Accepting the Now
Before we can effectively dream about the future, we need to get unstuck from the present.
When life is hard, it’s tempting to focus on the future, either as an escape or in the hope of making something new happen. Whatever is happening NOW in our lives may involve things that we don’t have the ability to change or affect and that’s a hard place to be. But that future focus may keep us from effectively acting now and set us up for disappointment. If we can first learn to be with what’s happening in our present, we gain an ability to be at peace with it. If we can accept the way things are, it doesn’t mean that they’ll be that way forever just because we accepted them. They are what they are. But, hopefully, that opens things up for us to see something possible for the future.
I’m a licensed mental health counselor who enjoys sharing mindful meditations and information about mindfulness. Below is a transcript of a meditation I led on this topic, and at the end of the article, you’ll find a link to the meditation video. In this guided meditation, we work on accepting the present, just the way it is and just the way it isn’t BEFORE we move into contemplating the future. And when we do focus on the future, we’re not treating it like a vending machine and wishing for specific outcomes. Give it a try and see what happens.