Truth Tool--Anchoring

My very favorite Truth Tool is Anchoring. The way Anchoring works is that whenever you feel any vexation—any negative feelings building inside you—you stop and Anchor yourself to the present moment. You concentrate on NOW. To do this you refuse to think about anything except what is present before you. Concentrate on the colors and shapes, the sounds, the feel of the textures your hands and body are touching, the subtle odors in the air. In other words you engage all of your senses on what is there for them right NOW.

Don’t let any thoughts about the things you should have said to your friend yesterday or the bills that are coming due tomorrow or anything from the past or about the future enter your mind. Just enjoy this very minute and what the Lord is giving you right now. This may sound similar to forms of meditation that are taught in Eastern religious practices, but it is different. In meditation you push ALL thought away and try to make the mind go blank. But in Anchoring you let the senses connect you to the current moment. As you connect to the present you find that there are other things available in the present besides what you can see, feel, hear, taste, and smell.

As the Lord has told us in D&C 59:18-19, “Yea, all things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and the use of man, both to please the eye and to gladden the heart; Yea, for food and for raiment, for taste and for smell, to strengthen the body and to enliven the soul.” What this means is that the things around us are given to us not just for physical sustenance but to “gladden the heart” and “to enliven the soul.” The problem is that we get our minds so full of what needs to be done or what has happened to us in the past that we don’t pay attention to what is right before us. We are living in the past or future and ignoring the present. By Anchoring in the current moment you open yourself up to experience the joy, love, hope, and peace that are always available in the present moment. As President Thomas S. Monson has instructed, "Learn from the past, prepare for the future, live in the present" (Ensign, May 2003, 22).

 Try Anchoring while doing menial tasks such as washing dishes or pulling weeds. Concentrate on how your hands move, the feel of the water or soil on your hands, the smell of the soap or soil, the sound of the dripping water or dropping soil, etc. and then pay attention to what comes to you as you Anchor. Anchoring does away with vexation and opens the windows of heaven for us to peer through. I love life when I'm anchored.