How Do I Live in the Present?

I’ve spent the last few days in a small village in the south of France, thinking about a concept I’m historically bad at: living in the present.

We’re all professional worriers. We obsess over the future, worrying if our long-term goals will be met, if our ventures will succeed, or if we’ll hit the arbitrary milestones we’ve set for ourselves. But I’ve realized that any time you aren’t living in the present, you’re essentially dead to it. When you really think about it, the present is the only thing we actually have; if you aren’t in it, you’ve lost the only time that’s real (the past has come and gone and the future isn’t yet here).