Hello, whoever is reading this!
Before we begin, take a second to take a deep breath and pay attention to what is happening around you. What does the chair you're sitting on feel like? What do your clothes feel like on your body? Is anything aching? Does anything feel alive? Close your eyes and focus on these feelings for a few seconds. What does it feel like to breathe; to change oxygen to carbon dioxide in a nano second? Take another deep breath. Be grateful that you are here in this moment. Thank your body for continuing to breathe. Thank your body for all it has done for you already. Take another breath.
Congratulations! You just practiced mindfulness, aka the "idea of paying complete attention to the present moment". Surprisingly, this is something humans, especially college students, are not very good at.
If you are anything like me (which, God help you if you are), I am always three steps ahead of myself. It is so exhausting never being able to feel like I can catch up to my own brain. TBH, it has a lot to do with my depression and anxiety.
My therapist (God, help him out also for having to deal with my dramatic a$$ once a week) has been trying to get me to practice mindfulness for at least a year now. I always say, "I don't have time for that, James", or "Quit giving me things to do, James" or "Stop making me actually work at improving my mental health, James". However, I finally gave in and started taking five minutes out of my day to just breathe and be present with myself. Honestly, it is life changing.
Mindfulness is not a new phenomenon. Yoga practitioners have been trying to get people to just be present in your body and chill out. Meditation is the ultimate form of mindfulness; Buddha had it together. However, life in the 21st century has sped up dramatically. We are receiving hundreds of new stimuli every minute, and we can learn information at the touch of a button. Also, we can see what everyone is doing (presumably without you, which can be an ouch) all the freakin' time. Our brain is processing what we are doing, what we have to do, what other people are doing, what we just did, what our friends just did, etc. That can be so toxic and exhausting.
Taking time to simply be where you are and nowhere else is hard. I feel like my brain is hardwired at this point to be in multiple places at once. Honestly, I don't always want to slow down, because thinking this way is almost addictive to me. However, when I just give myself a moment to breathe and focus on what is happening only in this moment, I feel like I can finally inhabit my own body fully. Trust me, you don't know what you're missing.
So take a second to breathe everyday, or at least try to, you'll thank me (or James) later.