There’s plenty of happiness to be found in the present moment, but sometimes life necessitates change, and changes take planning. Whether it’s a new job, moving house or starting your own business, planning the future can take you away from joy in the here and now.
One of the problems is that when you start thinking about the future, your present life can seem lacking. Spotting your dream home in the agent’s window leads to suddenly seeing all the faults in your own place. Hearing about an opportunity at a rival company makes the daily petty annoyances of your present job sound like a blaring alarm. So how can you stay present and content while also looking forwards?
What’s your priority?
Glenda Mitchell is a motivational coach and author of Kicking Out the Bucket List: Living Life with Intention and Passion. She says: ‘A lot of people are focusing on what they want for their ideal world or their ideal life. They end up matching what they’re doing currently with their ideal, and then beat themselves up. What I do with people is get them to look at the key areas of their lives – everything from spirituality to family, relationships, work, career, finance, all of those things. We look at where they are spending their time and energy from a prioritisation perspective.’
One client had always wanted to work for an aid charity. ‘She wanted to do something “meaningful”, as she put it, and help people suffering around the world. But at that moment in her life she had three young children, a husband, a home and a regular job. She felt stuck.’
Glenda took her through a process of looking at her ‘life portfolio’, assessing her current priorities and where she would like to be in the future. She realised that right now her family was her priority. This gave her a sense of peace.
‘She mapped out a timeframe where, in the future – say, X number of years – she’d be spending less time on the children and more time on her career. What this allowed her to do was to see clearly what her life looks like now, and reassure her that she can still get to where she wants to be – she just doesn’t have to do it right away.’
If you have a future goal in mind, you can bring yourself back to the present by thinking about where you want to be, and what your priority is for today, this week or this month. Are there little steps of action you can take towards your goal now, or is your priority actually to focus on the life you’re leading currently, or build in more time for something else?
Glenda recommends: ‘Break your goal down to the smallest component you can. If you’re aiming to buy a house, for now maybe your goal is to save a certain amount of money per month. You can actually get a nice feeling of satisfaction from slowly contributing to the end goal. Being able to do that makes a huge difference. It keeps the momentum going, by reaching little goals along the way.’
Find an outlet
As you work towards your goals you might notice signs that you’ve spent too much time focusing on the future. Perhaps it’s dry, itchy eyes from scrolling through a jobs website. Or maybe it’s an accompanying anxiety and mental load of ‘what ifs’ that are running through your mind. What if I apply for all these jobs and don’t get one? What if the right job never comes along? Negative thoughts could be a sign that it’s time to get focused on the present again.
To help get back to what brings you joy, focus on activities that facilitate a state of flow. Flow is a concept identified by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It’s a state of consciousness where you are totally absorbed in something and aren’t thinking of anything else. It could be the endorphin-releasing high of running or swimming, or being immersed in a creative activity. It could be cooking, gardening or anything where you are enjoying the process, not just the end result.
If you’re struggling to feel a sense of wellbeing in the present, it can also help to look back at what brought you happiness in the past. Glenda says: ‘We have this obsession with being in the moment, which is good because that stops you only wanting to be in the future. But I find it does sometimes prevent people from looking back and celebrating the good things from the past.
‘It can help to look back and find the things that were significant and gave you joy previously. If you can recognise them, you can look for those same things in your present and your future.’
You can hold onto your long-term goal to relocate, or to change career to something more rewarding. But in the meantime, maybe there’s something you can unearth that might add joy to your life in the short term. Perhaps you once took a pottery class you really enjoyed? Maybe you’ve a distant memory of a day spent beachcombing? In Csikszentmihalyi’s book Beyond Boredom and Anxiety, he writes of the flow state as being those occasions when ‘we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long cherished and that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like.’ What are the memories that stand out in your mind of what life can be like?
Small is beautiful too
When you scroll property websites or compare your desk-bound job with friends constantly on foreign assignments, you might start equating happiness with getting a certain thing or living a certain kind of life. A state-of-the-art kitchen or hotel room service can, of course, bring a particular kind of satisfaction. But we are all prone to thinking the grass is greener. It’s good to remember that happiness can be found in the little things, and in the company of family and friends.
Incorporate small acts into your everyday, to shift yourself back to gratitude and contentment in the moment. If you’re looking for a new job, spend a few moments writing a gratitude list for what you like about your current job, however trivial and insignificant the points may seem. If you’re house-hunting, then maybe there’s something you could do today to make your current living space more inviting, even if it’s just a bit of tidying and decluttering.
With the right approach, your future goals don’t have to take you away from the present. You can simultaneously find the joy in your current life, while making plans to fulfil your dreams.