Honouring our emotions, thoughts and feelings with compassion in the moment, moves your focus to that moment only. When you’re living ‘in the moment’, the past and the future can’t touch you.

It can be a difficult task to put your feelings about the past or future aside. It’s like when someone says, “Don’t think of a pink elephant!” Did you think of one, just now?

Well, your grief is sometimes that pink elephant and it seems like there’s nowhere to turn. In this situation, you can look for help from present moment thinking.

Remaining in the present takes practice. While you’re learning how to live in the moment, remember that it gets easier as time goes on. 

You can work on redirecting the attention from your thoughts, but one practice that’s all about staying in the present moment is mindful awareness and meditation. These simple exercise can also help you work with grief, sadness or anxiety.

Here are some practice tips and options:

• For 1-week, create a meditation schedule – 30 minutes per day every day.
• Go to a place where you can relax and be alone and notify those around not to interrupt.
• Sit in a position with good posture or lie down on your bed with the doors closed.
• Take deep breaths in and out from the bottom of your lungs by holding your hand over your stomach to ‘notice’ the constant breath.
• You can use guided meditation apps that provide a “mantra”, visualisation or positive affirmation to help you focus.
• When thoughts arise, acknowledge them, and then let them go.

The most difficult aspects you might encounter when learning to meditate is self-judgements when experiencing the busy mind and being pulled into the resulting emotions. But this is the human condition and natural part of the practice, where it is to experience this and focusing back on your breathing to return to the state of observation and awareness. Resulting in clearing away extraneous thoughts and worries, to go as easily as they come by.

When you’re grief stricken, it’s an especially difficult time to keep a clear mind. Thoughts of the past will more than likely keep coming up in your practice. This is normal. As you continue practicing, it will get easier to focus on the now and be aware of the craving and clinging as it comes and goes in the moment-to-moment awareness.

An important thing to remember is to avoid judging yourself. Don’t punish yourself for thinking of the past when you’re trying not to think about it. Realise that your mind is taking a turn you didn’t intend, and then lightly nudge it back in the right direction. Be grateful that you were able to catch yourself in the midst of a negative thought, and let go. 

 Once you’ve adopted a philosophy (Transcendental, Vipassanā or any other preferred Meditation modality),  and generated the discipline of present moment thinking, concentrate on keeping up with your practice. Rather than a mechanism you turn to only when you’re in a pinch, consistent present moment thinking can bring you a habitually normalised new lifestyle of observation and awareness.

It’s essentially changing your default neural pathways that have been normalised up until this point in life, and changes the ‘habit patterns’ of the mind. Call it ‘Innercising’ if you will! Like the gym, it’s quite the workout to change your biological matter, and like the gym, you need to show up and do the work consistently to gain and maintain the results.

When you learn to live in the moment, you’ll find peace and joy in life, from the previously unexpected places. You’ll be more calm and collected and enjoy every moment for what it is. It’s a game changer in work, relationships and health experiences.

As your practice deepens, you’ll fully realize that life is just a series of moments. It’s not a definable measure of time, but you’ll feel many moments in every minute. Little by little, you’ll learn to recognize them.

You may find it difficult to remain in the present just because you must refer to the past and plan for the future in order to live. This is true, of course, but once the reflection is over, and the planning is put away, your goal is to remain in the moment as much as possible.

• Refer to the past when you must, but avoid reliving grief (aversion) or daydreaming (craving).
• Plan for the future, but don’t obsess (craving) over it.
• Simply look at what you’re experiencing right now and accept as it comes and goes.

Living in the moment can help not only processing grief, but also help strengthen the ability to catch the thoughts and feelings before they spiral out of control.  When your mind is completely focused on the present moment, you’ll be surprised at how much lighter life can be!

Explore the various forms and tools of guided meditations and practices available to integrate into your everyday life and become more equipped to support yourself when times get tough. The Little book of Mindfulness has been a great tool to use when getting away from the desk for 10-minutes a day. Simply steps that make a big difference.

The free Insight Time App also provides a variation of guided mindfulness tools and meditations tracks from a wide range of modalities, music and talks on the various practices available. Just search keywords of what you’re struggling with or curious about and the app with narrow down some suggestions for you. 

For those looking for an immersive meditation course that cultivates the discipline in a supportive group environment, I’d highly recommend looking into applying for a course at one of the many Vipassanā centres around the world.

These centres are run by volunteers and take donations to support those looking at learning about the practice and the wish of learn the ‘Art of Living’. 

Vipassana means to see things as they really are, and is one of India’s most ancient techniques of meditation.