Remembering Your Present Book Exerpt #2 by Stacy Duplease of Stories by Stacy

NO DELAY
 I realize these are some rather deep thoughts that could take you a while to contemplate. I also realize how it can take you some time to try to figure out what you want to do about remembering the importance of the present. However, please do not delay. Do so now. Make the time immediately to do so before another moment passes you by. You don’t want it to be too late.

Life is a gift. We never want to take it for granted. We want to live life as best as we can each and every day, each and every minute.

This present moment is critical.

This present moment leaves you with the choice of living life fully or shallowly. Living fully is living with awareness, intentionality, with meaning, and with purpose. It’s taking control of the present moment and not allowing outside forces you cannot control to impact your joy. Living shallowly is just going along for the ride and being influenced by whatever life throws at you. It’s not living a life focused on what brings you meaning or purpose. Which one do you want to actively choose—the full or shallow life?

Oh, and another moment just passed. So, what about this moment? How will you choose to live it?

LEAVING A LEGACY
 Can you imagine what legacy you could leave your children and the following generations if you live this principle every day for the rest of your life of realizing the most important part of your life is the now—the present?

What gift would you have for your family and the future generations in learning about your journey and how you lived every single day, without fail, to its fullest?

How do you do this? What does that look like? What does this mean exactly? Why is this a new concept to us? Or, worse yet… Why is this a concept we realize, but rarely live by?

This book and series will help you to do so.

Let’s face it, when we are about to die, we tend to regret doing too much because we realize we allowed life to pass us by. We rarely regret taking the time for something important.

So, here’s a question for you. Do you keep a journal or a diary?

Most people cringe at just the mere thought of such a fancy. Why would anyone want to keep one? (Give me a moment. I’ll explain why you should.)

THE IMPORTANCE OF LEAVING A LEGACY:
WHY THIS IS WHAT WE SHOULD WANT TO DO?
 How many of us wish we had the journals of our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents, our favorite figures in history, Presidents of the USA, people who owned our houses in the past, our belated children or siblings, or our own from a situation we wished we could remember more now? Most of us could raise our hands to each of these people.

Fact: Most of us would love to hear about their lives, what they found important, what gave them meaning, how they lived their purpose (along with what their purpose was), and the lessons they learned through life.

What about your children? Don’t you think they would appreciate your journals when you died or well before then? What about your grandchildren and great-grandchildren?

Every single one of us has a story to tell. That’s without exception. We all do. Every story is valuable and is sacred. After all, we’ve lived! If we live life fully each and every day, how much more valuable and sacred are our lives? We’ve lived! Our lives matter and so do our stories.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PRESENT
 The most important part of your life today is the present.

The second most important part of your life today is living fully for the present.

The third most important part of your life today is remembering the present.

It’s never too late to document your life. Start today. Leave a legacy. Leave your mark on the world. Leave your trace for your family’s sake. Share your life’s lessons with the world.

It doesn’t matter if you have children or not. You live. You have a story. Share it. Your present is something that another individual can learn from and can have a better life because they hear your story.

TO UNFORGET: TO REMEMBER, RECALL, AND RECOLLECT IN THE FUTURE
 Don’t forget.

One of the tragedies about life is we tend to forget. We don’t remember every facet in our lives that have shaped us to be who we are today. This is a sad reality of life. However, what’s the saddest part of all is we can all remember, but for whatever reason, we choose not to do so… It’s really because of different reasons. However, we will regret it later—particularly forgetting the good stuff in our life and the lessons learned. We will want to remember these moments later.

Also, wouldn’t it be nice when going through a hard time to read about our other hard times and how we made it through somehow? It could be a motivating factor to help us through this present one. Or, what about reading how your grandmother, who you adore and love deeply, endured a similar situation and the lessons she learned through it and how her life was shaped by it?

Or, what about when you hear of a family member or a friend say, “I don’t think anyone knows what this is like,” when you know darn good and well what it was like you’ve been there too? Wouldn’t it be nice to pull out your life’s record and share it with them so they could learn from you what to do and what not to do?

Why would we not want to live fully in the present moment?

Why would we not want to capture it for ourselves—later in life—and for current and future generations?

What’s the key to living life in the present as fully as possible? It’s through remembering it. When you remember it, you want to be able to say you lived fully and the best you could. You want to enjoy life. The key is to always be fully present (and aware) in the present moment and when you force yourself to record it, you will do so. You have no choice.

The biggest regrets we often have are because we forget something—whether we remember it or not. It’s in our psyches and we sense it. Why not have the record so we never have to feel this way—particularly before we die?

By Stacy Duplease
of Stories by Stacy, LLC