Where are you at this very moment? Can you describe your current environment? What sounds do you hear? Observe your surroundings. Can you sense any smells? 

Connect with your physical self. Feel your body, from your toes, your legs, your torso, to your chest, your arms, your neck, and your head. Are you truly present within your body? Or is your mind somewhere else?

This mindfulness exercise above is a simple way of getting back into the present moment. Even if for a few seconds, you may have noticed that you were completely immersed in your experience. There were no thoughts of past events or future anxieties. 

You were simply Being. 

Yet, many of us find that most of our days are dominated by overthinking. It is rare for us to be in the now. This disconnection is a significant reason why many of us feel anxiety and lack inner peace. We are in a constant state of avoidance, lost in mental narratives and illusions.

“What would happen if..?” 

“Remember that time when..?”

“What is that person thinking of me?”

The mind never rests. 

Which is why if we want to achieve more  inner peace and mindfulness, we have to escape the chatter. True peace is found in the now. Unless we are being threatened, our anxieties are probably rooted in imagined scenarios.. And even if we are facing a real threat, we’d act instead of overthinking.

Our mental chatter is a prison. It prevents us from acting with intuition. It prevents us from experiencing the life around us. How often do you wait for your turn to speak instead of genuinely listening to someone? How much of your day is spent lost in thought?

I invite you to challenge yourself with a mindfulness experiment. For a whole day, write down every instance that you catch yourself lost in daydreams or distant thoughts. If you’re like most of us, you’ll find out that it’s more frequent than you’d expect!  Also, write down the emotions that accompany these distractions. Are they in line with your current reality? Or are they outcomes of your mental illusion? 

Awareness is our path to freedom.

The mind is a tool, but we have become tools of the mind. Keep remembering where you are. Keep remembering who you are. You are not the experiences of the mind. You are not the past. You are not the future. You are here, now, living, breathing, being. Come back to your immediate experience. This is all that there is. This is all that will ever be.