Staying present to protect the future

I’ve realized recently that my biggest stress comes from projecting how something happening right now is going to impact me in the future. My dog is a good clear example of that. He’ll be 14 in a couple of months, and lately he’s been going to the bathroom in the house more often than he goes outside. He suffers from a spinal disease that’s caused him to lose feeling in his hind parts. When he does go to the bathroom in the house, it’s not that act that annoys me, it’s the belief that it’s going to continue to happen more and more frequently, and were going to spend the last few years of his life, the next few years of our lives, cleaning up after him. It took me awhile to unpack that, but just knowing that has helped to calm me down when an accident happens and just deal with the present. And I know that whatever the future brings we will be ready for it.

But it’s not just my dog. It also happened to me recently in the days and weeks leading up to a big trip we were taking. Over the winter holidays we drove from Colorado to the northeast where both of our families live. Between driving back and forth, and time spent with family, I knew we were going to be on the road, away from our home, and out of our routines, for three long weeks. Just the thought of it was exhausting, and the more I thought about it the more I convinced myself I was going go be exhausted. Anticipating future exhaustion, I started doing things in the present to try and mitigate it.

I meal prepped double the amount of food for my dog than I normally would (we stopped giving our dog kibble a few months ago, and now cook him real food). I ran extra errands to buy extra supplies, supplements, and edibles, for our trip (more to pack, and I barely used any of the extras) and to be stocked up when we got back. I stressed over whether or not we should go on a planned ski trip the week before our road trip to celebrate my birthday. When we booked it a few months earlier it seemed like a good idea, but now with the trip looming it seemed like just one more thing that was going to wipe us out.

Everything I was doing to protect my future self, was causing draining me and making me miserable in the present. How I anticipate feeling in the future has a very real and negative impact on how I feel in the present, and I need to change that.

I’ve been trying to view each incident with my dog as a stand alone issue to be handled. I’ve been giving myself permission to let go of trying to control the future, reminding myself that there are no guarantees, regardless of how I act now. And by just doing those things, I’ve been better at alleviating the false stress of an uncertain future. There was a quote I thought of not too long ago that I thought was kind of clever.

“Being present requires accepting the uncertainty of the future.”

I know it’s not a behavior that will just change overnight, and I know that it will likely happen again, and again, and again, but hopefully each time less so, and hopefully I’ll be able to catch it a little earlier each time. I remind myself often that changing behaviors is a very difficult thing to do that takes time and repetition, but is perfectly doable.

Is this something that you struggle with? How does it impact your life? What have you done to try and mitigate it?