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Five Practices for the Present Moment

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The present moment is the only one that we truly exist in and can influence. Author and spiritual teacher Ekhart Tolle believes it’s one that we should grasp consciously with our awareness. To recognise life’s fragility and to focus on those things that are most important.

In this blog, I am introducing five practices that can anchor us in the present moment.

1. Radical Acceptance

Radical Acceptance simply means acknowledging our reality. We may not like how our life is turning out, yet once we come to a place of acceptance we are in the position to make changes and move forward. Alternatively, if our response is to struggle and reject reality, believing ‘this shouldn’t be happening to me’ and life is unfair, our emotional distress is heightened.

“Surrender to what is. Let go of what was. Have faith in what will be” Sonia Ricotti.

Accepting the Past

When hurtful memories take hold they do so like a dog chewing a bone. Ruminating thoughts and emotions can create constant mind chatter.

At times when I have replayed the past I was confronted with the ‘what ifs’ or ‘what could I have done differently’. I kept second guessing my previous decisions and saw times where I may have possibly behaved differently or changed the trajectory of my life. I blamed myself for things that went wrong. Regret and shame are cruel mistresses.

To quieten my thoughts I used mindfulness, restorative yoga, and writing. Each practice took me out of my headspace and into my body and awareness. A soothing relief for the mind and a way to process emotional distress. I learnt to observe my thoughts and emotions rather than invest in them.

We all hold scars from our past. It is unhelpful to replay the scenarios over and over when we can’t change the story. The first part of radical acceptance is acknowledging the circumstances of the past. Appreciating that each element of past events has made us the person we are right now. We have a choice then of how we continue the story.

Surrendering to the present

The current moment is one of surrender. Acknowledging this is who I am and this is my life – the second act of radical acceptance. With it comes the ability to have gratitude and appreciation for the things that are in our life and determine the next step.

It requires us to give into an act of self-love that encompasses everything about who we are. To create healthy, compassionate boundaries and to step back from people pleasing habits that have become detrimental. These habits form in childhood when we discover that saying ‘yes’ to doing things for others earnt us praise. Patterns which are hard to break and we take them into our adult relationships, parenting style and workplaces. Even if our constant giving and putting others first causes us to feel a sense of resentment or overburden.

Having faith in the future

The final act of radical acceptance is the belief we can influence our future. The ability to manifest characteristics and circumstances that bring us joy. What an amazing thing it is to say – ‘I like the person I am and who I am becoming’. Having the ability to surround ourselves with nurturing relationships, experiences, and contributions we want to make. Each one reflecting the uniqueness of our personalities.

2. Gratitude

No matter what our current circumstances, gratitude is a powerful tool for our well-being. Gratitude shifts our attention away from resentment, regret, guilt and what is missing in our life. It focuses awareness on positive things that actually do exist. Simple facts such as having enough water to drink, the laughter of children, the kindness of others and the delightful smells and tastes from a nourishing meal… (and so much more).

Studies show that cultivating a simple gratitude practice has lasting and important benefits including lifting our mood, increasing life satisfaction and building our resilience to the inevitable challenges of life.

Sometimes we want to wait until we are in a better frame of mind before using a gratitude practice in our life. Yet it’s when life is the most challenging that being thankful for all the small things that are good can help us reframe our perspective.

I personally used a 52 Weeks of Gratitude journal during one of the most difficult years of my life, 2020. I was separated from my husband and not sure of my next step. Each week I filled it out and now it’s an important reminder of my journey to reflect back on.

This trusty journal kept me grounded and eventually helped me to be in the right space to make sound decisions about my life direction.

Questions that the journal prompted: –

  • What I did to take care of myself that week.
  • What made me happy.
  • Important lessons I learnt.
  • Goals I had for the next week.
  • People I am thankful for.
  • What challenged me during the week.
  • Something kind I did for another.

And of course, a list of four things I was particularly grateful for that week.

I encourage you, especially if you are going through a challenging time in life, to try the practice of gratitude. It’s a powerful and positive step to ground you to what’s important in your life.

3. Finding Calm

If you imagine your mind as a snow globe, it can often feel agitated and busy. In this state, the snow globe particles, representing your thoughts, are being vigorously shaken and the globe is unclear and murky.

By giving attention to the state of your mind through slowing down and focusing on your breath or body sensations, all the particles can begin to settle. Gradually your mind feels calmer and clearer. You start to respond rather than react to the world around you.

It’s in that space of calmness and clarity that you’ve created the conditions to allow happiness in. It may be in the form of feeling a sense of inner peace or contentment. It mays also include a feeling of bittersweetness. A broader emotional response that contains both a sense of longing and sorrow alongside feeling joy and appreciation of life.

4. Practicing Mindfulness

‘Mindfulness is paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally’ – Jon Kabat-Zinn.

I love this definition of mindfulness. It reminds us of the need to bring ourselves back to the present moment. We all know of times when our thoughts wander away from the ‘now’ to something we have experienced in the past or concerns we may have about the future.

We find ourselves unconsciously reinforcing and embellishing the story we tell. Mindfulness helps us to notice these inner thoughts without judging them right or wrong. Instead, we can gently bring our focus back to the present moment.

It’s also noticing body sensations, gut responses and emotions and labelling them. (This is actually the first part of giving ourselves self-compassion). Acknowledging the ‘ouch’ we feel when responding to life and the icky feeling that arises inside us. What are these bodily responses trying to tell us? Mindfulness is the deliberate practice. A skill or habit we can continually work on.

One of the ways to find present awareness is through meditation. If you have ever done sitting meditation, particularly in the beginning, it’s difficult to sit in the traditional posture. You know the one. Sitting upright, legs crossed, and eyes closed. It’s hard to maintain that posture for any length of time as in modern life we tend to sit in soft lounge chairs rather than crossed legged on the floor. It’s also tricky to have our eyes closed without drifting off to sleep or have them open and not get distracted by what’s happening around us.

In reality, the best posture for meditation is the one that allows you to be both relaxed and alert for an increased length of time. It may be sitting legs crossed or even with both legs straight out in front. You might use cushions to support parts of the body. You may need to alternate between having your eyes open and closed.

Meditation takes practice. Like any new habit it comes easy at first, but resistance tends to set in over time. As you persist a desire to include a meditation practice in your day gradually becomes second nature. Something you look forward to. Something you don’t want to miss.

5. Recognising your Needs

What are some of your current needs? Is it having time to yourself (even if it’s 30 minutes to have a shower or eat a leisurely meal), appreciation from others, feeling loved and accepted for who you are, receiving support and encouragement, fresh air and time in nature or having a listening ear to share life’s challenges. You might be craving interesting work or hobbies that make your life enjoyable and fun.

Our major psychological needs fall into three categories – autonomy, competence and relatedness. With autonomy we want to make decisions in our lives that affect us. Those might be related to our interests, preferences, wants and desires. We need to be able to make those decisions at our own pace and feel supported by others and respected for the particular choices we make.

Competence needs revolve around developing our skills and abilities. Having that feeling we can rise to a challenge successfully and feel satisfaction around completion of a task. Anyone who has found themselves immersed in something they enjoy and achieved a state of ‘flow’ (where time seems to stand still) knows the joy of competence. Attempting tasks that are neither too hard or too easy for us and receiving positive feedback about how we are doing help build our competence. We also need to learn to accept failure and then be willing to try again.

The other important need is around our sense of belonging and relatedness to others. We want to have warm, close, affectionate relationships with others. Connections with people who understand, accept and value us for who we are. We want relationships with others who really care for our well-being.

If we were to conjure up what makes a good day for us it would incorporate each of these psychological needs.

Is it Time to Let Go?

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I love the change of season to Autumn. It’s my favourite time of year. Where I live in Australia our climate is temperate so the days are slightly crisper yet the temperatures have not dropped too much. I look forward to opportunities to head further south to cooler climates and to witness the stunning natural colour change before the trees shed their leaves.

Autumn is a perfect time to think about letting go of what no longer serves you. It allows you to bring something new into your life. It may be around work or lack of purpose. Your health. Feeling a sense of loneliness and difficulty finding people to connect with who’ll support and understand you. It may be an attitude or self-belief that is impacting your confidence and contentment.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

How can you think differently about yourself or the situation that’s bothering you? What meaningful actions can you take to let go of the past? What can you control that will allow you to move forward?

“Summon all your strength to let go and start heading in a new direction because it’ll lead you closer to your true path”

Niki Banas (Walk the Earth)

Let’s identify a few things you may want to let go of.

Letting go of focusing on the past

The past can be a challenging place to move forward from. It’s a safe place that we know well. It’s become our sense of identity (even though we tend to strongly identify with the worst incidences of our past – trauma, grief, illness and betrayal). Unforgiveness and resentments are also hard ones for us to shift.

The past is the source of many of the stories we tell ourselves. If they are trauma based, they can become crutches to provide comfort and receive pity from others. Ultimately these stories become unhelpful and limit us moving forward.

The past is also a place we can no longer access. It has framed how we understand life, given us life lessons and helped create who we are, someone who is continually evolving. Although we may have regrets about our past actions or misgivings about decisions we previously made, it’s important to find a way forward and seek peace within ourselves.

There is a growing body of evidence that our mind and body are deeply interconnected. Experiencing PTSD, repressing anger, struggling to forgive and people pleasing sit alongside unhealthy physical factors in the development of chronic health conditions (Dr Rangan Chatterjee and Dr Gabor Mate are useful resources for further reading).

Please don’t blame your ‘past self’. The patterns you formed to keep safe and survive life’s difficulties may have come from your early life. Those responses can also form following particularly traumatic events you’ve lived through. None of us come through life unscathed.

The thing is to recognise the patterns of your behaviour and do the work to heal and move forward toward your own version of optimum health.

Letting go of worrying about the future

The other side of the coin is our concern about the future. Something that in reality is also outside our control. No matter how much worry and anxiety we infuse into our being, it will have little influence on what we will eventually experience.

When we are anxious about the future we can benefit from taking practical action in the present moment. That may look like fully accepting what is and having gratitude for what we currently have in our lives. To also recognize that we’ve been able to navigate through changes before in our lives and come out the other side. There is probably a toolkit of strategies we’ve learnt to help us move forward effectively.

Brad Stulberg in his book ‘Master of Change’ talks about developing a rugged flexibility around life. Building a strong sense of self that allows you to also be flexible to navigate life’s changes as they present themselves. It’s a type of moving renovation we make that takes into account each life transition from a solid base of understanding ourselves and life.

“We have a better chance of feeling and doing good if we set realistic expectations – including that things change all the time, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse”

Brad Stulberg

Bringing your focus to the present moment

The work of letting go happens in the moment you are living right now. Ekhart Tolle in his book ‘The Power of Now’ would say it’s the only moment that truly exists and that we can influence. The beauty of that is that we can use the knowledge and life lessons of past experiences but we are not bound by them. By consciously letting go it’s possible to imagine a different future.

So what can you let go of right now?

  • The need to be constantly busy and feel validated through being needed by others.
  • Suppressing your emotions rather than processing and expressing them.
  • Comparing yourself and your life to others (often in an unfavourable way).
  • Having limited beliefs of what is possible to achieve in your life.
  • The desire to endlessly acquire things.
  • Difficulty and discomfort receiving support from others.
  • Wishing life was different rather than appreciating the life you are actually living.
  • The need to know what is going on in the world, especially through social media. Many have a fear of missing out if they disconnect from technology.
  • Outdated ideas of what it means to be a woman and your place in the world. This can influence how you see yourself in your relationships, community and workplace.

As you read through the list, do any of these resonate as habits or attitudes you’d like to change? Just by recognizing they exist you are taking the first step of reflection which will enable you to look for ways to act or view things differently.

By examining what you need to let go of in life, you create space for something new. Something that is more aligned with the person you are becoming, rather than who you are now or who you have been. It’s a process that requires time to ponder the presence of behaviours and attitudes in your daily life. Noticing the impacts they have on yourself and those around you. Then it becomes possible to create and  implement small steps that move you forward.

Friends for Life

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Do you remember how easy it was to connect with your friends in childhood. You spent your days at school together, eating lunch and playing games between classes. You’d maybe meet each other on the weekends to play sport or spend hours building cubbies or riding your bikes in the neighbourhood. Friendship was relatively easy to maintain due to your proximity to each other. You were also full of energy and going through a similar stage of life together.

Once school days were over, suddenly you experienced the great ‘scattering’. Your friends moved away for education or work (or you did). Relationships formed and over the following decade each of you moved into the next phase of life where a multitude of life choices took you in separate directions. It became harder to stay in touch.

Adult friendship is different to those we had as a child. The responsibilities of life dominate our energy. It requires a much more conscious effort to establish new friendships and maintain them over time. Mel Robbins in her book ‘The Let Them Theory’ identifies three elements that are required for adult friendships to thrive. These are proximity, timing and energy.

Proximity

Living near our friends, so we can regularly organise face to face catch ups, is a major factor in maintaining connection. As much as we have the ability to stay in touch online and through messaging, seeing each other in person creates a deeper experience. We can hold a balanced conversation between expressing ourselves and actively listening to each other. It’s easier to notice the other person’s non-verbal cues such as their emotions and body language and ask relevant questions. It’s also possible to offer physical support and comfort to our friends in a face to face exchange.

Timing

Timing also plays a major role in sustaining our friendships. Brad Stulberg in his book ‘Master of Change’ highlights the need for more flexibility as we navigate adult life. Research has shown that on average, people experience thirty six significant changes in the course of their adult life. That equates to a shift in life circumstances every eighteen months. Examples might include leaving school, starting a job, leaving a job, getting married, getting divorced, having children, losing those we love, experiencing an illness and moving to a new community. With each change our friendship dynamic is also impacted. Our needs and priorities change and we may feel out of step and distant with our current friends. Some naturally drift away from us, yet a change may also bring with it new friendships. Those that are with people who know a more current version of us or the one we are becoming.

Energy

As we experience each of life’s changes our energy can be drained. Even if we are healthy, there is lots of adjustment required. If we become unwell or sustain an injury it can compromise our ability to attend activities where we’d normally meet up with our friends. Illness can make us avoid others and focus our attention inward. The energy for friendship may not be possible at the time.

Change can also bring about a lack of confidence in our ability to make new friends. Moving to a new community or workplace, our children leaving home and moving into retirement are just some examples where shifts in friendships may happen. As a result, we can feel lonely and disconnected from others. It’s important to remember that new friendships take time to develop. It may take up to a year to establish close bonds with others.

Some strategies that can help us develop adult friendships include the following –

  1. Remaining flexible about our choice of friends and being curious about the lives of others. Often our childhood friends are those who are similar in age. In adulthood, we can develop a wider range of friends who have different lived experience or are in a different age group yet we find common interests and views on life. The benefit of having a wide range of friends is the different perspectives, support potential and wisdom we can tap into.
  2. Being proactive in reaching out to people rather than expecting to be included, invited and texted. Invite others to join you in activities and be willing to attend events and activities you are interested in, even if that means the first time you arrive on your own.
  3. Being approachable to others. You might start by saying hello to people around you and seeing how they respond. Show an interest in others and offer compliments about them as a person. Smile, say hello and introduce yourself. Allow yourself to have no expectations of how these interactions will turn out. Just focus on connecting with others and gradually with each effort you make you will find those people who gravitate to you as potential friends.
  4. Once you have established a friendship consciously prioritize staying in touch. Let them know you are thinking of them. Plan for future get togethers. Remember birthdays and dates that are important.

Our friendships with others evolve over time. Some friends stay with us for a ‘season’ or stage of our life. Others become life long friends. The relationship we have with our friends takes conscious effort to both establish and maintain. We also need flexibility to adjust to changes in our lives and the potential impact that has on our friendships.

The Courage to Let Them

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When I first heard of the Let Them Theory it felt counterintuitive. To hear those words ‘Let them’ to me assumed that I would let others get away with whatever they liked and stand by meekly and unresponsive with a smile on my face. I believed I would be giving away my own control and allowing others to do as they pleased. It just felt disempowering and weak. A stance where I would be emotionally stifled unable to express my anger, sadness or disappointment.

Yet it was only through my own experience of radical acceptance of a situation that became increasingly outside my control that the real power of those two small words ‘Let Them’ became apparent.  Radical acceptance simply means acknowledging our reality just as it is. We may not like how others are behaving or the choices they are making yet once we come to a place of accepting our circumstances we are in the position to make changes for ourself and move forward.

Re-framing the situation with ‘let them’ allows us to move toward a powerful personal response of ‘Let me’. A place of self-care and love. A kinder response than struggling with and rejecting our current reality. We are biologically wired to want to control the circumstances of our life. It gives us a perceived sense of safety and security. Yet the most powerful ability to control a situation is in our personal responses and decisions.

Photo by Benjamin Williams on Unsplash

Seven years ago my husband and I were each experiencing our own midlife crisis. We were at an impasse in our long term marriage. For him, it was a stalemate of purpose after retiring and seeking to recover his younger desires and pursuits. For me it was a deep sadness, that I now recognise as grief, wrapped up in completely missing a sense of connection to my own roots and family connection. It impacted our relationship and while my husband firmly held to the current status quo, I was miserable. Life seemed to be about his choices with what felt like little empathy of what I was experiencing. In reality, he rightfully wasn’t going to change our life situation to suit me, so it was up to me to figure out mine.

I remember coming to a rather abrupt conclusion that I was the only one who could change my circumstances. While the solution meant my husband stayed in our home and community I stepped away from our rather comfortable existence to find my own answers. I ensured our finances were divided so the decisions we made moving forward would be personal ones. Joint accounts became individual accounts. I secured a 12 month lease on a rental property near our children and grandchildren. I packed up what belongings I wanted to take with me and organised a removal of furniture.

It was a bold and scary decision making process but it was also an empowering one, giving me a surprising sense of calm and peace around what the future would bring. I let go of any expectations of the future and focused on my own healing. What I didn’t know at the time was that this separation would be temporary. It eventually led to us rekindling our marriage as wiser, more contented and understanding partners. For us, it was like a marriage ‘sabbatical’. An opportunity to let our paths diverge for a while and then come back together. To each explore our own identity separate from each other.

As I have more recently reflected on this experience I can clearly see the wisdom of the ‘Let Them’ theory come into play. Each of us have a unique experience of life. As much as we want to control what we experience, that is not possible. We constantly come up against the personalities, differing viewpoints, passions and purpose of others. Some of that we can avoid and allow by distancing ourselves. At other times we get caught somewhere along a spectrum from mild frustration to downright conflict of opinion. The most difficult situations are around those we are close to and love.

By simply reframing a situation mentally with the words ‘Let Them’ it’s possible to find a sense of inner peace. It allows us to give back ownership of behaviour and life choices to others rather than trying to control or change them. By distancing ourselves from knee jerk reactions we get to see the wider situation more clearly. It is then possible to decide our own course of action.

At first I thought the ‘Let Them’ stance was weak, yet on reflection it’s a powerful one. It’s one where we accept what cannot be changed in life and others. Then we get to choose our own response whether that’s distancing, setting a personal boundary or making a personal decision based on reality rather than how we would like things to be.

May 2025
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