Four Steps to Living in the Moment

Four Steps to Living in the Moment
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Living in the moment may help you to feel a sense of inner peace. Therapists believe that if you can achieve this mindset, you can escape your thoughts and experience life to the fullest. According to Psychology Today, living in the moment can prevent your thoughts from controlling you, which enables you to feel better each day because of reduced stress levels, lowered blood pressure and improved self-esteem.

Stop Thinking

According to Psychology Today, thinking too much about your actions will hinder your performance, because your focus will be too much on how you look completing the action or the end result of the action. If you do not worry about the situation and simply face each step as it comes, you will likely perform much better because your mind will not have a chance to evaluate the experience. "Letting go of yourself" allows you to avoid self-consciousness and experience the moment.

Focus on the Present

Much of the anxiety that people have comes from thinking about events from the past or events that might occur in the future. Psychology Today suggests that all negativity comes from the past and the future, and this limits how much pleasure you can experience in the present. Your awareness of everything that goes on around you will increase your enjoyment of those things, and that will only happen if you learn to ignore the past and the future.

Find Mindfulness

Over the course of your life, you have probably been in a situation where you do not remember the previous few minutes, even though you have been moving the entire time. The University of California-San Diego Center for Mindfulness reports that this mindlessness can cause you to miss many great experiences in life. If you can learn to experience every moment, however, you will notice new things about the world everyday, which you otherwise would have missed.

Lose Track of Time

Make sure that you have flow in your life, as this will allow you to focus on the task at hand. According to Psychology Today, flow occurs when you shut out everything around you and lose track of everything in your life except your current task. Eventually, your sense of awareness merges with your task, which creates a scenario where you will have complete control over your task and nothing else in the world will matter.

References

Article reviewed by Leah Ann Crussell Last updated on: Jun 14, 2011

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