Present Moment Focus
The past is gone and cannot be changed; the future is uncertain. The Stoic attends fully to the present action.
Marcus Aurelius returned repeatedly to the theme of present-moment attention. The mind tends to linger in past regret or future anxiety, both of which are not 'up to us.' Only the present moment is the arena of virtue and action. Sustained present-focus is both a Stoic practice and a modern mindfulness insight.
Confine yourself to the present.
Stoic present-focus parallels Buddhist mindfulness practice; both traditions arrived at similar insights about attention through different philosophical routes.
Meditations
Written about in
- What Stoicism says about fear and anxiety
Fear lives in the future and regret in the past, and neither is up to you. Marcus Aurelius keeps calling himself back to the thing actually in front of him.