Life Was Here A Moment Ago

Moments are all we have, but they go by so fast and there are so many of them we tend to think they’re not important. Here’s how important moments are: everything you ever did, everything that ever happened to you, happened in a moment.

Since moments are what we live in, they require attention. Every waking moment of your life consists of what you pay attention to. It’s possible to stay alert and give full attention to whatever’s happening in the present. You probably did it when you were little, but most of us gave that up long ago. Becoming an adult these days seems to mean shifting attention from the moment you’re in to future moments. Adults live whole days without being in the moments they are in, always thinking what’s next. Take the average adult. Once in a while her attention has returned to the moment she was in, but she’s already used up 12,466,839,155,376 of today’s moments being someplace else -- up ahead, where she can’t possibly make a difference from the moment she’s occupying.

I don’t mean we should never think of the future. Planning and goal-setting and visioning are fine and necessary uses of present moments. Once they’re in place, though, they should be put in the set-it-and-forget-it category, like your watch. When I say we’re using up precious moments I’m talking about fussing about what’s next. While our attention is on future moments rather than the ones we’re in, we sort of don’t exist, except in fantasy. We’re not where we are, so we might as well not be around at all. Keeping our minds on what’s next rather than what’s in front of us means we’re always distracted. That’s very stressful and wasteful of energy. Conversely, the moment the mind let’s go of what’s next and returns full attention to what’s now, it relaxes. It feels the joy of returning home; now it’s fully available for what it has in front of it.

A friend of mine, Spencer Johnson, wrote a book called The Precious Present. The story is about a grandfather who keeps talking about the precious present, and a boy who keeps expecting it to be a gift wrapped up like a birthday present. It turns out the precious present is the present: this moment -- and this one -- and this one. Moments are precious because they go by so fast and can so easily be squandered.

A very wise man named Paramahansa Yogananda once said,

You are the master of the moments of your life. He meant that each of us gets to decide what we spend our moments on. Most of us could probably say that many of our past moments have been misused. Misused moments make up misused lives. But other moments—those we were fully present in, fully ourselves, fully joyfully on-target—were used to the full. And lots of moments used to the full make up fully used-up lives. Ones we can look back on and say, “Good show.”

That’s why Yogananda said,

The moments are more important than the years.

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Good coaching enables the client to be effective in real time -- i.e., in the moment. Visit www.myjimballard.com

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