There is only Now... Have you ever become trapped reliving past mistakes....over and over like a video player, stuck on endless replay? Do you spend time and energy worrying about the future? Do you spend more time thinking about the things you can’t control rather than the things you can control about the areas where your efforts matter? Do you ever find yourself busy trying to prepare mentally for the next meeting, or the next assignment, or the next chapter in your life, rather than being fully present in the current one?

It’s natural and human to obsess over past mistakes or feel stressed about what may be ahead of us. Yet every second spent worrying about a past or future moment distracts us from what is important in the here and now.

The ancient Greeks had two words for time. The first was chronos. The second was kairos. The Greek God Chronos was imagined as an elderly, grey/haired man, and his name connotes the literal ticking clock, the chronological time, the kind we measure (and race about trying to use efficiently). Kairos is different. While it is difficult to translate precisely, it refers to time that is opportune, right, different. Chronos is quantitative; kairos is qualitative. The latter is experienced only when we are fully in the moment - when we exist in the now.

It is mind-bending to consider that in practical terms we only ever have now. We can’t control the future in a literal sense, just the now. Of course, we learn from the past and can imagine the future. Yet only in the here and now can we actually execute on the things that really matter.

...focus on the things that are truly important - not yesterday or tomorrow, but right now.

The above is an extract from “essentialism, The Disciplined Pursuit of Less” by Greg McKeown

How to integrate this information on and off the mat? Create a healthy routine that matters, makes a difference, and inspires creativity in and around you.

Start with this question: “What’s important now?”

As suggested by Greg McKeown, “When faced with so many tasks and obligations that you can’t figure out which to tackle first, stop. Take a deep breath. Get present in the moment and ask yourself what is most important this very second - not what’s most important tomorrow or even an hour from now. If you’re not sure, make a list of everything vying for your attention and cross off anything that is not important right now.