There has been a lot of focus on “mindfulness” recently. As technology increasingly distracts us from being “present in the moment”, its importance and value continues to elude us. The relentless need to be interconnected 24/7 through email, phone, text, Facebook, Twitter etc. distracts us more and more from being in the now.
But does it really matter all that much since business, especially, is all about driving to the future, about making the next deal or finding the next customer? Well, in my book, it’s difficult to drive into the future if we don’t take stock of where we are now.
Life is like a collection of Kodak moments. You can recall those moments once the images are placed in a photo album, or you can be present to the experience at the time the photos were taken. Here’s an example.
Greg Louganis is an American diver who has won gold medals at the Olympic Games on both the springboard and platform.
Louganis’ parents attended the world championship in 1982 where their son executed a dive of such exquisite precision that he became the first person in a major international meeting to receive a perfect score of 10 from all seven judges.
Their biggest regret? That they viewed their son’s shining moment through the tiny aperture of their video camera, and not by being present to see the amazing event with their own eyes. They were interviewed later and expressed such remorse that they had missed seeing their son perform the most incredible dive of his life. And they did miss it. Replaying a video is simply not the same thing as being there and experiencing an event in real time.
Since the future is, in truth, an unknown, then the present is what we have and being in the present can be a sublime experience.
Just recently I suffered a terrible case of the flu. Not something that one would normally call a sublime experience and yet it became exactly that for the three days I was completely incapacitated with a hacking cough, high fever and aching head.
There was absolutely nothing I could do but be in the moment. I made it known that I was out of commission for three days while I healed myself and I relinquished all need to check email, text or phone messages. I simply focused on getting better. I just focused on that one thing.
In those three days I rediscovered how love and kindness is the nature of my wife, Alexis. I found that I could be my real self – wheezy, red-nosed, disheveled and sweaty from fever – with a close friend who was staying with us. I reveled in the closeness of our dogs who snuggled on the bed beside me. I appreciated the rays of sunshine that warmed my face through the bedroom windows.
Without any distractions, I was profoundly aware of everything near me and around me and I saw my home, my family and myself in a sublimely different way.
It is a heady realization to recognize that I don’t have to wait for a crisis to bring me into the present.
Don’t let your mind tell you otherwise. It is the now that matters. Really.