One of my coaching clients recently had a session with me about how he can’t figure out how to just be present and in the moment. He always feels like he’s rushing towards the next milestone, achievement or goal. 

When we dug into it, he recognised that he has a repulsion to the idea of sitting still with his thoughts and feelings. He felt a vague sense of unease and fear that if he stayed present for too long some horrible shit would come up.

He bravely agreed to explore this. When we delved into exactly what it is that he’s afraid of discovering in the still moments of being present, he was confused and unsure. He just had a sense that it would be bad.

But then something interesting arose. Almost out of nowhere, he mentioned that he’s never really been free of the need to focus on whatever was “next”. He’s rarely done anything that wasn’t in service of some future goal. He had a long-term pattern of always moving towards the next thing, rushing and urging through the process to get to the end.

And yet, whenever he achieved whatever the goal was, he simply reset and moved towards another goal. There were no lasting moments of satisfaction or completion. And as time passed he became increasingly concerned, but about what he wasn’t sure. All he knows for certain is that most Mondays he feels a bit lost, empty and “flat” – haunted by a sense of pointlessness and restless uncertainty that always seems to settle over him.

Long story short, when we unpacked everything we discovered that he really resonated with the idea that he’s afraid it’s not really possible to enjoy life, to fully be happy and to feel fulfilled in a sustained and meaningful way. What he was really afraid of experiencing in those moments of stillness and presence was a realisation that he simply can’t enjoy life.

I don’t think he’s alone in this fear.

I have personally and professionally had a lot of experience with depression, anxiety disorders and suicide, and I’ve noticed this fear correlating highly with these situations.

I think men in particular struggle to enjoy life (more than meaningless pleasures through stimulation and highs), and as we age we become ever more aware of this problem. We start to realise that we don’t know how to find meaning or fulfillment, and that achieving goals doesn’t seem to satisfy this need or fill the weird empty apathy that we experience when we stop moving for too long.

We start to worry. Inside that apathy is a kind of panicky fear, a sickening sense of pointlessness and lack of meaning, like this whole living thing doesn’t have any purpose or deep reward to it. 

Despite the fact we almost never talk about this problem openly, this fearful apathy is actually so common that entire philosophies have arisen in reaction to it. The philosophy of pessimism, for example, believes that conscious awareness is a terrible mistake in evolution, and that to consciously be aware of existence is nothing but misery.

Too many people are pretending they don’t experience it. They busy themselves with all the appropriate socially-approved activities, like work, sports, and drinking down at the pub, to convince themselves and others that their lives are purposeful and enjoyable, that they know what they’re doing and are getting on with it. This acts as an effective decoy to hide the fact that most people have no fucking idea what they’re doing and nearly every moment is an attempt to distract themselves from a stressful, worried and meaningless life.

I’ve worked in the field of psychology for nearly 20 years, and I can promise you that nearly every one of those people who appear to be happy and purposeful are pretending. They are desperately avoiding the dreadful sense of pointlessness that lingers inside them, suffocating it with busyness, stimulation, drama, and highs.

The louder they are, the busier they are, the more ambitious they are… the less satisfied with life they are. Confidently content people are calm, slow, and quiet about their lives, doing just a few things but doing them well, and keeping most of their awareness with the present moment, just enjoying life for what it is. It’s the people trying to change and improve their lives all the time that clearly cannot enjoy life for what it is.

I don’t mean that self-development isn’t a good idea, obviously that would be a bit hypocritical. But straining and grinding in misery to create a different future means you do not yet know how to enjoy life.

And in my opinion, learning how to enjoy life in the present moment is both the most important and most difficult challenge every one of us faces. There’s really nothing else we need to master – to learn how to enjoy life is to solve every other problem we have.

You cannot enjoy being HERE if you’re trying to get THERE. They rule each other out. It seems that you can either try to create a better future or you can enjoy the present moment, but you cannot do both simultaneously.

Or can you?

This paradox is the only problem we need to solve. How can we enjoy the process of living whilst also giving sensible attention to planning and preparing for our future?

Obviously, only staying in the present moment without a single thought for the future is untenable. It might be fun for a while, but ultimately we live in the real world and things like relationships, money, and accommodation are things that require a bit of planning to effectively sustain.

But only thinking about the future means missing out on life completely. Some of the most organised and successful people on the planet have barely experienced their own life! They’re so busy thinking about being somewhere better that they don’t get to enjoy the fruits of their labour.

It would appear obvious to most that one way to manage this issue is to swing back and forth between planning and being present. However, humans are cognitively hardwired to favour future-based worrying over present-based appreciation, so when you try to balance the two you’ll end up defaulting to a mostly future-based mindset (i.e. worrying and stressing). It’s like trying to manage an alcohol addiction by only having small sips of beer a few times per day – it’s nearly impossible to moderate.

In my ongoing exploration of this problem (which is by no means totally solved for me), I’ve discovered a promising approach to this paradox that seems to be working for me whenever I remember to apply it. And that is to find a way of acting in the present that satisfies your fears for the future whilst also being enjoyable as a process.

So what we’re trying to create here is a mindset and method to create behaviour that simultaneously is meaningful to do right now while also relaxing our fears for the future. This might seem patronisingly obvious, but it’s surprisingly difficult to do! So maybe it’s not as simple as it seems.

We need to first understand the basic principles of a) how to enjoy the present moment, and b) how to best prepare for our future. Then we need to find a way of being that overlaps both of these.

There are some basic principles to enjoying the present moment.

You must find a way to keep your attention on the here and now, not allowing your mind to wander, worry and fantasize. While mindfulness meditation is a good way to train this skill, even more effective is making sure you’re doing something you’re really into. This is easy when we’re naturally passionate about something, but how do we achieve this with the everyday mundane tasks that consume most of our time?

The trick is to focus on quality. A task feels meaningful when we give it our all, treating it like it’s highly important and trying to do it right. We enjoy our favourite hobbies and conversations and sex because we’re really into it. This can be applied to other tasks through a kind of manual override.

Busyness and rushing usually means not giving a task any sense of meaning or value, while overthinking and perfectionism usually just translates to procrastinating on the action or stressing out doing more than is most effective.

Think of washing the dishes. You could either rush through it with your mind on something else, frustrated that you have to “waste time” getting them done. Or you can stress about washing them perfectly. Neither of these approaches gives a sense of meaning.

Another approach is to slowly, calmly, carefully, and thoroughly wash the dishes as if it’s the only thing you need to do today. Wash them like your yearly salary is entirely based on this task. You only have to do this one thing well, and the rest of the day is yours.

You can apply this approach to everything you do. However, you won’t have the time or space to do this with everything, so you’ll have to delete some tasks from your list. A hidden secret to creating meaning in life is to eliminate as much as possible. To ensure what you do always feels meaningful in the moment, you must be ruthless about what gets done. Either do it properly, or don’t do it at all. Half-measures cannot be tolerated.

While this approach is the key to enjoying something in the moment, we must also allow for preparing for our future. So what principles apply there?

For effective future preparation, whatever we do should be sustainable, constantly able to improve, adaptive to feedback, and aligned with our values. Stressing, pressure and worry aren’t required. We just have to do things in a way that are empirically likely to achieve our goals.

The great news is that these principles of successful future planning also translate easily to present-focused actions. The micro matches the macro, i.e. doing something right in the here and now is also the best thing to do for your future. You don’t need to do something fundamentally different now to how you’ll be doing it when you get successful.

To make this more understandable, here are some examples of present moment activities that also prepare for the future.

Budgeting carefully and diligently once per month, as if you’re a master accountant trying to improve on last month’s numbers, is not only a great way to enjoy the mundane task of managing your finances, it’s also the smartest method to ensure you will be wealthy in the future.

Brushing your teeth with care and attention as if you’re trying to impress your dentist, not only makes cleaning your teeth more enjoyable but also protects you against health problems in the future.

Treating every conversation as if it’s your last – paying attention, taking your time, listening carefully, and doing everything you can to speak as honestly as possible – will let you lose yourself in the connection during the moment, and is also the most effective way to develop long-term relationships and friendships.

Slowly exercising, paying attention to your body during every second of every rep, transforms “boring” workouts into a loving and respectful interaction with your body. This style of exercise is also the most sustainable, meaning you will avoid injury and always push yourself to just the right level of stress.

Standing up for an injustice you see in public rather than succumbing to the Bystander Effect like everyone else will require a level of focus and bravery that will keep you totally present and create a memory of doing something important, while also developing the highly valuable skill of courageous boundary-setting and self-respect that will pay out in dividends over your lifetime.

As you can see, there are ways of behaving that give your present moment depth, meaning and enjoyment, while also relaxing your worries about the future. When your brain says, “What if…?!” and starts worrying about shit that hasn’t happened yet, you can just calmly respond with, “Chill out dude, I’m doing the best thing I can for that right now anyway, I’m on top of it.”

You must remember something important here: the future is a fiction.

It will never happen. And I don’t mean that your dreams for the future are unrealistic (though I doubt they’ll turn out exactly as you hope), what I really mean is there literally is no such thing as “the future”. Every moment is just now.

As you read this, you’re living through yesterday’s future. It’s just NOW, isn’t it? There’s no difference from previous now’s. The “future” is not some destination you’re heading towards. You’re not travelling through time; you’re just running on a treadmill of constant now. There’s no other time to enjoy your life. There’s nothing to build up to, or to wait for. 

Life is already happening, is always happening, and nothing will change about that until you die. If you can’t learn to enjoy this moment then you won’t be able to enjoy “future” moments, because by the time you get there they’ll just become this moment again. You’ll be the same person then as you are now.

More money won’t solve this. Going from single to married won’t make a difference. A six pack of abs won’t change your experience of now. If you can’t enjoy your current finances, relationships, or body, then you lack the ability to enjoy the now, and therefore when you achieve those goals you’ll still be someone who doesn’t enjoy the present, unless you change your approach.

Let go of your hope that there is some future destination where everything finally feels good and makes sense. You have to learn how to create meaning in your life as it is. Life will always be as it is. Whatever changes and improvements you make will quickly become your new normal, and solving your current problems will just replace them with new problems. You have to get ok with whatever is your current state if you also want to enjoy different states in the future.

There’s a reason billionaires don’t stop chasing money, and politicians don’t stop chasing power, and celebrities don’t stop chasing attention. It’s because those things never satisfied them. They weren’t able to enjoy being poor, powerless, or unknown, and didn’t realise that changing those states didn’t improve their ability to enjoy life. They might look like they’re having a good time, but their relentless chasing reveals the truth: they’re fucking miserable.

There is no other time to focus on, and nothing else worth doing with your life: you must learn how to enjoy any moment, any stage of life, any state. Or you won’t be able to enjoy even the most admired life.