6 Steps to Living in the Moment

Found this won­der­ful arti­cle from Psy­chol­ogy Today by Jay Dixit. This is one of the best arti­cles I’ve read ever and I enjoin you to read until the end.

Some­times as Jay puts it, “Life unfolds in the present. But so often, we let the present slip away, allow­ing time to rush past unob­served and unseized, and squan­der­ing the pre­cious sec­onds of our lives as we worry about the future and rumi­nate about what’s past.” But the past is past, and the future has not hap­pened yet. All we have is the present. That’s what we have a hold of, and that’s what we can control.

The good thing about stay­ing in the present moment is that we become more and more effec­tive and efficient.

To be most myself, I needed to focus on things out­side myself, like the music or the peo­ple around me. Focus­ing on the present moment forces you to stop overthinking.

6 Steps to Liv­ing in the Moment
Jay Dixit

1) UNSELFCONSCIOUSNESS (To improve your per­for­mance, stop think­ing about it.)

I’ve never felt com­fort­able on a dance floor. My move­ments feel awk­ward. I feel like peo­ple are judg­ing me. I never know what to do with my arms. I want to let go, but I can’t, because I know I look ridiculous.

“Loosen up, no one’s watch­ing you,” peo­ple always say. “Everyone’s too busy wor­ry­ing about them­selves.” So how come they always make fun of my danc­ing the next day?

The dance world has a term for peo­ple like me: “absolute begin­ner.” Which is why my dance teacher, Jes­sica Hay­den, the owner of Shockra Stu­dio in Man­hat­tan, started at the begin­ning, sit­ting me down on a bench and hav­ing me tap my feet to the beat as Jay-Z thumped away in the back­ground. We spent the rest of the class doing “isolations”—moving just our shoul­ders, ribs, or hips—to build “body aware­ness.“

But even more impor­tant than body aware­ness, Hay­den said, was present-moment aware­ness. “Be right here right now!” she’d say. “Just let go and let your­self be in the moment.”

That’s the first para­dox of liv­ing in the moment: Think­ing too hard about what you’re doing actu­ally makes you do worse. If you’re in a sit­u­a­tion that makes you anxious—giving a speech, intro­duc­ing your­self to a stranger, dancing—focusing on your anx­i­ety tends to heighten it. “When I say, ‘be here with me now,’ I mean don’t zone out or get too in-your-head—instead, fol­low my energy, my move­ments,” says Hay­den. “Focus less on what’s going on in your mind and more on what’s going on in the room, less on your men­tal chat­ter and more on your­self as part of some­thing.” To be most myself, I needed to focus on things out­side myself, like the music or the peo­ple around me.

Focus­ing on the present moment also forces you to stop over­think­ing. “Being present-minded takes away some of that self-evaluation and get­ting lost in your mind—and in the mind is where we make the eval­u­a­tions that beat us up,” says Stephen Schueller, a psy­chol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia. Instead of get­ting stuck in your head and wor­ry­ing, you can let your­self go.

2) SAVORING. (To avoid wor­ry­ing about the future, focus on the present)

In her mem­oir Eat, Pray, Love, Eliz­a­beth Gilbert writes about a friend who, when­ever she sees a beau­ti­ful place, exclaims in a near panic, “It’s so beau­ti­ful here! I want to come back here some­day!” “It takes all my per­sua­sive pow­ers,” writes Gilbert, “to try to con­vince her that she is already here.”

Often, we’re so trapped in thoughts of the future or the past that we for­get to expe­ri­ence, let alone enjoy, what’s hap­pen­ing right now. We sip cof­fee and think, “This is not as good as what I had last week.” We eat a cookie and think, “I hope I don’t run out of cookies.”

Instead, rel­ish or lux­u­ri­ate in what­ever you’re doing at the present moment—what psy­chol­o­gists call savor­ing. “This could be while you’re eat­ing a pas­try, tak­ing a shower, or bask­ing in the sun. You could be savor­ing a suc­cess or savor­ing music,” explains Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psy­chol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia at River­side and author of The How of Hap­pi­ness. “Usu­ally it involves your senses.”

Why does liv­ing in the moment make peo­ple happier—not just at the moment they’re tast­ing molten choco­late pool­ing on their tongue, but last­ingly? Because most neg­a­tive thoughts con­cern the past or the future. As Mark Twain said, “I have known a great many trou­bles, but most of them never happened.”

The hall­mark of depres­sion and anx­i­ety is catastrophizing—worrying about some­thing that hasn’t hap­pened yet and might not hap­pen at all. Worry, by its very nature, means think­ing about the future—and if you hoist your­self into aware­ness of the present moment, wor­ry­ing melts away.

3) BREATHE (If you want a future with your sig­nif­i­cant other, inhabit the present)

Liv­ing con­sciously with alert inter­est has a pow­er­ful effect on inter­per­sonal life. Mind­ful­ness actu­ally inoc­u­lates peo­ple against aggres­sive impulses, say Whit­ney Hep­p­ner and Michael Ker­nis of the Uni­ver­sity of Geor­gia. In a study they con­ducted, each sub­ject was told that other sub­jects were form­ing a group—and tak­ing a vote on whether she could join. Five min­utes later, the exper­i­menter announced the results—either the sub­ject had got­ten the least num­ber of votes and been rejected or she’d been accepted. Before­hand, half the sub­jects had under­gone a mind­ful­ness exer­cise in which each slowly ate a raisin, savor­ing its taste and tex­ture and focus­ing on each sensation.

Later, in what they thought was a sep­a­rate exper­i­ment, sub­jects had the oppor­tu­nity to deliver a painful blast of noise to another per­son. Among sub­jects who hadn’t eaten the raisin, those who were told they’d been rejected by the group became aggres­sive, inflict­ing long and painful sonic blasts with­out provo­ca­tion. Stung by social rejec­tion, they took it out on other people.

But among those who’d eaten the raisin first, it didn’t mat­ter whether they’d been ostra­cized or embraced. Either way, they were serene and unwill­ing to inflict pain on others—exactly like those who were given word of social acceptance.

How does being in the moment make you less aggres­sive? “Mind­ful­ness decreases ego involve­ment,” explains Ker­nis. “So peo­ple are less likely to link their self-esteem to events and more likely to take things at face value.” Mind­ful­ness also makes peo­ple feel more con­nected to other people—that empathic feel­ing of being “at one with the universe.”

Focus­ing on the present reboots your mind so you can respond thought­fully rather than auto­mat­i­cally. Instead of lash­ing out in anger, back­ing down in fear, or mind­lessly indulging a pass­ing crav­ing, you get the oppor­tu­nity to say to your­self, “This is the emo­tion I’m feel­ing. How should I respond?”

Mind­ful­ness increases self-control; since you’re not get­ting thrown by threats to your self-esteem, you’re bet­ter able to reg­u­late your behav­ior. There’s a sim­ple exer­cise you can do any­where, any­time to induce mind­ful­ness: Breathe. There’s no bet­ter way to bring your­self into the present moment than to focus on your breath­ing. Because you’re plac­ing your aware­ness on what’s hap­pen­ing right now, you pro­pel your­self pow­er­fully into the present moment.

4) FLOW (To make the most of time, lose track of it)

Per­haps the most com­plete way of liv­ing in the moment is the state of total absorp­tion psy­chol­o­gists call flow. Flow occurs when you’re so engrossed in a task that you lose track of every­thing else around you. Flow embod­ies an appar­ent para­dox: How can you be liv­ing in the moment if you’re not even aware of the moment? The depth of engage­ment absorbs you pow­er­fully, keep­ing atten­tion so focused that dis­trac­tions can­not pen­e­trate. You focus so intensely on what you’re doing that you’re unaware of the pas­sage of time. Hours can pass with­out you noticing.

Flow is an elu­sive state. As with romance or sleep, you can’t just will your­self into it—all you can do is set the stage, cre­at­ing the opti­mal con­di­tions for it to occur.

The first require­ment for flow is to set a goal that’s chal­leng­ing but not unattainable—something you have to mar­shal your resources and stretch your­self to achieve. The task should be matched to your abil­ity level—not so dif­fi­cult that you’ll feel stressed, but not so easy that you’ll get bored. In flow, you’re fir­ing on all cylin­ders to rise to a challenge.

To set the stage for flow, goals need to be clearly defined so that you always know your next step. “It could be play­ing the next bar in a scroll of music, or find­ing the next foothold if you’re a rock climber, or turn­ing the page if you’re read­ing a good novel,” says Mihaly Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi, the psy­chol­o­gist who first defined the con­cept of flow. “At the same time, you’re kind of anticipating.”

You also need to set up the task in such a way that you receive direct and imme­di­ate feed­back; with your suc­cesses and fail­ures appar­ent, you can seam­lessly adjust your behav­ior. A climber on the moun­tain knows imme­di­ately if his foothold is secure; a pianist knows instantly when she’s played the wrong note.

As your atten­tional focus nar­rows, self-consciousness evap­o­rates. You feel as if your aware­ness merges with the action you’re per­form­ing. You feel a sense of per­sonal mas­tery over the sit­u­a­tion, and the activ­ity is so intrin­si­cally reward­ing that although the task is dif­fi­cult, action feels effortless.

5) ACCEPTANCE (If some­thing is both­er­ing you, move toward it rather than away from it)

We all have pain in our lives, whether it’s the ex we still long for, the jack­ham­mer snarling across the street, or the sud­den wave of anx­i­ety when we get up to give a speech. If we let them, such irri­tants can dis­tract us from the enjoy­ment of life. Para­dox­i­cally, the obvi­ous response—focusing on the prob­lem in order to com­bat and over­come it—often makes it worse, argues Stephen Hayes, a psy­chol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­sity of Nevada.

The mind’s nat­ural ten­dency when faced with pain is to attempt to avoid it—by try­ing to resist unpleas­ant thoughts, feel­ings, and sen­sa­tions. When we lose a love, for instance, we fight our feel­ings of heart­break. As we get older, we work fever­ishly to recap­ture our youth. When we’re sit­ting in the dentist’s chair wait­ing for a painful root canal, we wish we were any­where but there. But in many cases, neg­a­tive feel­ings and sit­u­a­tions can’t be avoided—and resist­ing them only mag­ni­fies the pain.

The prob­lem is we have not just pri­mary emo­tions but also sec­ondary ones—emotions about other emo­tions. We get stressed out and then think, “I wish I weren’t so stressed out.” The pri­mary emo­tion is stress over your work­load. The sec­ondary emo­tion is feel­ing, “I hate being stressed.”

It doesn’t have to be this way. The solu­tion is acceptance—letting the emo­tion be there. That is, being open to the way things are in each moment with­out try­ing to manip­u­late or change the experience—without judg­ing it, cling­ing to it, or push­ing it away. The present moment can only be as it is. Try­ing to change it only frus­trates and exhausts you. Accep­tance relieves you of this need­less extra suffering.

Sup­pose you’ve just bro­ken up with your girl­friend or boyfriend; you’re heart­bro­ken, over­whelmed by feel­ings of sad­ness and long­ing. You could try to fight these feel­ings, essen­tially say­ing, “I hate feel­ing this way; I need to make this feel­ing go away.” Or you could focus on the pain—and become sad about being sad—and only pro­long the sad­ness. You do your­self a favor by accept­ing your feel­ings, say­ing instead, “I’ve just had a breakup. Feel­ings of loss are nor­mal and nat­ural. It’s OK for me to feel this way.”

Accep­tance of an unpleas­ant state doesn’t mean you don’t have goals for the future. It just means you accept that cer­tain things are beyond your con­trol. The sad­ness, stress, pain, or anger is there whether you like it or not. Bet­ter to embrace the feel­ing as it is.

Nor does accep­tance mean you have to like what’s hap­pen­ing. “Accep­tance of the present moment has noth­ing to do with res­ig­na­tion,” writes Kabat-Zinn. “Accep­tance doesn’t tell you what to do. What hap­pens next, what you choose to do; that has to come out of your under­stand­ing of this moment.”

If you feel anx­i­ety, for instance, you can accept the feel­ing, label it as anxiety—then direct your atten­tion to some­thing else instead. You watch your thoughts, per­cep­tions, and emo­tions flit through your mind with­out get­ting involved. Thoughts are just thoughts. You don’t have to believe them and you don’t have to do what they say.

6) ENGAGEMENT (Know that you don’t know)

You’ve prob­a­bly had the expe­ri­ence of dri­ving along a high­way only to sud­denly real­ize you have no mem­ory or aware­ness of the pre­vi­ous 15 min­utes. Maybe you even missed your exit. You just zoned out; you were some­where else, and it’s as if you’ve sud­denly woken up at the wheel. Or maybe it hap­pens when you’re read­ing a book: “I know I just read that page, but I have no idea what it said.”

These autopi­lot moments are what Harvard’s Ellen Langer calls mindlessness—times when you’re so lost in your thoughts that you aren’t aware of your present expe­ri­ence. As a result, life passes you by with­out reg­is­ter­ing on you. The best way to avoid such black­outs, Langer says, is to develop the habit of always notic­ing new things in what­ever sit­u­a­tion you’re in. That process cre­ates engage­ment with the present moment and releases a cas­cade of other ben­e­fits. Notic­ing new things puts you emphat­i­cally in the here and now.

We become mind­less, Langer explains, because once we think we know some­thing, we stop pay­ing atten­tion to it. We go about our morn­ing com­mute in a haze because we’ve trod the same route a hun­dred times before. But if we see the world with fresh eyes, we real­ize almost every­thing is dif­fer­ent each time—the pat­tern of light on the build­ings, the faces of the peo­ple, even the sen­sa­tions and feel­ings we expe­ri­ence along the way. Notic­ing imbues each moment with a new, fresh qual­ity. Some peo­ple have termed this “beginner’s mind.”

By acquir­ing the habit of notic­ing new things, says Langer, we rec­og­nize that the world is actu­ally chang­ing con­stantly. We really don’t know how the espresso is going to taste or how the com­mute will be—or at least, we’re not sure.

“Once you rec­og­nize that you don’t know the things you’ve always taken for granted, you set out of the house quite dif­fer­ently. It becomes an adven­ture in noticing—and the more you notice, the more you see.” And the more excite­ment you feel.

Don’t Just Do Some­thing, Sit There

Mind­ful­ness is the only inten­tional, sys­tem­atic activ­ity that is not about try­ing to improve your­self or get any­where else, explains Kabat-Zinn. It is sim­ply a mat­ter of real­iz­ing where you already are. A car­toon from The New Yorker sums it up: Two monks are sit­ting side by side, med­i­tat­ing. The younger one is giv­ing the older one a quizzi­cal look, to which the older one responds, “Noth­ing hap­pens next. This is it.”

You can become mind­ful at any moment just by pay­ing atten­tion to your imme­di­ate expe­ri­ence. You can do it right now. What’s hap­pen­ing this instant? Think of your­self as an eter­nal wit­ness, and just observe the moment. What do you see, hear, smell? It doesn’t mat­ter how it feels—pleasant or unpleas­ant, good or bad—you roll with it because it’s what’s present; you’re not judg­ing it. And if you notice your mind wan­der­ing, bring your­self back. Just say to your­self, “Now. Now. Now.”

Here’s the most fun­da­men­tal para­dox of all: Mind­ful­ness isn’t a goal, because goals are about the future, but you do have to set the inten­tion of pay­ing atten­tion to what’s hap­pen­ing at the present moment. As you read the words printed on this page, as your eyes dis­tin­guish the black squig­gles on white paper, as you feel grav­ity anchor­ing you to the planet, wake up. Become aware of being alive. And breathe. As you draw your next breath, focus on the rise of your abdomen on the in-breath, the stream of heat through your nos­trils on the out-breath. If you’re aware of that feel­ing right now, as you’re read­ing this, you’re liv­ing in the moment. Noth­ing hap­pens next. It’s not a des­ti­na­tion. This is it. You’re already there.