Everyone wants to live a good life. The good news is that you can improve the quality of your life by learning how to quiet your mind and stay present. This article presents 5 techniques on how you can do this. With persistence and patience, you can
successfully learn and master these techniques. But before that, let's first discuss a few things about your mind and thoughts.
The Mind in General
The total sum of your knowledge and experience is acquired through your mind. Every ability, every performance, every recognition is conducted by your mind. Yet, you are not your mind! This is paradoxical and quite irritating, especially when we can’t see the difference between these statements. If everything I know and everything I can experience must pass through my mind, then how come I am not my mind? You’re not—at least not entirely. You’re not the thoughts you’re producing unless you put them into action, but this is another topic. Here, we want to find out how to manage and quiet the mind and not get managed by it. The techniques explained here will help you do that so you can face all your thoughts, feelings, and emotions. The mind’s purpose is to construct thoughts and produce reason as a result. This includes combining thoughts, feelings, emotions, and logic; making recognitions, creating mental skills and virtues, and dwelling in revelations, celebrations, and disconsolation. Using the mind for these purposes and being aware of them exhibits mastery over the mind. Normally, when the mind is not used as per the above mentioned mental qualities and activities but only for a random and superficial use, it becomes not only busy and dynamic but also mostly dominant. We get trapped in the easiest and laziest patterns that the mind sees as comfortable—then comes the need to quiet the mind (thoughts, feelings, and emotions).
Thoughts, Feelings, and Emotions
Because our mind is overwhelmed by the thoughts, feelings, and emotions that it creates, it makes us believe that that’s what reality is—our reality, which isn’t actually. Our mind is tricking us with its infinite capacity and velocity of constructing all kinds of thoughts. Therefore, the techniques to quiet the mind and stay present helps us see that our reality is not our thoughts, feelings, or emotions. Our mind is the most beautiful tool, capable of understanding the world with everything good and bad in it—making life a great and valuable experience on every level. And surely, our thoughts, feelings, and emotions are also tools for making that happen. By using the techniques in this article, you can better understand your feelings and emotions and not only quiet the mind but also acquire emotional intelligence. At first, you might experience a state of bliss and nothingness. But our goal here is to quiet the mind and make use of the present moment. These techniques are meant to quiet your mind and show you that your feelings of sadness, happiness, or any other emotion are not the essence of your reality—the essence of the present moment.
Using Your Senses as Tools
The techniques I created involve the five senses, and they will be closely working with your feelings and emotions. They are designed to get your mind's focus on only one of your senses and make you see how your mind can calm down. While you execute these techniques, you’ll be able to realize the presence of your action—the present moment—by creating a mindful bond between you and your feelings. Through practicing and acquiring the knowledge you'll get to the experience of emotions, which can positively influence sensory processing and add value when dealing with difficult everyday life situations.
Very important instruction: Try not to get involved with your emotions right away. Just let the feelings you produce quiet your mind and settle you in the
present moment. Once you become confident with the experience of the feelings, you can then deal with facing, decoding, and managing your emotions.
5 Techniques to Quiet Your Mind and Stay Present
Here are 5 techniques to help you quiet your mind for a better quality of life.
1. The Subtle Seeing Technique
A vision is born with closed eyes!
- Simply close your eyes and project an image of something you really like—something that is present at the point of creating the image. This could be the face of a loved one or a specific element of nature that’s meaningful to you; the sun, the water, the wind, a landscape with trees, a mountain, a river, and so on.
- Breathe gently and deeply into this image. Try not to involve memories or create further imagination into that subtle seeing. Become one with this image. Life is how you see things within you.
- Use your feelings that this subtle seeing has created, and see how your mind instantly calms down and how your concentration makes use of your present moment.
Breathe gently into your feelings and enjoy the beauty of your vision.
2. The Subtle Hearing Technique
The silence is your inner sound!
- Cover your ears and feel the sound streaming inside your head. With closed or open eyes, focus on the streaming of that sound.
- Focus on the stream of your breathing and recognize the difference between these two sounds. They are different but constant. Try to connect as deeply as possible with these sounds.
- Use your feelings that this subtle hearing has created, and see how your mind instantly calms down and how your concentration makes use of your present moment.
Breathe gently into your feelings and enjoy the harmony of your rhythmic melody.
3. The Subtle Smelling Technique
A good smell can knock you off with a feather!
- Take a scent that you really like—one that takes you deep within you. Inhale the smell gently and deeply, and focus on the feelings that emerge from it.
- It doesn’t have to involve any memories nor create any imagination. Just identify what you feel from the scent.
- Use your feelings and see how your mind instantly calms down and how your concentration makes use of your present moment.
Breathe gently into your feelings and enjoy the enchantment of your scent.
4. The Subtle Tasting Technique
Flavour shapes character!
- Take a natural flavor that you really like—for, me this would be dark chocolate, Jasmin tea, or a coffee. Take any natural flavor that you like. After consuming it, have your tongue run through your palate.
- Try to connect deeply with that flavor, and see what kinds of feelings emerge from it. Acknowledge that this whole process takes place in the present moment.
Breathe gently into your feelings and enjoy the richness of your flavor.
5. The Subtle Touching Technique
Palms can heal!
- Start slowly rubbing your palms. Notice the heat being created through the friction.
- Place your palms on your face and feel the heat entering your face. Rub your palms and place them on your eyes or any other part of your head. Feel the heat of your palms entering your head.
- Feel the quietness of your mind through your palms. See this process as one long moment of presence. Breathe gently into your feelings and enjoy the energy of your touch.
Meditation and Breath as the Primary Technique
All of the above exercises are meditations on certain sensory perceptions. The breathing is used as a central element to support the continuity of the meditative process and intensify your experience when using the senses. You can
benefit in many ways when practicing these meditative techniques. These techniques will take you through these four phases:
- Focus on your sense-perception;
- Focus on the feeling your sense perception is creating;
- Calmness of mind through the feelings;
- Connection with the present moment during that process.
Final Thoughts
Working this way, you will not only learn how to quiet your mind and stay present but also develop a strong sense of how feelings turn into emotions. This moment, which is the key to learn about feelings and emotions, is mostly overlooked and underestimated, resulting in the experience of emotional imbalance. Once you get connected to that moment (which always lies in the present moment), you can learn how to move along with any emotion or feeling that is overwhelming your present moment—your life. After a serious, diligent work, you can reach a state of equanimity where you expand your insight and your inner growth. Once there, you are a master of emotions! Using these techniques, you'll always be able to quiet your mind and stay in the present moment.
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