#9 The Power of Now: Living In The Present Moment
Kelly shares how reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle in 2005 highlighted how often her mind was caught up in the past and future. She was rarely living in the NOW.
She shares the handy tricks she uses to bring herself into the present moment throughout each day - and the positive affect this has on her life.
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Read the Transcript for this Episode below:
Episode nine of the Project Me podcast. Hi guys, welcome back. If you're scratching your head and wondering where last week's episode about finding my birth father has disappeared to, I've made the decision to delete it. It wasn't entirely my story to tell, and without invoking any drama, because I honestly, I avoid drama like the plague, I have decided to replace episode nine with this new one.
This time I'm going to talk about a life changing book that I read 15 years ago. Um, Back in episode 1, if you remember, I talked about the Celestian Prophecy and how that book was the first book I ever read that just made me go, wow, and start thinking about life in a completely different way. And in episode 8, I talked about reading both The Secret and The Magic by Rhonda Byrne and all the magic that unfolded from there.
And I just love following the breadcrumb trail. To remind me, how did I get to where I'm at now with my mindset and these higher levels of conscious living? And I can see how key books have definitely influenced me along the way. When I first read the best selling book, The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle in 2005, I had a five year old and a two year old.
I didn't really get the book, and it was written in a language that was This is very unfamiliar to me. This was just the start of what was going to later become my obsession with personal growth books. But this whole concept of observing my thoughts and noticing when I'm in the past, future, or present was brand new to me back then.
What really struck a chord for me was this concept that I am not my thoughts. I am the one observing my thoughts. And as I began to observe my thoughts more from this perspective, I realized how much my mind was always ruminating over stuff that had happened or had been said in the past, or I was worrying about or trying to figure something out or planning something for the future.
My mind was rarely in the present moment. It's no wonder when my kids would interrupt my train of thought, I would get so irritated with them. That's probably an understatement. To them, it must have just looked like I was being I don't know, folding the laundry, but my mind was a million miles away and I would get so irritated and even angry with them when they interrupted my thoughts.
It depended on what I was thinking about at the time, but you know, if I was really deep in thought and thinking about, I don't know, some, some conversation I'd had that upset me or something, I was like right back in that moment having that upsetting conversation. And so if one of my kids came up to me and just innocently asked me something that came up to me, I would like be.
super, super like agitated and everything. Cause I was, my mind was back there, you know, my emotions were back there and um, yeah, it was, it was me starting to really start to pay attention to where I was with my minds was in the past or the future that began to really help. I began catching my thoughts and one of the things I noticed was how many make believes conversations I was having inside of my mind.
Sometimes I'd be planning out what I was going to say to someone in the future and I was actually like. I'll say this and then they'll say that and then I'll say that. I mean, actually like having this imaginary conversation like both sides. Um, and then other times I would be completely rehashing a dialogue from the past.
Oftentimes thinking about what I wish I'd said instead, like, or just going back through the whole conversation again. And you know, what is the purpose of that? It's completely crazy, right? We're missing out on the present moment when we're lost in the past or the future. And this part in the power of now, I'm going to read this to you.
This really, really stuck with me. To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time. The compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with the past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be.
The more you are focused on time, past and future, the more you miss the now, the most precious thing there is. Let's stop right now in this actual moment and simply breathe and feel this moment. The very best trick I have, I'm about to share with you right now, it will immediately bring you into the present moment anytime.
Ready for this? Relax your forehead. You hear me say this at the end of every episode of my podcast and I'm finally getting to why I say that. So do it right now. Relax all the muscles in your forehead and feel that peace that comes when your thoughts drop away. Bring your attention to the space between your eyebrows.
That's often referred to as the third eye. It's actually impossible to think a negative thought with a completely relaxed forehead. And if you're thinking that sounds like BS, then you are definitely not relaxing your forehead because it's absolutely true. I have actually told an entire live audience, I've asked them all to relax their foreheads.
And then to try to think a negative thought and they just can't. It's so funny. It's absolutely true. So keep relaxing your forehead as I tell you the story of how I discovered the relaxing your forehead method. I was studying to be a yoga teacher in 2006. I'm a yoga school dropout. I need to share that story sometime, but we had a visiting meditation teacher come to talk to us about meditation.
His name was Andrew, and I'm completely spacing out on his last name now. At that point, I found meditation impossible or it felt impossible to me. That has definitely changed. But I explained to Andrew that I had really young kids and that I really struggled to be able to meditate. And I was kind of beating myself up over it at the time.
I was trying to wake up early. This is before meditation apps or anything. This is before smartphones. Um, and so I was literally trying to get up before the kids and sit cross legged on the floor because in my mind, I thought that you had to sit cross legged on the floor. And I was like trying to do this and it just, all I could think about was my to do list and it just wasn't working for me.
And he just told me in that moment, he said, close your eyes and relax your forehead. And he put his finger right there on my third eye And I felt this wash of peace come over me instantly. And he said, This is a meditation that you can do every day, several times a day. You don't even have to close your eyes.
Just relax your forehead. And it's impossible to think a negative thought. And you're brought into the present moment. And I felt like he'd just given me like this free ticket out of having to try to meditate anymore. It was just absolutely brilliant. I went home and I put post it notes all around my house and I put it on my car dashboard.
I remember having a post it note stuck on the car dashboard because I would look in the rear view mirror and I could actually see my brows furrowed in the rear view mirror. And it just said, relax your forehead. I don't, I definitely didn't have smartphones back then because I would have set reminders now when I want to remember something I'll set a reminder to kind of flash up on my phone.
But doing this with the with the post it notes it helped me to form this habit of relaxing my forehead. So you've now got this trick up your sleeve to use as many times a day as you can remember to do it. Just set yourself a relax your forehead notification to flash up during the day until it becomes second nature like it is for me.
So back to the power of now. It is so interesting that until I picked this book back up again for our project, we book club in 2019, I wrote this book off as being way over my head. If anyone even talked about the power of now it's like, Oh yeah, that's that book that I, phone really confusing and hard to read and I didn't get and yet when I picked it back up again in 2019, I discovered how many dog eared pages, underlined passages and comments had written in the margins all the way back from 2005.
You know this was supposedly that book that I didn't get and clearly the book made a much bigger impact on me than I realized. I think I was just too too much saying I don't get this, I don't get this, but I look at my notes now and I'm like, you got this more than you realized. I'm remembering now that this book prompted me to find routine moments in my day that would become my calls to presence.
Back then when We had one of those filtered water dispensers built into the fridge door and the water came out really slowly and I used to get impatient, like waiting to fill up a water bottle. And if I was going to be going out with the kids or something, I needed to fill up, you know, three water bottles.
I would just stand there like in front of this thing going, come on. And I decided that this was going to be a good exercise in being in the present moment. And I would just breathe. and watch the water coming out, relax my forehead and kind of empty my mind like this little, this little mini meditation.
And I practiced staying completely present for the time that it took for the water to come out. And it really reset me. Like it changed my whole mindset around the slow flowing water. And I was going to say that if you There's other points in your life that you, like, if you've, if you live near notoriously long traffic light, the kind where if you just miss it, you have to wait seemingly ages for it to turn green again, you can use anytime you've missed a traffic light, like just.
Use that as your call to presence and just relax your forehead and you can look up ahead at the at the red light and just wait for it to turn green and have that be one of your triggers, one of your kind of good triggers like that keeps you out of your, out of your forward thinking or past thinking and bringing you into the present moment.
If you live near a railway crossing that goes down when a train is approaching, I know, you know, when you've just missed that, you're like, Oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to sit here for ages. That's another call to presence. So just look in your own life at those kind of examples and just find certain Ways that you can use those as moments like present moment awareness, uh, opportunities.
I remember in the power of now, it said that whenever your mind is in the past or the future, it's in a state of agitation. The mind can only really be at peace when you're in the present moment and the present moment doesn't have to be pleasant. Being fully present means being with whatever's happening, no matter what's happening.
But that was something I didn't get from the book and I didn't get that until much later. One thing that puzzled me when I was reading The Power of Now and I was practicing being in the now was What about future planning or trying to figure out something that needs a solution? How can you be in the now when you need to be in the future or you want to be in the future because you're making a vision board or you're writing out your goals or you're making a business plan or researching a trip like any of that stuff where you actually need to be thinking about the future.
Here's what I figured out on my own after I created my project me. You do your future thinking intentionally when you've actually sat down to do it rather than letting it dip in and out of your mind all day throughout your day. You will experience so much more ease and flow and even joy in the future planning and visualizing when you set time aside to do it.
If you have a challenge to solve, say, I will right now, with pen and paper in my hand, discover a solution. And if you catch yourself trying to work out something in your head, and you're just not in a position to sit down with pen and paper in that moment, notice that, you know, just jot yourself a really quick reminder, just a little message that you can sit down later and figure it out properly.
Out of my head and onto paper is my mantra now. And if you go to my website myprojectme. com and you go to the uh, workshops tab, I mean um, worksheets, action sheets tab, you'll find these different printable worksheets that help you to figure things out on paper. I'm going to open it up right now so I remember which ones to tell you about.
Okay, there's a meal planner, so you're not always caught up in thinking about what you're going to make for dinner. That was me all the time, just constantly thinking about things I needed to add to my shopping list, or do we have this, or do we have that. I started sitting down on a Sunday evening with the meal planner and sheets that you can get for free on my website, and I began just figuring this stuff out in one go, and then I could food shop off of the list.
And I didn't have to be constantly thinking about it, like every day. It freed up so much mental bandwidth. I can't tell you. And then there's design my day. I mean, I wouldn't start my day without filling in a design my day action sheet. And so many people tell me this is their favorite. It's definitely the most downloaded sheet on my website.
That is where you plan out your day in the morning. So you can stay focused and not always worry that you're forgetting something important. You know, your mind, you can just look at it. And if there's something you think of, you can just add it to that sheet and you get to easily see that there's only so much you can do in one day.
So it's not this to do list that you're carrying over from day to day. Like that's a whole nother conversation. But, um, what else is here? We've got the weekly fitness planner. Again, rather than beating yourself up and going, Oh gosh, I was meant to go for a run today or, Oh, this week I haven't done any exercise.
You sit down. I do it on a Sunday and you just fill in the blanks. Like you look at your week ahead and you go, okay, these are the days I'm going to move my body and you just kind of schedule it in and then you no longer have that. It's not occupying space in your brain anymore. What else have we got?
There's the magic matrix. I get so. Much positive feedback from the Magic Matrix. This is an overwhelm buster. You just have to look at it. It'll make sense to you when you, when you fill it out. But you just, if you just feel like you've got so much on in your head, you use the Magic Matrix and it helps you to figure out what can wait and what needs to be done now.
And again, just Freeze you up so that you can be more in the present moment. There are lots more here. There's like a dozen here, but just go to my project me. com and you'll find those there. They're all free to grab. Um, in episode eight, I talked about creating my project me and having a non negotiable date with me once a month to do the forward plank planning so I can be more present.
And that. That is just, again, a game changer by me, once a month, having this date with myself, doing my life wheel check in, seeing which areas of my life, you know, over the previous month, um, maybe something needs to change, something wasn't going so well, I identify that. I look at my month ahead, I see what I've got coming up, and I just do a little bit of planning.
And that just means I'm not in firefighting mode the whole month, or I'm not, you know, letting things slip through the cracks, like it's just. Got to do your date with me. If you haven't listened to Episode 8 or you don't know about the Project Me Life Wheel, listen to that one next. Right, so how do we break the old patterns of being in the past or the future and truly live more in the present moment?
We practice. The moment you realize that you're not in the present moment, you are present. So that's a great thing. So when you think, oops, there I was off in the future, or oops, there I was back in the past, like that oops means that you are present. So. Whenever you're able to observe your mind, you're not trapped in it.
So what I would encourage you to do is just really start to pay attention to it when you're in the future, when you're in the past and just noticing it and noticing it is, is brings you into the present. So do I recommend the power of now? This is a tricky one because this book clearly had an important impact on me in waking me up to this whole concept of present moment living because before that I just did not think about this at all.
Um, it's a huge bestseller. Eckhart Tolle is awesome. awesome. I think he's just an incredible person, but I have heard from so many people who've not been able to finish the book that I'm reluctant to just urge everyone like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you've got to go out and buy it and read it. You know, I'm going to be doing a future episode about a different book that I read years later, which I'm always recommending and people always love it.
And that's called The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer. And again, I'm going to do a whole episode about that because it's, um, It really, really helped me. It kind of filled in the blanks and some of the other stuff that didn't make sense to me. I have a way of taking all of these different books that I've read and making it all make so much sense in my program.
I run a program called the high vibe journey, and that really helps women who are stuck in patterns of worry and uncertainty. And it helps with a lot of different things, but you know, it's become almost cliche to say most of the things you worry about never happen anyway, but there is total truth to that.
And if most of the things that you worry about aren't going to happen anyway, you need to really remind yourself of that. And Once you know about the Law of Attraction, you've got another huge reason not to worry, because you actually attract into your life whatever you think about the most. So you are on a vibration of what you're thinking about and you're drawing whatever that you're thinking about to you.
So I'm going to give you an example. If you are constantly thinking and worried about money, that vibration of lack or worry about money is going to actually attract that attention. Back to you. So if you can focus instead on abundance and deep appreciation for all that you already have, then you're in that vibration of abundance and more of it flows into your life.
I have experienced this in my own life with astounding accuracy. So get into the vibration of abundance daily. Say Thank you every time you're withdrawing cash from a cash machine. That's like my little cash machine trick. Actually feel wealthy as you, as that cash touches your hands and you're tucking it into your purse.
Say thank you every time you pay a bill with the mindset that you actually have the money to pay it. And you know, thank you for that. Look around your home every day and just really appreciate all that you have. So that, that's it. That pure vibration of feeling abundant and wealthy now in this present moment is what's going to keep it flowing in the future.
Rather than giving you a PDF of journal prompts for this episode, I would rather you download any of the free action sheets I've talked about. There's more I haven't even talked about on myprojectme. com. These are going to really help you to clear your mind and keep you more in the present moment because you'll be doing, you're figuring it out.
Time in a structured way. So it's not just taking up this mental bandwidth all the time. It's going to free you up to be more in the present moment with whoever you're with and whatever you're doing. It's, it's going to change your life. Living my life. Feeling so in the now helps me to feel so peaceful.
I don't get so caught up in worrying about things that are uncertain about the future. I just, I just cut those thoughts off. I don't get so caught up in negativity around the past. I feel so much more. Objective and level-headed and protected from outside influences because I'm just like in my own head, in my own brain, in, in the present moment.
So don't keep missing the present because your head is off in the past or the future. Remember that your mind will always be in a state of agitation unless you're a fully present. Relax your forehead right now and take in a nice, long, deep breath in. and let it out with a sigh. And then repeat either out loud or silently to yourself, I am in the present moment.
I am in the now.
The only moment that truly exists right now is this one.
I am so grateful for this moment.
Thank you for listening to the Project Me podcast. If you're listening before the start of November, 2020, you might be just in time to join my high vibe journey program. This four week program has been called transformational, and I'm so honored to be able to run it for the fifth and final time this year.
If you'd like to end 2020 on a high Who wouldn't head into, you want to head into 2021 with a positive outlook. This is really the best early Christmas present you could possibly give yourself. It finishes at the end of November, which will be just in time to slide into the holiday season, feeling so high vibe, no matter what's going on.
I'll teach you to be really practical and doable, how to stay focused on the good and in the present moment and protected from downward spiral emotions and outside negativity, including politics and pandemics. You'll have me by your side for the entire month of November, encouraging you and guiding you into how to raise your vibes in ways that fit in with your life, that will stick and become part of your new normal.
Unlike taking Italian lessons and then having to wait until your next trip to Italy to start practicing, you'll learn on the high vibe journey. It'll be practices that you're going to put into immediate effect. It's not something you have to wait to do. So every single time you learn something, you just get to immediately apply it to your life.
It is so fun for me to see how high everyone gets during this program, high on their own supply and the positive knock on it has on their families too. And I just keep hearing it's, you know, it's a long term effect. It's not something that's just going to last you for a short time. So go to myprojectme.com so the chorus is tab and read all about it and take the little intuition test to see if the high vibe journey is right for you right now.
'cause it has to be something that you're feeling pulled to do, not just because I tell you it's great. If you enjoyed this episode, I am so grateful for a review. I think you can only do that in Apple Podcast, in the Apple Podcast app. So if you do listen in other places. Then, and you can't leave a review, that's absolutely fine, but I'm so grateful if you'll share about the project me podcast with anyone you think might like it too.
Until next time, open your mind, open your heart and stay curious. We all need some space in our lives for the magical and unknown.