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Hey, y'all, Dr. Joy here.
I invite you to join me every Wednesday on the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, a weekly chat about mental health and personal development, where my expert guests and I discuss the unique challenges and triumphs faced by black women through the lens of self care, pop culture and building the best version of you.
So if you're looking for more ways to incorporate wellness into your life, listen to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Angie Martinez and on my podcast, I like to talk to everyone from Hall of Fame athletes to iconic musicians about getting real on some of the complications and challenges of real life.
I had the best dad and I had the best memories and the greatest experience.
And that's all I want for my kids as long as they can have that.
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It is summer and on NPR's Planet Money podcast, that means it is time to grab your notebooks and your headphones and tune in to the economics crash course for your ears.
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We've got the lessons to keep you sounding smart at the beach with help from real economic historians every Wednesday until Labor Day.
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Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s.
The podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show.
Welcome back to the podcast.
New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world.
It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we, of course, break down the psychology of our 20s.
We're tackling a new subject today, one we've never really dove into, and that is the power of staying present, the power of mindfulness, of living in the moment for, I guess, anyone who's ever been told to just enjoy the moment, to just appreciate what you have right now.
You'll kind of understand that doing so is actually a lot harder than it looks.
The present feels very, very elusive in so many ways, especially when we're facing so many distractions and our attention is being pulled in so many directions, we're being told to kind of do it all.
When was the last time within that system and within that kind of busyness culture that we've actually slowed down and had a look around us and appreciated where we are right now?
We're also really inclined to, I think, ruminate on the past a lot naturally, but also to overthink and stress about the future.
And what I've at least come to find myself is that we spend a lot more time appreciating the moment only when it's past, only in hindsight, rather than when we're in it.
And that can really come at our detriment, as we'll come to see.
Letting yourself be present, be deliberately conscious of all that you're experiencing and really noticing small things about your reality brings a lot of peace that we tend to neglect in our really busy lives.
It's also been said to be amazing for creativity, mental clarity, productivity and just all around general levels of happiness, which who doesn't want more of that?
But mindfulness, again, doesn't always come easy.
And that's why I think it's really valuable to start almost training our brains in being mindful when we're young or during our 20s, when it does tend to have the biggest and longest impact.
And that is precisely what we're going to discuss today, the immense power of staying present, why we tend to struggle to do so, and what we can kind of learn from the experts on how to keep your feet really firmly planted in the now.
And I'm also going to kind of introduce you to this, it's kind of like a 30 second introduction into this art of living in the moment, into a practice that helps you bring you into the moment that I personally really love, I actually use it on a daily.
And I think this is a great place to kind of introduce people to it.
It's an amazing method and hopefully you get something out of it.
So I really hope you enjoy this episode.
I hope it is your calling or something to remind you to be more present in your life, to stop trying to rush to the future, rush to the next chapter or get too stuck in what's already come.
I know it's something that I sometimes really need a reminder of, especially right now, you know, in recent months, I feel like the older you get, right?
Like time just seems to speed up a little bit.
And that's a really scary thought at times.
But being really mindful of where you are now and the privilege of getting to experience where you are now definitely is grounding and definitely brings us back.
And I think we all need that sometimes.
So I'm very excited to share my thoughts, the psychology, the studies that we've dug up for this one.
So without further ado, let's get into the power of staying present.
Staying present and enjoying the moment is something that I will come out and say I really, really struggle with.
I have struggled with it for many years because of how I think chaotic my thoughts always seem to be or just the fact that there's always something going on.
There's always something to overthink, which is all too common amongst any one of you, any one of us who struggles with anxiety or just has a lot of things on their mind or a really busy life.
What's really helped me, though, is being able to categorize the different distractions or interruptions that make me feel distanced from the present.
And when I say distanced from the present, what I really mean is I'm spending a lot more time in my brain than in my senses, a lot more time in kind of fantasy or memory or overthinking than I am in what's actually going on around me.
And it kind of feels like there's this static between me and my life or that I'm walking through life and not really able to remember what has happened.
That really, for me, is a good indication that I'm feeling a little bit detached.
And there seems to be three ways in which that kind of happens, in which we disconnect.
The first way is when we get stuck in the past, falling into the nostalgia trap or the regret spiral.
If you've listened to our full episode on the psychology of nostalgia, you'll probably know a lot about this, but nostalgia is one way that we definitely become unable to appreciate our present because we are very much enticed by the more rosy memories of the past.
Regret is another emotion that I mentioned, feeling like you can't stop reliving moments of embarrassment or cringe.
And then, of course, we have trauma, reliving trauma, feeling constantly pulled into your memories by some really painful experience.
And a lot of these specific kinds of, I would say, distractions from the present come down to unresolved emotional experiences that there isn't a place for them to rest.
Your brain hasn't fully gotten through processing what you've been through, a situation, and so it continues to kind of remain in your active memory.
The second category is when we get fixated on the future.
Now, this is definitely where I spend a lot of my time.
Much of what ruins the present is sheer anxiety.
For me, this really includes anxiety and worry about what needs to be done.
Like, you know, you're trying to talk to a friend or a co-worker.
You're trying to be engaged in that conversation.
And all you can think about is how much work you need to do or your endless to-do list over thinking future choices and outcomes.
And even some of those more existential questions that can create a great deal of detachment, if not disassociation at the time.
Of course, I think disassociation is kind of in a league of its own here.
For those of us who aren't familiar with the term, it's this experience where we feel completely disconnected from our thoughts, our feelings, our memories, surroundings, sense of self, basically everything that makes up the present.
And sometimes we can feel disconnected just for a few seconds or much, much longer.
And it's a really scary experience to have to feel like you're almost floating outside of your body or that nothing feels real.
Often it's the result of too much stress or extensive trauma.
Our brain is kind of trying to find a way to essentially protect itself, to compartmentalize and to survive when it can't handle that much information or that much stress or trauma.
And finally, I think on a less extreme note, we just have general everyday distractions.
Now, when I say distractions, I mean both emotional and physical distractions or preoccupations is maybe a better word.
We can think of things like notifications from our phone, a really busy environment as kind of falling into this category.
And our phones are, I think, a big problem point for many of us, because they are just simply designed to be so addictive.
That was an intentional choice by their creators.
And they can really start to feel like our whole reality at times because of how reliant we are in them and the dependency that we have, whereby we're constantly drawn to them for everything from social connection to work, shopping, entertainment, information.
I think every single one of us has unknowingly missed out on a beautiful moment because we were locked in by our screens.
We have missed an old friend walking by us.
We've missed seeing some beautiful interaction take place or we've missed really feeling what we're feeling because as soon as it gets too much or uncomfortable, we pick up our phones and we flood our brains with information as a buffer.
In fact, a recent report from the American Psychological Association, it actually suggests that our phones often divert our attention away from the real from the real world, which duh.
But the reason it does that is because it kind of takes our attention from this messy reality into this nice, neatly formed and neatly designed reality where we know what to expect.
Our apps have everything in place.
We are in control. And so it becomes kind of a mental sanctuary.
And what's the consequence of this?
Well, a separate study from 2020 basically found that because our phones are constantly capturing our attention, a lot of us do feel less socially connected.
We are less able to recall certain memories, especially biographical memories.
And we feel less in the moment.
And you know what? I read that study and I was kind of like, do we even need a study to tell us that?
Like, who hasn't felt this way or question their relationship with our phone or social media in the last couple of years?
Like, I think all of us are probably getting to the point where we realize that what's really keeping us separate from our experiences in a lot of circumstances is a screen.
You can kind of see that there is a bit of a spectrum or a scale here from intense distractions, very existential distractions to smaller ones.
And then those that are a bit less common and those that are very chronic.
Of course, our phones are a chronic distraction.
I think or even like overthinking about the future may also be a chronic distraction.
But, you know, there is, of course, a distinction between complete dissociation and getting caught up in scrolling on your phone or distracted by something in your environment, but they all have the same effect at the end of the day.
We feel less engaged in the moment.
And when that continues to happen, we feel less engaged in our lives.
Moments make up our lives.
If you've ever had the experience of kind of waking up one day and feeling like you can't remember what you really did for the last two weeks or two months of your life, sometimes even years, that is a consequence of day to day disengagement with the present for whatever reason.
Because remaining present really means remaining deliberately conscious of what is happening around you so that you can actually feel your life, participate fully in your life.
And that also means being connected to both good and bad experiences and choosing to feel both because you appreciate that they make up this reality that you have the privilege of experiencing even during times when it doesn't feel like a privilege.
Being present is not about cherry picking when you want to be present and when you want to detach, because eventually it becomes very hard to reattach when your motor's operatum or your impulse is to distract and intellectualize and withdraw instead of feel.
So it's showing up for all of it.
And I know I said the good and the bad, but I should also include the boring within that as well.
There is a lot of joy to be found in the monotonous, in my opinion, but when it becomes very routine and same old, same old, the natural urges, of course, to disengage because you don't need to be fully there.
You can be thinking about other things.
But those boring, mindless tasks like brushing your teeth, like your daily commute, cleaning your house, answering emails.
They make up a lot of life.
There is a lot of minutes in those small activities that we can disengage from.
And so if we're not appreciating them, if we're not immersed in them as much as we can be, that becomes a big chunk of life that we spend inwards and removed.
And there's a lost opportunity in there for presence and for connection with our senses and with our reality.
I think sometimes daydreaming and kind of indulging in old memories or make belief situations, it can be protective, firstly, in the case of boredom, but also when our current day to day is just not very satisfying.
It's kind of a small reprieve to imagine the day's life will be better or to think about the times when it was before.
That kind of emotional detachment from day to day is instinctual.
And some would say hard way it in as a way to keep our mind distracted from what could be a pretty confronting reality.
And isn't that why kind of all of us go through periods of detachment?
Because if we were to be truly seeing our life, what it was, the problems, the fears, the relationships, the insecurities, it would just be too much.
It would be too painful.
And so we do need a little bit of like we need to step back mentally sometimes.
Plain and simple. We just have a natural tendency to withdraw and want to skirt the unpleasant emotions and experiences because they make us uncomfortable.
And logically, by avoiding this discomfort, we can be happier for longer.
Isn't that the way that it goes?
Unfortunately, that's an incorrect assumption.
Unfortunately, it goes a different way.
Actually, we don't become happier by selectively experiencing our lives.
We become quite numb. And that is exactly what I was talking about before going weeks, feeling like you've been wrapped in bubble wrap, that nothing has really touched you or made you feel not being able to remember conversations with friends, not being able to enjoy the moment because we have become accustomed to this habit of either not fully feeling or feeling
through our phones, only feeling through the memory of something or, you know, my least favorite, overthinking everything that could happen, might happen, that we can't control, until we just don't feel anything anymore.
We only think about the feeling.
But when we switch to a more present mindset, we unlock some pretty profound psychological benefits.
Being present is a combination of awareness, acceptance and attention.
We need to be in tune with the moments that we are not present.
We need to accept why that may be, whether it's an internal resistance to our feelings or a distraction.
And then we need to redirect our attention from inwards to outwards.
That is really complemented by just the simple art of noticing, observing your surroundings, really experiencing them, the sounds, the smells, the sensations, the temperature and also what you're feeling internally.
Presence to me is also about, you know, surrender.
Surrendering to what might be uncomfortable, what you might not want to think about, what might be happening and just being quite stoic about it, like, yeah, this is what's happening right now.
And I have to be empathetic with myself and, you know, it might be hard, but that's reality.
And I would rather be present for my reality than kind of reach a point where I can't remember anything at all.
When we're able to do that, we become more empathetic.
We're more able to connect with others on a deeper level because we're actually listening, we're actually absorbing everything that they're saying and doing.
We improve our mental clarity by slowing everything down to just what's happening right now, not yesterday, not one minute from now, not a year from now, meaning that we can, you know, sideline our mental clutter and turn down the noise for a moment.
And there's also been a lot of really convincing arguments about increased creativity, productivity, resilience, because those mental states, they all require a great deal of mental energy, which we often don't have the reserves for when we're bustling from one thing to the next.
So there is a, you know, a real argument to be made for rest and silence and serenity and actually making us more successful and more creative and more productive and more resilient.
The other significant thing about mindfulness is that it makes us a lot more comfortable with what we can't control.
The reason we tend to spend so much time in our memories is because we already know what happened, so there is a certainty there.
There are no surprises, which really eases our fear of the unknown.
And it's the same reason we spend a lot of time overthinking the future, because our overthinking convinces us that the more we interrogate all the possible outcomes, the more prepared we'll be when they get there.
But, you know, we probably won't be because it's never going to be like we thought it was and mindfulness really places you squarely in the now.
And we begin to realize that what will come will come.
It's something we can't control.
And the moment that you're in right now, you were probably worried about two to three months ago, but you're here and when you look around, it's not as scary.
It's not as dangerous. You have the skills that you need to kind of get through it.
And of course, the final benefit of being mindful, the true power of being present is that it just simply makes us happier.
And the reason we know this comes from one of the most powerful studies of the past 10 years in my mind by this researcher called Matt Killingsworth.
So his study took a huge sample of individuals, 15,000 people from different education levels, age, occupation, income, marital status.
He took, you know, he sampled them from across 80 different countries.
And his premise was really simple.
Throughout the day at random times, participants were contacted through their phones by an app that he had designed for this specific study.
And they were kind of asked to rate their current level of happiness, what activity they were involved in, and whether or not their mind had been wondering from the activity.
Now, most people know this study is the one that basically determined that money is correlated to happiness.
So if this sounds familiar to you, that's the primary, I think, finding that people like to highlight in the media.
But the finding that I find much more powerful and the one that came from this study was that actually when it came to our attention and awareness was what really made people happy, had far less to do with what they were doing and significantly more to do with whether their attention was fully present in the moment.
People who focused on their present moment experience, whatever was happening, even if it wasn't that great, were significantly happier than people who were allowing their mind to wander, who were trying to do a million things at once.
Something else he concluded was that our mind is wandering between 32 to 47 percent of the day on average.
But when the mind wonders, we don't feel as happy as we do in those moments of flow, attention, awareness, feeling, because this distracted state leaves us quite vulnerable to rumination, to stress, to depression.
Basically, like I said before, we spend a great deal of time contemplating what we're feeling rather than just feeling it.
Or we just avoid it all together, which ends up giving us a lot less mastery over our so-called negative emotions.
It also means that again, we miss out on all the positive experiences, because I said this before, right?
If you're kind of impulse your status quo is just to constantly be detached, it's hard to reattach your awareness and your attention during those good moments.
So all those positive experiences that would outweigh or overwhelm the frustrating, sad, lonely ones, they're also ones that we aren't fully there for.
But savoring the moment, on the other hand, and there was this brilliant study, a different study from 2017, it really talks about how when you savor the moment, the way you savor a meal, the way you savor like a time with a friend, the way you savor, you know, sleeping in in the morning, that is going to make you a lot more happier and it's going to increase your level
of daily positive emotions, which is basically a psychological scale for measuring how often we feel joyful, happy, satisfied, purposeful, grateful throughout each day.
And in this study, they measured people across nine weeks and those who had more dispositional mindfulness, which meant that they were in the present more throughout their day, they did report feeling a lot more content, more able to work through their anxious thoughts and yes, more happy.
One thing about that study I just want to mention was this term, dispositional mindfulness, because it's something that we really do need to highlight.
Basically, for some of us, it's just so much easier to exist in the present moment.
Our minds are naturally stiller, they're more serene, they're quieter in a way.
That's just part of our makeup.
For others, it's the opposite.
And I've said this already, but I've spent a great deal of my life very anxious about something or another.
And it literally used to make me feel anxious to not be anxious about something because I was like, what am I missing?
Some big bad fear that I haven't noticed yet.
So that's how complex it is.
And if you're someone like that, mindfulness is just kind of like it just feels out of your reach, but it is very much something that we can learn.
You can rewire your brain and how it operates to perceive your reality in a way that is firmly planted in the moment.
And that's really what I want to discuss next.
We can list all the benefits until the sun goes down, but it's semi useless if you don't know how to get there.
You don't know how to embrace the power of staying present.
You don't have the techniques.
So we are going to talk about all of that.
And of course, so much more after this short break.
Ever wonder what it takes to be a professional athlete or how the best in sport are taking those skills to elevate women's sports to a whole new level?
I'm Tiffany Oshinsky, host of League One Volleyball's podcast Serving Pancakes, a new show by I Heart Women Sports.
Get ready for some unfiltered analysis and authentic conversations about volleyball and beyond.
Learn what it takes to be the best in the sport and what it takes to stand on the podium from top athletes and figureheads in sports.
Every week, I'll dig into the perspectives from some of the best athletes in the world, like with Olympic gold medalist Justine Wong.
I will say my journey has not been easy.
Like whatsoever, I've I've been cut from teams.
I've made teams. I've been the starter.
I've been a non-starter.
And so for me to like say that I would make the Olympics, like I immediately started crying and give insights and behind the scenes stories from the people who are making the biggest impacts on global volleyball and women's sports from the likes of three time Olympic medalist, Jordan Larson.
I'm finding little ways to like do things differently.
And now it's more of how can I help the next generation?
You'll also learn about their other dream jobs if they weren't playing on the biggest stage, like from Olympian Lauren Carlini.
I'm thinking about starting a dog walking business, putting that out there.
For anyone's dogs, you need to be walked or watched or fed or played with.
Listen to serving pancakes on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey there, I'm Dr. Maya Schunker and I'm a scientist who studies human behavior.
Many of us have experienced a moment in our lives that changes everything.
A moment that instantly divides our life into a before and an after.
On my podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, I talked to people about navigating these very moments.
The last couple of years has been the hardest season of our marriage for sure.
I'm surprised our marriage survived it.
I think we both are. I think we both were barely holding on.
Nothing compares to how hard this is.
Their stories are full of candor, awe and hard one wisdom.
And you'll hear from scientists who teach us how we can be more resilient in the face of change.
True behavior change is really identity change.
Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.
Listen to a slight change of plans on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Between work, the gym, family, I am overwhelmed.
Sis, are you feeling overwhelmed?
You're not alone. I'm Dr.
Joy Harden-Bratford, licensed psychologist and host of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, and I'm bringing candid mental health conversations straight to your podcast feed.
We'll unpack every single topic we have.
Mental health conversations straight to your podcast feed will unpack everything from conquering imposter syndrome to nurturing your friendships.
Join me and my expert guests as we explore mental health and personal development.
Whether you're just starting your mental health journey, entering motherhood, thinking about becoming a therapist or just trying to show up as the best possible version of yourself, listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Angie Martinez. Check out my podcast where I talk to some of the biggest athletes, musicians, actors in the world.
We go beyond the headlines and the soundbites that have real conversations about real life, death, love and everything in between.
This life right here is just finding myself, just just relaxation.
It's not feeling stressed.
This is not feeling pressed.
This is what I'm most proud of.
I'm proud of Mary because I've been through hell and some horrible things.
That feeling that I had in adequacy is gone.
You're going to die being you.
So you got to constantly work on who you are to make sure that the stars align correctly.
Life ain't easy and it's getting harder and harder.
So if you have a story to tell, if you've come through some trials and trials, you need to share it because you're going to inspire someone.
You're going to you're going to give somebody the motivation to not give up, to not quit.
Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
The cognitive shift required to go from someone who is constantly distracted or very self contained, very in their own head to someone who is in every moment, fully feeling and present is a skill for sure.
Especially if your factory setting or the factory setting for your brain is one of nostalgia or anticipation or split focus.
But there are a number of small things you can implement that are so minimal and yet become some of those long term investments that we make in our life satisfaction and well being that we wish we started earlier.
And the kind of investments that people who are really happy and really successful and really at peace tend to do.
And I've got to say, I don't know if you need any more convincing, but truly before I introduce these kind of methods to you, I do have to say like what do you have to lose in trying these switches?
Often when we hear about mindfulness techniques or we hear about, you know, techniques for staying present that require a time investment.
We kind of pause and we're like, is it really worth it?
Do I really want to do this?
My life is so busy. You know, how I'm going right now is kind of fine.
So I'm just going to switch off and yeah, I don't have time for a 30 second mindfulness exercise.
That sounds silly, but I do think it's worth trialing.
We talk about bounded and unbounded risks on the show a lot.
This is a bounded risk. It takes very little to practice some of these methods for even 10 seconds, five minutes a day, but it could be life changing.
The person who really convinced me of this, actually, and why I'm so passionate about it is this man named Darren Larson, who's been practicing mindfulness for over 22 years, and he is actually a mindfulness coach.
A few years back, he did this talk and he offered this analogy.
Mindfulness is like taking the stairs every day.
Sometimes it's kind of annoying.
It burns, your heart rate goes up, your body is put under momentary stress, you know, the stress of confronting reality, confronting uncomfortable feelings of boredom, of loneliness, of whatever it is you're going through.
But that stress trains you for future moments of tension.
And it makes you stronger in comparison to, you know, taking the elevator every day, which, yeah, for sure, bypasses the discomfort.
But that makes you less prepared for the day the elevator is broken and you're forced to take the stairs.
You're forced to confront something in the moment, but you don't have the skills because you never practiced.
Basically becoming more present is about building endurance and our attentional muscles.
And I love this idea of an attentional muscle because it's so visual to me.
Like, I like the idea of like, I can train something and make it stronger.
Like, how long can I hold my senses on one thing without letting it slip?
It's kind of like, how long can I hold a squat?
How much can I be aware of my environment before it slips away?
Much like lifting weights.
How much beauty can I hold?
How many seconds can I go just thinking about nothing but what's in front of me?
And when I started this practice, I could not go that long.
It was probably like as long as I could hold my breath.
And now I feel like the same way that I go to the gym to train my muscles and my body, I really go to mindfulness to train my attention and to kind of train the part of me that experiences joy and peace.
So firstly, we are going to start small.
And this is a once a day, a daily practice in which you are going to deliberately, consciously bring yourself back into the present moment for just a brief moment.
I want you to set a random alarm on your phone for, I don't know, two thirty three pm every day.
And at that time, take 30 seconds to pause and place all of your attention into the current moment.
And if you don't know how to do that, there is this really simple way of doing this that was created by psychotherapist in the early 2000s and he worked in Silicon Valley with all these tech CEOs and highly successful people.
And he created this thing for very busy people called the three by three by three method.
This combines mindfulness and simplified breathing.
So what I want you to do is name a physical object that you can see like a lamp, like a dresser, like a plant and just take a deep breath in for four, hold for three and then out for five.
Then name another object in your surroundings to the same thing in for in for four, hold for three out for five and then one more.
You can do this not just with things that you can see, but things that you can hear, things that you can feel like different surfaces on your body.
But for that whole time that you are breathing in, holding your breath, breathing out, just focus on that one thing in your vision, in your, I don't know, in your hearing, in your like, anywhere, just focus on what it feels to experience that fully for three, three and three.
Something that the creator of this practice, Phil Bosier says is that when he first tells people about this, they look at him like, you know, are you spouting nonsense?
And then they try it. And I was one of those skeptical people because how in the world could 30 seconds shift my mindset so quickly?
But the best evidence I found is the one is the evidence that you can provide for yourself.
So I do want you to try it.
And if it doesn't work, that's 30 seconds you would have spent listening to this episode anyway, so you don't really have much to lose.
But if it does, if you feel even the slightest change, the slightest transformation, try implementing it for just a week and see if your consciousness improves for the rest of the day, even when you're not doing the exercise.
The other huge piece of advice I have for people who want to be more present is to actually start the day the way you want to experience the day, which is alive, awake, alert, feeling.
The easiest way to not achieve that is, of course, going to your phone.
The first thing in the moment, you know, as soon as you wake up and and just immediately flooding your brain with just like all this like crazy information and I get the impulse.
I get also that this might be super simple advice, but sometimes the smallest change and the smallest reminder to make the smallest change is what is most effective.
Those micro habits have the largest impact.
And this is certainly a very easy micro habit.
Start the day practicing presence by focusing on your breathing for the first few minutes after you wake up, drinking a cold glass of water and feeling the passage of the water through your body, experiencing sunlight or even a breeze.
These are sensory grounding exercises.
And the reason that they work is that they very intentionally connect you and what you're thinking with what you're feeling.
The way I explain it is like when you sync up audio and video, you sync up your perception with what is what is actually currently happening in their mind.
Basically, what we are doing is seeking ways that we can take ourselves from being detached, doing things habitually, to doing it deliberately, switching from unremarkable and automatic to remarkable and joyful.
In a similar vein, my friend actually introduced me to this method that she calls the romance moment.
Basically, the romance moment is where you choose one activity in your day to fully romanticize and be engaged in.
Take, you know, brushing your teeth or doing the dishes, really drag it out, feel every moment, every movement, watch what your hands are doing, how your muscles are moving, every second, fully be in it.
A really good way, actually, like a great way to try this.
Is it a meal? Like when you're sitting down for dinner or breakfast, really savor each bite, each new taste.
Pause for three seconds between each bite.
You know, like that research paper said before, you've got to savor the moment.
You've got to really be in the moment for all that it's worth.
And I think also avoiding that multitasking is also really, really valuable.
I think it's very hard to do that.
We're very busy people.
But just try and focus on one thing at once.
The biggest difficulty I do here is with being present, especially in this day and age is how many distractions there are.
And I think we've all had that experience of like, we're talking to a friend or our friend is talking to us and like a phone is buzzing.
And there's someone walking past who's like wearing an outfit that you like.
And the music is too loud.
It's just like there's just a lot going on.
And my to-do list is getting longer and longer by the second.
You've got a million things to do.
You're anxious about the future.
You're thinking about that weird exchange from yesterday.
And there is that societal push to be busy and stretch thin.
Going against that and focusing on one thing at a time is actually very bold and actually very, very effective, especially when we've been conditioned to go through life, kind of like we're operating the landing strip at a busy airport.
Like anything that's around us, anything that's happening, like you're welcome in, come in, distract me, slow it down, embrace single tasking by limiting how many tabs you have open on your desktop, limiting notifications, setting time blocks, 20 minutes for each thing where you are fully concentrated and then you can shift.
Do the hardest and most mentally draining tasks first thing and then move on to the smaller bite sized things that you can take off later in the day as your attentional resources kind of deplete.
There are so many strategies for this.
I know the inclination is to be doing it all and you can just not all at once.
And we're seeing this research time and time again, that if what you're worried about is productivity, is getting everything done, hitting milestones, achieving goals, actually being intentional, being really attentive on one thing at once with your time is a much more successful strategy.
Staying in the present really allows you to tap into that secret pool, that secret like mental pool, mental lake, like everything that makes you a successful person, purpose, creativity, kindness, attention, awareness, self-awareness, that all comes from living in the moment rather than feeling like everything is just this tangled web of before, after,
during, what's on my to-do list, what could possibly go wrong over thinking.
Try and just detangle that web.
And I want to recommend this one final thing for you, which is actually a book.
And it's called The Power of Now.
My friend, one of my best friends, Kay, who I talk about on the podcast a lot, she's fabulous, she's amazing, I love her.
She actually bought me this book for my birthday a few years back.
And it's very new age and spiritual, which I never truly gravitate towards because I'm much more, I think, scientific personally.
But I packed it on a holiday and it was incredible.
It deeply changed my personal philosophy.
It made me think about my life differently.
I think it's probably the inspiration for this episode.
And although it's about 30 years old now, there is this saying that the author has that has always really stuck with me.
And it's that only the present moment is real and only the present moment is what matters.
The past is a past of the future.
You don't know what it's going to be.
So the only thing that you can truly experience is what you're going through right now.
And that just always kind of wakes me up a little bit.
It always gives me something to think about.
So if you want to expand your mindset when it comes to mindfulness, when it comes to the power of now, the power of the present, that book, I would really, really recommend.
So thank you so much for listening to this episode.
If you haven't made it this far, it's great to have you here at the very end, as we're summarizing.
I just hope that, you know, I think I said this at the end of every episode, but I hope that you just go away thinking about something, learning something, even if it was small.
This is like a topic that I'm in a subject, I guess, that I'm really, really feeling the importance of in my own life at the moment.
If you couldn't tell by how much I referenced my own anxiety and my own, I think, tendency to be rushing and to be filling my life with so many distractions that I never really have to feel.
The power of staying present is an important reminder for me.
So yeah, I hope it's the same for you.
And then if you enjoyed this episode, make sure that you are following along on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, leave a five star review only if you feel cool to do so.
Otherwise, you don't even don't even have to worry about it.
And if there's someone that you think would also benefit from this episode, please feel free to share a link with them.
You can also DM me on Instagram at that psychology podcast and give us a follow.
If you want to see what we've got coming out soon, if you want to contribute to the discussion, if you have thoughts, feelings, questions, I would love to hear from you.
And until Friday, stay safe, stay kind, be gentle with yourself, and we will talk very, very soon.
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