What prevents us from being in our present moment?

Our reactive thinking prevents us from being in the present moment. From our earliest life encounters, our reactive thoughts create storylines about our experiences. We bring our cognitive and emotional development as a five-year-old to our experiences of parents, family, love, safety and fear.

In our storylines, we come to conclusions about ourselves and our world and make judgments about who we are, about whether or not our needs and feelings are OK or not. These storylines remain with us through adolescence and into adulthood. Throughout our life we add storylines and pile them one on top of the other. Our inner critic is an outgrowth of the conclusions we reach about who we are.