Being present and living in the here and now is a struggle. There is so much input in our everyday that tries to make us stay in our past or strive for the future. Our phone pings with reminders and text messages. We want to get to the bottom of our ‘to-do’ list. Advertisements provoke us with our wants, needs or envy. Don’t fail. Don’t drop the ball. Keep running endlessly towards the moving goalposts of tomorrow.

You can be neck-deep in a task and these constant niggling notifications throw up potholes in your flow. Little obstacles that 99% of the time take you out of the here and now.

What stops us being present in the present?

* We sometimes selectively view our past and edit out the worst bits - that sepia-tinted mental photograph often appears better than reality.

* We like concrete and certainty. When we choose to let go of our anchors of the past and striving for the future, we can feel temporarily adrift, and our desire for control doesn’t like that.

* The “Oh look, a shiny thing!” factor - everything seems to contrive to distract.

We need to think about the past and the future sometimes. To celebrate the positive things and learn from our mistakes. It’s good to have a plan and to be prepared, of course it is. Doing neither is an invitation for chaotic thinking.

However - we can have a tendency to overstep the thinking, and start DWELLING in the past and the future. Somewhere between the “good old/bad old days” of nostalgia or trauma, and the “what ifs/if only” of the future lies the moderator - the present.

Balance. It’s an over-repeated and misunderstood word, but it’s an important action. To be mindful is to hold your thoughts about past, present and future in equal tension. Find the balance that works for you, and the stresses should lessen.

Think about your past and your future in small manageable chunks. Make sure you are looking back or forwards for the right reasons.

Remember former good times, acknowledge mistakes and how they were remedied. Think about what went right.

Come back to the present.

Look forward to the future just enough to make healthy plans, not to worry about it.

Come back to the present.

Stay in the here and now a little bit longer every day.