Living in the past and in the future, in our minds, gives way to positive and negative influences or self speak.   The negative talk in our heads may be based on how we did yesterday or the past week when we didn’t reach our goals, or maybe even when we failed miserably.  We might hear echoing in our heads, “You’re not going to lose this weight.  You are tired of this diet.  What’s the point?”

If you did well, you might hear, “Well, that may have been a good week, but remember two weeks ago?  You haven’t even gotten back on track yet.” Or, “Well, maybe you did well this week, but that doesn’t mean you will do well next week.”  That kind of negative talk can discourage the best of us.

On the other hand, positive self talk can lead to expectations which occasionally back fire.  For example, you are doing well and say to yourself, “Wow, I am doing great!  I can’t wait to see how much I lose next week!  It’s going to be great!”  Setting up these expectations can backfire because if we don’t do as well as we thought we should, we might beat ourselves up about it and our experience becomes negative.

Living in the past or the future can lead to us telling ourselves we did bad, or we did good.  Living in the present there is no good or bad, it just is.

Truly living in the now, in the present, with no past in our memory, is difficult because how would we have language if we had no past to draw upon?  Would we even think about losing weight?

For our purposes lets say we can live 80% in the present so we can still have our language and our goals yet still quiet all the talk in our heads about the past and the future.  From that space, the chatter is quiet.  While keeping our awareness in the present, we are more aware of the physical self, the spiritual self, the emotional self, and even the intellectual self.  In that quiet we are more aware of who we really are and how we are connected to the world around us.

Learning to quiet that little voice in the back of our heads can be a daunting task.  However, the more we practice quieting that voice the better we will become at it because we will be increasing our awareness of the ongoing commentary.  For me, as I have practiced this, when I hear the voice chime in, I instantly ignore and hum to myself to push the voice off the audio stage in my mind.

The main reason I wanted to bring up living in the now for weight loss is because in the now there are no failures, there are no expectations, there is no beating ourselves up.  There is only our beautiful and wonderful self and our connection to the Great Everything.  In that state I find everything to be so much gentler, easier, and beautiful. I believe we can learn to superimpose the state of being in the “now” over our daily lives.  I can manage this for short periods of time until I forget, but then when I remember, I begin again.

Peeling back the layers of emotion also helps with living in the now.  There is a stillness deep within that is majestic, powerful, and is you.

I would love to hear from anyone who tries this and how living in the now works for you.  Thanks for listening!