‘Live in the moment, why be mindful?’

Norfolk Life Coach
Jun 12, 2019
5 min read

‘Living in the moment means letting go of the past and not waiting for the future. It means living your life consciously, aware that each moment you breath is a gift.’ Quote by Oprah Winfrey

We live such busy lives, always jumping to the next item on our agenda, catching up with jobs left unfinished, reading emails, writing emails, attending meetings, shopping, cleaning, cooking, and if you have children at home, add another 100 things to your to do list!

When we do have time to sit and relax, we are usually content to flop in front of the telly or read a few more pages of our book before we fall asleep. This is how life is for most of us, but imagine taking a few minutes each day to completely relax your mind and body and just concentrate on you!

Mindfulness is a technique which has become much more well- known during the last few years. It is about paying attention to your own thoughts and feelings and noticing the world around you. Research shows that using regular mindfulness techniques can reduce stress, improve working memory, increase focus and cognitive flexibility and can improve relationship satisfaction. Being mindful enables you to become more aware of how you are feeling so when you are beginning to get stressed you notice and understand those feelings. Instead of reacting in a negative way you can use mindful strategies to calm yourself and give yourself time to think through the situation and what steps you should take next.

I have learned over the years that my body tells me how my life is going. I notice when I am down and low and I can usually align that to something which is happening in my life at that time. I have taught myself to notice when I am feeling joyful, maybe excited, and to enjoy those feelings and keep that memory for when I am feeling sad.

I use the analogy that we have two brains, our ‘first’ is in our stomach and this brain tells us how we are feeling physically. Our ‘second’ brain is in our head and makes sense of these feelings and we can trick ourselves into thinking one feeling means something else! For instance, the feelings we experience when we are nervous and excited are the same…we have all felt those ‘butterflies’ just before we are due to enter an important meeting or start a new job, but we also experience those ‘butterflies’ when we are excited, but we don’t always put two and two together. Next time you are leaving the house to go on holiday or have a night out, notice how your stomach feels. That feeling of excitement can be matched to nerves but we don’t always realise it. The fantastic thing is, when we are worrying about something, we can tell ourselves we are looking forward to it and our brain can trick us into moving into a different, more positive mindset!

Idea for today: Is there an event you are nervous about? Take some time to name those feelings. Now tell yourself you are looking forward to that event, name positive reasons and change your mindset.

So our first step to being mindful is to understand ‘why’ it can be so helpful. Research has been carried out and continues to evidence the benefits, we just have to learn a few techniques so that we too can enjoy a more peaceful and calm way of life. I will explain ‘how’ to be mindful in my next blog, but for now I want to focus on ‘why’ being mindful can be so liberating.

As I highlighted at the beginning of this blog, we spend a great deal of time just getting through each of our many daily tasks, because these are needed to get us to our next step in life. We may have our 5 or 10 year plan clearly mapped out for our future or just be sauntering through life with a more ‘what will be, will be’ attitude but whatever our attitude, we will all spend time thinking about the future at some points in our week and this may bring negative as well as positive thoughts.

We also often dwell on decisions we have made in the past. Maybe we have made choices which could have been better, maybe we have been unfair to people in our lives, maybe we have endured experiences which have been upsetting. I believe that ‘everything happens for a reason’ and that negative experiences make us stronger and more able to empathise with others. However, those memories linger and can make us feel inadequate and undeserving.

Being mindful teaches us to accept both the past and the future and put that thinking to one side to enjoy the moment. This can be so calming and give us strength and it can be so very simple. I remember recently I was driving to a new place and I knew there were some tricky roundabouts coming up. I do find driving to new places stressful and am so grateful for my Satnav. As I was driving at one point I could feel those feelings of nervousness getting stronger, I began to feel hot and a bit sick, I could feel myself becoming more alert and turning the radio down so I could totally concentrate. I knew the roundabouts would be coming up soon…but then I turned my thinking around. Yes the roundabouts were approaching, but at this precise moment I was driving on a straight calm road and I had nothing to fear. I was driving in the moment and everything was fine, why worry about something that was not happening yet? I began to feel calmer, that hotness eased and I felt more in control. When those roundabouts came I would be fine! (and I was!)

It is a simple example, but it proved to me that concentrating on the moment can be really effective and we can change our attitude and our physical state. What is even more important to remember is that when we have challenged ourselves, coped and come out the other end, we feel a fantastic sense of achievement which brings a whole different set of emotions! Even if the result is not what we would have hoped for, we need to give ourselves credit for pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone and giving it a go.

So now we know ‘why’ mindfulness is so beneficial, read my next blog to find out more about ‘how’ we can be mindful.