Anxiety and Regret Stop You From Being Happy? Live In the Present! Be Mindful!

Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. But TODAY is a gift, that’s why it’s called PRESENT.

Philosophy ideas from kids' movies? Yes. And there are soo many, you might not believe it. I find this one particularly interesting because it brings out two of our worst feelings and it offers a way to get rid of them. I am talking about anxiety and regret, and it all has to do with TIME.

It’s all about fear

I realized that all these bad feelings are consequences of some fears that I have.

Regret is what I feel when I think about the past. I think about something that made me feel in a way that I don’t what to feel anymore. I fear that I will do the same thing and feel the same way. This idea is not true. I realized that I always change, what made me feel in a particular way yesterday will not have the same effect tomorrow. Regret makes no sense having this in mind.

Anxiety is the fear for the future. “What will happen if I go to that interview?”, “Will I be rejected if I do this talk?”, “What if she leaves me?”, “What if he will not like my dress?”, and so on. All the things that might happen in the future and might create pain. That is what anxiety is.

What about now?

So I feel pain when I live in the past, and anxiety when I live in the future. But what about in the present? What feeling is there in the present? And that’s when it hit me. No feeling. In the present, there’s just CHOICE!

If there is no link to anything that happed or anything that will happen, then I am FREE TO CHOOSE WHAT I FEEL!

And indeed I am. I can choose to enjoy nature, colors, air, textures. Or, I can, as well, choose to be angry at them. But there is a choice.

This is what mindfulness is all about, and that is why it helped me a lot. When I am mindful I live in the present, I feel what happens around me, I choose what I want to see, I choose the life that is displayed around me. and thus I choose what I feel.

Awesome!! But HOW can I be mindful?

I found out that mindfulness comes in a variety of forms. A lot of people will say that meditation is the best method to become mindful. I agree that meditation is a good way for that. I wrote an article to help people start with a meditation called Feeling that Meditation is Hard? Let Me Help You Ease it Out. But meditation is not the only way. I manage to bring myself to the present with a lot of methods. Most of them are essentially stoping and paying attention.

Walking slowly — when I go to work, or anywhere for that matter, I, sometimes, walk slowly, very slowly. It is extremely hard, but when I do it, I have time to see the buildings, the threes, to smell the air, and feel the wind. It takes me out of automated movements and makes me feel the present.

Do sports — when I go to the gym and I want to do a certain exercise, I focus on the muscles I use. Like when I plank and I tighten my glutes, or when I push up and tighten my back, or when I pull up and harden my core. Some muscles need to be accessed directly because otherwise, they would not join the effort. To be able to do that I need to bring my attention inward, to feel my body, to be conscious of my movement.

Routines — when I wake up in the morning, I make myself a cup of coffee, put on some essential oil, dim the lights a bit, stay on a chair, smell the coffee, smell the oil, and sit there for a few minutes. I would take a sip of the coffee, fell its texture and its taste.

Feel your body — this is something that I learned from meditating, I know, but once I did that it gave me a shortcut to mindfulness. Awesome, I know. One day I was with my kids trying to take them to the swimming class. I decided that we should walk because it was a nice summer sunny day :). At some point, I noticed that I was very angry at my kids because they were playing around. I stopped a bit and realized that I was angry because I had something on my mind and their playing did not let me think about that. At the same time making me not being present with them. What I did is that I took a few deep breaths, I scanned, for a few seconds, my body, just to feel it, and brought myself into the present again. The rest of the trip was awesome. we laughed and played all the way and we ended up being late to the swimming class 😁. But it was awesome 😍.

Take away

Being present is good. It gives your brain a break from the future and the past. It gives your heart a break from feelings. In the present, there are no pains and no fears, because there is no past experience or future possibilities to take into consideration.

Every technic for putting you back in the present involves 3 steps:

• stop and breath
• look around
• feel yourself

You can do these steps in your particular way. But do them. Live in the present. You deserve it.

The present is the best present you can give yourself!

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