While the thoughts we experience can vary from time to time, it seems pretty consistent that we aren’t really being in the here and the now. We’re letting our mind jump forward into our future or we’re delving into our pasts—we’re anywhere but here. If this is such a normal thing that everyone does, what’s the problem then? And if there is a problem, what can we do to resolve it?
First, let’s take a few minutes to dive deep into this moment right now. As you read this book, I want you to step outside of yourself for a bit and observe whatever sensations you may be feeling as we walk through them. To start, think about how you’re positioned. Are you sitting down on a comfortable couch or chair, are you standing on a bus or a train or are you lying in bed with a pillow behind your neck? However you’re reading it, that simple sense of awareness you experienced for a brief moment about where you are is being in the here and the now. It can get even deeper than that if you’re willing to continue with me.
As you continue to read I want you to focus now on your breath. Feel the air enter your lungs as you breathe in, hold that breath for just a second or two, and then exhale to let the air escape. Inhale one more time, feel the oxygen enter to a point where your lungs are full and whole, and then exhale again. While you breathe, try to imagine the air as something you can see entering your body, something you are bringing into it by your own sheer will. It’s easy for us to forget how important breathing is, usually because it becomes so automatic to us and we just accept it as a part of life. But when we take a moment to be fully aware of it, we stop focusing so much on ideas of the past and the future. We take full control of the present moment that exists in the here and the now.
When you are conscious and aware of a specific moment in the present, you are practicing mindfulness. Mindfulness can seem like an abstract concept or can even come off as a buzzword to you, but there is a lot of power behind it. Being mindful can help you respond to all kinds of situations like not feeling good enough measured by someone else’s standards, dealing with hurtful words from someone you care about, or worrying about a test you’re taking later in the day.
When we think about mindfulness, we tend to imagine practicing it in a context that exists entirely on its own, outside of the real world that we live in. However, let’s walk through each of those examples and see how we can use mindfulness to manage the emotions and feelings we have during those situations. Imagine you have a crush on someone that you’ve liked for a while. You’re completely captivated by the way they look, they way they talk, and every other quality you’ve gotten to know about them. There may even be times where you find your mind drifting off into fantasy scenarios where you two are dating or how you would ask them out if you had the opportunity to do so. These type of thoughts can make you feel happy, but they don’t have a chance of coming to be unless you do something about it.
When the time finally does come for you to approach the person and talk to them, you mess it all up. You don’t say the right kind of words, your body language is awkward and nervous, and they tell you they don’t have romantic feelings and just see you as nothing more than a friend. Moments like these can feel soul-crushing, it can take all the expectations you’ve had and flip them upside down, leaving you feeling like there’s something wrong with you, like you’re not good enough to date them, or that happiness is just not possible for you now.
It’s moments like these where mindfulness training can help us work toward feeling whole again. Otherwise, we will allow ourselves to naturally fall into the cycle of thinking of those painful events and reliving all the things we could have done differently, despite not having the ability to change the past at all. What we can do instead is close our eyes and focus deeply on our breathing once again. Rejection and heartbreak are part of the past, not the present. And as we bring ourselves into the present, the past can stay where it is. If you find your mind wandering back to those thoughts and feelings, understand that they exist and they have their reality, but they don’t need to be here right now with us. Think of these thoughts as waves of water coming onto a beach and wetting the sand. As the thought comes in, you may feel like it’s here to stay, like it’s a part of your present existence and there’s nothing you can do about it. But once you recognize you are thinking it, center yourself once again and come back to the present. Come back to the breath, and let the waves gently retreat back into the ocean. Or maybe your mind isn’t centered around your mistakes, perhaps your mind is focusing on how you can recover from your mistakes and what needs to be done to fix the situation. These thoughts too can also be put on hold for now, the key is to remain here in the present because it’s in the present where your feelings exist. There will be a time to work on changing things, but without a clear mind your decisions will be driven by your anxiety and fears.
Where you stand, as you feel your body breathing in, everything in this moment is OK. You are not being rejected, you are not trying to recover from a mistake, you are simply existing as you are, right here and right now. There is no other time that exists but this moment, and in this moment, you are whole. You can become grounded in the idea that this is where you stand, you can feel your feet planted on the ground, you can feel your legs keeping you there, and you can feel that you are what exists, not others’ image of you.
Practicing meditation can be difficult, but it is even more difficult at times to apply it to real-world scenarios. When you are especially hurt, your instinct might be to escape the pain rather than absorb it and transform it. Regardless of what you choose to do, however, you should always know that you have the strength to get through it as you continue to breathe, and this is not something anyone can ever take away from you.
Let this bring you peace over time—recognize that the choices and words of someone else are how they felt at the time, and that the feelings they carried don’t have to come with you—you can choose to let them go.
Let’s also imagine that you’re preparing for a big exam in school, the kind of exam that can make or break your final grade for the class. You’ve spent a great deal of time studying for this test, but you still feel nervous about taking it because you don’t know what to expect. The idea of how the experience may feel continues to play in your head in a loop, and you feel helpless to think otherwise.
Before your test, you can practice mindfulness to help you resolve the stress that thoughts of the future moment may be causing, and all it requires you to do is to return to the here and the now. In this very moment, you are not taking your exam and you are not studying for it. You are existing in the very present, where there is no test to complete but rather a test to let go of. The reason why you may be worrying about it is because the test starts to take shape in place of who you are. You see your worth as how well you will perform on the test, and because of this, you lose sight of your identity, your body, and your breath.
Sometimes when people are studying for a test, they forget to eat, they lose out on sleep, and they let it affect all the other aspects of their life. The test becomes your present moment, and it’s only by practicing mindfulness that you can see that you are not your exam. All you are is someone who exists right here. You have a greater purpose. If you close your eyes and focus once again on your breath, you’ll start to see that what’s to come is not what is; all you can control is what you have access to in this moment.
The next challenge is to take your exam and then to wait for your grade to see how you did. This can also create a sense of anxiety and can lead you back into projections of the future. You hope you did well but worry that you got questions wrong or should have chosen a different answer for a few of the questions. It’s in these moments that it serves you best to let go—you cannot know the outcome of the test until it has been graded, and thinking about the grade