“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”
Buddha

“The weightier way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness ways stuff awake. It ways knowing what you are doing.”
Jon Kabat-Zinn

One of the most worldwide habits that make life miserable is to not be where you are.

What do I midpoint by that?

That your soul is right here, right now. But that your thoughts are elsewhere in time and space.

They are in the past, reliving an old, painful memory. Or replaying an treatise – that you still want to win – for the hundredth time.

Or your thoughts are in a possible future. Worried and stressed well-nigh what may happen at work or in your relationship. Or trying to plan for every possible scenario and through that hoping to fully tenancy the future.

And the increasingly time you spend in the future or past, the increasingly you – in my wits – tend to also:

• Be ineffective. Making decisions becomes very nonflexible if you second-guess yourself all the time or wilt paralyzed by all the possible outcomes. And overthinking zaps so much energy that you lose motivation to take action.
• Miss life as it happens. If you are not fully here in this moment then it is very easy to miss and to not fully enjoy a victory or simply a beautiful, fun or small moment in life.

Maybe you cannot spend all of your time in the now. Because there are things you can learn from reexamining your past. And there are things you sometimes need to plan for in your future.

But the kind of obsessive or haunting way to spend so much time in a regular week in the past or future can be replaced with something smarter, increasingly helpful and happiness-friendly.

Three habits that have helped me a lot to make that shift into stuff much increasingly mindful are to:

1. Slow down.

Start your day with doing whatever you do first in your morning slowly.

This will make it easier and increasingly natural to alimony a slower pace and to focus fully on what you are doing for the rest of your morning.

And starting your day in this way will often prevent you from going into your own most worldwide thought loops that rationalization worry, wrongness or sadness.

Plus, doing something in a wifely and relaxed manner is often the quickest way to do something well.

And you can of undertow slow lanugo what you are doing at any time during your day to get your mind when to what your soul is doing.

2. Tell yourself: Now I am…

I often tell myself this silently in my mind: Now I am X.

And X could be that I am brushing my teeth. Doing the dishes. Taking a walk and listening to the sounds virtually me.

Just reminding myself of this helps my mind to stop wandering and it brings my focus when to just that one thing I am doing right now and nothing else.

3. Disrupt your thoughts quickly reconnect with the here and now.

If you are a regular reader then you know that I like to use a stop-word or phrase to silence the inner critic.

This works well for getting when to the present moment too.

When you reservation yourself going somewhere else in the past or future with your thoughts then – in your mind – shout: STOP!

Or: No, no, no, we are not going lanugo that road again!

Then, right yonder without you have disrupted those thoughts find your way when to the present moment by either focusing only on what is going on virtually you right now with all your senses – the sights, the sounds, the smells and so on – or by focusing 100% on your breaths going in and out of your body.

Do either of those things for just 1-2 minutes.