Are you showing up, right here and right now, for this particular moment in your life? Are you present, truly present? Silly questions, you might think, but are they? After all, you are reading these lines, so, technically you are here. Are you really?

I invite you to check in with yourself. How much of you is present in this very moment? Any conversations happening inside of you? No? Yes? Maybe not real conversations but fragments of ideas, shoulds, shouldn'ts, what ifs, musts, to dos and more floating through your mind? Where are you emotionally?

So, on a scale of 1-10, how much of you is present in this moment? A 10 would indicate 100%. My sincere congratulations to you if that's where you find yourself. You may not need to read on.

Just in case you assess your number to be closer to a 5 or six or lower, don’t despair. Instead, be kind to yourself and breathe. Allow the breath to settle, anchor yourself and bring your awareness to the moment. Even though I set my intentions each day to show up fully to each moment and be present to it, this very endeavour continually requires my utmost attention. I can and do distract myself so easily, particularly with my attachments to the past or my meanderings into the future to determine the what ifs, for instance.

Now don't get me wrong. I love to dream and daydream, to engage in future thinking and planning. There’s definitely a place and time for it, just as you may wish to dedicate time and attention to healing the wounds that stem from the past. After all, our lives are replete with losses that require healing.

Back to this moment now. It takes more than just your physical presence to be fully present, as you well know. Check in right now and see if you truly feel in your body. Are you able to feel the expansion of your breath in your body?

How about your mind? Where is it? Where are your thoughts that generally are expressed in language fragments that float around, creating fascinating dialogue or boisterous town hall meetings, perhaps even shouting matches sometimes?

Here is a revealing exercise for you, in case you've not paid much attention to the seemingly random thoughts that go through your mind. Several times a day, jot down what thoughts and fragments of comments cross your mind in just a minute. I bet you it's more than a handful in many cases. See if your monkey mind or your cow mind has the upper hand. I'd be curious to know.

What does such an active cow mind or monkey mind do for you? Apart from draining and exhausting you, it leads you astray and distracts you from accomplishing your goals. Furthermore, you miss the opportunity to give to and gain from each encounter you are experiencing because only a part of you is present.

Let me provide you with an example: How many times in a conversation have you prepared a response to the speaker, even if this person is your best friend, while the person was still speaking? This suggests your attention was not fully on the speaker, but on yourself. Have you ever interrupted somebody because you felt the need to add a thought? I’m certainly guilty of both behaviours. My impatience or anxiety around forgetting something I wish to contribute or my eagerness to look informed or knowledgeable, however, mainly demonstrate my own needs and desires to be acknowledged and seen. That, in turn, takes me away from embracing the moment. I’ve then lost the ability to hear the speaker’s truth because of my premature engagement. Does that sound familiar to you?

I will extend this thought a little further. Perhaps you are dealing with a challenge in your life that absorbs much of your thoughts and emotions. Perhaps you feel numb, unable to even label what you are feeling. Perhaps you are experiencing much love and happiness right now. All of it just IS. In itself, it is neither good nor bad; it's just our thoughts and attitudes that make it so because we continually compare to events and experiences of the past. The question remains, are you fully present to even the joy and happiness you’re experiencing?

What if you find yourself in a situation that you consider undesirable? In such an instance, Eckhart Tolle, the author of The Power of Now, suggests you have one of three options: 1) Remove yourself from the situation or event. 2) Change it; and 3) Accept it totally. He continues to propose that whatever you choose (and there is no right or wrong), do it fully and accept all anticipated and unanticipated consequences in the process.

That advice in itself certainly resonates with me. I have successfully exercised the first two options, even under challenging circumstances. The third choice–total acceptance–that’s the tough one for me. How about you?

How can I totally accept whatever comes with the situation if I cannot remove myself from it or I don't have the power to change it? It’s a hard pill to swallow. Do you feel that's where you are at now or where you have been in the past? How do you accept a situation fully and completely if it is something you neither wished nor chose to have in your life at all? That’s when we tend to feel sorry for ourselves and fall prey to victimhood–justifiably so, we believe. As examples, I’m thinking of a life-threatening illness, a traumatic experience or the death of a loved one, and, of course, other scenarios may be true for you.

If all my being resents the circumstance or situation, what does total acceptance mean? To me, it suggests embodying all the thoughts and the emotions, a process which requires honest recognition and awareness of all the feelings, thoughts, sensations, and emotions that well up inside of me.

The wise words attributed to the Chinese teacher and philosopher Confucius, "Wherever you go, go with all your heart," express clearly my embodied sense of Tolle’s statement. Even when my heart feels broken and my soul feels trapped in the darkest and longest nights of the abyss, I need to open myself to the presence of each moment. Then, and only then, do I learn to embrace the paradoxes life has to offer rather than feeling engulfed by the tension of the opposites that tear me apart.

These are not empty words, as you may already know. My manuscript Invisible Connections bears witness to such an experience where I express my attempts to acknowledge and be fully present to each moment through poetry and memoir. I invite you to read the excerpts I’ve posted on my website under the heading Writings .

Do you have anything to share with me on this topic? I’d be very interested in hearing your musings on this subject. Enjoy having fun and practice showing up and being present when life throws you little teasers. That’s the practice we need to become proficient and effective even during the tough times. Let me know what happens when you do show up and are present.