Walking to be Present – Being Here and Now

How much of our lives do we spend in the future or the past?

I’m someone who can chew on regrets for days. If I make a mistake, or embarrass myself, that can become the burden of my thoughts and feelings for far too long. I know that I’m overthinking each of these situations but that doesn’t stop me living in the past. Interestingly my temperament is such that positive experiences rarely have the same impact, I let delight slip from my thought far too easily and hold onto the negative far too quickly.

Worrying about the future is another pastime that has been a prevalent companion. I have an expert level certification in imaging catastrophe, not surprisingly most of these imagined disasters have never happened. I’m living in a future that doesn’t exist and will never exist quite how I imagined it.

Neither chewing on the past nor worrying about the future are worth anything like the amount of time that I spend on them.

There are times, though, when my time travelling starts to feel like it’s getting out of control and that is when I need to make a conscious effort to return to the present.

The best way I know of returning to the here and now is to go for a walk.

I’ve written previously about starting a walk at a high pace and how it takes a while for me to drop into my rhythm. My mental presence follows a similar cycle.

When I start out on a walk my head can be in all sorts of places depending upon the events that happens just before setting out. Sometimes my thoughts race between something that’s just happened and a worry about the future, like a tiger in a cage pacing backwards and forwards. I’ll then switch inexplicably to another concern and a different worry, but still bouncing from one to another, backwards and forwards in time. After a few minutes, having visited the various corners of the cage the tiger starts to calm down and move to a place of rest. This phase doesn’t, normally, take more than a few minutes before peace starts to build.

On one of my regular walks there’s a gate just a few minutes from my house, reaching the gate is often the symbol for me to step out of the cage and into the present. There are times when the steps before the gate are a blur as all of my attention has been soaked up mentally pacing the cage.

Stepping through the gate and into the present I start to notice everything around me. This morning I’d hardly noticed how misty it was until I stepped through the wooden kissing gate. It’s in the present that I start to put things into perspective and set aside my worries and concerns. It’s in the present that I start to see hidden things. It’s in the present that delight arrives. It’s in the present that in a strange way I step out of the present and into a daydream.

You are a success when you have made friends with your past, are focused on the present, and are optimistic about your future

Zig Ziglar

Header Image: A sunset on one of my morning walks. It’s taken a little way through the gate.