The key is this: meet today’s problems with today’s strength. Don’t start tackling tomorrow’s problems until tomorrow. You don’t have tomorrow’s strength yet. You simply have enough for today.
Max Lucado
Stay in the present. With all its gifts, joys, burdens, and struggles. We get ahead of ourselves all too often. We think that worry is actually problem solving. As if running all the worst case scenarios in our head is giving us the edge. Is strengthening our resolve. Is sharpening our sword.
In fact it is doing quite the opposite. You see, our brain is not always the brightest bulb. The mind is a tool, remember, and should not be the master. No, the brain thinks if you’re thinking something than it is actually happening. In fact, studies show that when scanning the brain during an activity AND when scanning the brain while imagining that same activity, the very same neural pathways are firing. Basically, our brains don’t perceive a difference between reality and imagination.
Spend 30 minutes agonizing about how to make a phone call to your family member about some help you desperately need and don’t want to ask for, only to spend 4 minutes on the phone with them. And don’t forget the 20 minute recap on feeling self pity that you’re in a position that you needed to ask them for help at all. Well folks, I’m sorry to tell you but the pain of 4 minutes turned into the suffering of 54.
And that’s just it. When we play things out in our mind, our body and soul is experiencing it as if it is real. No wonder we are so exhausted all the time, with all the running around, second guessing and Monday morning quarterbacking we do.
So why not use what we know the brain will inevitably do to our advantage. Why not practice in our mind being here in just this moment…enjoying it when it’s desirable, spending time feeling grateful, and tolerating the pain of what is right in front of us, but not adding to it with our preemptive worries or ruminative replays of events. When we practice being here in just this moment, we add in more of the things that lift us up and use the resources we know we have at this very moment and are confident in. No more and no less.
Therapists call living in this way, Mindfulness. It is a matter of nonjudgmentally being in the present moment and only managing what we need to in the now. Not worrying about our pasts or our futures. When we have a hard day, this is really tough. It can be easy to start stacking our problems together, comparing them to other times we have experienced these things, and worrying that this will just keep happening. Being Mindful is a way to practice self-compassion. To be kind to ourselves by only expecting that we can handle the problem of the present moment with the skills and resources we have in any given present moment.
Here is a tip. Take a breath when hard things start happening and try saying something like this to yourself, “I only have to manage what is happening in just this moment and I am doing the best I can with what I have. I will handle just this moment and when the next thing comes, I will leave that to the strength and knowledge I will have in that next moment and only manage what is in front of me for now.”
Take the advice in this quote and try this tip. Be in the moment and solve today’s needs with today’s strengths and leave Tomorrowland to Disney.