I made a list of things I want to do today, things I want to accomplish.  Things I want to get done.  A typical kind of at-home to do list.  

My tendency has always been to look at a list like this and feel a surge of anxiety.  Dread.  Thinking about all the things I want to get done tends to feel overwhelming to me.

But today when I looked at my list, I looked at it differently.  I thought “Everything on this list is just one thing.”  And I thought about approaching the things on this list in a different way.  

I want to live every day in mindfulness and appreciation.  I want to be present and approach everything I do with awareness, fully living in that moment and experiencing all that is within that moment.  Doing something on a to do list is no different from doing anything else during my day.  I can only do one thing at a time, and I can choose to be mindfully present and find appreciation in what I am doing, or I can choose not to do that.  This choice will clearly determine the quality of the moments of my day as I work on completing my tasks.

So I will not think about the list.  I will just think about the one task that I am going to do now.  I will be fully present in the moment as I work on that task, and in doing that, I will experience appreciation for everything that is within that moment.  When I think about working on a task in that way, I no longer feel anxiety and dread.  Instead I feel gratitude for being alive to live another day, and for all that I will experience during this day.

I hope you live mindfully in the moment as you do one thing at a time today.