Act Today

(gentle music) Headspace Studio. (relaxing music) Hi, it's Andy here, and welcome to Radio Headspace and to Tuesday morning. So ordinarily I'm sat here talking about the present moment, right? The importance of the present moment and how we can benefit from living a life being less distracted by the past, the future, and spending more time in the present. The danger of that is that it sounds as though the past and the future are being excluded in some way, and they're really not. It's essential sometimes that we sit and either reflect on the past or we look and plan for the future, and it's possible to do both from this position of being present. The risk is losing our consciousness, if you like, as we drift backwards or forward, where we are no longer present thinking about the future, we are simply in the future in our mind, in a time and a place that hasn't exist, creating scenarios and thinking about those things as though they are actually happening. That's the risk and that's the danger, it's not that the past or the future is bad, it's just that there is a risk that we get lost in thinking about these things that haven't even happened yet, or remembering these things in a different way than maybe that they happened at the time. So it's not that the present and the future is in opposition, and that's really important, 'cause the truth is when we look forward, we need to start shaping that right now. It's only in the actions that we take right now that we'll be able to clearly move towards a particular direction in time. And that's true whether it's of us as individuals in our life, in our personal life, our family life, work life, however you like to sort of think about it. And it's also true as communities, as nations, and ultimately sort of as a planet. When you start to consider things like climate change, it's absolutely essential that we are able to zoom out and see the future in a way that allows us to take meaningful action in the present. So rather than thinking of the mind in a very sort of one dimensional way, that there is the present moment and everything else is bad. Instead, maybe considering the possibility that maybe the time thing is not that relevant at all and that we don't need to focus on that so much. It's more about our awareness. If we are aware, then we are present. And in being present, we can be present of what's happening and unfolding in this moment. In the same way, we can be aware and present of thoughts and feelings that are unfolding about the future which will inform our ability to act today. Thanks for listening today. I look forward to seeing you back here tomorrow. (relaxing music) (relaxing music fades)...