Living in the present moment

I think many of us would say that in life, we would like to be given a heads up or build an understanding on something before it happens. Ideally, you want to be prepared for anything that comes at you so you don’t lose sleep over it, become anxious or stressed, you name it. Unfortunately, the reality of things in life is that no matter how prepared you may feel about something or that you may understand it to the fullest extent based on your knowledge, life will always throw you curveballs. Some can be in your favor and some won’t be in your favor but you must understand as a person that it is completely normal. Things cannot always go your way. You shouldn't convince yourself that it does or it will because one day, something unexpecting can happen which can throw you off, set you back, prevent you from moving forward at that very moment and the last thing you want is to already have that built up idea on things going your way and only your way.

Recently in my life, I have been thrown a lot of curveballs. Some days only one, sometimes multiple. At first, I didn’t see myself recovering from these curveballs, I was basically saying to myself “well, it is what it is at this point”. That is true, it is what it is, because there are things in life that we simply cannot control. We as humans need to understand that. I’ve seen myself stressing out so much which would lead to me becoming quite anxious over things that I wasn’t able to control the process or the conclusion.

I recently started making two mental lists in my head. One list consists of things I can control and the other list being things that I can’t control physically or emotionally. The list of things I can’t control, I keep a constant reminder on what it consists of but that is about it. I forced myself into reality that things I can’t control shouldn’t stress me out. The only stress factor from it is not being able to control what you want but you must understand that you simply can’t. Take it as a good thing because you don’t want to overload yourself at any given moment over things that you cannot justify (self-care!).

It is a day-by-day process. It’s ok to look into the future but not too far into it because you don’t want to skip over the next several hours you have in front of yourself or tomorrow. It is also ok to look at the past but not to live in it but to learn from it. Looking into the past can be valuable when you are orientating it around the experience but trying to live back in the past, hoping things would have gone differently is a dangerous game. I fell into that hole for a couple weeks after a situation that occurred in my personal life and saw the negative impact it was having on me.

We as humans naturally get ahead of ourselves, it can be influenced by our ethics, character, goals, etc and that is fine, but make sure to understand that the only person you should be racing or competing with is your future self.

This is my second blog and I am starting to get more comfortable expressing my personal thoughts and feelings with aspects of life. I am no expert on this, I am simply one of you. On this note, I wanted to take a quote from the movie “Kung Fu Panda” that I came across this week that has left a positive impact on what I have been dealing with and going through. “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called a present”. Enjoy every moment of your day because life goes by fast. Love yourself, know the value you have on this planet, and that I am proud of what you have achieved and what you plan on doing. Love you all, be happy and healthy. Hope you guys enjoy this.