Mindfulness is being talked about a lot at the moment, and the essence of mindfulness is the idea of living in the present. It’s actually a really hard thing to do, because we constantly get distracted into planning or speculating about the future, and going back to the past.
To stay in the present, to be aware of yourself in the present, takes a lot of practice. Feel your chair underneath you as you sit there now reading this article, feel your clothes on your body, feel the breath as the air goes in and out of your lungs, be aware of yourself as you’re reading. You’re completely here and now, in this room, not thinking about this tomorrow, or yesterday, just 100% here reading this article. It’s easy to do for a few moments, but hard to keep doing for a longer time.
But why bother, what’s the big deal with mindfulness? Well the answer is that the only thing that’s real is the present, so if you spend a lot of time thinking about the past or the future you’re mind of sleepwalking through life because those things just aren’t real.
Also, there’s a theory that all negative emotions are in the past or the future, and that true happiness can only really be found in the present. Things like regret and sorrow are in the past, while things like worry and fear are in the future. You might think fear can be in the present—say if a tiger came into your office right now—but then you’d be dealing with it, you probably wouldn’t’ have time for fear, and any fear you did have would be thinking about what is going to happen in the—admittedly very near—future.
There’s a concept called ‘flow’ which says that when you’re really absorbed in something, hopefully something more fun than fighting a tiger, maybe something like rock climbing, or making a model of the Golden Gate Bridge out of match sticks, or gardening, or even preparing a PowerPoint presentation, you’re completely immersed in the present, and that’s where true happiness lies. All your fears and worries are forgotten as you focus on that activity, you’re in the flow.
Photo by Juan Chavez on Unsplash
So, how can we live more in the present, how can we get more flow?
Well I think there are two main things you can do. First, find out what gets you really immersed, what activities do you love doing to the point where you lose track of time, and plan more of those into your life.
Ask yourself, “What makes me think ‘This is the life!'”? and do more of that. For me it’s walking on the beach in bare feet, right on the edge of the sea, and also it’s playing the saxophone as loudly as a I can (you don’t want to live next door to me!). But for you it could well be something different. By the way it’s interesting to see that most of these things don’t cost much money, if any at all.
And second, focus on the small stuff. Observe the little details of your life. Take longer to do things like eating, or cooking, or spreading the jam on your toast. Notice every details of your children’s faces, or the trees as you walk through the city. Consciously stay in the present as much as you can, so you can suck out as much happiness as possible from every little detail of the world that we are lucky enough to be living in.
- This article originally appeared here.