I’ve decided to set myself a challenge. I’m going to spend the next week trying to be as present as possible in my life instead of being stuck in between overthinking past events and feeling anxious about possible future scenarios.

There are several things that have inspired me to challenge myself in this way. The first, is that I gave birth to my daughter in December. They say that your children are here to teach you things, and even at three months old, my little girl is forcing me to look at the world in a different way. As a parent to such a small human, I have to relinquish control and am constantly being forced to live in the moment, as uncomfortable as that makes me. But before I had my daughter, I didn’t realise how little time I spent living in the now, and just how frustrated I would feel not being able to stick to my to-do list.

The extent to which I felt uncomfortable being out of control of what my day looked like when we had our daughter has forced me to do some hard self-reflection and thinking about my issues with day-to-day control in my life, and my inability to appreciate each moment. I think some of it stems from anxiety I experienced at work in the past, which encouraged me to control the things in my life that I could, but I also think it goes deeper than that. I think that we’re socially conditioned to be achieving and delivering as part of the capitalist model – the whole time equals money scenario. This way of thinking keeps us eternally stuck in either reflecting on our achievements/deliverables from the past or worrying about whether we’re going to be able to achieve/deliver in the future. Therefore, ticking things off the to-do list and being productive is engrained in our social psyche and part of why we find it so hard to ever live in the now. In order to be as productive as possible, we have to take control of our time because productivity is all about predictability. As a result, emotional and nurturing roles that are unpredictable and difficult to assess the immediate outcome from are not seen as important within our social and economic framework.

 So, when I was nursing my new born daughter sitting on our bed for hours each day, literally grabbing two minutes here and there just to go to the toilet, I felt that I was achieving nothing. I didn’t value the huge thing that I was doing right before me. I also felt frustrated that I couldn’t schedule or time anything. Instead of cherishing and embracing the time I was spending with her, literally giving her life, I was focused on the future and what I wasn’t able to achieve in that moment which would impact my future goals. However, none of the things on my to-do list, or my external achievements, make me who I am, and if I’m constantly striving for something, then I’m never going to appreciate what I have right now and I’m not actually living at all.

 These reflections drew me to start listening to the audio book of “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle. I’m only at chapter five, but already have so much food for thought, hence the additional inspiration to start this challenge. 

In chapter one, Tolle presents us with the simple fact that we are not our minds. He outlines the point that our minds are a tool for us to use in life, but they do not define us. However, Tolle states that most people are unable to switch off the constant inner dialogue our mind bombards us with and therefore we begin to believe that we are the inner voice. We create an identity based on this, based on our ego, rather than our true self. He also talks about the importance of focussing on the how rather than the what. For example, if our what is to write a book, we should also enjoy the how of getting there – the time spent working on the narrative and developing the characters. Our how should never be seen as a chore just to get us to where we want to be, but instead should be embraced, helping us to live in the now rather than the past or future.    

I’ve also been thinking about the conversations that we have with people, how they are structured in a way that forces us to talk about the past (previous events) or the future (what people have coming up), but never the now. We never (or rarely) ask questions like, “How are you feeling right now?”, “What’s making you happy in this moment?”. Tolle also encourages us to ask ourselves two questions that will help to bring us back into the moment, “Am I at ease at this moment?”, and, “What’s going on inside me?”.

So, for the next week, I’m going to attempt to be in the now at least once a day, and to capture the things that I see, hear, and feel in that moment and share them on my Instagram (@amyhouldey). I want to do this challenge publicly because it will encourage me to actually do it, and also, because I want to share the simple everyday things that we are all guilty of ignoring due to being too focused on achieving our next goal or task.