How to enjoy life more, in 12 keys

We only have the present. Everything we can do and therefore enjoy is here, in the now.. Don’t let it escape longing for the past or projecting into the future. Life does not wait. You only really live when we make it ours, when we discover ourselves, trust, bet, make mistakes and start over.

The importance of enjoying life to the fullest

It is true that facing the challenge of our day to day seems increasingly difficult. It is true that the temptation to return to safer places in our past is at least as tempting as letting our fantasy run wild into the idealized world of the future, where our dreams come true. And this statement is as true for us as individual beings as well as for our partners and for our families. It is also like this for our town or city, for our province and, many times, even for our country. The world is truly a complicated space because it is not what it was nor is it what it will be; it is what it is here and now.

This combination of words, here and now – to which the wonderful and brilliant creator of Gestalt therapy, Fritz Perls, paid attention more than fifty years ago – has been used so lightly in recent times that it can be said that it has gradually losing its original strength. Above all because the merchants of illusions, the cheap publicists and the politicians in bad faith have appropriated it, depriving it of its real meaning.

The routine that chains us

Every year many men and women come to my office, like all my colleagues, whose biggest problem is experiencing the feeling that, having got everything they ever wanted, they cannot enjoy it. They talk, cry and complain; they lament “what they should have enjoyed in the past if they had realized what they now know, which they should have enjoyed at that time.”

These people are sure that this situation is hopeless because it is too late; However, they come to the consultation thinking about everything they are going to enjoy the day they overcome that problem. Away from the present, these patients permanently suffer what most of us sometimes suffer, oscillating between the frustration of “how nice it would have been if…” and the expectation of “how nice it will be when…”.

Living in the moment, or living in the future?

Let’s give an example of this situation. Let me imagine you in an unlikely situation. Suppose you belong to the Anterograde club – that’s the name of the “how nice it will be when…” club. And let me flatter our ego by stating that you woke up this morning with a fierce desire to read our magazine. Due to this characteristic that I have just attributed to you, I can assume that you have not been able to enjoy the breakfast that someone dear has lovingly prepared for you because you were thinking about how much you wanted to read our articles.

However, now that you are reading them, you cannot fully enjoy the expected reading either, since –almost without wanting to– you are thinking about how fantastic it will be to be able to share these concepts with your friends Joaquín and Eulalia, with whom you have met for dinner tonight in a restaurant that you have wanted to visit for a long time. Let’s imagine that dinner is spectacular. And the truth is that you could have fully enjoyed it if it weren’t for the fact that during the evening you couldn’t stop thinking about how good you will feel when you can get home to go to sleep, since today you are exhausted.

But if you really belong to this club, you shouldn’t get your hopes up about this moment too much because, surely, when you are in bed, it is very likely that you will not be able to sleep thinking about the amount of work that awaits you the next day. A job that, by the way, you love and that would be much more pleasant if it weren’t for the fact that, while you work, you spend the day calculating how much you need to raise the money that allows you to access the credit for the apartment you want to buy. Although I sense with good judgment that, when you manage to live in the apartment, this will be cause for a very fleeting joy because you will soon think about how fantastic it will be when you no longer have to pay the mortgage… Shall I continue? Better not.

Let’s abandon anxiety to achieve our dreams

The world, I told you, is what it is. And in it, whether we like it or not, I am who I am today, and you are the person you are today. Everything that we have deposited in our lives in the past or everything that we can imagine of our future is today just a memory or a fantasy and, as such, they do not exist in tangible reality. The real world, the one that contains us and to which we belong, is only the present and it is the only true one..

However, being anchored in the present does not mean dispensing with experience. Rather, it consists of learning not to be a slave to it, but we’ll talk about that another time – and now don’t keep thinking about how beautiful it will be the day we talk about it. Also, do not interpret that you do not have to have projects because it is the opposite.

By living in the present, I mean surrendering to our plans as a challenge that allows us to be surprised by everything; Live each moment and each experience without anticipation, without conditions, without fear. I’m talking about projecting ourselves into the future, but without actually living in it. I’m talking about being at peace with the past to stop resorting to it looking for excuses and justifications.

Someone might believe that this difference is subtle, but it is not. And the consequences of mixing those two ghosts with the reality of the present can be sometimes funny, but other times, dramatic.

I remember when I started studying psychiatry, the world seemed to gang up on me, as everyone told me jokes about crazy psychiatrists and even crazier patients – or was it the other way around: deranged patients and even crazier psychiatrists? One of those jokes is very apt:

A supplier of medical instruments was visiting a psychiatric sanatorium in the middle of summer. From the small terrace where he was having tea with the director, he watched the patients who, in swimsuits, climbed onto the diving board next to the pool. From above and to the spirited cry of “How beautiful Thursday will be!”, they jumped headlong, one after the other.
The visitor, somewhat surprised by the unanimity of the “war cry”, was encouraged to ask him:
“Why do they all say the same thing when they jump?” What happens on Thursdays?
The director slowly poured himself some more tea and replied:
—I don’t know about other Thursdays, but this Thursday they will fill the pool with water…

Here and now. We can now understand, in their essence, these two words together. They point out that in order to live, it is necessary to be anchored in the present, since the only true life is that which takes place in time and in the place where each one of us is.

Valuing the present as it deserves

The present is the result of everything we have experienced and is always our best moment, especially since it is the only moment on which we can really act. At this moment, we can ask ourselves: What is needed, what is necessary, what is the way to learn to act appropriately in this fleeting and eternal moment that is the present? The first condition to enjoy life more is to realize that life, with all its difficulties, is worth it. That is to say, to realize that the difficulties of our existence are also worth it: the suffering, the sadness and the pain that we experience.

It is worth insisting, creating, trying, failing, starting over, building and sharing. It is worth living, here and now, without delays. And even more so if we are willing to bet, almost blindly, on what is to come, on the future, on the rest of our lives, which, as the song says, begins today.

To finish, I leave you this poem that I wrote many years ago and that I titled “Brevity”:

I was born today at dawn
I lived my childhood this morning
and about noon
I was already in my teens.
And it’s not that I’m scared
let time pass me by
So fast.
It just worries me a little
think maybe tomorrow
I’m
too old
to make
what i left today
earring.

12 steps to get your best version

Life is like a journey towards self-realization and, as in all paths, the reward does not wait for you on arrival., but you enjoy it at every step you take. This is a small travel guide that aims to make it easier for you.

1. Get to know yourself better

Knowing yourself means taking the time to connect with what you believe, think, feel and are., beyond what others would like. If you know who you are, you will recognize yourself in your actions and take responsibility for them. In the following article you will find many clues.

2. Learn to listen to what they say about you

As the Talmud says: “We have two ears and one mouth to remember that we must listen twice and speak half”. I’m talking about active and committed listening that analyzes and understands without judging. We often despise what we don’t know for fear of admitting our ignorance.
If you learn to listen to what others see in your attitudes and say about you, you will know the aspects of your person that are hidden in blind places from your own gaze.

3. Decide your freedom

Freedom referred to the internal process of autonomy and not to the vulgar and lying concept of “being able to do what each person wants”. Freedom consists of the possibility or the right that each person has to choose one (and sometimes more than one) of the alternatives that are presented at a given moment. You are responsible for your decisions, therefore, you are free to stay or leave, to say or shut up, to insist or abandon, to take risks and to look for what you need. Freedom is the ability to choose within the possible and to assume the cost of your decisions.

4. Order the external and the internal

To reach your destination and not lose your way, you need to prioritize what is important over what is accessory., it is necessary to be patient in our demands and prioritize the great things over the trifles. Freedom and the ability to let yourself flow are not at odds with putting some things in order. If we intend to end up taking care of everything, it is essential to start by putting the first in its place before taking care of the last.

5. Open up to love

There is no personal fulfillment without the ability to feel loved and to love intensely, committedly and selflessly. Open up to interest in the well-being of others, be it your child, mother, partner, neighbor or someone unknown. I am convinced that in order to reach the goal of self-realization it is essential that we be able to reap, at least, a relationship with someone who is not only important to us, but who also manages to let us know that we are important to him; someone we can love and feel loved even in disagreements.

6. Choose good companies

Choose your fellow travelers well and do it with your heart and not with your head. We live in a competitive and consumer society that makes it difficult for those around us to enjoy. We live installed in a hurry, we seek immediate pleasure. Often,…