Staying in the Moment Game
Lately, I found it challenging to stay in the moment. There is a lot of chatter going on in my mind and my breath is shallow. On one of this “lost in thoughts days”, it was while walking to my work place, I came up with a game (out of the blue) that I started to play immediately!
This game helps me to come back to real time in such a playful, simple and amazing way, that I want to share it today. Maybe someone wants to check it out for themselves (-;
So here is how it works:
Step one: You notice that you are lost in thoughts and have a hard time being where you currently are.
Step two: You look around and notice things in your surroundings that you have never noticed before! You keep looking for things that are new to you. You get very very interested in all the things that you can see around you!! For example, the color of a building, the hat of the person sitting next to you on the bus, the number of windows of your neighbors house, the freckles of a little girl, the T-Shirt of a person jogging in front of you, your plant in your own home. The shape of the clouds in that very moment…and so on…
I played this game in places that are familiar places, for instance around my neighborhood, or on my way to work – places I have been a thousand times before – and I am so amazed by all the new things I keep discovering! Colors, trees, shapes, statues, patterns of the pavement, beautiful ornaments on a facade, even “new” street names, “new” streets, cafés, churches, buildings turn up magically! Of course, they were there before, I just never payed attention to them. You cannot imagine the FUN I am having by playing this little game!! (-: My own town has become a very interesting, new, exciting place! And as a side effect, I smoothly and elegantly come back into the here and now.
I started it doing with noticing new sounds and smells too, but seeing is the sense that is most fun to me.
Interestingly, I now discover new things in familiar faces like my sister’s face (which I have looked at for the past 31 years), also in friends faces. And it translates to my general life as well: I notice new possibilities in my everyday life through playing this game – through being here – that I have not noticed so far. My attentiveness seems to raise. It helps to shift my attention from my thoughts to the things that actually happen around me in the moment. That’s so refreshing! I am able to breathe more deeply and naturally again, the tension fades away, and besides that I discovered that life in real time is not as serious as in my thoughts. I still catch myself not being present all the
time, especially because I find the current phase of my life somewhat challenging but this game helps me to come back most of the time.
time, especially because I find the current phase of my life somewhat challenging but this game helps me to come back most of the time.
