Delight in the daily tangle

Anticipating and planning for our future needs is often extolled as a virtue in society, and it’s definitely important for us to act in ways that will make our lives easier in later years. For example, when we don’t save for retirement, we find ourselves scrambling in desperation when we become too old to perform our jobs adequately.

Similarly, investing in our future housing stability by buying a house or our future career options by taking skill-development courses is not only wise but often necessary. When we perform these actions, we are creating a more stable, secure, and comfortable life for our future selves. But even this version of living for the future, commendable as it is, can be overdone.

Consider the case of the diligent young man who lives well below his means, siphons almost all his income into savings and investments, and is hit by a bus at 34. He couldn’t have known he was wasting his life—he was doing the ‘right’ thing—but he never got to enjoy the fruits of his labour. His hard work was in vain.

Tomorrow can’t be taken for granted by any of us, nor can reaching a ripe old age. Saving is important. Acting to ensure our lasting well-being is indispensable. But delaying all or most of our happiness for the sake of a future that may never come sacrifices the present for the future and drains happiness from life. Balance is necessary. Plan and act for the future but live and act in the moment.

Imagining our future can help us crystallise our goals and enhance our confidence if we do it in moderation, but goals are only useful when they are followed by real, daily action. When dreams of the future distract us from performing those tasks, they’re a waste of time at best. At worst, they’re creating dread and despair for our current lives because we aren’t living the life we want. When we do this, we’ve raised our expectations so high that all we feel is disappointment. Worse, this mismatch between our expectations and what we feel we deserve can quickly lead to anxiety. Will we ever get what we want? Will we ever be good enough? How can anyone make that much progress? These anxious trains of thought can further propel people toward daydreaming, as it makes daily life more and more unpleasant.

Don't be too fixated

Avoid this by setting reasonable, achievable, stepwise goals for yourself. When you see yourself getting closer to your goals, it’s easy to imagine reaching your final destination. Keeping our brains too fixated on the future damages our happiness, even when we have modest expectations if we allow our anxiety to take over. It’s easy to be afraid that people will boo us off the stage during a speech or that our car will break down on a long drive.

It’s even easier to imagine the hundred ways that we can fail ourselves by not having the strength or character needed to do our work. But in reality, most people are kind and will accept gaffes, mistakes, or even the occasional calamity. In reality, the world isn’t out to get us; it’s filled with kind people who are willing to help and a million opportunities that most of us can’t imagine until we see them before us. And in reality, most of the things that can go wrong won’t go wrong. Wasting our time fretting for hours, days, or years over mistakes and misfortunes that will, in most cases, not happen is needless.

Worries are only useful as a reminder. If you’re worried you’re going to mess up your speech, stop thinking about it and practice more instead. If you’re worried about your car breaking down, make sure to carry your cell phone and sign up for a roadside assistance service. If there is something you can do to prevent misfortunes, do that thing, then let the worry go. You’ve done your best.

Meanwhile, if you’re anxious about something that you can’t control or mitigate, there’s no benefit in worrying at all; you’re better off enjoying life or working to improve your world. After all, it’s not like worrying about a potential problem makes that problem any less likely; it only makes you devote more of your life to that event than necessary—and at a critical cost.

Worrying activates the body’s stress response, increasing blood pressure, cortisol levels, and the amount of adrenaline pumping through our veins. Combined, these contribute to heart disease, weight gain, insomnia, and some truly unpleasant neurological changes; the effects of these outcomes range from death to improving your likelihood of making poor decisions in the future.

A thoughtful eye

How do we avoid this? Relax a little. Be kind to yourself. Remind yourself that what you ‘should’ do is no more important than what you ‘want’ to do. Treat yourself when you can afford the expense, calories, and lost time. Remember that plans can change and mistakes are not the end of the world. Get enough sleep. Set time aside each day to enjoy the little things. Without this focus on your present needs, and your present life, it’s easy to run yourself into the ground and burn out before you even come close to the life you want to live. Go slow and steady; that’s the only way to win.

Just don’t take it too far. Forgetting the future entirely will make you forget to strive for better things. Similarly, avoiding thoughts of tomorrow can be a way to avoid facing the inevitable change of life. You, your life, your capacities, and your possessions will not remain constant from birth to death. Bodies and minds grow old, people move on, and physical objects break and deteriorate. We must learn to minimise these damages and maximise our gains despite these potentially frustrating facts of life.

Giving a thoughtful eye to the future, figuring out a good plan of action, and enacting that plan in our present is the way through. Identify what you need to do and act instead of letting fear develop.

Excerpted with permission from How To Suffer Well by Peter Hollins published recently by Penguin. The writer has studied psychology and peak human performance for over a dozen years and is a bestselling author.

How can we stay in the present?

How can we develop our ability to remain conscious of our current environment and actions? Better yet, how can we pull ourselves back to the present when we get stuck lingering on our futures and pasts?

1. Focus on the present moment. Notice the interactions and processes occurring around you. Quietly observe actions as they unfold and notice your place in the times and locations you experience. Consider any thoughts that arise, but don’t linger on them. The point of this exercise is to really notice the world outside of you and how you can shape and change it with your body and mind. This is great to do while baking or performing housework and can transform the experience from an unpleasant task you can’t wait to finish into a fascinating exploration of the world we occupy.

2. Pay attention to your senses while going about your day. When you smell something, consider what you can hear or see at the same time. Notice the feeling of fabric on your skin and the breeze through your hair as you move. Feel sunshine, smell the grass and the flowers you pass, and really notice the complex and nuanced flavours of your food. When we focus on our senses, instead of dismissing the information they offer us, a wealth of riches can be discovered in the most mundane events. It also helps us stay connected to our environment, which keeps us in the moment.

3. Pay attention to your body. Consider and correct your posture. Scan your body to find areas of tension, then tighten and relax those muscles to relieve stress. Pay attention when you feel hungry or thirsty rather than immediately grabbing some food or drink. Notice whether what you really feel is hunger, boredom, or a need for emotional fulfilment; act accordingly. When we genuinely notice what we feel physically, we become more grounded and less prone to distraction.

4. Learn to meditate and make it a regular practice. The easiest way to start out is through a simple breathing exercise. Breathe in, noticing the physical sensations of your lungs filling with air. Then breathe out while noticing all of the details of that sensation. The important thing here, as in a lot of meditative practices, is to focus on one thing for an extended period of time. Anything can be a focus of simple, singular contemplation like this, but focusing on breathing is one of the easier ways to start. However, if you decide to meditate, know that you will be distracted. Thoughts will arise in your mind. When they do notice them for what they are and return to the object you’re focusing on. Over time, it will become easier to let go of thoughts and focus on a chosen object. Once you gain that discipline, it’s a lot easier to dismiss anxious or distracting thoughts in your day-to-day life.

5. Allow yourself unspeakable, childlike joy. Children explore the world in a simple, naïve, and hopeful manner. They play with toys, make up games, and form attachments with gusto. Reviving some of your childlike fervour by allowing yourself to experience that same joy as an adult can amp up your ability to live without fear, and that’s a great way to stay in the present moment.

6. Write down things you’re happy about or grateful for every day. If you make this a consistent practice, you’ll find more and more reasons to be glad every day. Often, we take for granted the good things in life, leaving us with painful and unfortunate events to focus on. Forming a habit of noticing the good trains us out of that mindset and makes us appreciate all the good stuff that happens every day. Even better, writing down the details gives us an easy reference sheet to remind us of all the good things that have happened and will happen to us again in the future. It’s a lot harder to be carried away by negative thoughts when you have proof of all the good in your life!

7. When you’re getting stuff done, monotask, don’t multitask. Monotasking has been shown to increase focus, happiness, and the quality of our work while reducing stress. All of these help our days go smoothly and our goals get accomplished; that makes it easier to appreciate our current lives.

8. Take small steps toward the life you want. Often, it can feel like our endgame is a million miles away and we’ll never reach it. That can make us discouraged, encouraging us to give up. But almost every goal affords us something that can be done to get closer to it, even if it’s as small as reading an article or setting up a savings account. Small steps, when put together, allow for a lot of progress. If you work toward your goals for twenty or thirty minutes every day, you’ll be who you want to be, doing exactly what you want to do, in no time at all.

9. Release tension, and set intention. This tip comes from the book High-Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard. To do it, stop between projects or events in your life to take two to three minutes to focus on your breathing, releasing all the tension from your body. Our prior steps about meditating and focusing on your body should help. After you do this, think about how you want to move forward right now. When you do this, you’ll find that the tasks you perform in a day transform from an endless series of events to complete into isolated tasks that are approached with a singular focus. This will increase your performance by keeping your current task at the forefront of your mind.

When you notice your thoughts drifting unconsciously to the past or future—and you will; we all do—take that drifting as a cue that you need to perform one or more of the focusing tasks listed above. You don’t have to give in to the cycle; the distracted thoughts themselves can be your cue to dive right back into the present moment.

Remember, our whole lives exist in the now, and our actions in those successive moments are what we should be thinking about most of the time. That way we notice

all the calm, peaceful, joyful things we encounter, and we remember to stay dutifully on the path that will lead us to our goals. When we think of the past, it should be to learn a lesson, resolve emotions, or relive a pleasant experience.

In the end, we can only control the present moment. The past is gone, the future is uncertain, but the life we’re living right here, right now? That’s real. We control that. Let’s make it good.