Apparently, You’re Never Really Living in the Present — A Neuroscientist Explains

When it comes to mindfulness meditation, Leaf shares that our ability to remain in a state of presence has its limits: “The deliberate exercise, trying to stay in the now for a few moments, is a very good practice to develop the mind, but it’s not the solution to managing chaos.”

Rather, she suggests embracing the entire context of your past, present, and future—not avoiding it. She notes, “You have a narrative, you have a story, you are responding in this moment because of everything else about you.” Essentially, your current reality is rooted in the stories of your life—so don’t ignore them; make sense of them!

In terms of the how, she touts a five-step brain-building process (which includes gathering, reflecting, writing, reconceptualizing, and active reach—find a full tutorial here). “It takes time to get to the point where you train yourself to access that,” she notes, “but these five steps train you how to get to that ‘wisdom mind’ so you can put the present, past, and future in context.”