Living in the "now" means spending your time working on and thinking about today's activities. It is a well-stated fact that "stress kills." You cannot change anything about what happened in the past. What you think may happen in the future may or may not occur (usually it doesn't).
What do you think about when you first wake up in the morning? If you have spent even 10 minutes before you go to bed at night writing your next day's goals and activities required to meet those goals, you will wake up with your thoughts centered around those activities. As you relax and stretch upon awaking, you'll become excited about knowing what direction your day will take. You have now started a positive, productive day.
Our bodies react exactly the same way whether something is occurring right now or whether you are just replaying the situation in your mind. You were born with a fight or flight mechanism built in so if you remember and "play back" that almost auto accident that happened yesterday, your blood pressure will increase and your blood will thicken. These are automatic bodily functions that you cannot stop when you replay that event in your mind. What happens when pressure goes up and blood thickens? You become susceptible to a heart attack and/or stroke.
Do you find yourself unable to sleep at night get? Many do not believe that they have control over their thoughts. You do! It takes practice but if you find those replays filling your mind or if you find negative thoughts creeping in, you can just yell "stop" (out loud by the way) and force yourself to think about a situation that you'd love to be experiencing. That may be an ocean beach walk or a mountaintop vista or whatever you would find to be relaxing. When you can't sleep, it is often because you're worrying about what happened yesterday or "may" happen tomorrow.
Remember you can live in the now. Keep your thoughts about what you want to accomplish today. Remain grateful for what you have now and you'll be grateful for what you get tomorrow. What you expect to happen, happens.
