Our relationship with time

• What are the implications of the fact that we live in a perpetual now?
• Presence, awareness and being is a description of the fact that every experience we have ever had in our life was in the now
• We can only ever live in the now
• “I need more time!”. How can you have more time than now? It doesn’t make sense. So what can we do about time?
• Our thinking creates time. Our thinking is never completely in the now
• When people are involved in an accident why does time slow down?
• When you are at your best what is the quality of this experience? Presence!
• Problems with our mental health occur when our energy and focus drift into the past and the future. We spend time going back over things or worrying about the future. We get into a vicious cycle where our thinking just goes round in circles. We struggle to concentrate. We flick from one thing to the next to the next. We cannot live in the past or the future. This is where a busy mind takes us.  
• We cannot change the past – however much we think about it it is not going to be changed. The psychotherapy world realised some time ago that constantly going back over troubling memories just re-imprints them more strongly
• We cannot predict the future. We can make plans, but the harsh reality is that we are not in control of life and the way that it unfolds. Covid has certainly proven that point
• How our state of mind is a critical variable to understand and to be able to navigate. When we feel overwhelmed the problem starts with the mind and not with circumstances. When we slow down we get more done with less mental effort
• It is now such a common mantra – ‘Live in the now’. Why is this such a popular message?
• We intuitively know that this is the key to living a happy healthy life. It is one of the main reasons why there has been such an increase in the interest in meditation. However, meditation is not a cure all if you try to use it to control your thinking – around 10% of people find their anxiety and depression gets worse
• Meditation is about being aware. The essence of meditation is simply to be aware of being. And as we are always aware of simply being, meditation ultimately is not something we do. It is what we are. Not about trying to control the mind and our thinking