How Living in the Moment Can Help Your Wellbeing

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.

Using Mindfulness and Meditation

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.

Keeping Up Your Practice

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.

Moment to Moment

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!

Tools and Resources

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.

Online Introduction Course

In this free online course, participants are invited to give trial to 5 forms of mindfulness practice that can be incorprated into everyday moments in life.

You’ll notice the benefits of being curious, calm, connected and creative with the sensations, thoughts and emotions that arise, as well as notice the habit patterns developed with clarity and compassion.

A great place to chose where to respond from and not continue to ‘re-act’ to.

Introduction to Mindfulness

10-day Silent Retreats

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.

Find out more about Vipassanā

Providing Comfort in Tough Times

Counselling, Intimacy and Relationships, Life Transitions

When life hands you a tough situation, you may need to lean on other people for comfort. But what if you're the person that needs to provide the shoulder? It can feel challenging to know the right things to say or do when there's a sense to be strong for the other person.

How you provide comfort will vary depending on who you’re comforting and what they’ve gone through. However, there are universal tips to keep in mind when you’re supporting someone during a time of need.

Here are some strategies that can help you provide much-needed comfort to others:

Attune to them. When someone approaches you for comfort, chances are that they’re not asking you for your advice. More likely, they just need someone to be there for their emotional needs. Avoid trying to solve their problems unless you’re asked for advice. In that case, you’re free to provide any advice that you have. Asking “what do you need right now? Comfort, advice, or anything else” is a great way to tune in with what’s needed in that moment.

Listen well. It’s always a good idea to develop your listening skills. A part of being a good listener is truly striving to understand what the other person is saying or going through. Remember that you can provide a certain degree of comfort just by lending an open ear to the person suffering.

Offer unconditional help. Sometimes it’s comforting just to know that the other person is there. Tell the person that’s suffering that they can discuss their problems with you any time they need a lift to help them get through.

Give a hug. It’ll certainly vary depending on the relationship that you have with the person you’re comforting, but you can provide physical comfort with a hug. Hugs simply make people feel better! The human touch can melt the soul and warm them with comfort.

Be understanding. You might not know what it’s like to go through the tough time that you’re helping with, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t strive to understand. Do your best to try and understand where this person is coming from.

Understanding Grief

If the person you’re helping is dealing with loss, you’ll also be supporting them with their grief. Grief is a natural process to go through when people are facing a loss, due to natural disasters or sudden and unexpected change. If you gain a better understanding of their grief, you may know what to expect should it ever happen for yourself or someone else and feel able to respond in an empathetic manner, from a place of understanding.

The response to loss can show up in the following ways, and not necessarily in this linear order or intentisity;

Process of grief

The Stages of Grief

As outlined in the Kübler–Ross Grief model above, grief is expressed in different stages and different people spend varying amounts of time on each stage. Sometimes the stages aren’t even expressed in the same order.

Grief usually starts with the initial shock of the loss and often times denial accompanies this distress. Then numbness, pain and/or anger sets in, which may last for a long time. Sometimes depression also sets in before the person journeys into acceptance.

While you don’t want to push a person through the stages too fast, you do want to do whatever you can to help them along to acceptance. When they’re angry, be an open ear and try to reassure them their feelings are valid and acknowledge their subjective experience must be a difficult place to be in that moment. Help them see their problem or loss from a different perspective or possiblities if you pick up on it being appropriate.

Depression can be difficult to help with since the person tends to lose interest in the world around them. Your presence and willingness to be a support guide can make a difference. Show them that the world hasn’t given up on them, so they shouldn’t give up either. With your support, and the help of a professional, the process will find a way that works best for the person and their understanding of what’s happening for them.

When someone you know is going through a rough time, these tips are a basic guide in ways to console your loved one. The comfort you bring them may be the one thing that helps them make it through to better days.