’s incredibly amazing. My partner and I took a drive last weekend to actually go and see all this beauty. I took pics to send back to my family and we had a great time getting lost in the trees. It was great to do something to celebrate. I’m all about reclaiming this time of year in a positive way. One of my best friends passed away this month 4 years ago and I’m not lost on the irony of how close his passing is to Dias de Los Muertes. I scheduled some time with a massage therapist on the day of his passing to help me relax and stay grounded. It was a good session and she told me afterward that she kept getting during the session was that there was an intense need for me to stay in the present.

Staying in the present is hard for me to get my mind around. I’m a “big picture” kind of person and am always thinking about the next steps, what happened in the past, etc. I honestly am not sure I have any real idea on what “staying in the present” means.

So, I do what I always do when I can’t figure something out – I go see what others have figured out. I went to a bookstore and skimmed through a book called, “Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life". It was kinda over my head, the author was analyzing and I think conducting a bunch of scientific studies on being in the “present”, but one thing that struck me was --- to pay attention to where you put your attention. In other words, we sometimes put our attention on things that we have no control over instead of on what we are currently doing. If I am interpreting the book right, it seems that we often hoard our energy of attention because we think there is only so much, but there is a difference between giving something attention and curiosity versus obsessing over our interpretations of that thing (or comment, or email, etc) that often takes much more energy then something like curiosity which actually can give you energy.

This point really made me stop, cause I am nothing but obsessive sometimes and often leave myself exhausted at the end of a work day from giving all of my attention to things that I probably didn’t have to spend time “interpreting” and could have just taken them as is. I’ll be trying this next week to pay attention to what I am giving my attention to and how it affects me.