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If you have one foot in the past, and one foot in the future, ….. you’re pissin’ on the present.

We’re all guilty. We all need to be more mindful of the moment and not getting dragged back…or worrying yourself to death about shit that is out of our control. Life is a struggle…..life is suffering. This is some bullshit!!! . ……Whew.

Take a breath. A couple more.

Keep it movin
Adjust accordingly.

🙂
❤️

Take a breath. A couple more.

Always done in the present reminder/mindfulness/moment of awareness no matter the dharma spin or what we are trying to duck …

Ways to manifest the nugget:

• use an activation event such as a phone vibration, on entering a room, your last breath …
• Mantra is a breath technique, even silently, breath in … out on recitation
• Where is the Buddha? Bow, take breath, prostrate (even visualised is good)

https://www.wikihow.com/Breathe

*The way my present is currently, I have to take it moment by moment. I have a lot of plates spinning and can't wait to get my ducks in a row.
But I guess I'll just have to go with the waiting....

My foot in the past: regrets for not doing / regrets for doing certain things.

My foot in the future: eagerness or rush to reach and fulfill my current goals to fix the past.

My foot in the present: awareness of the present moment, strong like a cold waterfall, washing away those two foolish feet away!

Thanks for the reminder.

@nakazcid said:
This doesn't seem to be a problem of comparing oneself to others, but something else entirely - at least on the face of it. Any tips for countering that tendency?

My internal critic is very keen on saying things like "Ah man...You ruined such n such!" and then I get all mopey reflecting on the thought and feeling. Three things that help me and compliment each other...

First is I just stop the inner dialogue. Like @how mentions, send resources from the mind thinky-feely sense to the other five senses. Just like it's hard to daydream while driving a car well on a busy street, I stop the mind from doing its thinky-feely thing and give that attention to the eyes and others. I look through my eyes more intently, I hear with my ears more acutely, smell through the nose more particularly... For me this quiets my mind in a sort of selective-attention kind of way. I select to give attention to my five senses and revoke it from the mind sense. The longer I can do this, the nicer things seem all around and it can be quite relaxing.

When I include and keep my breath in my sphere of attention while I do this, I can usually do it better and for longer. However I get lazy and distracted and eventually lose the breath from my attention, lose the selective-attention keeping my mind in check, and again start thinking "Ah man...You ruined such n such!" So it has become a reoccurring practice for me. Negative thoughts and feelings arise, I become fixated on them, I notice I'm fixated on them, I do something about it by giving attention elsewhere and letting go of the fixation, and they sort of dissolve for a little while til I forget and get lazy.

Second is I try to examine the connection around what I'm thinking/feeling and how it came to be. This helps resolve those sticky places my mind goes to from my past. To me this looks like a lot of self-reflective questions until things make more sense. Understanding dependent arising can help with this but I'm not doing it very well at the moment so I won't muck it up trying to explain it.

This was particularly helpful for learning about dependent arising.
How to See Yourself as You Really Are - H.H.D.L.

Third is I try to live virtuously and blamelessly so to prevent creating any new situations to berate myself over. This requires quite a bit of effort monitoring my thoughts/feelings/intentions/actions/etc.

It all seems to go a lot better when I'm practicing good compassion and have an abundance of gratitude and interconnectedness. It seems nature is a great way of tapping into compassion..which is seriously some advice I need to start taking for myself.

Anyway, that's what I try to do.