“Stay in touch with present? I’m thinking…I’m already IN present!”

Well, certainly we all are in present, since there is nowhere else to be, but that doesn’t mean our thoughts are in present. And therein lay challenges to our own personal happiness.

We as humans are rarest of all species in that not only can we think, but we can think about our thinking.

And you can use this process of being aware of your self-thoughts to help you achieve contentment. It’s important for you to challenge what you see and believe. This insures that your view of world matches reality. So often what we believe is truth, is nothing more than glimpses of past, present, and future.

We often take only bad from past, quickly breeze through present, and falsely make up future. The result is frequently guilt about your imperfect past, anxiety about a future that doesn’t exist, and impatience with Now.

But it is Now which can help us to live our lives today, fully alive, happy and content.

To prove value of present to yourself, try this:

Take a moment and sit in a comfortable place and observe. •What do you see? Describe images around you. •What sounds are there? How many can you hear? •Can you smell different smells? (Some are pleasant, some maybe not!) •Tell yourself how surfaces around you feel, chair, rug under your feet, tightness or looseness of your clothing. •And finally, what tastes are apparent in your mouth?

It’s quite true that anger is created from within. No matter how much you say—“She made me mad!” “It makes me so mad when…”—the anger comes from YOU, not it or she.

Our thoughts about “it” or “she” is actually where anger comes from. And by changing our thinking we can change way we feel (for example, instead of angry or enraged, annoyed or irritated..)

Doesn’t it make sense, then, if anger is created from within that we have power from within to keep from getting angry? The answer is a definitive YES.

By adjusting how you think about a situation, to listen your self-talk, is how you keep yourself from getting mad—period.

How? By listening for demands. What are demands? They’re easy to spot. They tend to express themselves in words such as SHOULD, ought, must, have-to, need.

Depending upon context and situation, when these words or thoughts are used they will create anger.

Whether you use them on someone or someone is using them on you, a sense of anger, rage or mad evolves from these words/thoughts of demand when things don’t go your way.

There are numerous examples of how this is true, but here is a simple one that most everyone can relate to: