In the same way in the movie Hook that Robin Williams' grown-up Peter Pan found his best "happy thought"-the one that enabled him to remember how to fly-in a thought about his son, we need to have our own "happy thoughts" at the ready to pull us away from obsessive rumination about the future so that we can enjoy the present. And we can't just go searching for it when obsessive worry suddenly appears. The alternative thought needs to be both pleasurable and non-anxiety producing. ![]() If we're repeatedly being distracted by an obsession with a future event or situation that consistently draws out attention away from the present moment, we need to find an alternative thought that distracts us away from that obsession. Ideally, whatever activity in which we're engaging in the present would be distracting enough, but this is clearly often not the case. How? With other thoughts that are equally, if not more, attractive. Rather, we need to distract ourselves from them. The best way to stop paying attention to thoughts that generate anxiety, however, isn't by forcibly trying to resist them (studies show this quite reliably and paradoxically magnifies them). To learn to enjoy ourselves, then, we don't want to stop thinking entirely and live only in the moment but rather to think about the future only when it serves us to do so, not when it doesn't. But Homo sapiens, we now know, evolved to think-and not just about anything, but specifically about the future (being able to think about the future and plan for it provides us an almost unparalleled survival advantage). Part of the problem, according to psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow, is that to be fully immersed in the present moment is to be not thinking at all-only experiencing. But the majority of us do experience spikes of anxiety when thinking about certain aspects of the future that can easily obstruct our ability to enjoy the present. Luckily, however, this group actually constitutes the minority of people: it turns out the majority of us don't spend the majority of our lives awash in worry. ![]() How, then, can we free ourselves from worry? Unfortunately, that answer is a bit more complicated.įirst, people whose lives are filled to the brim with anxiety-who seem to feel it for no clear reason or for reasons that most others don't-may very well be suffering from a full-blown anxiety disorder, one that may require professional treatment, whether therapy, medication, or both. If we're constantly worrying about the future, how can we possibly enjoy the present? The answer is we can't.
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