What Am I Doing Right Now?

What am I doing right now?

Few words have ever had a more significant impact on my life as this simple question.

I remember reading it in a book about mindfulness yoga that I had picked up years ago because I was looking for some ideas to help me in my struggle against constant worry and anxiety. I had often enjoyed yoga as an exercise practice, but had never really considered it as a meditative/mindfulness practice. I knew I needed to do something different in my life though, and as someone who was definitely born on the far side of a Type A personality, meditation and mindfulness are not things that ever came naturally to me. But they’re part of my life now, and have been transformative.

What am I doing right now?

Most people I talk to who resist the idea of trying meditation tell me it’s because they can’t quiet their mind and just ‘sit there doing nothing’. It makes them anxious even thinking about having to be still and ‘emptying their thoughts’ for any length of time. “I can’t do mediation.” “Mindfulness is too hard – my mind races too much.” That was me too. I had tried, and failed many times and was particularly bad at the guided meditations where I had to imagine specific images or listen to someone telling me what I was supposed to be thinking about or visualizing while I was sitting there with my eyes closed. I felt like a failure and started to believe that it would never be something that I could learn to do. I felt destined for a life spent either living in the regrets of the past or the uncertainties of the future, but rarely just enjoying the moment without fear or anxiety.

What am I doing right now?

It seemed so simple. Maybe too simple. Instead of forcing myself to sit and meditate or to suddenly expect all of my thought patterns and unhealthy mental habits to just disappear overnight, I could just start here by asking myself “What am I doing right now?”.  Taking a moment to deliberately take note of my environment, my physical feelings and whatever it is that is right in front of me. What task am I doing RIGHT NOW. What decision am I needing to make RIGHT NOW? What is actually happening in my life RIGHT NOW?  

I started here. Throughout the day, whenever I would realize that my thoughts were moving into the ‘what if’s’ of the past or a worry about something that hadn’t happened yet, I would ask this simple question of myself and take 30 seconds to answer it and to be genuinely present. When I would feel overwhelmed or overstressed, I would stop and ask the question. When I wanted to cry or scream or just withdraw, I would ask myself this question, and answer with objective, real details about that exact moment in time.  And it helped. And it gradually started to become a habit. And a practice of mindfulness grew from there.

Once you realize how often you’re living in the past or the unknowable future during the day you start to see more opportunities to live in the present and focus on that little moment in time that you actually can control. RIGHT NOW.  And as you begin to form a new habit of living in the present, you start to let go of that attachment to the past or the worries of what may never happen in the future. You learn to control what you can in the Now, and to stop beating your head against a wall by trying to always control what is already done or what hasn’t happened yet. And you find peace in that space between the past and future and begin to trust the process of life as it unfolds and your ability to handle whatever may come. 

I encourage you to try this simple, yet powerful mindfulness technique. Try it for a day and see what you discover. Try it for a week and see if you start to feel any differently. Try it for a month and see if it starts becoming a habit. It’s easy, fast, and I promise it can change your life and how you see the world in front of you.

If you try this technique, I'd love to hear from you and how it went! please post in a comment.