Turning future desires into present contentments

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#Philosophy#Shitshow To Afterglow#spirituality

UPDATE 2020: This writing has been migrated to The Afterglow, my members-only private publication.

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About the Author: Ariel

@findyourafterglow

Author of three editions of the Offbeat Bride book and its sequel (From Shitshow To Afterglow, the ultimate offbeat breakup book) Ariel Meadow Stallings is the publisher of all the Offbeat Empire web properties. She lives in Seattle with her son. To read her latest work, follow @arielist.

Comments on Turning future desires into present contentments

  1. Ariel, I hear you SO HARD right now. I’ve actually been looking for a way to do exactly this (because focusing on those future big goals with every other breath and every idle thought just isn’t serving me). I’ve already done this exercise twice in the last half hour.

    I think this is going to be one of those things that’s a practice. I’ll keep falling out of it and have to come back to it, and maybe someday I’ll be able to do it for much longer (THERE I GO AGAIN, I can’t even look at the not-looking-at-future-goals without looking at future goals in it).

    I’ll be in the corner.

    • Ha! Goal setting about goal setting… #itme

      Here’s a different way to look at it: if you gave yourself in just a couple brief moments of non-anxious future looping, then that’s a couple more than you had before!

      With mindfulness/presence practices like this, it’s so easy to be like WHY CAN’T I BE PRESENT ALL THE TIME I SUCK WHY EVEN BOTHER. But sustainable shift is tiny and incremental. You’re doing it right! ♥️

  2. I practice allowing myself to have some aspect of my ideal NOW, which I learned from The Artist’s Way. There is also an exercise very similar to what you describe in Martha Beck’s book Steering by Starlight.

    My favorite misbelief is that I am no good at “daily life” and cannot be happy in it (as opposed to travel and strange circumstances). I am trying to unlearn the idea that “daily life” means I am limited to work and a dull home life of chores and TV. If my daily life is going to improve, the logic goes, it will require me to do a bunch of shit and work really hard and theeenn maybe someday, I will have fun. -OR- I could just do the Ariel method and feel happy now.

  3. YAS! I love this. I’ve definitely become what I hate- never being fully present, always thinking about something else or doing multiple things at once. I’ve recently gotten into witchcraft (baby baby beginner), as a lot of the practice has to do with intention- much like the LOA. Its all about your mindset, babyyyy.. its the simplest, yet the most complex answer to basically everything I’ve been trying to “fix” about myself. Thanks for the practical implementations. I’m starting today. <3 <3

  4. …aaand this is why I still have this ridiculus fangirl-crush on you since I first stumbled about a post about how pushing a stroller feels weird and thinking “man, she gets me.”

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