Same Thoughts, Four Years Later

I recently had a deja vu moment. Not just a simple flashback... perhaps more of a revelation that brought to light a particular pattern of thinking that I thought deserved some self-reflection. Here's my story:

When I was in my second year of undergrad, I was working as a student assistant in an occupational therapy research lab at the university. I had yet to become interested in occupational therapy (OT) at the time. I think I had heard about it from a friend who was had applied/was in the program, but nothing more. (Sidebar/tangent: I even remember sitting at the table with one of the most internationally respected researchers in the field of OT, Helene Polatajko, during a lab meeting. The encounter had barely any significance to me at the time! If I were to meet her now, my mind would be churning out questions to ask her! But truth be told, I'd probably end up being star-struck.) So past Gillian, still in the middle of her undergrad years, is sitting in this lab meeting with the lab manager, a few OT grad students and Helene Polatajko. The one thought that had come to my mind then was: These girls (the grad students) are so pretty and intelligent. What they're doing is so cool, they must have their life all well put together! I was envious of where they were in life and I wanted to be like them --finished with my generic undergrad and moving on to something more meaningful!

I am currently in my second fieldwork placement of my OT program and have been thoroughly enjoying my experience in the Masters of OT program and my placement opportunities. Just the other day, during a meeting with several OTs from different community services, I found my mind wandering a bit. I thought to myself: These OTs are so pretty and intelligent. They totally understand their professional roles and are so well put together as OTs! I hope to be like them when I start working in the field.

Later I realized that my envious thoughts in that meeting were identical to those I had 4 years ago! (The memory from my undergrad stood out to me because it was something that I had immediately shared with my friend when I had become "enthused" with the idea of graduate student life.) I started to reflect on this fact. Personally, it takes a lot of time, mental energy and will power to stray from the everyday-routine-"What's on my To Do list"-type of thinking to go the "metacognition" route. As a student on placement, I am finding this to be a necessary process and part of getting the most out of my learning experience. The main idea that seemed to be recurring in those two memories was that I am not content with the present, and the life I'm living Now.Since I've been a student for the longest time, I see that my future-oriented thinking has been effective for my academic goals in life: getting into the university of my choice and getting into the program of my choice etc. It's made a real "planner" out of me and it's only been in the past 1-2 years that I've started to think of this kind of forward thinking as a "bad" thing.

I feel as though I lack the ability to think in the present tense, that I'm not fully experiencing today's moments because I'm too focused planning on what I want to happen tomorrow or the weeks, months and years ahead of me. Maybe because so much of my energy was put in the planning process that I see as making the actual moment happen, I don't have much left to feel and experience the moment when it does end up happening as planned. I'm starting to realize the importance of being mindful of the present moments in my life not only as a skill I should use as a professional in building therapeutic relationships, but one that should play a role in improving my everyday well being. Because ultimately, it won't matter if I plan to make future Gillian happy if present Gillian isn't because the future can change and we can only anticipate so much.

A friend recently reminded me not to worry about things that you can't control. And as "laissez faire" as that sounds, it's true and I must admit that a good portion of my stress is self-imposed from my worrying.  And I think one way to achieve a balanced perspective that involves my present experience more and lessen my tendency to worry is to practice being more mindful, and not adding the "judgement" piece to what's happening now. Not to immediately start evaluating the present in relation to my goals for the future when I have yet to full comprehend what it is that I'm experiencing.

When my friends ask me about my program, and how I find it, it makes me very happy to be able to tell them that I'm Loving what I do at the moment. I genuinely Love what I study. Despite all the life stress that I have I am more or less content with what I've chosen to do and I try my best to get the most learning out of my program. These present-oriented thoughts are always in the back of my mind, in every moment since I've been in my Masters. And I know it's the "doubt" in the future (in this case: post-grad/professional work life) that plagues my perspective, making me lose focus of the present, pushing it to the back when it belongs in the center of my attention. So I guess the point of this self-reflective post is to remind myself to be more mindful of the present. As much as I wished I could become a grad student with more direction in their life or hope to be an OT who has their professional life "all figured out", I am a grad student figuring out their direction in life now and the knitty gritty of my future needs to start with my experience Now.