Joey Klein, Inner Matrix Systems CEO, on Living in the Moment: How the Science of Presence Can Transform Your Daily Life

In modern society, our mind has been trained to focus on anything but what we're doing right now. Texts, notifications, emails, knocks on the door, kids needing attention – we seldom have focused time where we are completely present and focused on what we're doing.

Increasingly, people are learning the power of living in the moment. By shutting out all distractions and focusing on the present moment, not only do we perform better, but we are also happier people. Below, Joey Klein, Inner Matrix Systems CEO, explains how mindfulness can change your life.

While there are plenty of studies, it doesn’t take scientific research to prove, on an individual level, that being mindful and focused on the present can increase mental and emotional well-being. Just try it. For most people who give it a try, mindfulness yields immediate results. Learning to master mindfulness takes time and effort, but almost anyone can experience a taste of its power by giving it a try.

“Most of the discomfort and suffering that we experience is often related to being somewhere else. We are not present with life as it’s happening right in front of us. We’re usually focused on the past or focused on the future,” stated Joey Klein in an interview with Times of Startups.

To prove to yourself the reality of this statement, try your own experiment. Next time you are experiencing stress or anxiety, stop and write down what you are thinking about. Note what thoughts are causing your discomfort. Unless you are literally in the midst of an ongoing emergency, your stress or anxiety is likely caused by thoughts of the past or the future. You are probably reacting to either past trauma or mistakes or worrying about possible circumstances that have not yet occurred.

Once you’ve recognized what thoughts are causing your stress and anxiety, pull your mind back to the present moment. Look around you. Ask yourself if any real dangers pose an immediate threat to your welfare or the welfare of your loved ones, not potential threats, but actual in-the-moment threats. There probably aren’t any. In fact, you’re probably safe and healthy, capable of dealing with your current circumstances. It is either the past or the future that is robbing you of your present happiness.

Don’t confuse the power of focusing on the present with ignoring potential future threats or failing to learn from past mistakes. Mindfulness will allow you to plan for the future with a calm and reasonable mind. You can also learn from the past without exaggerating the consequences of events that can’t be changed anyway.

To cultivate mindfulness, take an hour per day, and execute on the things you need to do uninterrupted. If you do this one hour per day, you'll train your mind to focus. When you start thinking about things that happen in the past or future, bring yourself back to the task you are executing at the time. That will teach you to be present with what you're doing and aware of where you are. That way, when you are focussing somewhere else, you are aware of it and more aware that a shift needs to occur.

At one time or another, we all sacrifice our present moment happiness on the altar of regret or worry. Imagine it is Sunday evening, and your mind starts to think about the events of your upcoming work week. You may have had a wonderful weekend, but once you let your mind wander into thoughts of either what you didn’t accomplish over the weekend that you wanted to or thoughts of the unpleasant tasks of tomorrow, you have let the future or the past rob you of your present. You can’t change the past, and the future isn’t even here yet, so focus on the only place you can have any real effect – the present.

About Inner Matrix Systems

Inner Matrix Systems, based in Denver, is a personal mastery training system for high achievers. For more than twenty years, IMS has delivered a proprietary methodology that rewires, trains, and aligns the nervous system, emotions, and thought strategies to create real-life results. CEO, Joey Klein, and IMS have worked with more than 80,000 individuals from around the world through both live and online training programs, as well as one-on-one coaching. Clients have included: Boeing, IBM, Dell, Google, Panda Express, Coca Cola and The World Health Organization. Joey is the author of The Inner Matrix: Leveraging the Art & Science of Personal Mastery to Create Real Life Results (June 2021).