How Do You Live in the Moment?

By , SparkPeople Blogger
I'm a planner. I like making lists, schedules and deciding things ahead of time. Most of the time, that works well for me. I'm able to get a lot of things done and I'm pretty organized. But sometimes, I wish I could just "go with the flow" a little more and live in the moment. There are times when I know I'm not enjoying what I'm doing right now because I'm thinking about what I need to do later.

I think that can happen a lot when you're trying to lose weight. It's easy to focus on the next 10 pounds or how long it's going to take to get to your goal weight. But when you pay too much attention to the future, sometimes you miss out on enjoying what's happening now. It's easy to miss that you've got a little more energy or you feel a little better today than you did last week, especially if the scale doesn't show that one pound loss you were hoping for. It's important to appreciate all of the small victories along the way, because I think that makes reaching your goal even that much sweeter.

Living for right now is a lesson I can learn from my kids. For the most part, they don’t care what's going on next week or next month. They enjoy playing and having fun now, and will take everything else as it comes. I know that's a little bit easier for a 4 and 2-year old than it is for an adult with lots of grown-up responsibilities. But it's still something I could do a better job of incorporating into my own life, especially as I see how fast time goes and how quickly they are growing up. I'm always hounding my husband to come home from work earlier so that we can have family dinners and spend more time together. I tell him that sometimes, work can wait. But our kids are only going to be little for so long, and too quickly the day will come when they would rather have dinner with their friends than with us.

When my daughter says "Mama, will you read to me?", even if I have a million other things I should be doing, I try to stop and spend that time with her. It's not always easy, because the "do-er" in me feels accomplishment when I get a lot of things done. But sometimes, there are other things that are more important. Although I think my organizational and time management skills are good things to have (and they have allowed me to keep working while balancing my family), sometimes I need to learn to take a deep breath and appreciate all of the good things happening in my life right now.

What do you think? Do you live in the moment? If so, any tips for those of us who struggle with it?