How to Remain in the Present Now in Daily Life: 5 Easy Habits

“Do not linger in the past, do not dream about the future, focus the attention on the current moment.”

Buddha

There is only one moment and location that you can be and have any influence over.

The current moment.

Yet most of us still spend a lot of our ordinary days buried in recollections, reliving a sunny vacation or maybe more typically rehashing an old quarrel or terrible circumstance over and over in our minds.

Maybe we become lost in fantasies about what might happen in the future. Maybe via hopeful daydreams.

Or maybe by making monsters in our brains as ideas run round and and round and make terrifying and deadly mountains out of molehills or simply air.

Maybe your mind may get scattered and distracted between various distinct items and activities.

If you spend a lot of your daily moments and time in the future or the past or you have difficulties concentrating and you believe this may have a bad influence on your life then maybe you want to learn to live more in the present now.

Here’s what works for me to achieve that. Just a few easy items that I utilize in my usual day.

1. Single-task not just your job.

I and many others have frequently written and spoken about the need of single-tasking your job to get it done more successfully.

I have discovered that it gets simpler for me to be present for longer time during my day if I single-task everything as best I can.

It is to not utilize tabs when I explore the internet but to simply be totally engaged with one thing online at a time. That means to not use my smartphone or my computer as I also attempt to watch the TV.

Or to use any of those internet-devices during a chat.

Make a positive start to your day and set the tone for it by doing one item at a time as soon as you get up.

If you have to multitask, then attempt to block apart some particular time for it throughout your day. Maybe an hour or so in the afternoon.

2. Do it slowly.

As you get up and begin doing your first item of the day, then slow it down a little.

Do that and the following few things at a leisurely and tranquil pace. It will probably not take that much longer than if you do it fast.

And you’ll be able to remain present more readily, to concentrate on each item you do and to discover a simple delight or calm in it.

Do it instead of boosting your tension straight immediately and becoming lost in anxieties or though loops about what may happen today before you even have eaten your breakfast.

And as you proceed through your day, try to do it slowly when you can.

3. Remind yourself: today I am…

When I accomplish anything I just tell myself this in my mind: Now I am X.

For example, if I am cleaning my teeth, then I tell myself: Now I am brushing my teeth.

This practice is maybe most necessary while performing jobs when it is easy to slip away to the future or past. It may be when you clean your hair or teeth or while you are on a stroll to the grocery.

I don’t tell myself this statement all the time, but I pepper it in a few of times during my day.

4. Limit what you allow into your thoughts early in the day.

If I check the email, Facebook and other websites online early in the day then I have discovered that I will have more ideas running around in my mind.

And so it becomes a lot difficult to focus on anything, to be present and to not be carried away into some unpleasant thinking cycle.

So the nice choice for myself has been to not check anything early in the day. And to check things as few times as I can.

If I limit such things then my day gets lighter and easier and I not only remain present more readily but I also tend to get more things of value done.

5. No, no, no + reconnect with the here and now.

The four recommendations above make it simpler to remain in the present moment and to utilize it and enjoy it completely.

Yet each day I still stray towards the past or the future. Perhaps my thoughts get divided between several topics.

If you have read any of my articles on self-esteem then you know that I frequently use a stop-word or phrase to instantly interrupt and halt the inner critic or a detrimental line of thinking. I do the same thing here.

As fast as I detect that my thoughts have strayed away I declare to myself: No, no, no.

Then I immediately follow that up with concentrating on just my breathing or just on what is occurring around me right now with all my senses for a minute or two to pull myself back into this present moment.