Truth 4: Being present takes practice. As children, we felt we had command of our day, at least until bedtime. Summers stretched into hide-aways, street games, lightening bug hunts, marshmallows over campfires, and inner tubes in pools. What would happen if we could capture, practice, and re-frame present so that at end of a day, a week, or year, we felt like we have lived life -- with it’s joys and sorrows -- in a manner of our choosing? Plenty.

How to Get Started

Here are two examples of what you can do to be here now:

1. Create a sacred space for regrouping. This could be your car, your bathroom, your backyard. When you enter this space, ban anything that distracts your attention from simply breathing and noticing your surroundings.

2. Try and discover something you have never seen or heard before. There will always be something. This is like any exercise. The regular practice will allow you to stop at any given moment and be in control, centered, and observant. Keep a journal, and joy a few words of some event, person, experience or observation that struck you as meaningful. This is part of being in now.

Being present means seeing with new eyes and looking beyond obvious to that metaphorical magic which takes an event in time and earmarks it as a memory. By collecting these moments and capturing them in word or picture, at end of a year, you’ll be amazed at how much you have won by being present. You have won back a portion of your life.

© 2001 by Eileen McDargh. All rights reserved. Reprints must include byline, contact information and copyright.

(R)ead only what matters. And what matters concerns your business, your future, and your soul.

(O)perate early. This can mean everything from getting up early to doing things early. If you pack for a trip, don’t wait until last minute. Prepare, in advance, your suitcase, your briefcase. The only things that need to be added are last minute items. Create artificial deadlines that are in advance of true deadline. You’ll always feel more in control.

(L)ighten up. Perfect isn’t always perfect. Look for and relish unexpected. There is serendipity when we allow ourselves to surrender to events and times over which we have no control. The weather-hold which keeps my plane grounded allows me to complete a piece of writing I could not have finished. The shop, which closes just as soon as I approach door, lets me walk down street and find other stores that I had never noticed before.

Getting in control is ultimately about getting clear on our work habits, our priorities, and our values.

© 2000 by Eileen McDargh. All rights reserved. Reprints must include byline, contact information and copyright.