What Are You Waiting For?

Being late is a bitch.

Last Saturday I was running late for a tennis match and it was not a pretty scene. Somehow the time got away from me when I was getting ready and when I got in the car to leave, I realized I was in trouble. My match started in 16 minutes and Google Maps said it would take me 18 minutes to get to the tennis facility across town.

Awesome.

The next 18 minutes of my life were like a scene from a Rocky movie when Rocky is getting his butt kicked. My mean inner voice took over my mind and proceeded to mentally and verbally abuse my entire reason for existence.

The abuse sounded something like this:

Well done, Katherine, I cannot believe you’re going to be late for this tennis match. How can you keep getting this shit wrong? You know the rules. If you’re 10 minutes late, you get disqualified from the match and ruin your team’s chance of winning. Can’t you just picture the captain stressing out and calling you to see if you’re going to be late again and apologizing to the other team on your behalf? Nice one. It’s a miracle you manage to keep a day job with how irresponsible you are. How hard is it to be on time to a tennis match? Apparently, it’s incredibly hard for you because you’re a knucklehead.

The attack got worse and worse as the time went on. The closer I got to the tennis court, the more real my tardiness and irresponsibility became. I watched and I worried as the clock ticked down to my impending doom.

It was manic.

When I arrived I was a hot, sweaty mess. I was six minutes late to the start of my match and four minutes away from being disqualified.

I used what little breath I had left to profusely apologize to the team captain, “Oh my word, I’m so sorry. The time got away from me! I got here as fast as I could! I hate that I kept you waiting.”

Her response? “No worries at all. The previous team is still playing so we can’t get on the courts right now anyway. We have plenty of time.”

Good Lord.

My immediate reaction was unexpected. What I felt inside of me was not relief because I was no longer late. It was disappointment for how I had just treated myself.

What a horrible use of 18 minutes of my life.

I had just spent 18 minutes vilifying myself — spewing venom and dark and hateful words without so much as taking a breath the entire time. I blamed myself. I accused myself. I yelled at myself.

I was disappointed in myself and I sure let myself know it.

Hindsight is a wonderful teacher and I’m now able to see the root cause of why I was so hard on myself that day. It’s very simple.

I wasn’t living in the present moment. I was living in the future.From the moment I pulled out of my driveway, I was predicting and anticipating the worst-case scenario of what I would find when I arrived at the tennis match. I assumed I would be disqualified. I anticipated that everyone would be pissed.

But none of those things came true. Not one.

So the 18-minute boxing match in my mind was completely and wholeheartedly unnecessary.

Talk about a waste of time.

In one of my favorite self-help books, The Power of Now, author Eckhart Tolle reminds us that almost all of our problems are based in the past or in the future. In other words, we’re always beating ourselves up for what we didn’t do this morning or what we’ll probably screw up later today.

If you’re truly living in the present moment, your manic and mean mind cannot attack you.

If I had been in the present moment in my car, and not anticipating the future, I would have listed to a TED talk or a podcast or some great music on the radio and enjoyed a stress-free drive in my beautiful car driving down clean and safe roads in the greatest country in the world. I would have appreciated that I was blessed enough to have a healthy body and a fabulous husband, both of which made it possible for me to play tennis on that sunny 70-degree Saturday afternoon.

This is not airy-fairy stuff. It’s incredibly hard to do, but it is indeed possible.

If we keep reminding ourselves, even out loud at times, that we’re “Right Here. Right Now.” it can bring us back to the present moment so we can actually enjoy it.

Eckhart Tolle goes on to say that stress is caused by being ‘here’ and wanting to be ‘there’. He says that most of us are so busy trying to get to the future that the present moment is reduced to a means to an end of getting there.

Holy cow.

Are you treating the present moment, the only moment you will ever have, the only moment that is real and the only moment in which you can find happiness, like it’s a means to an end?

In my case, I was terrified of the future and that fear single-handedly ruined 18 minutes of my life. And fear is like fuel to the voice in your head.

The mean voice in your head loves fear; it thrives on it.

Fear gives the voice the ammunition it needs to argue the case that you’re an idiot for being late…even when you’re not late.

Living in the future is no way to live. Here are two things you can do to keep you mind in the present moment.

1. Ask yourself a question. When you find yourself fearing, something that might happen in the future, ask yourself this question: “What problem do I have right now?” Not next year, tomorrow or 18 minutes from now. I wish I had asked myself that question in the car on the way to the tennis court. In the car I didn’t have a care in the world. My problem was waiting for me in the future but it was not with me in the present moment.
2. Never wait again. The very notion of “waiting” creates problems. Waiting means your body is in the present and your mind is in the future. For example, if you are “waiting” in the line at the DMV, you are treating the present moment like a means to an end; you are treating it like it doesn’t matter. The Power of Now suggests that the next time someone says to you, “Sorry to have kept you waiting,” you can reply, “That’s all right, I wasn’t waiting. I was just standing here enjoying myself — in joy in my self.”

Damn, that’s deep.

What if you looked at the idea of waiting differently? What if you never waited again? It is possible. It happened to me just yesterday.

Yesterday I was in line with a good friend at a local coffee shop. We hadn’t seen each other in a long time so we were engrossed in conversation the entire time we were in line. When we reached the counter, the woman in front of us turned around and profusely apologized for taking so long to order. She hated that she had kept us waiting.

My friend Michelle and I immediately looked at each other, laughed and said in sync, “We didn’t even notice!”

We didn’t notice because we weren’t waiting in line. We weren’t waiting for the future to arrive. We were living in the present moment enjoying each other’s company.

The present moment is not a means to an end.

The present moment is all you have. It’s the only thing that is real.

Don’t waste it by allowing your mind to live three steps ahead of your body. If you want to preserve your mental energy and save your sanity, just think about keeping your mind and body in the same time zone.

Try it today. Try it in this moment. And again in this one.