Category: Living Now

Abundance, Health, Living Now, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Working Moms, Working Mums

How Living in the Now Leads to Inner Peace

Lyn Bailey

Peace is something that many people are missing in their lives. You don’t have to live that way. When you live in the now, it can lead to inner peace. You can find the calm that you’re looking for.

Start by dialing it back. You don’t have to be everything to everyone. You don’t have to be available all the time and you don’t have to let social media rule your day. Give yourself limits to how much time you’ll give things or people that drain you.

Next, make a date with relaxation. This might mean listening to music, using visualization, or meditation. It might mean taking off for an afternoon to do nothing but just relax.

While you’re at it, don’t use a wide-angle view of your life. When you look at everything at once, it can create inner panic. This can happen with both bad things or good things.

Ask yourself how important the situation is on a scale of one to ten. Then ask yourself if what’s happening will still be important to you a year down the road. This will help you keep your perspective, no matter what happens.

Another way to find inner peace is to stop rushing. When you’re in a hurry, it affects your outlook and creates stress. Take your time as you go through your day. Be present when you eat, laugh, and love. When you stop the rush, you’ll find that inner peace blooms.

Next, beware of the things that own you. When you have too much stuff, you waste your peace trying to take care of it and you end up letting your things encroach your space. When your home or office is filled with things that nag at your mind, it creates mental chaos and steals peace. Let go of things you don’t need or want.

If you struggle to release an object, consider taking a photo of it. Then you can keep the photo but let go of the object. Remind yourself as you do this that you’re giving a second life to the object by passing it on to someone else to be loved and cared for.

The final way to keep your inner peace is to focus on a “this moment” mantra in your mind. When thoughts about what you should do in the future crop up and you get that tight feeling in your stomach, say to yourself, “I only have to deal with this moment.”

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Health, Living Now, Mindfulness, Working Moms, Working Mums

Why Living in the Now Makes You More Resilient

Lyn Bailey

Why Living in the Now Makes You More Resilient

Living in the now stops the mental chatter that consistently goes on in your mind. This chatter is what keeps you thinking about what happened yesterday, what’s going to go on at work tomorrow and all the hundred and one responsibilities you have on your plate.

When you’re fully present, the things that you do right now become your goal rather than being the destination. For example, this could be something like learning to play a new instrument. You spend time enjoying the practice and the art of learning rather than focusing your attention on the complex song that you want to be able to play once you learn the instrument.

You’ll learn to eat less but enjoy more. When you feel the strong desire to go and get a snack or you want something you know isn’t good for you, living in the now helps you to overcome these cravings.

It does this because you realize all you have to make it through is this moment. You don’t have to worry about what you’re going to do for tomorrow’s mid-morning junk food hunger pangs.

Each little moment of the new becomes its own success story. That empowers you and makes you more resilient so you’re able to handle the next difficulty that arises.

If you have a goal to lose weight, living in the now helps you not to focus on the entire twenty pounds. Instead, you can focus on losing what you can today, one pound at a time. You keep your attention on what you’re eating now, what exercises you’re doing today. You don’t worry about how you’re going to beat a future plateau. Mindfulness allows you to enjoy what you eat, to feel the texture, to appreciate the aroma and to delight in the taste. You enjoy your food more when you live in the now.

Change becomes easier. Just focus on one little change at a time. In the end, the little changes add up to successfully reaching your goal. Living in the now helps you stay in control. It also helps you overcome self-defeating thoughts and habits such as drinking too much, smoking, skipping sleep, or skipping meals.

Taking care of yourself becomes more doable when you’re living in the now. You can concentrate on one healthy action at a time. Eating a healthy snack, going to bed earlier, or walking around the block today are good examples.

You don’t have to concentrate on making sure you get to the gym every single day of the week. All you have to put your focus on is working out today. You don’t even have to focus on making sure you exercise for thirty minutes. You just complete whatever exercise you’re doing during the moment.

Reaching your goals will become easier. You’ll be able to make your plans by focusing on which step you have to do right now. You don’t have to have all the answers today. You simply need the first step. That first step is what leads you to being able to handle whatever it is you want to do in life.

This will help you stop feeling overwhelmed with large projects. Instead, you’ll choose to look at the small steps and accomplish those, which become a completed project.

As you develop this resilience, you can quickly learn how to understand yourself. This helps you to stop living with stress or worry or anxiety about situations.

When you feel upset about something, take a moment to focus on yourself. If you feel dread or fear, take a deep breath and allow your subconscious to come to the forefront of your mind. You’ll be able to connect the emotion with the thought that was used to create it.

For example, you may realize that you felt dread after hearing your partner mention that layoffs were happening at his or her place of employment. When you focus on connecting that information with the present emotion and physical reaction, it’ll help you to see that your dread isn’t permanent.

By addressing it, you’ll be able to let it go rather than allow the dread to continue to build to the point where you feel fearful about your future.

Let resilience improve the moments in your life. When you live in the now, it can help you to become more aware of what you’re doing that could have a negative effect. For example, hitting the snooze button repeatedly can cause you to sleep in, wake feeling groggy, and leave you rushing around in the morning in order to get to your job or school.

By being mindful, you’re aware of the value of your time. You become aware of how one moment affects the next.

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Abundance, Health, Living Now, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Relationships, Time Management, Working Moms, Working Mums

How Living in the Now Strengthens Your Relationships

Lyn Bailey

How Living in the Now Strengthens Your Relationships

 

Everyone wants to have healthy strong relationships but not many people know that living in the now is exactly how you develop those types of relationships. It’s all about what you choose to focus on in the relationship that makes all the difference in the world.

Being fully present lets you look at the foundation of your relationships and allows you to be nurturing rather than wasting time and effort trying to fix what you believe is wrong with the other person. When you’re living in the now, you develop a deeper level of kindness and connection toward the other person.

Rather than rehashing and reacting to what you perceive are flaws—or even what irritates you about the other person—living in the now lets you become accepting. When you accept other people as they are, they tend not to be as defensive. Their guard is lowered and true bonds can be formed. You’ll be able to grow within the relationship. As a result, you can change the tone of the interactions you have with those you care about. When you live in the present, you have relationships where love and honesty are at the forefront. This allows the relationship to flourish. So if you’re ready to nurture your relationships, here’s what you can do to strengthen your bond today…

Practice paying attention.

When the other person is speaking, give them your full focus. When you multitask as someone is talking to you, it makes them feel like they’re not important enough for your full attention. By giving half of your attention away when someone else needs you to be present, you’re robbing yourself and them of the full benefit and enjoyment of your relationship. However, when you pay attention, you’re living in the moment. This deepens the level of the relationship and allows you to feel closer to the other person.

Check your emotions by being in the present.

When you’re in the present, you’re not allowing the emotions from the past to interfere with your relationship. Constantly holding onto things that bothered you then allowing those things to remain in your thoughts or to come out during an argument can erode the relationship over time. Your emotions become heightened when you carry past baggage into the present. You end up saying things that you may not truly mean. This happens because you’re not speaking with present emotions but with past ones. Checking your emotions allows you to break the circle of constantly fighting over the same things.

Teach yourself.

Use living in the moment to guide you on how to deal with relationships now. Look for self-teaching moments. This is when you stop and check in with yourself. Ask what the best way is to handle the situation. Look to see if you reacted emotionally and created friction rather than acted mindfully and created peace. What checking yourself does is boost the strength of the relationship. You’re not busy looking at what the other person is doing. Instead, you’re focusing on what your responsibility is. Being mindful enables you to control and manage your feelings and actions. It also means you don’t have to be in control of the outcome of the relationship. You’re free to let it evolve. In the end, the only person you’re capable of changing or improving is yourself. When you focus on strengthening the relationship, it lets the other person “off the hook.” Taking off that pressure prompts others to feel better and react differently toward you.

Create the future you want.

When you behave mindfully in any relationship, it shapes how it will be in the future. Many people have hopes of loving, fulfilling, relationships but don’t realize that today’s behaviors and words create that. If you want love and peace, you have to plant and cultivate those seeds.

Let go of your expectations.

Living in the moment makes you let other people off the hook. People won’t follow the script that you have in your head. They won’t react as kindly or as romantically as you had hoped and sometimes, this can be painful. When you keep your focus on the now, it lets you see past the surface of that person’s response. You’ll develop empathy and realize that the other person is under stress or they’re worried or something is going on that has absolutely nothing to do with you. Being mindful allows you to take a step back to see the truth.

Own up to what’s happening.

Living in the now helps you to deal with whatever issues are going on in a relationship rather than ducking it. Every relationship has flaws because humans have flaws. Some flaws can be so big that if not dealt with, it can wreck the relationship. You can strengthen it by approaching the other person with your feelings now. This helps you not to lay blame and use words that are guaranteed to make the other person defensive like “You always” which is accusatory. Instead, living in the now will help you to address other person calmly. You’ll be able to change the tone by saying, “Right now, I feel let down,” and that enables the conversation to start and the situation to be resolved.

Set your intention each day.

Let mindfulness make you more forgiving toward those in your life that you care about. When you get up each morning, think of two things that you can do to help the relationship grow closer. This might be two acts of kindness such as leaving a caring voicemail, writing a note or simply saying, “I love you and I’m on your side.” Your relationships take work. However, living in the now makes it easier to strengthen your bond and build the relationship you’ve always dreamed of.

 

 

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