that have already passed. It’s human nature to look at the past and feel nostalgic, or even fearful or angry – but the trouble comes in when we focus on the past and let it guide our present actions, rather than living in the present moment.
When that happens, you miss the chance to create your best life and you’re settling either for the pain or the glory of what used to be. A life of potential fullness can easily be lost by looking at life in the past.
In the same way that focusing on the past can limit your ability to have your best life, so can focusing on the future. The future isn’t here yet. You don’t want to waste the quality of the present on what might happen in the future.
Usually, what you focus on for the future, when it arrives, is different from what you thought it would be. To have the best life possible, you need to aim for keeping your focus solely on the present. It’s true that everyone can have times where the past or the future seems to be all they can focus on. But you can change that. You change it by living in the now.
When you’re working on something, don’t work on several things at once. When you’re eating, don’t do anything else besides eat. When you’re spending time with someone, don’t split your thoughts by trying to pay attention to the other person while at the same time opening mail or answering an email. Don’t always be thinking about what’s coming next. Be in the present fully aware of your actions. Slow down. Don’t try to zip through life at full speed to get stuff over with.
Stop overcrowding your day by multitasking your way through everything. You’re not really getting more accomplished because you’re not able to give one single thing your complete attention. Stop packing so much into your life – because too many things will cause you to suffer from a mental frenzy. This happens when you take on so much that you feel as if you don’t have time to think.
Take a break on purpose. It’s rare that people simply be instead of doing. For a set amount of time every day, stop. You might have heard the phrase ‘take the time to stop and smell the roses’ and this is the same principle. Take the time to stop and be present. Don’t do anything during your time of stopping but drink in your surroundings. Notice the day. The scents on the air. The beauty around you.
When you take the time to practice mindfulness, it allows you to not only create the best life you could ever dream of, but you get to savor it, too. When you begin practicing this process, you’ll notice how many others are not living in the present, and you’ll be grateful that you’re no longer chained to the old way of living.
How Can You be Mindful
You can be mindful on daily basis by paying attention to current tasks, but mindfulness is usually associated with doing so with a particular attitude of curiosity, openness and acceptance. That way you can be open to your actual experience, free of presumptions and without being distracted by your reactions to it.
Mindfulness is at its peak when you’re focusing your mind entirely on it, which is known as meditation or 'falling awake' as a contrast to falling asleep.
The movement of breath into and out of the body is a very popular initial focus of attention in mindful meditation as it is always present and involves just enough bodily movement to keep one interested.
Some people prefer a repeated silent phrase – called a mantra – or a set of rhythmic, simple movements, or enjoy being guided through a meditation by verbal instructions and reminders from a teacher or an audio track. Many guided meditations are available online and there are also a number of apps that are readily available.
Mindset
Do Your Actions Support a Strong Mindset?
It’s clear that life doesn’t divide up all good things evenly among all people. You can tell that just by people watching. Some people are better looking than others. Then there are people who are richer than their peers.
There are people who come from a good background. They have a great education. They’re intelligent, well liked, and it appears the world is theirs for the taking. Then, there are people who are average in looks. They don’t have all of the money they need, much less all that they want. They come from backgrounds full of various struggles. They may not have attended a prestigious college or even any college at all.
Yet, so many times, it’s this second group of people who end up far more successful and enjoying more personal satisfaction than the first group. The reason for this is mindset.
Mindsets are not just important for learning new skills. They can affect the way that we think about everything. For example, a growth mindset can help you recover from illness because you believe that you can do something about the illness. They can help you achieve in sport, at work and can also help you grow and develop in relationships. Cultivating a growth mindset could be the single most important thing you ever do to help you achieve success.
Remember that someone who seems to have it all doesn’t always stay that way. And what you see on the outside – the nice car, the fancy clothes – doesn’t necessarily reflect inner happiness.
It’s not enough to wake up every day and tell yourself positive things. That’s a great start, but mindset isn’t enough to change your life. You have to have an active role in taking action to leverage mindset into a new existence for you.
Understanding Mindset
It’s not your lot in life that determines what you can or can’t achieve. Being successful in life is something that can happen for anyone because the key to success in business or in your personal life is having the right state of mind to carry you forward.
There are two kinds of mindsets. One of these appears successful – but in the end, that success will stall out. The other mindset will pave the way to a life full of personal accomplishments, business achievements and deep inner satisfaction.
The first mindset is called a Fixed Mindset. This is what people have who rely on what they know, what they’re born with and what they believe they’re currently capable of to succeed.
They believe that they have everything they need within themselves. That sounds positive, and in some ways – it is. But they run into obstacles and because they sometimes don’t see anything they currently have to handle it, they hesitate and fail.
But with people who have a Growth Mindset, they believe that anyone can work hard. They don’t have quitter’s attitude toward achieving success. This attitude causes them to strive while others coast by and get stopped by roadblocks.
The two differences can be compared to the race between the turtle and the rabbit. This was a race between unequals. If anyone were to bet on success between these two opponents, they would have bet on the rabbit.
From the outside, he had everything. He was faster because biology guaranteed that. Surely, he would finish the race with success because he started out equipped to win. But as everyone knows, the story didn’t end up like that. The turtle was the victor because he wasn’t afraid to keep on going although the odds weren’t in his favor.
He didn’t have the speed or talent the rabbit had, but he was willing to stay in the race because he knew what the rabbit didn’t. He knew that while he didn’t have the ability to run that fast, he had the ability to go at his own pace and cross the finish line.
That
