Mental Health Blog, Day 9: Live Now

“Live the actual moment. Only this actual moment is life.” – Thích Nhất Hạnh

It can be easy to live in the past, as is the way with depression sometimes, or to live in the future, which is often how anxiety is manifested. By making way for the present, with all of it’s potential, we can allow life and change to take place. Living in the present is often seen as a way to relax, but it can also make us more productive by removing mental barriers. For me personally, I'm still struggling to do this, but trying is the important thing. For years my mind has been set on a vision for the future, and just capping it down to the next 24 hours is hard, but surprisingly productive.

'It is always now, appreciate the present moment, live in the present, enjoy your life, connect with the present moment.'

‘Living now’ can be a more productive way of living: Dwelling on the past or future can cause distress. Often there is a desire for change, that we wish we could change the past, or change the future by achieving this or that. However, dwelling does not achieve change, if that’s what we desire, instead it usually causes distress. We dwell more when we are 'problem-focused', and by engaging in 'solution-focused' behaviour, we can actually get things done. Rather than ruminating over the bad stuff, if we just find out how to resolve it, and get to it, we can make the changes we need. By being mentally ‘present’, we can focus on what we want to achieve at this moment and actually make a change. By starting with ‘baby steps’ towards what you want, we can see actual change, and be happy that we’ve made some progress, even if it’s small.

“Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already.”

Traditionally however, mindfulness and living presently is associated with non-attachment, being free of desires, not needing things to change, but accepting how they are now. The fact is that oftentimes, happiness is seen as something that the future will bring, and we are always chasing it. ‘I’ll be happy when I get this, or achieve this next thing…. Then I’ll be happy’.

‘Be happy for this moment, as this moment is your life’

Modern life is often all about desiring, wanting, and achieving change and improvement, but Mindfulness and meditation can be tools for becoming more comfortable with being as you are now, not who you’d like to be later, and for feeling a bit more at peace with the current day. Even if mindfulness is just practiced for some part of the day, it can break the cycle somewhat. To be 100% honest, today's entry feels like a bit of a lie for me. I am struggling to do this myself but that's the thing about this blog, it's not all stuff I successfully do all the time, it's simply the stuff I've realised I need to do, and I'm working through it :P That's why I'm not trying to be a self-help author, or motivational speaker, because I'm not saying I've done all these things = success. Instead I'm in the process of trying to do all these things myself, and often struggling with them, but I feel good that they are the way forward.

Norway Quest Travel Blog, Day 9:

No photos today as it’s the day before the hike, so we just chilled out. Tried to check in to our Trolltunga hotel in Tyssedal but were told we were too early to check in so we ate some cold beans from the tin, outside in the pouring rain, and I had really bad back ache... It was a really crap day for me! Amy remained positive though. During grief, it was very easy to quickly feel awful whenever a 'bad day' occurs, which was regularly. Sometimes real life just seems plain awful, but it isn’t, it’s a bad time, but not a bad life. With the good company of friends it makes things a lot lighter. It's amazing how bad life can get in an instant. It's also amazing how good life can get after that, but it's very gradual. It's a series of ups and downs, like the circle of life :P Me and Amy had each other so it was just something to laugh about, when we checked in we listened to Alex Boyé and Lion King music to uplift our spirits ready for Trolltunga tomorrow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D68cUzqcTrg&fbclid=IwAR3cHs2AlN4xUYzSo13skVQcOFASzIg6U58l97dgG8lPcZO8qomAfvSXfJU