How to stop worrying & start living? The first step toward Mindfulness

How to live in the moment?

If you are not capable of disconnecting, or in other words, if you are not capable of stopping yourself from thinking about work-related issues, your challenges, your problems, or your next bills while you are sitting with your family and friends, then this article is for you.

Because in this article, I will share with you two things or concepts or ideas that if you understood correctly, can change your perspective, and they can help you to live more ‘‘in the moment’’.

And the first thing or idea of these two things is that you are not invincible.

Can you guarantee that you will live until tomorrow? Can you guarantee that you would even live until the end of today?

That's the main problem.

The main problem, especially in the Western world, is that most people believe that they will live 60, 70, or 80 years.

While this is most probably true, this is something that can be very good and at the same time very destructive.

Very good because it can make you feel optimistic. It can help you think about your future, plan for the future, set goals for yourself, and all of these things.

But it's also destructive because it makes you all the time flying somewhere else, looking at the future, thinking about what will happen there, thinking about what will happen when you retire, thinking about your next car that you want to buy, your next promotion, and all of these things.

While instead, you should be thinking about this moment between your hands. Because this moment is the only thing that you guarantee and the only thing that you have.

And the problem with the idea of invincibility, and I know that a lot of people who are watching or listening to this episode will have a problem accepting this reality (that we are invincible) and getting themselves in this mood, but let me ask you, ever heard about the story of someone that you know who went to a doctor because he was complaining about a specific feeling or illness or pain, and then after going to the doctor, the doctor suddenly struck this person and told him, you have one week or one month to live? Or maybe this doctor told this person, you have an operation that you have to undergo after 24 hours or one week or something similar?

What you will notice is that this person's perspective will totally change in one moment. After getting this shock from the doctor, this person will start suddenly thinking ''what are the things that truly matter to me right now? I want to take care of my kids. I want to take care of my beloved ones. I want to spend more time with them. I want to make them feel that I'm there for them in this limited time available for me on this earth.

In one moment after getting this punchline from the doctor, this person's perspective on life changes.

He is not thinking anymore about the next promotion. He's not thinking anymore about the yacht or the villa or the house or the money that he will get after he retires. He's not thinking about all of this because this is all in the future and he does not have a future. What he has is this moment now. He has a specific limited time. And that's why he is thinking about how to make the best out of this limited time.

And the answer always comes to him in the form of things that are not materialistic.

He will not think about what he is going to take with him to the graveyard, but he will always think about how to make the best out of these moments left for him. And the best things are always there in non-materialistic things. The things that are emotionally impacting you and the people around you.

So I'm sure that most probably you heard about these stories, either you read them in one of the autobiographies or somebody else passed through them. And hopefully, you will never have to pass through these situations. But they are real.

You can feel and believe that you are the healthiest person in the world, and then you go to a specific doctor because you are complaining about something that you believe is trivial. And then when you go there, this doctor shocks you and tells you that there is something risky or that you have a very limited time to live.

And then you come back to reality, and you discover that all the things that you are trying to postpone for the future, you have to do them right now.

The training that you have to attend with your kid to see him playing football or basketball that you promised him to attend. The vacation that you promised your family to go to. Or any other thing that you promised that you will do and fulfill and you didn't do because you believed that you are out of time or you are busy at work, or you needed more money or after the next promotion, or any other reason that you were saying, which is stopping you from doing this action right now.

All of these things fall, and what remains is ''how can I be there for the people around me? How can I focus on the things that truly matter to me?''

Do this exercise right now, imagine that everything is falling apart. Imagine that you don't have tomorrow. What are the main one or two things that you will be doing today? Ask yourself this question.

I know it's hard to get yourself in this mood if you never lived it before, or if you are not complaining about something, or if nobody shocked you and told you that you have a specific limited time to live. But try to get yourself in this mood. Hopefully, it will never happen to you, but put yourself in this mood and ask yourself ''if this is truly happening, what is one thing or maybe two things that I will be focusing on and doing in the meantime?

This is the first thing to do or the first thing to keep in your head all the time. That you are not invincible.

The second thing is ''problems will pass anyway''. I promise you, problems will pass anyway.

Do you remember your problem last year? Can you tell me about it?

I am sure that this problem, when it appeared last year, you were saying to yourself ''oh God, this problem is killing me. I will not survive it. I will not pass this problem alive.'', right?

And you are sitting and watching this episode right now and everything is fine, and you survived. Because problems will always be here.

Problems are like clouds. They are supposed to be in the skies from time to time, but they will pass. They are not frozen. They will not stay there all the time.

So if you keep this in your mind, you will not get distracted while spending time with your family or friends because you will not be thinking about these problems and you will not allow them to eat up your life.

You will be saying to yourself ''I know that I have problems. I have bills to pay, or I have other challenges, or I have credit. But I will also think about this problem at another time because I know that sooner or later it will be solved. Because guess what? last year I was not with my brain present with my family, I was only with my body there with them. And I was always concerned about the other problem that I had during the last year. And guess what? It was solved and I didn't die and I was regretting that I was not there living the moment and present with my brain while sitting with them.''

Don't do the same mistakes. Don't keep repeating them over and over.

If you know that the past mistakes or the past problems were challenging you and they were keeping you focused on them, and you didn't enjoy your time with your family and friends in the past years, and you regretted that later because you discovered that the problem passed and everything went fine, then don't do this same mistake again and again and again. Learn from your mistakes.

So when a problem happens, leave the problem for its time and say to yourself ‘’I will be living right now in the moment because this moment will not come back again.’’

The moment that you spend with your kid, the moment that you spend with your beloved ones, with your wife, with your husband, with your best friends, these things will not be repeated.

And if you want me to give you an example of these things, I want you to think about the moments that you consider the best moments in your life.

If you go back with your memory, let us say 20 years ago, when you were training at the gym with your best friend or when you were going on vacation with your colleagues from the university, or when you were starting your career journey, you will discover that one of the tricks that your brain does is that it always pushes you to believe that the past was always better than the present.

So my question to you is if you know that your brain will trick you to let you feel that everything was amazing compared to what's happening right now to the extent that you long for these moments from the past, then why don't you invest more time in order not to make this mistake in the future by being there in the moment?

So that later on, when you are remembering these moments, you say to yourself ''I truly lived them. I truly lived them and I remember these feelings all the time as if I was living them yesterday.'', because, again, I'm repeating, these moments will not be there forever for you.

You can think ''OK, I have the full life in front of me to play with my kid or to go to the sports field and watch my kid training’’, or something similar. But in reality, your kid will grow up, and later he or she will not be even open to you interfering in his or her life. And you will be longing for the moment that you spend with them while they were in front of you and you were trying to push them back. That's what I'm trying to explain.

So if you know that time will pass. If you know that things will not stay the same. If you know that you will be longing for these moments from the old days while saying that they were the best moments in your life, then don't make them pass away easily. Try to stick to them. Emphasize their importance and live them. And try to create a visual memory of these moments, instead of just being there trying to look ‘‘available’’ while you are not, and then you discover their true value seven or ten, or twenty years later on in your life.

I hope that these two concepts can help you in changing your perspective.

The first one is that you are not invincible. I know it's hard, but I know that you can try to pretend that you believe that something can happen and can change your life around.

And the second thing is that problems will always come and go but they will always pass.

Keep these two concepts in your mind and try really to be there for the people that you care for and are important to you.