You Must Be Present to Win

I remember seeing that phrase "You must be present to win" in the rules of a raffle or something a long time ago. If you weren't there when they pulled your number out of the hat, well they pulled another number. Somehow that phrase has always stuck in my mind. "You must be present to win." I think that makes a lot of sense, really.

As human beings, we create every moment of our lives. Most of the time, we just don't know it. We create unconsciously. We're not aware that we're creating anything. We often only think of the word create as it relates to art. When I look up the word create in the dictionary, that's so handily on the desktop of my computer, the first definition is "bring (something) into existence". So, when we create, we bring something into existence. Well, don't we do that every day? every moment? Whether it's the toast I ate for breakfast or the conversation I had with my spouse as we ate, neither one of those things existed until they were created in the moment. We do it all the time.

The next definition of create is "cause (something) to happen as a result of one's actions" I love this! We create. We CAUSE.

When life doesn't look the way we desire it, the most powerful realization is that we have created it exactly as it is. Not like we did it on purpose, but we created it unconsciously. We were unaware of what we were creating. We were just going about our business. Trying to get through the day. Make the ends meet, etc. Well, what might happen if you were consciously creating your life? If you were aware? What would you create?

You must be present to win. You must be present to create the life you desire. How much time do you spend being truly present? In this moment? Right here? Right now? That is where conscious creation happens. I've spent an awful lot of time in my life stuck in thinking about, planning for and worrying about the future. I have friends who've spent just as much time stuck in the past. There's nothing happening in either one of those places. I've been writing songs for about 30 years now. It's always been a way that I express myself. It seemed to come quite naturally. There was a time though when I would start a song, but I couldn't finish. It got to the point where I didn't even want to start a new song because I knew I couldn't finish it. It was frustrating to say the least. I felt like I was broken or something. This thing that had always come so naturally to me and been fun, was now hard and frustrating and I couldn't do it. Not fun at all. I realized that every time I would write a song, I would start to think about how it would be received. Would it be good enough? Would people like it? Would it secure me a place among the great songwriters of history...blah,blah,blah. I got so tangled up in my head that I would get stuck. Well we do that in our lives don't we?

What I had to do with my writing was allow myself to be in the moment. When I would catch myself going off in my head I would have to bring myself back and just be in the flow of creating a song. It's no different than being in the flow of creating your life. Moment by moment.

If you want to build the life you desire, begin right here. Right now. Be in this moment. You're breathing. You have a body. You're sitting or you're standing. What will you create? Look, I know things happen. We sometimes get thrown the unexpected curve ball. Life unfolds. We learn. Or we don't. But you CAN create your life to be any way you desire it to be. You have that power. Just remember, "You must be present to win."