I have a very unusual clock on my wall.
It only has one hand.
That hand takes a full twelve months to rotate just once.
It’s an annual clock that tells time in seasons, marking the Equinoxes & Solstices throughout the year.
And so it’s half-past January.
The clock has a name too – it’s called The Present. I purchased it as a prototype via a Kickstarter campaign by Scott Thrift. It’s “all about time” and the idea behind the clock is to remind you to live in the present moment.
Have you ever felt like time is moving too fast? Or perhaps you have trouble being “in the moment” for longer than a few seconds?
The present is the gift we give ourselves.
I didn’t really get what was meant by “living in the present” until an embarrassingly short time ago, despite having been on a self-development journey for some 50-odd years. But now I do, I can’t think of any other way to live.
Sure, we need to learn from the past, but we can’t dwell or live there. And of course we need to plan for the future, but we can’t live there either. We can’t change the past, nor can we pre-determine the future. The only place we can truly live is in the present.
It’s all about mindset.
And that’s why Soul Goals are so critical as a guide for how to live your life. There’s a bit more to it than this, but we can learn from our past where our passions and purpose lie, do a full sensory visualisation of their fulfilment in the future, and then live today exactly as if they were already happening.
If you want to know more about Soul Goals you can download The Quickfire Guide To Creating Soul Goals here with my compliments.
So what do I do on a daily basis to remind myself about living in the present?
At the beginning of this year I started a Happiness Jar. Every morning for the last 6 months, part of my ritual to start the day is to ask what it was that gave me the most joy on the previous day. I write that on a piece of paper, fold it up and place it in my Happiness Jar. At some point in time, maybe at the end of the year or perhaps if I’m feeling a bit blue, I’ll dip into the jar and remind myself of some of the daily pieces of joy that have been present in my life. Interestingly, just seeing the jar filling up makes me happy by itself. In fact I was particularly chuffed when I had to buy a bigger jar because the original one was overflowing!
I also start every day by reminding myself of the answers I have worked out to the questions
Who am I?
Why am I here? &
How do I want to feel today?
These answers help me focus on behaving in alignment with my Soul Goals throughout the day, which means of course that I’m living in the present in alignment with how I have envisioned my future and as taught to me by my past.
So when I look at my clock on the wall and notice that it is half-past January, I am full of gratitude for the experience of having spent the last 6 months being as present as I can.