Living in the Now

As life gets more complicated, you need to be able to move beyond the mistakes of past events, prevent worry and anxiety from holding you back, and spend more time in the present working on your future.

You definitely can’t change the past. You can’t always predict the future. That leaves you with now. Right now. This moment. The only moment where you actually have any power to do anything at all.

This isn’t just philosophy. This is a practical reality. The past is done, fixed, and immutable. No amount of thinking about it, regretting it, or reliving it will change a single thing that happened. The future hasn’t arrived yet. It’s a projection, a prediction, a possibility. You can’t act in the future. You can only act now.

Yet most people don’t live in the now; instead, they live everywhere except the now. They live in the past, replaying old memories, dwelling on regrets, stuck in what was. Or they live in the future, worrying about what might happen, dreaming about what could be, paralysed by uncertainty. Meanwhile, the only moment they can actually do anything about, this moment, passes them by.

Watch children play, really watch them: they’re completely absorbed in the moment. They’re not thinking about yesterday’s disappointment or tomorrow’s schedule. They’re here, fully present, totally engaged. Then we grow up and lose this ability. We learn to worry. We learn to regret. We learn to live anywhere except where we actually are.

A large study that sampled people at random moments through the day, using a phone app to ask what they were doing and where their mind was, found that people were less happy whenever their minds were wandering than when they were focused on what they were actually doing — regardless of what that activity was, including activities people said they disliked (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010). The mind-wandering came first and the drop in mood followed, not the other way round. Peace of mind, in other words, doesn’t depend much on what you’re doing. It depends on whether you’re actually there for it.

The Dwellers, the Worriers and the Dreamers

Broadly speaking, there are three ways people avoid the present. Each of them suffers for it in a different way.

The Dwellers live in the past. Some people are stuck there, whose present moment is just a collection of old memories. They spend their days reliving past events, typically negative ones, asking why this happened to them. Their now is filled with loss, regret, and pain from their past. They can’t move on. They can’t let go. They sit there playing back old memories that carry strong emotions, over and over, like a broken record.

If you spend your time ruminating over past events — the ‘could have done this’ and ‘should have done that’ — it gives you very little time to focus on the present to make your situation better now. Imagine trying to drive a car on a busy road only by looking in the rear-view mirror. There’s no doubt you’re going to crash. That’s what dwelling in the past does to your life. It’s worth saying that not all reflection on the past is unhelpful here: going back over what happened to work out, concretely, what you’d do differently is useful and constructive. It’s the abstract, repetitive ‘why me’ version — asking what it says about you rather than what to do next — that tends to keep people stuck.

I think of a patient, a composite of several people I’ve seen with this pattern, who came to see me five years after her divorce. Five years on, she spent every consultation talking about what her ex-husband had done, how he’d wronged her, how unfair it all was. She was right — he had wronged her, and it was unfair. But five years later, she was still living in that moment. Her ex-husband had moved on, remarried, and built a new life, but she was still trapped in the past, reliving the betrayal every single day.

Our discussions were not about pretending the past didn’t happen. It was about recognising that she couldn’t change it by constantly thinking about it. The only thing she could change was what she did now. Once she understood that, once she started focusing on building a life in the present rather than dwelling on the past, things shifted. Not overnight, but gradually, she was able to find some peace of mind in the present.

The Worriers live in the future. These are the natural worriers, the people prone to anxiety. They spend their time worrying about what could go wrong. They make up scenarios of tragedies, possible failures, and bad things that could happen, constantly catastrophising and always expecting the worst.

These people look beyond the present into a future that’s far too far away for them to influence. With all the catastrophising they do, their imagined future isn’t a nice place — it’s a place of pain. Just as memories carry emotion from the past, thoughts of the future do too, even if these bad events haven’t happened; you can still get yourself to feel as if they had.

This is why really anxious people often fail to do what they need to do. They’ve already convinced themselves of the worst that could happen, of all the things that could ever go wrong. They fail to take opportunities because of the fear of failure. Research shows that chronic worry is strongly associated with avoidance behaviour and reduced quality of life (Borkovec et al., 2004). You can’t build a life while you’re busy worrying about everything that might go wrong.

I see this constantly. Someone comes in, wants to change something in their life, knows exactly what they want to do, and has a clear plan. But they don’t do it. Why? Because they’re stuck in the future, worrying about what might go wrong. What if the new job doesn’t work out? What if they can’t pay the mortgage? What if people think they’re stupid for taking a risk? All these future worries prevent them from taking action now.

The Dreamers live in fantasy. These are the people who spend their time dreaming about the future. They make the future so vivid and compelling that they forget it’s just a dream, so they fail to take action to get there. Their goals become way-off dreams that drift further away. Dreaming about a compelling future is great, but without planting the seeds in the present to make it happen, all these dreams will ever be is dreams.

A line widely attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson puts it well: don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. That’s the key. You can’t reap the harvest now. The harvest is in the future. But you can plant seeds now. Every action you take in the present is a seed. Some will grow, some won’t, but nothing grows if you never plant anything.

Think about a marathon runner. The training you did in the past affects you now. Every step in the present takes you nearer the finish. If you haven’t trained in the past, every step in the present is more difficult, even painful at times, and the finish is harder to reach. But you can’t reach the finish unless, through will and effort, you focus on taking steps now in the present, however hard they are, to take you to the finish line.

Steve Jobs said something brilliant about this in his Stanford commencement address: ‘You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.’ You make the dots now. You connect them later. But if you’re too busy living in the past or worrying about the future, you never make any dots to connect. You’re just drifting, waiting, hoping things will somehow work out without you having to do anything about it now.

Healthier Ways Back to Now

People go to great lengths to get back to the present moment when they’re struggling, and not all of those ways are healthy. Some dull the past with alcohol. Some rely on drugs to make the present seem more vivid. Others prefer a cigarette, or reach for food when they’re not hungry, to interrupt the worry for just a few seconds.

Research on emotional cascades shows that a wide range of behaviours — from substance use to overeating to self-harm — share a common function. They interrupt an unbearable internal state and force attention back to the present (Selby et al., 2008). People reaching for them aren’t usually trying to hurt themselves for its own sake; they’re trying to escape distress they don’t yet have a better tool for managing, and it helps explain why willpower alone rarely fixes these patterns — something else has to take over the job the behaviour was doing. If self-harm is one of the ways you manage distress, please know that it’s common, that it’s treatable, and that your GP is a reasonable and non-judgemental place to start; you don’t have to manage it alone or explain it perfectly to ask for help.

There are healthier ways to get back to the present: activities that focus your attention in a positive way. For some, it’s reading a book, listening to music, walking in the countryside, playing an instrument, exercising, having a hobby, or just about any healthy pastime. These activities work because they demand your full attention. You can’t worry about tomorrow while you’re fully engaged in playing piano. You can’t dwell on the past while you’re focused on the trail in front of you.

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy has good evidence for helping with depression and anxiety and for maintaining mental health (Segal et al., 2002), and the underlying skill it teaches — noticing where your attention is and bringing it back — is available to anyone, not only in a formal programme.

I’ve meditated for around twenty minutes almost every day for years now. I have a busy job, demanding patients, and constant pressure. What I’ve found since starting to meditate is that my stress levels have dropped, my energy levels have increased, and I can focus for longer without my mind wandering off on tangents. Not because it’s mystical or magical, but because it trains you to stay in the present moment. It’s not magic. It’s just attention management.

But meditation isn’t the only way. Any activity that brings you fully into the present moment works. The key is consistent practice. You’re not going to master this overnight. Living in the now is a skill, and like any skill, it requires practice.

Research on flow states shows that people perform at their best and report the highest levels of satisfaction when they’re fully immersed in the present moment (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Athletes call it being ‘in the zone’. Artists call it inspiration. Psychologists call it flow. Whatever you call it, it’s the same thing: complete presence in the current moment.

You’ve experienced this yourself. Think about a time when you were so absorbed in what you were doing that hours passed like minutes. You weren’t thinking about the past. You weren’t worrying about the future. You were completely here, completely now. That’s what living in the present feels like. That’s what you’re aiming for — not constantly, but more often.

If you’re a Dweller, stuck in the past, you need to recognise that thinking about the past doesn’t change it. Learning to see past events differently and letting go of the emotional weight they carry can be helped by therapy, but not everyone needs it — sometimes just acknowledging you’re stuck is the first step to getting unstuck.

If you’re a Worrier, lost in future anxieties, start simple. When you notice yourself worrying about the future, bring your attention back to the present. What are you doing right now? What can you see, hear, and feel right now? If you spend more time in the present, you’ll naturally spend less time worrying about the future.

If you’re a Dreamer, lost in fantasy about the future, you need to start making those dreams come true. Start taking small positive steps towards them. Learning how to set these dreams as goals, and how to break them down into actions you can take now, is the bridge between dreaming and achieving.

For all three types, the solution is the same. Get back to now. Take action in the present. Do something, anything, that moves you forward. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Now.

Living in the present doesn’t mean being reckless or impulsive. It doesn’t mean ignoring consequences or failing to plan. It means being fully engaged with what you’re doing right now, making decisions based on your current reality rather than your past regrets or future anxieties.

You can’t go back and change your past. You can’t jump forward and see your future. The only time you can actually influence is the present.

By embracing the now and taking action in the present, you live more proactively. You move towards your goals instead of just thinking about them. Every journey starts with the first step, and that step can only be taken now. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Now.

So here’s your challenge. Don’t live in your past memories. Don’t live in your dreams of the future. Be proactive today. Right now. Take one step, however small, towards where you want to be. Plant one seed. Make one dot that future-you can connect to other dots.

Because here’s the truth. The past is gone. The future hasn’t arrived. Now is all you have. Now is where you live. Now is where you act. Now is where your life actually happens. Stop living everywhere except where you are. Get back to now. Stay here. This is where everything changes.

Further reading

1. Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science, 330(6006), 932.
2. Brown, K. W., & Ryan, R. M. (2003). The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(4), 822–848.
3. Selby, E. A., Anestis, M. D., & Joiner, T. E. (2008). Understanding the relationship between emotional and behavioral dysregulation: Emotional cascades. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 46(5), 593–611.
4. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper & Row.
5. Segal, Z. V., Williams, J. M. G., & Teasdale, J. D. (2002). Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression: A New Approach to Preventing Relapse. Guilford Press.