The present moment

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Well I think when you
start to think about

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the negative side of things,
the negative emotions that people have

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the idea of mindfulness
and living in the present moment

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can be a very hopeful
approach to take.

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I see this a lot in my
own patients at times

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where you know maybe people
have a stomach issue.

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And so every time their
stomach hurts them a little bit

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they start: Oh! Is it going
to get worse?

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Is it going to get you know
is it gonna turn into cancer?

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or is it going to...
Am I going to suffer?

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Or am I going to have to go through...?

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And so they just keep
ramping up this whole thing.

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When right now if you just
focus on the moment

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it's just that their
stomach hurts a little bit.

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And so what mindfulness does
in a very effective way is say

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let's not go to those,

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the next step, and the next
step, and the next step.

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Let's just focus on
where we are right now.

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And by doing so, we don't
have those overreactions.

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We keep our emotions in check.

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And in that way we have more
positive feelings about things.

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We have a more optimistic
approach to things.

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And of course if you start to apply that
to your relationships with other people

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then again you don't feel that

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the person is now going to do
something even worse to you.

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The next time, you feel like OK
you know where am I right now

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and how am I going to deal with this

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and how can I work with
this person effectively

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and can I listen to the person

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instead of thinking about all the
things that are making me angry.

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Let me just listen
to the person.

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So the more you can be in that
present moment on a lot of levels

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levels both in terms of how we
communicate, how we speak,

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how we start to think about
the problems that we have,

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these are very effective ways of
keeping us in a more calm state,

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keeping our brain
in a more calm state.

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And the brain imaging studies
again support this idea

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that by activating our frontal lobes,

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we help to kind of modulate or tamp
down our emotional responses

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so that we can feel more
compassion, more love,

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more positivity instead of ramping
up all of that negative emotion.