It’s absolutely vital for our well-being to live in the present. That doesn’t mean we don’t plan our future or analyse our past mistakes. It simply means that when you are eating, eat, and when you are studying, study. When you plan, do that mindfully. Don’t mix up many activities or multi-task and land up mentally exhausted. Play one ball at a time!

Ignore the mind’s scripts

Roger Federer is well known for brilliant comebacks.

On many occasions when he was trailing, even a few match points down, he’d go on to eventually win the match. What’s his secret? In one interview he confessed that he’d tell himself ‘just hang in there. Don’t give up, things may turn around’. And that’s exactly what happens.

If you notice there’s a subtle, yet powerful principle in play here: be present, now. He wouldn’t allow his mind to cheat him when he was down by analysing the points he lost or the lost cause he was contending with. For lesser mortals, the inner dialogue when they trail behind is: ‘what’s the point of fighting a losing game? Next time, I’ll play better but right now I am disgusted, I should have done that…..’ The mind’s babble is unending; if you give it importance you never rise from the slip, and the match is lost.

The mind can offer many scripts and each appears convincing. If you ignore the mind’s proposal, it assures it has an alternative and then another one, until you succumb. Like this, we remain dutiful slaves of the mind. In the process we miss out on a simple, yet most effective tool to puncture the mind’s tirade. And that is ‘just be present, here and now’. Louise Hay, in her best-selling ‘You can heal your life’ said it crisply, “the point of power is always in the present moment”

To be continued…

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