Picture this, an 18-year-old boy from land-locked Kansas sitting on the edge of a small boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean getting ready to hop into shark-infested waters.  I had survived the 20-minute ride to what seemed like the middle of the ocean…and found myself face to face with our planned shark swimming experience. As I was slowly crawling to the edge of the boat, I kept seeing more and more shark dorsal fins swimming around the boat and the only thing I could think of was: “Please, do not let these 7-foot long sharks eat me for lunch.” As soon as I dropped into the water, I found myself going into a state of panic and clinging to the rope hanging from the edge of the boat. I no longer wanted to be there in the ocean with my family but instead standing on the shore clinging my arms around a tree. My cousin had gotten me into this mess as I promised I’d go swimming with the sharks with her, and now I only had to survive 15 more minutes until I could climb back onto the boat without having to swallow my pride. In that moment every second felt like an eternity and all I wanted to do was get back to land.  My fear was forcing me to take in every single second. As time seemed to tick by so slowly–I had no choice but to live in the moment, and it was a feeling I will never forget. It made me think: what if we all made a commitment to live every day in the moment? Would every day be something we would never forget?

If we reflect on our lives, we all have these moments that we want to remember forever and the moments we wish we could forget. Like many of us, I have no problem remembering the mistakes I’ve made in my life, as they seem to permanently etch themselves into my memory, but the problem is once these negatives enter my memory, I get caught up on them, which holds me back from moving forward. During the pinnacle of my middle school baseball career, I could be found at the shortstop position. Not only was it my job to field the ground balls and get them to first as quickly as possible to get the batter out, but also it was my responsibility to control all action in the outfield, field all balls that were hit up the middle, and cover a base on almost every play.  I’d always start the game optimistic and ready to go.  Things would go great – until I made a mistake.  Almost every game a batter would step into the box hit a grounder right at me…and I’d miss it.  How could I do something so stupid I’d think as I kicked the dirt and shook my head. This became a reoccurring error that would happen multiple times a game. I could not let go of the fact I wasn’t perfect nor wasn’t playing a perfect game….and the angrier I became at myself for missing a simple grounder, the worse I played. Coach Tim always told me to accept my mistake and move on, but I never did and it kept dragging me down.  Looking back, my baseball career taught me a life-long lesson:  to accept my mistakes, learn from them, and move on.

Often times we stumble upon this need to embrace the mistakes we have made in our lives to move on and make the next play. The thing we need to realize is that it is okay to make mistakes because we all do. If we continue to make these mistakes without taking the time to reflect on and learn from them though, then we will continue to find these mistakes serving as barriers that we cannot seem to surpass. In my baseball career, I simply needed to accept that every baseball player misses ground balls and embrace the feeling of imperfection to move on and prepare for the next batter. If we leave a gate open and all the cows get out, it won’t take long to realize the problem we made, and I can speak from experience that we will learn to always shut the gate behind us. Or if we find that we hurt a friend through our actions, we will learn the type of impact that our words and actions have on others. Once we make these mistakes it is vital to remember what lessons we learned from them, so we do not make them again. How will you remember your self-taught life-lessons and be purposeful about learning from your mistakes? For me, I keep a pocket-sized Moleskin with me titled “Things to Remember,” in which I record things I learned from mistakes I have made. Like the time I ripped off the trailer door because I did not take the time to shut it, and now I always check to make sure the trailer door is shut everywhere we go. But perhaps remembering for you is creating art, taking pictures, listening to music, or even journaling your thoughts.  As we learn from our mistakes, we free ourselves to accept the experiences that have made us who we are rather than let it hold us back and prevent us from living in the moment.

I am a natural competitor – especially when it comes to showing cattle. I always want to be the one who wins every show and brings home every banner. Over spring break of 2017, I attended a national show in Loveland, Colorado with my favorite High-Maine heifer: Mamie. We entered this show with modest expectations, hoping to place in the top end of our class, but before we knew it Mamie had won the High-Maine breed and was selected as the third overall heifer in the show, blowing our expectations out of the water. We continued showing Mamie that spring and her successes kept adding up, to the point where I started having the expectation of winning every show, every weekend. Before I knew it, I became so obsessed with the idea of winning every show, I could only focus on Mamie by figuring out when Mamie needed to be in the chute when she needed to be at the ring, and how we could keep Mamie looking her best. I was so focused on Mamie that I forgot the real reason I began showing cattle in the first place: the relationships and people in the industry. Instead of being present, I was too focused on trying to win the show and found myself staying with Mamie rather than catching up with my friends I only get to see a handful of times per year. When Mamie retired from her career as a show heifer, the winning stopped, and I began to realize the memories I missed out on by not being present with the people around me, especially during my last year on the show circuit.  Instead of making memories with my friends showing cattle every weekend, I had instead collected a bunch of banners with not much more thought than what is written on them.

Many times in our lives we come across situations like these where we find ourselves not making the most of every moment. For me, I find myself looking back to the relationships and memories I missed out on because I was too focused on trying to win the show with Mamie rather than being present with the people I was with. Where are some areas in your life that you are not being present and making the most of every experience? Maybe while we’re spending time with friends and family we find ourselves too caught up on our phones rather than having real conversations with the people we are with. Or perhaps when we are in class we catch ourselves simply going through the motions or spacing-out rather than trying to focus on the material. We can find ourselves being present in every moment by saying thank you to those who help us, taking notes during a conversation, or helping others where we can. Once we begin being present in our experiences we start to develop deeper, stronger relationships with our friends and loved ones, get more out of our classes, and become more aware as individuals. By being present in our experiences not only do we make a positive impact on our own lives, but we begin to make a positive impact on the lives of those around us.

Living in the moment involves learning from our mistakes and being present. In baseball, it was hard to focus on anything else when mistakes were made. Once we begin to accept this idea of a growth mindset, we allow ourselves to make a mistake, learn from it, and move on, freeing us from the baggage we were carrying along with that mistake. In the show ring, it is easy to get caught up chasing banners rather than valuing the relationships we build with others, but with our minds clear we have the ability to be present in all of our experiences, allowing for us to reap the true experiences from what we do and make an impact on those around us. As individuals, we all have the opportunity to live life and let it fly right on past us without stopping to take it in. Instead, let’s accept our mistakes, be present in our experiences, and begin living in the moment.

“Let’s accept our mistakes, be present in our experiences, and begin living in the moment.”