Summary of "The Present"

This book explains very common yet powerful concept in very simple manner. The crux of the book is how to live in the present while learning from the past and planning for the future to achieve happiness in work and personal life. It explains The Present (gift) is not the past, and not the future, it is the present moment, it is ‘now’. It means to focus and pay attention to what is happening right now. Usually when you are in the office, you think where else you might enjoy working more, or what you will do when you go home. When you are in the meeting or chatting with friends, your mind wanders somewhere else. So this concept explains very powerful strategy to focus on the present moment and concentrate on the activity which is happening in that moment.

Now focusing on present doesn’t mean that you should forget the past. Everybody does some mistakes in the past but you shouldn’t keep worrying about it. You might keep thinking about those past mistakes in the present and may spoil the present. It is hard to let go of the past if you have not learned from the past. As soon as you learn from your mistakes, you can easily let that go away and move on in the present. Once you learn from the past, it is easy to enjoy in the present, which eventually enhances your performance in the present. When you are feeling unhappy in the present, then it is time to learn from the past or plan the future.

The common behavior of people is to live in the future and get anxious about the events in the future. This book explains that we should plan for the future but we should not live in the future. Only way we can make our future better than our present is to plan for the future. Planning for future reduces the uncertainty, anxiety and fear about future events as you are actively working on your plan to achieve your goals in the future. So we should visualize a wonderful future, create a realistic plan to help it happen and then take actions in the present to achieve the desired success.

It also explains living in the present, learning from the past, and planning for the future is not all there is. It is only when you live with the purpose, and respond to what’s important about the present, past and future, has all the meaning. Living with purpose means not only knowing what to do, but also understanding why to do. It means rising each day and seeing what meaning it will hold for you and for others as a result of your actions.

Source: http://www.scribd.com/doc/37356/The-Present-One-Page-Book-Review