Setting goals and having detailed plans that you are totally committed to achieving has been touted as the only way to achieve success in business and life. What if there was another way to achieve even better results?

There is and it is living in the now.

As someone who always believed in the importance of having a goal and a plan to execute the goal, it has come as both a shock and a gift to see the real, tangible benefits of living one day, even one minute, at a time.

Up to quite recently I lived my professional life with a continuous focus on the future. I always had goals, plans and visions be they monthly, one year or five year. Looking back on this aspect of my approach, I now realise it did not help me to be any more successful or happy than I could have been because circumstances and the changing nature of life meant I always had to adjust to both new challenges and opportunities.

Being alive to opportunities for change

If I had stuck rigidly to my vision and goals of 30 years ago, I would not be doing what I am doing now. This equally applies to my goals of 20, 15 and 10 years ago. I am very excited by not knowing what my future role will be, knowing it will emerge and be better than what I now experience.

I am not living a completely aimless life, let me assure you. I still have a vision of what I would like to be doing over the next five years and a general plan on how to do it, but I am now much more focused on what I am doing in the moment, which, in this moment, is writing this article. Living in the present is helping me be much more aware of what wants to emerge or change. As I develop this awareness, I get great insights into new ways of navigating the challenges and opportunities life throws up. In the past, I would have ignored these signals and tried to make whatever was happening fit into the narrow frames of my vision and strategy. In hindsight, I can say that this caused me to waste time and energy. But this was also a blessing in that I now know what does not work.

It’s not just me

What I find inspiring is when other people bring up the same learning from their lives. At a forum about a year ago a participant presented the challenge of how best to re-structure his business model to better meet the needs of the marketplace while creating a culture that harnessed the motivation and creativity of his employees. After processing his challenge with the help of his peers, he was surprised by what he learned about himself. Instead of having another plan and strategy, his insight was to live in the present, focus on what was in front of him and stop trying to anticipate future challenges. Another insight was to emotionally detach from the problems he was hitting up against and see the challenges from an outsider’s perspective. His final insight was to trust his inner wisdom and stop trying to make other people’s historical solutions fit his business. All of this made sense to him as the months went by. He gradually began to realise that the change needed to start with him.

When he reported back at our last session with his group, a discussion emerged around the benefits of focusing on the present and not being concerned about the past and future. As other members were also experimenting with this approach the following are some of the benefits and lessons the members shared:

• When you focus on the present you are less likely to get distracted. You achieve more in a shorter time frame.
• Being present to those around you means you listen better and as a result get better information which helps you and the others make better decisions.
• Being less caught up in achieving targets or meeting goals means you are less stressed and less hard on yourself for not achieving what you imagined you should be achieving.
• A more relaxed you means a more relaxed culture where employees feel more valued and involved. This relaxation paradoxically leads to greater not lower productivity.
• When you practice accepting the present moment as perfect, you are more likely to welcome problems as an opportunity to either make adjustments, learn from and improve the present processes.
• When you invest less emotional energy in a difficult situation, things generally take their course and often work out better than if the situation had never arisen. However, this depends on your ability to stand back more from the problem.
• Being present means you are more likely to spot opportunities as they arise. If you are too wedded to your five-year plan or vision, you won’t see them as opportunities or will let them pass.
• Do less thinking and more sensing. Trust your gut-feel more. While the head is good for analysis, spending too much time there means you create a fog of over-analysis. Balance the head and heart/gut.

How might living in the now help you take advantage of the opportunities that arise for you?