“Whether you work full-time or part-time or stay at home with your kids, life can feel so busy these days. It can seem like there are a million things to do and as if you are constantly running to get everything done.
You might also feel like you are always thinking about and taking care of other people. If you are in some sort of helping field or a job where you provide customer service or have to consider the well-being of someone else, even if you love the job, this can add to the overall sense of not having much time for you.
In the therapy field, we call taking care of yourself “self-care.” Here are some great self-care tips to promote peace and well-being for anyone who feels like life can get busy or overwhelming.” These are the opening lines of Heather Gilmore’s post in Psych Central Self-care; How to have Peace in these Busy times which I thought to share with you.
More importantly I’d like to emphasise and expand on her point “DO ONE THING AT A TIME” which is really what being present means.
The problem of not being fully present in the here and now is not new to humanity. As thinking imagining creatures, humans have always been capable of being somewhere else in their minds while physically being in their “here-and-now”. Usually preferring to be somewhere else, to be someone else, to do something else; hence conflicted and consequently unable to fully enjoy the reality of one’s moment. However, as we make technological progress and live amidst immense breakthroughs in communication technologies, the pace of life also becomes faster. We become busier and more multi-tasking as time and space shrink around us.
In order to protect ourselves and to live healthier lives, it is therefore more important now than any other time in the history of humanity to learn to be more present and to live in a mindful state of consciousness more often.
Despite reading about it and being told of the benefits of being present, we are usually so hopeless in being able “to do just one thing at a time”. This is because our conditioning is typically so entrenched that the mere talking or reading about being present, and one’s trying to do so is hardly effective. Fortunately there are practices that help; such as meditation and paying attention to your body and the sensory input from your five senses during simple daily tasks. I have previously written about being present, here are some of the links that I hope would be of benefit to you:
Six Steps to Living in the Moment
Achievement by presence: you cannot make halva if you are not home
Dear Rumi…please tell me about time
Be well and I encourage you to share your experiences around “do just one thing at a time” with others in the comments section below.
