I’ve spent a lot of time this summer pondering what it means to “be present in your life.” At first I thought this phrase meant to devote your full attention to whatever it is you’re doing at that particular time—to live your life without distraction with greater focus on the here and now. But it’s really much more than that.

I’ve never been the kind of person who lives in the past but I definitely enjoy thinking about and planning for my future. I don’t really think of this as a bad thing, but I can see how fretting about what might happen and playing out scenarios in your mind can drain a person of energy. If we’re always looking ahead to an idealistic future then the present will never be a pleasurable reality.

It’s a much harder task to live in the present and be available to your children, spouse, family, and friends than to just mull through each day in survival mode. We all have busy lives and schedules. Let’s face it: Sometimes it’s easy to tune things out than to tune in and solve a problem. Kids fight, dinners get burned, people run late and daily life can border on the edge of insanity, but we can totally miss the whole point of it all if we make ourselves entirely unavailable.

The first few weeks of consciously trying to be more available made me more than a little edgy. I also found myself climbing into bed at a much earlier hour because I was completely exhausted. It takes real work to be there for the important people in your life. I felt like the more I put myself out there to my children the more insatiable their appetites for my attention grew. I thought back to the previous weeks and thought, Were they really this deprived? Or do they just take as much attention as I’m willing to offer to them? Certainly my children are far from neglected, but they definitely enjoyed having more of me. The problem was I wasn’t so sure I could keep up with their constant demands on my time, energy, and frail attention span.

After two weeks of really giving it my best effort I felt like quitting. I went back to some of my previous methods of tuning things out, but felt guilty. But it wasn’t the guilt that motivated me to be more present. I was missing out on the joy I felt when we had wonderful moments together. I missed out on the peace I felt not always worrying about what was coming up next, but instead could focus on the game we were playing or the activity at hand.

Don’t get be wrong though. It was hard to put down what I was doing to read Dora’s Trip to Wonderland for the 99^th time that week, or to patiently offer suggestions to my older two daughters on how to resolve conflicts. There were many times I still wanted to quit because my patience was stretched more than the elastic on my maternity pants during my last pregnancy.

Sometimes I couldn’t endure this close connectivity all day, but I gave what I could when I could. I felt like I made a better effort overall and my ability to cope with the day-to-day stress of motherhood was going through intense strength training. I also learned how to bargain with my children by saying things like, “I’ve had a wonderful day with you and we’ll do great things tomorrow but right now I need a little bit of time to (fill in the blank: lay down for a minute, make a phone call, be alone in my room, eat a snack, etc.).” I think this is a healthy way to show my children that even moms need a break and that it is okay to take care of yourself.

This summer I tried to clear my plate of some added responsibilities and focus more of my time and attention on my family. As a result I can say that we unanimously agree that we had a great summer. I’m sure there were multiple factors that contributed to our good times, but I think it’s interesting to take a step back from our day-to-day routines and see where we are missing out on life. Again I’m not posing to be the poster child for great mothering or exceptional focus, but instead I’m offering my own shortcomings to others who may fall into the same category of manic multi-tasker and ask, “Are you sacrificing being effective for being efficient?”

Question: What do you do to live in the present?