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“Don’t dwell on the past, don’t dream of the future, concentrate your mind on the present moment.”
Buddha
“The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means you know what you are doing.”
Jon Kabat-Zinn
One of the most common habits that make life miserable is not being where you are.
What do I mean by that?
That your body is here and now. But that your thoughts are elsewhere in time and space.
They find themselves in the past and reliving an old, painful memory. Or reenacting an argument – which you still want to win – for the hundredth time.
Or your thoughts are in a possible future. Worried and stressed about what might happen at work or in your relationship. Or try to plan every possible scenario and thereby gain complete control over the future.
And the more time you spend in the future or the past, the more – in my experience – you also tend to:
- Be ineffective. Making decisions becomes very difficult when you constantly question yourself or become paralyzed by all the possible outcomes. And thinking too much takes so much energy that you lose the motivation to take action.
- Miss life as it happens. If you are not fully here in this moment, it is very easy to miss a victory or just a beautiful, fun or small moment in life and not enjoy it to the fullest.
Maybe you can’t spend all your time in the now. Because there are things you can learn by re-examining your past. And there are things you sometimes need to plan for in your future.
But the kind of obsessive or addictive way of spending so much time in an ordinary week in the past or future can be replaced with something smarter, more helpful, and more happiness-friendly.
Three habits that have helped me a lot to make that transition to being much more conscious are:
1. Slow down.
Start your day by slowly doing whatever you do in the morning.
This makes it easier and more natural to maintain a slower pace and fully concentrate on what you are doing for the rest of the morning.
And starting your day this way often prevents you from falling into your own most common train of thought that causes worry, anger, or sadness.
Moreover, doing something in a calm and relaxed manner is often the fastest way to do something well.
And of course, you can slow down what you’re doing at any time of the day to get your mind back on what your body is doing.
2. Tell yourself: now I am…
I often say this to myself silently: Now I am X.
And X could be me brushing my teeth. Do the dishes. Taking a walk and listening to the sounds around me.
Reminding myself of this stops my thoughts from wandering and allows me to focus my attention back on the one thing I’m doing right now and nothing else.
3. Disrupt your thoughts + quickly get back in touch with the here and now.
If you are a regular reader, you know that I like to use a safe word or phrase silence the inner critic.
This also works well to return to the present moment.
If you notice that your thoughts are going somewhere else in the past or future, shout – in your mind –: STOP!
Or: No, no, no, we won’t go down that road again!
Then, right after you disrupt those thoughts, find your way back to the present moment by either focusing solely on what is happening around you right now with all your senses – the sights, the sounds, the smells and so on – or by focusing 100% on your breathing going in and out of your body.
Do either of these things for just 1-2 minutes.