By Owen O’Brien, LCSW and clinically reviewed by Teri Schroeder, LCSW
How much of your life do you spend in the present moment? How much time do you spend daydreaming, ruminating about the past, or worrying about the future? How much of your life do you miss by getting lost in thought? These are all things to consider as you look at how to live in the moment with anxiety and depression.
In his book, The Power of Now, author Eckhart Tolle explains that learning to exist in the now frees us from pain while connecting us to the infinite calm of our essential being. He attributes human suffering (depression, anxiety, guilt, worry, fear, and more) to our tendency to live in our minds instead of in the present. If you take time to examine your thoughts, like I did, you might notice that they are very often related to the past or future and are rarely focused on the now.
Tolle argues that time, or “psychological time,” is essentially a construction of the human mind. In other words, the future, whether it’s work on Monday or a beach vacation in two weeks, exists only in our heads. Similarly, the past is simply a collection of memories. The only thing that ever truly exists is the now. By always thinking about the past or the future, we are ignoring or resisting the now. In essence, we are denying reality and, in doing so, causing ourselves a great deal of pain.
How to Live in the Moment with Anxiety and Depression
The Past Produces Pain
What thinking about the past does for your depression.
Tolle explains that too frequently ruminating on the past causes feelings of depression, guilt, and self-loathing. The following are examples of past-oriented thoughts that are likely to cause pain:
- “I should have asked her out! I’m such a coward. I am never going to find my soulmate.”
- ”I shouldn’t have said that in front of my boss. Now, I am never going to advance at my job.”
- ”I wish I hadn’t eaten that piece of cake. I feel fat and undisciplined.”
Even letting your mind drift back to happy memories can create sadness about that period of time being over, which can result in feelings of emptiness, loss, and general dissatisfaction with the present. For example:
- ”In college, I felt so free. I had a million friends, zero wrinkles, and boundless energy. I guess I will never feel like that again. My life is basically over.”
The Future Forges Fear
What thinking about the future does for your anxiety.
On the flip side, Tolle explains that regularly thinking about the future causes worry and anxiety. For instance:
- “I have to go to the store, call the doctor, finish up three reports at work, and pay for a bunch of bills I can’t afford. I am so stressed out!”
On a Sunday afternoon, instead of enjoying the walk you are taking outside, you might find yourself thinking…“Oh my gosh. I have work tomorrow. The weekend is basically over. I am dreading tomorrow.”
Even habitually thinking about positive future events, which may initially cause feelings of excitement, can eventually cause dissatisfaction with the now, as you may deem the present inferior to your idea of the future event.
- ”I cannot wait until my beach vacation: warm sand, margaritas, time without work. Too bad that, until then, I am stuck with work and cold weather.”
Even worse, habitually living in the future prevents you from ever actually experiencing and enjoying these positive events when they do arrive. You will always be looking forward to something bigger and better.
- While on the beach on that beach vacation, instead of enjoying the sun on your face and the sand between your toes, you might be thinking… “I can’t wait until the shrimp dinner tonight! Only 3 more hours!”
*Disclaimer: Tolle grants that sparingly thinking about the future is acceptable insofar as it allows us to plan for the next step in life but argues that most people spend far too much time doing so. I am definitely guilty of this and have too often ventured from “sparingly” thinking about the future to constantly thinking about the future.
Luckily, there is an escape from the pain caused by the mind’s continual creation of and rumination on psychological time. If we embrace the present moment, we unchain ourselves from this suffering and are free to enjoy the peace of true existence, the joy of the now.
Easier Said Than Done: How Do You Live in the Now?
How to deal with depression and anxiety caused by excessive thinking.
Tolle teaches that the easiest way to start living in the now is by noticing the sensations in our bodies and by paying attention to the world around us as it unfolds. I like to pay attention to my breath while also noticing my surroundings: non-judgmentally observing the color and shape of the clouds, feeling the sun on my face, noticing my diaphragm move up and down with each breath. This everyday mindfulness can be practiced while:
- Driving: feel your hands on the steering wheel and your foot on the gas pedal while gazing through the windshield at the road ahead.
- Cleaning: feel the warmth of the towels fresh out the dryer, hear the quiet popping of soap bubbles, and smell the lavender scent of cleaner on the sponge.
- Walking: notice the quality of your breath, the feel of the ground beneath your feet, observe the sights around you, and listen to the sounds of birds, car horns, and other ambient noise.
Whenever you find your mind drifting to thoughts of the past or future, gently redirect your focus to the present moment. On days that I am too far gone, I find that yoga helps me, and sometimes forces me, to reconnect with the moment. Matching each movement with an inhale or an exhale requires that I stay focused on the present. By the time we lie back in Shavasana (corpse pose), I use my here-and-now momentum from the class to stay centered in the present. Afterwards, I am able to attack the day with a greater foundation of calm and less needless stress.
Tolle’s Secret Weapon
Tricks for avoiding unnecessary thoughts about the past or future.
In The Power of Now, Tolle provides a trick to help us avoid unnecessarily stressing out over psychological time. He instructs the reader to ask him or herself “Do I have a problem right now?” whenever they start worrying about the past or the future. The answer should almost always be “no” (unless a rabid bear is chasing you right now!). For example, although, tomorrow, in a single workday, I need to figure out how I am going to complete lengthy treatment plans for each one of my clients on a new electronic client-information system while also fulfilling my normal work duties as a Crisis Social Worker, I do not have a problem “right now.”
Right now, I am sitting on my back patio enjoying the first warm day in a week, and the only thing I need to be doing is typing out words on this keyboard, not preemptively worrying about a task I cannot start addressing until work tomorrow. Before reading The Power of Now, I might have considered this work task a “problem.”
Now, I know that the issue is just a “life situation” as Tolle calls it, and I will address it when this task enters into my now. Because right now, I only have to devote my mental energy to the moment. Right now, and for the next 100 million “nows”, I am free to live in the peace of the present. You can even take this a step further by developing a fear of missing out of the now.
Why Capturing the Moment Means Missing It
Mary Hoofnagle, MA, LPC-S, RPT, wrote about this from the floor of a Radiohead show:
“The lights came down and almost instantaneously the whole room became a sea of illuminated screens swaying along to the music. I was just dumbfounded. It’s not as though this was new to me. In fact it’s pretty common, and I’ve even snapped a shot or filmed a video myself.”
“Music has been one thing I can always count on to keep me in the present moment, full of bliss, without any worries. When I realized that we’ve decided to capture a moment at the expense of actually being in it, I was saddened to think that such a simple joy has been lost.”
The moment the screen goes up, she wrote, we’re in future time: “I can’t wait to show Sara this video! How many likes will I get when I post this on Instagram?”
This present moment is an experience that will only happen right now. We can’t save moments or put them in a box and keep them forever. When we try to, we end up living in the past.
Then we can return to the feeling and the memory briefly for comfort in hard times, but if we don’t immerse ourselves when it’s happening, we miss it. One couple planning an unplugged wedding put it well: “The photographer will capture how this moment looks; I encourage you all to capture how it feels with your hearts, without the distraction of technology.”
Practice Staying Present With Flow
Getting unplugged is a first step, but staying present is a skill and takes practice. Flow activities are a great way to practice.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explains, “It is the full involvement of flow, rather than happiness, that makes for excellence in life.” The result of flow is happiness of our own construction, not happiness that depends on external circumstances.
Mary listed yoga, unplugged conversation with friends, martial arts, drawing, singing, and writing as her own flow activities. A flow activity has several components:
- It is a place where challenge meets skill. The activity is not too easy (Bor-ring!) but just hard enough to expand a skill set without frustrating you. This graph illustrates the concept.
- When engaged in the activity, you become intensely focused on what is happening in the moment. Some describe this as being in the zone.
- You lose awareness of your ego self. You stop thinking of yourself as a social actor, and the feelings, worries, or frustrations of everyday life get pushed aside.
- You have a sense that you can control your surroundings, because you know how to respond no matter what happens next.
- The activity is intrinsically rewarding, and the end goal is really just an excuse to participate in the process.
- You lose all track of time.
To read more, check out Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s books. If you’re looking to add some flow to your life, try mandalas. You don’t have to be an artist to start, and this video walks you through your first one.
Don’t Let the Future Hold You Back
Mary also wrote about losing this battle herself while job hunting as a school counselor near the end of graduate school: “As I scroll through all the possible what-if scenarios, I begin to plan out possible solutions, in order to manage my anxiety; thus enabling me to go with the flow.”
“Um… does anyone else see the problem here? If I’m planning out every possible turn and corner, I’m never actually going with the flow.” Her fix was three steps:
- Clarify my vision of what I want.
- Accept that whatever happens is for my benefit.
- Stay in the here and now and remember that each moment is building the foundation for my future vision.
Trusting the future is easier said than done. Mary called faith a muscle: the more you use it, the stronger it gets. One tool she loved was a vision board, because it let her set intentions, then let go of trying to force them, while reminding her to look at what is happening right now.
She found Zach Sobiech’s story inspiring for the same reason: “Even though he didn’t necessarily have tomorrow, he was still planning out what he wanted his future to look like, and he understood how this moment is a building toward that vision, so it shouldn’t be wasted.”
Or, as Wayne Dyer put it: “Stop living as if life were a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.”
Develop a Fear of Missing Out for the Now
Owen O’Brien took Tolle’s idea one step further with fear of missing out, better known as FOMO. He described a bad case of it in graduate school in New Orleans, losing sleep to make every event on the social calendar while meeting the program’s academic demands.
“I remember that several times, while at the party I had chosen as the evening’s best option, I would feel near-unbearable FOMO for an event that I had already decided was the inferior choice for the night. Ridiculous.”
The insight: you don’t need to get rid of FOMO. You redirect it toward the current moment, whatever it may be. Whether you are at work, at Blues on the Green, at a friend’s birthday party, or washing toilets.
This is not about building a new anxiety around not being mindful enough. It’s a playful, paradoxical intervention. If you become fully present, you are, by definition, not anxious or worried. Anxiety dies when you enter deeply into the now.
When Your Breath Isn’t Enough
Watching your breath does not always cut it when a powerful bout of FOMO kicks in. For these cases, it can be useful to non-judgmentally notice anxious thoughts without engaging with them.
Instead of grasping onto and then wrestling with these mental mosquitoes, we can watch them drift by slowly, like leaves floating down a stream, all while noticing the way our breath and body feel.
Open Awareness
Broaden the spotlight of your attention to notice all the sensations of the current moment: your breath, your body, and your environment. He did this at a backyard picnic table, noticing doves cooing, grackles singing, the AC cycling on and off, and the heat of the 10 AM Saturday sun.
So what is really scarier? Missing out on some social event that we cannot make anyway or have already decided to skip, or missing out on the life that is real and unfolding before us in each moment?
The quiet hours on the couch with the dog when we are too tired to go out. The time spent supporting a friend or family member in need, regardless of what fitness class or brunch we may be missing. This moment right now is our life.
Breaking the habit of excessive thinking can be a tough task to tackle on your own. Attending a meditation group or a yoga class and perhaps doing depression counseling or anxiety counseling can be great ways to catalyze your foray into a present-oriented life. If you feel that you could benefit from counseling or life coaching, do not hesitate to contact us to make a counseling appointment.
If you liked this post, you might also like our blogs on The Simplest Way to Overcome Anxiety and Depression and our post Develop Fear Of Missing Out Of The Now.
Interested in more? Pick up a copy of The Power of Now or check out this video of Eckhart Tolle talking about how to break the habit of excessive thinking.
