Such a wonderful concept and when it came right down to it almost impossible. My mind was always in the past or the future.
I would see my daughter and focus on a memory, such as her being so demanding. Or I would fantasize about the future, about who and how and what she was going to be.
I noticed I didn’t want to be in the present moment with myself either. I’d been trained, as most of us are, to always try to be and get more – more money, more things, more success- always reaching out into the future.
And if I wasn’t where I thought I should be, then I was reaching back into the past telling myself I was lazy, not good enough, or rejectable.
I was having a hard time offering kindness to myself in the the present moment. And it was almost impossible to sit down in the present moment in my relationship with my daughter without coming to some conclusion about what that moment meant or where we should be in the future.
I’d like to tell you a story.
I don’t know about you, but I hate to be late. When my daughter was younger, we’d wake up in the morning to get ready for school and I would be throwing her a rope and pulling her the whole way: Get up! You’ve got to hurry! We’ve got to get to school! I was already in the future, already at school because I didn’t want to be late.
Then she would go backwards! The more I pulled the more she would pull back. It was like a crazy zone in our house.
One day, when she was still in bed,rolling around and not getting up, I thought: What if I meet her where she is? Which meant, first of all,I had to be willing to be late – really hard for me! But I thought: Ok, we’re late. It’s not a disaster.
I got into bed and started surrounding her with love and snuggles.. We were laughing, hanging out in bed and then a bizarre thing happened – the next thing I knew we were at school!
I had entered the present moment and it was like falling into some kind of wormhole!
A lightbulb went off and I realized: Anytime I am charging ahead my daughter will pull behind, or if I am behind in the past, my daughter will pull ahead. I got clarity about polarities, that I could sit more in the balance of the two being right where I was, with my daughter being right where she was.
This week, when you notice you are worrying or have some anxiety, put your hand on your heart. Instead of judging what is happening from the past or trying to reach some future place, just say, I am going to offer kindness to where I am in this moment, and see what happens.
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