10 Steps to (Finally) Learning How to Live in the Moment

I'm so excited to welcome Amy who blogs regularly at Rooted as a guest blogger!  Amy and I first met in our early 20s, bonding around talk of books and music and boys and work and philosophy and politics and religion and dreams and everything in between. Now in thirty-something territory, we've rekindled a friendship, finding that though our journeys have been quite different, we're both learning the same things.

10 Steps to (Finally) Learning How to Live in the Moment (or How to Stop Losing So Much Sleep at Night)

1. Experience some sort of tragic event - like two miscarriages in under a year - that makes the past too  painful to dwell in.
2. Throw your future into complete upheaval - by, say, moving your family cross country, leaving behind a house that you still own and moving to a locale where you have no family, no previous experience, and only 60 days in a two-bedroom TownePlace suite in the way of accommodation - so that the future is too uncertain and nerve-racking to contemplate for very long.
3. Reconnect with an old friend who - just weeks after you renew your friendship - starts a blog about making the most of your life, even if it doesnʼt seem to be proceeding as youʼd planned.
4. Get invited to an amazing weekend yoga retreat on an otherwise very bad day. Attend retreat as soon as possible. Laugh, cry, think a lot about what exactly you should be doing in life right now, how to engage more fully in it, and appreciate what you do have instead of focusing on what you donʼt. Make lists.
5. Randomly pick up an old copy of body + soul and discover it contains an article entitled “Find Your Passion” and a book review of The Joy of Doing Things Badly. Tear out article and keep it for further study. Request book from library immediately and devour it.
6. Buy a bread machine.
7. Start doing some of the things on your lists, things that are new and exciting or things youʼve been meaning to do for awhile: wake up half an hour before your 3-year-old in the mornings in order to do yoga in front of a fire in the fireplace, spend 3-year-oldʼs morning TV time writing, enroll in an e-course to get your creative juices flowing, cut down on the number of times you check e-mail every day.
8. Take pictures of your feet.
9. Sit down on the floor with 3-year-old, if only for a few minutes, when he asks you to play trains with him. Do this several times a day. Be thankful for this and all the small, mundane moments that make up your daily life.
10.Breathe deep and smile.

Go visit Amy at Rooted and say hello!