Living in the present moment
by sunil sharma
If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.
Lao Tzu
As a young boy growing up in India, I was blessed to experience the simplicity and the divine beauty of life.
Growing up in a home where my grandmother used to recite one chapter of the Bhagavad Gita daily, I was taught about the meaning of life .
At an early childhood, I became aware that the true happiness of life lies in simple things and within us.
Over the years, I began to read more and more books on how to create a healthy and meaningful life.
I started to attend seminars, workshops, and eventually my first Yoga Teacher Training. I realized through this ongoing journey of
self awareness that our very foundation of health and happiness is a result of our choices towards how we live each day. Whether we exercise or not,
and what we decide to eat plays a big part in how we feel and how we treat others. During these years, I explored different workout
styles including ballet, jazz, pilates, latin dance, and Yoga. Yoga became more than just physical workout. It taught me how
to be grateful, how to be mindful in my thoughts and actions, and how to live in the present moment.
Being in the present moment, we have the opportunity to see beyond what our fears and insecurities tell us and open us to a
nearly limitless array of new choices. In learning to live in the present, we discover how to set aside emotional baggage
from the past, and worries about the future, in order to appreciate the opportunities we have available to us, right here
and right now. They can enable us to:
1. Stay sharp and focused at work or school.
2. Cease to pointlessly wrestle with circumstances beyond our control.
3. Quit worrying and start living.
4. Do work we enjoy and enjoy our work.
5. Improve communications with others.
6. Experience the joy that comes from living fully.
7. Improve our relationships.
8. Discover our dreams and make them real.
When we are living in the present moment, we are using our bodies for the purpose for which they were designed - to feel the raw,
uncontaminated reality of life. By learning to be deeply aware of our physical senses, our thoughts, and our emotions,
we can greatly increase the clarity of that experience. Being present and exerting our ability to be mindful not only makes us
healthy and happy, it can also help us deal with pain more effectively, reduce our stress and decrease its impact on our health,
improve our ability to cope with negative emotions like fear and anger, and keeps us grounded and connected to ourself and everything around us.
sunil sharma
sunil sharma is a blogger, yogi, designer, engineer and humanitarian.