That's something I have been trying to achieve for years and failed miserably. So what do I mean by "living in the moment."
Well it says what it does on the tin. The idea is to blank out everything that has gone before and blank out everything that is to come to truly concentrate on what is happening at a particular place and time.
Now that certainly doesn't mean permanently blocking out the past and the future but does mean concentrating on the Here and Now. Children seem to be very bad at this. On holiday with the wonderful grandkiddles they were always talking about what we would do next. Their minds were in overdrive. They were enjoying what they were doing but forever thinking about the next thing.
They love swimming. But while we were in the pool, they wanted to talk about what we were going to do next. Then when we went onto another activity they wanted to know what we were going to do after tea. You get the idea.
Staying in the present moment is particularly important in sport. I think it was tennis champion Martina Navratilova who really introduced the idea of zoning in on a situation. Forget what has gone before and the bad shot, forget about what's going to happen in the next game and just concentrate 100% on the shot you are about to play.
Martina found that by doing this she could block out all exterior interruptions. But being in the Here and Now (a quick plug there for a pop music column I used to write in the local newspaper) takes some doing and I have never really achieved it.
I always write myself lists of things to do and came back from holiday with a massive list. What I needed to do was concentrate on task one and then move onto task number two and so on. What I tended to do was complete part of task one and then do a bit of task number two and then a bit of task number three and then complete task number four. You get the idea.
I like to divide my tasks into those that are major and those that are minor. The minor ones are the good guys because they are usually small things that can be easily completed, thus giving some easily achieved wins. Sometimes they can be completed in a few minutes. Concentrating on the larger matters that could take a few hours can be more difficult as often something that will take a long time to do will lead to a feeling of boredom as in "I'm fed up doing that let's do something else." But that can be fatal.
Nevertheless by being fairly disciplined I managed yesterday to complete about 75% of my list.
Tomorrow of course for almost two hours my concentration will centre around a football pitch as Norwich play their first home league game of the season. But even then my mind will be wandering to a cricket pitch where Hethersett and Tas Valley are trying to consolidate their position in second place in the Norfolk Alliance Division One. With four games to go the team are looking good for the second place which will take them into the highest level the club has ever played at.
Unfortunately due to various other commitments I haven't got to see much cricket this season but I'm looing forward to watching grandson Elliot play in a cup final in the next week or so.
Enough ramblings for today. More photos of Cornwall included. Today's are of Charlestown which I mentioned a few days ago.