Principle #2 Unhook Yourself From the Future: Attraction works in the present not in the future (from Thomas J. Leonard’s’ 28 Attraction Principles).  You could also add, “unhook yourself from the past, attraction works in the present….” not to be confused with Principle #27 which is: Have a Vision: When you can see what’s coming you don’t need to create a future”. Basically all this to say that the present is where it’s at!

I know that I used to spend a good portion of my days either staring off into space thinking about the future “what if” or looking back at the past “if only” and not a whole bunch of time was spent in the present because the present was just too dang painful.  Then when I got into therapy, I was able to talk about my feelings and look into the genesis of those feelings from my past that were zip filed and stuck on top of my feelings in the present.  Until I learned how to feel my feelings and let them find their place, I was not able to feel anything at all. Just too dang painful.  I spent an entire summer after my freshman year in college smoking as much weed as I could get my hands on so that I wouldn’t have to feel anything.  All I ended up doing was creating more problems and stress from inaction and/or poor choices and then compounding more difficult feelings on top of other difficult feelings. Yeeee gads!! Calgon take me away!

I’m so grateful today that I am able to be in the present (as best as I can) and enjoy my life as it unfolds.  There’s pretty much nothing extra curricular that I am feeding my brain that would prevent it from being in the now.  I go to three 12-step meetings a week, sponsor people, have a sponsor, stay connected, do what I know to do to help me be sane and take time out to have a conversation with the Divine each day.  So the tiny little things that these actions enable me to do today include being able to listen to one of my brothers (who I dearly love) admonish me for not being more careful about what I post on FB. Instead of jumping down his throat in rabid defense (which, believe me, I so would have done before in my life) I was able to listen to him, wonder where he was coming from and take into consideration what his intention was for telling me his perspective. Wow.  I didn’t earn a million bucks but I sure felt like I had won some inner battle that I’d become tired of fighting for years.

The having a vision part is important but people like me have to be careful because I could so fly right into the future and only have my body left in the present.  Because I’m someone who pretty much has to hear, see and do to learn anything, I didn’t really grasp how I could have a vision and remain in the present until I trained for a marathon.  Pretty much the only thing that got me through those hard long runs (when we ran 15 miles and longer on the weekends) was having a vision of being at the finish line.  I was still in the present, my body sure wouldn’t let me forget that, but I was able to have a vision that could pull me through.  Then when I finally did get to the finish line, it always felt so good.  If not mentally or emotionally, certainly physically!

There are all these tools that I’ve picked up along the way to help me get to where I am today and I am so grateful for them all but if I had to pick the top ones that have been the most helpful, I would have to say that “Being Present in the Present” has got to be one of the main ones.  Really being able to show up for your life is a wonderful thing. So many of us don’t or haven’t and many of us don’t even have a clue as to what we’re missing. I know I sure didn’t. Couldn’t imagine why those crazy people who wanted to be in the present could possibly desire that! Yuck, for one thing, when I tip toed up to the pain I was harboring and yuck yuck to staying there because the present just seemed way too b o r i n g!!!  I wanted to embellish the past or decorate up my future!

Give yourself the present of the present. And if the present just seems really hard, painful, boring (add your own word here) then whatever feelings are coming up are your first teachers and there are all kinds of classrooms available in all kinds of places to unravel their mystery so that you can learn what they are trying to teach you.

Be wiling to be.  Be open to learning and enjoy being present.