Keep your energy
Focused on your work today.
To each day its own.

For quite some time now we have been practicing staying centered in the present moment. We have found that while preparing our house to sell we have begun a little dance. There is timing to consider — the order in which our many tasks need to be completed — as well as planning so that we can contact and schedule people to come and help us at the optimal time. This planning and thinking ahead can be a temptation for our strategic minds to take the reigns and drive us into our heads. Potential danger lurks when we get ahead of ourselves because our heads will send us right into the familiar realm of anxiety which has zero value in terms of helping us stay focused on the tasks at hand. We have already experienced that nagging voice raising its volume to ask distracting questions: “What if the house doesn’t sell?” “What if you can’t find a place you like in Massachusetts?” “What if you can’t get your work off the ground after your move?”

“Walter and Wendy What-if” seem to look for any opportunity to throw us into distraction and anxiety.

However, when we dance between our future plans and the present moment, we are able to strike a balance where we can keep most of our energy with us today and choose what we need now, while still planting stakes in the ground for the process to move forward toward the outcome we desire: in this case, selling our house. We are learning to plan without having too many expectations, and to acknowledge our desires without relying on them to come true or even thinking that what we desire is necessarily what is best for us.

It is a dance and even with the occasional stumble or awkward off-beat step, we still prefer this dance to the march we used to be on in our lives. We find it far more enjoyable, rewarding, and effective to stay close to the very task in front of us with the patience and perseverance it takes to move one step at a time rather than to look 10 miles ahead and spend most of our time being anxious and worried about something that isn’t even here yet for us to tackle. Moreover, whatever it is we’re worrying about may never even materialize as an obstacle. So why waste time imagining the worst case scenario when instead we can dance toward the best case outcome we imagine possible with sincere hope, but without unnecessary expectation?