Choose...

to be present. Direct attention fully to your tasks, eating, working, cooking, breathing. Absorb your surroundings, see what is around you. Pay attention to the smell of the grass, food cooking, the notice how the keys on your keyboard feel on your fingertips. When with company, give your attention fully to them, hear their words completely before formulating thoughts around what they are saying.

Think of yourself as being the task. If you are running, be running instead of doing running. What would running be, if your mind was right here moment to moment without thinking of the rest of the day? If you are listening, be listening, calm the mind, open your heart as well as your ears. Be here with what or whom you are listening to. If you are working, be working, be focused. Allow work to be fully present, so you can completely release it when work time is over. If you are relaxing, be relaxation, be soft. Notice your breath as it slows and lengthens, nourishing your mind and body as it calms your nervous system creating more relaxation. Let go of yourself doing the task, and be it, which will keep you present and calm.

We often live in the past and the future. We go on autopilot and often wonder how we got from point A to point B, with no recollection of how we got there. How many moments of our lives have been lost to our autopilot, with our thoughts circling in our minds of things that upset us in the past, to do mental lists for later, or stewing over the same things over and over again. When we choose to be right here, right now, we fully experience our life, and those around us. We hear our children tell us about their lives, we smell the fresh cut grass, we let go of resistance because we are present before we judge that something is hard, or that we think something more important requires our attention. More often than not, we choose what we put our attention on without thinking, so how are we to really know what is more important? Not hearing a child express their love because the mind is in the past thinking about a stressful day which is already gone, is an important moment lost and wasted. Choose to be present, which will enable you to live more fully each and every moment.