Life goes so fast. Yesterday I was going to primary school without a phone, today I’m fighting my attention between notifications and a tight schedule.
If you don’t pause for a second you gonna lose your life, believe me. If you are like me, you’re always thinking in what to do next, your mind is always busy doing several things at a time, you aren’t living now and right now is the most important moment ever.
Have you ever thought about that?
It’s really hard to be in the present moment and there are some reasons for that:
Dopamine
Our brain is in constant search of dopamine, and little bits of that are everywhere: in the phone notifications, in a cigarette, you even know it’s bad but you can’t resist it and bit by bit you start to picking those habits, then without you realizing they start turning into addictions.
Your mind starts constantly thinking in this bits of pleasure, specially when you get bored, your brain craves for those things.
Hurry
You always have a tight schedule, you always have work to do, you have to pick up your nephew, something to catch on. So your brain is constantly thinking what’s up next, and without knowing you are losing focus, you are in constant hurry. Have you ever been in a conversation that you start focused and then you just catch it later and been completely lost and forget what you’re talking about? That happens a lot. If you aren’t interested at all, you should not fake it, but most the time you are, but you know you just remembered that you have to call Lucy tomorrow and pack some stuff than you lost almost all conversation.
That sucks.
Studies say we are happier if we live the moment, if we are into the conversation, we need to listen more, care more about people, about us, about our life and dreams.
“Psychologists have found that people are distracted from the task at hand nearly half the time, and this daydreaming consistently makes them less happy” — Study made by Psychologists at Harvard University.
It’s crazy to thinks you are losing chunks of your life thinking what’s next when all you have to care is now.
So how can you be more present?
Awareness will help a lot, realizing what’s going on your mind is the first step to change your behavior. Because almost all of the thinking and craving happens without awareness, if you can spot when it triggers is a massive improvement.
In fact Meditation is based on this consciousness.
“Meditation is a practice where an individual trains the mind or induces a mode of consciousness, either to realize some benefit or for the mind to simply acknowledge its content without becoming identified with that content, or as an end in itself” — Wikipedia
And this consciousness and being present can improve your focus, lessen your stress, improve your communication, relationships, sex and even increase your creativity.
I want to be more present, so I’m excited to try meditation, and hope to share some insights in a couple of months.