How to live in the present

The answer is.... I have no idea.

My entire life has been lived in the past or future. When I recently moved to a different house, I decided to go with more modern decor. I have been collecting way too many old things since my folks passed away, I think, trying to recapture that time period in my life that was fabulous and carefree. One day, I started looking around at all of these things, some from the early 1900's and thought, "I wasn't even ALIVE then!" I remembered what I had read about Feng Shui, and realized I needed to decorate and LIVE in the present. I needed to stop looking at old things and wanting to go back in time.

Last year I read these stories about decorating, and there was this one woman who was very lonely, and the Feng Shui guy said all of her artwork around the house was of lonely people. So she replaced them all with happy couples, and guess what? She found a husband. There were all kinds of stories like that but I can't remember them. Anyway, I digress.

MOST of my life has been lived for the future. Here I am, middle-aged, still living for the future. Right now, mostly worrying about the future, but I find it hard to live in the present. I'm a planner. I want a plan and I want to execute it. I like projects. I like to finish them, and move on to the next one. I'm trying to channel all of this mental and physical energy into a job, rather than houses and decorating or whatever.

I need to just enjoy the now. Just stop and "smell the roses." Gosh, that's hard for me to do. I just feel like if I stop, then I'll get atrophy, in a mental sort of way. Granted I'm also a bit ADD, so they seem to go together. I need to enjoy the weather TODAY and not keep watching tomorrow's forecast.

I read a book once that said since "present" also means gift, living in the present is a gift to yourself.

So, THERE'S a way to start out the new year. Hope in 2011 you can live in the present.

Hope I can too...