The Power of Living In the Now Series
Why Living in the Moment is Difficult
Even though there are many benefits of living in the moment, it can often be difficult to do.
All our lives we’ve been encouraged to think about the future and remember the past. Advertising, notifications, messages, reminders, alerts are all geared to what’s coming up or what happened previously. We tend to get caught up in what’s going on around us that we don’t pay attention to what’s happening in the moment.
Why is this a problem? The problem comes from the stress, strain, wear, and tear of living on a day-to-day basis causing us emotional and physical problems.
Here are other factors that contribute to living in the now:
When you’re in the flow, fully engrossed in what you’re doing and end up getting pulled away from it by a notification or message on your phone. This pulls you away from the
present and being aware. This is one reason living in the moment is difficult.
The basic nature of our mind is to dwell on our pass and worry about our future. We face a lot of uncertainty that causes anxiety when we live in the moment. When you are fully into the moment you aren’t thinking about what will happen in the next, which can cause some stress about what is going to happen.
We have a hard time keeping focused on the moment. Our minds naturally wander. We have an innate ability to always be thinking, wandering, asking, pondering, and just having random thoughts.
We don’t worry about the present moment because it’s already decided. That means our mind naturally goes to the past or to predicting the future. We use our past as the basis for what the future will be. This tendency can get out of control and we begin to see dangers that are not actually there.
There is comfort in the possibility of what’s to come, something that lies beyond today – hope. We have hope that tomorrow will be better than this moment, this now. So, we are constantly thinking of what is next.
These thoughts, assumptions and fears keep us from living in the present moment. It can be hard fighting these issues, but we are can change the tendencies of our brains. Practicing mindfulness helps us get stronger at it and makes it possible to overcome the harmful or destructive choices and make better ones.