Be Here Now And Reap the Benefits
Being present in the moment positively empowers you.
Memory is a strange thing. It tends to be colored, biased, and prejudiced by all sorts of factors, both internal and external. The way you remember any given thing is imperfect.
How you remember anything is unique and individual to you. This is in addition to how the people, places, and things of your life were situated. My memory of the space shuttle Challenger explosion as a middle-schooler in the ‘burbs of Minneapolis is very different from the memory of someone who was in Mission Control that day. How it impacted us might have similarities, but the rest is vastly different.
When you remember the past, what you remember is colored by who, what, where, how, and why you were, once upon a time. And it doesn’t matter if this is a year ago or 20 years ago, it’s still the truth. Because this is true, any attempt to go back, undo, or redo past events doesn’t work.
The past has come and gone. End of story. You can’t undo it, redo it, or do it over. Sorry, MAGA, but your entire “reason” for being can’t work. But I digress. Even when you zoom in on your personal life, you can’t change your past.
On the other end of this is the future. Changing the past nearly always connects to impacting the future. Guess how much control you have over the future? Almost none.
The future is unwritten and often unpredictable. This truth terrifies lots of people. So they cling to what was, hoping to make what might be more like it (even when what they think was never was), and create an endless loop of dissatisfaction, distress, unease, uncertainty, and fear.
There is another way, however.
Be here now
What does that even mean? To be here, now, is to be actively, consciously, aware. That’s mindfulness. Yes, that’s also being “woke”, but I know I’d rather be awake and aware and making choices and decisions from there than being asleep and ignorant and allowing someone else to dictate my life.
How do you become actively, consciously aware? By recognizing both what your 6 senses are telling you, here and now, and what your inner mindset/headspace/psyche self is perceiving.
Engaging your senses is easy. You simply need to be mindful, in this moment, of taste, touch, smell, sound, sight, and empathy (yes, I’m focusing the 6th sense on empathy). Engaging your inner mindset/headspace/psyche is done by asking questions you can only answer in the present, here and now. These include,
- What am I thinking?
- What am I feeling?
- How am I feeling?
- What am I intending?
- Is my approach positive or negative?
- What am I doing?
From there, you can be here now. When you actively be here now, you gain the power to shift, alter, and even control elements of who, what, where, how, and why you are.
You can’t do anything to impact, change, or otherwise alter the past. Likewise, you can’t predict how the future will unfold. But when you’re present, here and now, you gain the ability to make choices and decisions for yourself to alter the trajectory and path of your life.
To do so, however, and reap the benefits, you must overcome the ever-present and often weaponized fear.
To reap the benefits, you must overcome the fear
Fear is everywhere you turn. Hell, the upper echelons of the current US administration have weaponized fear in some truly horrific ways (which more and more people are seeing and resisting). Beyond this, advertising, social media, many religious institutions, and news outlets use fear to align you to their way, buy their product or service, and accept mediocrity.
Society has evolved too fast for the human psyche to understand. Worse, nobody teaches us how to cope or work with change, and mental health is often deeply stigmatized while trauma is ignored or swept under the rug. Hence, fear dictates how lots of people live.
To overcome fear, you must recognize it. But that’s not enough. You must then acknowledge it. Recognition is all well and good, but not acknowledging it allows it to grow and change uncontrolled. That’s how a little fear turns into a big terror.
Most fear you and I face is either utterly intangible or all about the suffering that will come to pass. However, in the words of Paulo Coelho from The Alchemist,
“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.”
That’s not to say that what might happen won’t suck. Losing a job, having a loved one die, or the end of a relationship might be utterly horrific. But in all likelihood, the suffering you fear is far worse than the suffering you’ll experience.
Overcoming fear helps you be here now. When you’re actively consciously aware and apply mindfulness, you can make informed choices and decisions for your life. That, in turn, allows you to reap the benefits and find more potential, possibilities, and discoveries that can better your life experience and empower you.
Light up the sky
When you’re empowered, you become a beacon of light and reason in the dark and fear of the world at large. And the only way to shift the collective consciousness from fear to reason is one person at a time.
You can only start with yourself. Be here now and reap the benefits of being awake and aware, and able to apply reason to your choices and decisions. Please note: This is not a one-and-done act. It’s ongoing. That’s because change is the one and only constant in the universe and is only enduring for a limited time.
By taking what control you can of your life, when you be here now and work with the framework of your mindset/headspace/psyche self, you reap the benefits of making your own choices and decisions. This puts you in the driver’s seat for choosing and deciding who, what, where, how, and why you are, and exploring the vast potential and possibilities therein.
Easy? No. Worthwhile? Utterly. Why? Because you are the only you that is. And you’re worthy and deserving of living life to the fullest, without being overwhelmed by fear, and being a beacon to help others find ways to do the same. Be here now, reap the benefits, and see how that empowers you and possibly inspires empowerment in others.
Reaping the benefits when you be here now isn’t hard
It’s all about practicing active conscious awareness (mindfulness) of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and the positivity or negativity of your approach to direct your actions.
When you recognize and acknowledge that you can only alter and change the present, you can be here now, practice active conscious awareness, be intentionally mindful, and make choices and decisions to guide your life. Knowing that most fears are intangible or only about potential for suffering, you can overcome fear, be here now, and work with the possibilities to make your life how you desire it to be – and maybe help others do the same by your example.
This empowers you, and your empowerment can, in turn, empower others around you.
Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity — from the vast cylinder that exists between them — shifts life in a way that opens greater dialogue. From that dialogue, you can recognize, explore, and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.
Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself opens the way for a positive approach and attitude via your actions. This can lead to realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.
The better aware you are of yourself, here and now, the better you can choose and decide what, how, and why your life experiences will be. When you empower yourself, it can spread to those around you and empower them as well. That is an amazing conduit to help reason to overcome fear in the collective consciousness.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the six-hundred-twenty-fifth (625) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, reblog, and spread the positivity.
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