I have decided to dedicate a post on Thursday to therapy, and offer you the many tips I have learned on the couch. They will be a good reminder for me, as well, of something small I can concentrate on. Many of them are published in my book, “The Pocket Therapist: An Emotional Survival Kit.”
In support group meetings, I often heard people say “if you’ve got one foot in the past, and one in the future, you are going potty on the present.” I agree with that line of reasoning, but find myself straddled too often. Nothing about staying in the moment comes naturally.
My regrets cover everything I could possibly have to feel guilty about–from making my mom’s day hellish as a colicky newborn until a second ago, when a bad thought crossed my mind as a happy family waved to me from their yacht. They all live in the past. My anxiety and endless worry about what might happen next belong in the future: my kids could give birth to colicky babies and expect me to babysit or marry into an annoyingly perfect family who waves to strangers from their yacht.
The present? Not much to fret about there … if I define the present as this very second: my sitting in a coffee shop devouring a warm chocolate-chip macaroon as I listen to Josh Groban’s “O Holy Night” and proofread this book. And that’s the point, I guess. So I’m trying very hard to follow the words of Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh:

When you are washing the dishes, washing the dishes must be the most important thing in your life. Just as when you’re drinking tea, drinking tea must be the most important thing in your life. …Each act must be carried out in mindfulness. Each act is a rite, a ceremony.

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