Moving From The Past To The Present

A mindfulness exercise to bring you into the present.

Some of my clients find the exercise of, “Stop Talking About Your Past”, to be incredibly helpful. So, if you’re wanting to take on a task for next month in honor of lady spring who is about to bless us with her beauty, then you could try taking on the task of not talking about the past. It will spring you from the past to the present. Start by becoming more aware of what you are saying and the words you are using in dialogue with others. If you are with others who are reminiscing about high school, or their bartending jobs in their twenties, or what happened last year or last weekend, just listen, but stay quiet and observe. Don’t participate. And if people ask why you’re being so quiet, just say, “I am trying this exercise of not talking about the past to see what affect it has on my life”. The reason we do something like this is that, we define ourselves by events in our past or have a description of who we are, and about how the world is, largely informed by our past. It can be confining and hold us back. One could say that there is no ONE description of the world or ourselves except for the one that we make up in our own mind. There is only the story that we make up about who we are, and we keep this story around us for protection. It is one of those sweet attempts by our egoic perceptions to keep us “safe”. But it can keep us shackled to the past and affect us in the present by limiting who we are and who we’re capable of being. All the things that we’ve been through; all the marriages or relationships that didn’t work; the children; the family that we came from; our dead-end jobs; they are not YOU in the present, they are part of your past. They are all just past moments that have led us to this present moment. The present moment exists as it is, and the past exists only in your mind. It’s okay to let it go and settle in to where you are, even if that is horribly uncomfortable. And if it is horribly uncomfortable find a best friend, call your people, read your inspiring literature, get out in nature, find your center. Come back home to you. As always I am sending much love and eternal well wishes for many blessings Be well, Laurel