And the truth is there is a lot of scientific evidence showing the physical and mental benefits of mindfulness and why we should aim to be more present in our everyday lives.

The purpose of this article isn’t to diminish the importance of mindfulness or “living in the moment,” but to remind you that it’s just one mode of awareness. At times, it is just as important that we “step outside of the moment,” and interpret our world from a broader viewpoint.

The benefits of reflecting on the past.

One benefit we don’t get from only living in the moment is reflecting on our past and learning from our mistakes.

If we never look backward at the scope of our life, the choices we’ve made, and where they have led us, then it’s incredibly difficult to identify what we’ve done right and what we’ve done wrong.

Research indicates that reflection is key to learning.

The benefits of planning for the future.

Living a happy, healthy, and successful life often requires adequate planning and foresight. It rarely happens by accident.

Therefore, looking forward into the future is often just as important as reflecting backwards on our past, or living in the moment.

If we never think about the direction we want to go in our life, it is very unlikely we will get there. This is why it is so important to make our values and goals clear to ourselves.

Try creating a rough timeline to better envision your goals.

The benefits of mind-wandering.

When “living in the moment” we often try to fix our attention toward something in the present – like our breathing.

And any time we deviate from this fixed awareness – or get distracted by something else that catches our attention – we beat ourselves up because we are no longer living in the present. Instead, we have what is sometimes called “monkey mind.”

However, some research suggests that mind-wandering and daydreaming can actually come with some valuable benefits.

Of course, daydreaming can be counterproductive (especially when it leads to procrastination), but other times letting our minds wander can aid in creativity and problem-solving.

This is because sometimes things distract our attention because we find them new and interesting. And keeping our minds open to different thoughts and sensations can help increase our opportunity to discover new ideas.

In this way, the occasional daydreaming and mind-wandering should be thought of as healthy.

“Living in the moment” – a common excuse to be impulsive and reckless?

This isn’t always true, but sometimes I see people use the “living in the moment” excuse as a way to justify their impulsivity and recklessness.

Say you’re at a party, solely living in the moment, without any concerns for the past or future.

With such a mindset, you may find yourself drinking lots of alcohol, taking drugs, and engaging in unsafe sex with strangers. And why not? You’re just reacting to your immediate surroundings, you’re not seeing the bigger picture of your actions, so you act in ways that only bring immediate satisfaction.

In this example, “living in the moment” becomes an excuse to find short-term gratification, but ignore long-term consequences. This is a misapplication of living in the present.

When to “live in the moment” – and when not to.

Developing mindfulness and “living in the moment” are valuable skills to learn. I can’t stress that enough, I just don’t think they are the only skills to learn.

The ability to “step outside your immediate senses” – and also reflect on the past, and plan for the future – are often just as important to your happiness and health.

In fact, reflection and foresight are valuable adaptations of the human mind that have greatly helped our evolution over time. They are also what distinguish us from more primitive minds, which can only react to information they receive on a momentary basis, and therefore can’t form memories or project into the future.

Trying to live in the moment, while completely ignoring the past and future, can be dangerous. There needs to be a balance between these different modes of awareness in order to have a healthy, functioning mind.

And one big part of that puzzle, to me, is creativity.

Often times, creativity can provide us with many benefits. It helps keep our brains sharp, it give us a greater sense of self-awareness, and it helps us deal with personal issues more effectively.

There are many different reasons why I find having a creative activity can be valuable to our happiness and mental health. I’m going to explain most of these key reasons throughout the rest of this article.

Increased self-awareness

It’s difficult to express some emotions and thoughts using just words, but things like art, music, and photography provide us with the ability to express these emotions and thoughts through other mediums.

This allows us to discover many emotions and thoughts, perhaps some hidden in our subconscious, that we can’t access through ordinary consciousness and rational thinking.

Art and creativity gives us a way to formulate these hidden and abstract emotions into something more tangible and accessible. This often helps us develop a deeper and more intimate understanding of ourselves, and our internal world.

Learning a new skill

Creativity often requires that we learn a new skill: how to play a guitar, how to paint, or how to sculpt. And when we learn new skills, this often improves our psychology in a number of ways.

First, it exercises our brains. Learning new things keeps our brains active, sharp, and flexible. When we stop learning new things, often times our brain’s power will begin to diminish, like when you stop working out a muscle.

Also, learning a new skill boosts our self-esteem. When we finally learn how to play our first song on guitar, we think “Wow, I learned to do something pretty damn cool.” Learning one new skill can often improve our confidence to learn other new skills in the future. It can start a positive cycle of continual learning and development.

A state of engagement or flow

When we get really immersed in a creative activity, psychologists say that we enter a state known as flow.

Flow is a state of high engagement or sharp focus on one particular activity.

It’s a very trance-inducing state, similar to many forms of meditation and prayer.

If you’ve ever gotten so lost in an activity that you lost all sense of time, then you’ve probably experience a state of flow. In many ways, creative activities can produce this same meditative state.

Flow is associated with intense feelings of enjoyment, and it is one of the five factors of happiness according to Martin Seligman’s PERMA theory.

Power and control.

When we start becoming proficient in something creative, there is a new sense of empowerment. It gives us a feelig of control, and it becomes an example of the ways our ideas and intentions can have a real effect on the physical world.

Perhaps this is why so many people with mental illness show interest in creativity. For many, it may be the one area of life where they feel they have some power over their situation.

This might also be why art therapy can be an effective supplement in a lot of mental health treatment. When we engage in activities where we feel in control, these activities can often become a source of stress relief.

Creativity can be a source of empowerment for people with and without mental illness.

Conclusion

These are some of the key ways that creativity can benefit our happiness and well-being. And the best part is, most of this holds true for any kind of creative act whether it be painting, music, photography, sculpting, cooking, dancing, or whatever.

It’s not hard to think of new ideas. We have them all of the time: at work, at home, in the shower, and before bed. In fact, we are constantly thinking. Generating new thought after new thought.

Writer’s block? It must be a myth. I hear people say “they can’t think of anything” – but I don’t believe them. Often I find it harder to stop the flow of ideas, rather than to get it going.

The problem isn’t that someone can’t think of anything. This rarely happens. The problem is that people can’t think of anything that they think is good enough.

That’s a key distinction.

Get rid of the “I can’t think of anything” excuse.

Next time you find yourself using the “I can’t think of anything” excuse, I want you to look a little deeper.

Ask yourself: is it really true that you can’t think of anything – or do you just not like the ideas you have?

How good ideas are actually born.

An average idea can become a good idea over time. But that will never happen if you wait for that one golden moment. The truth is you need to take what you have and start building off of it. Now.

During most creative projects, the final product often looks drastically different than the original idea. This is why taking action on an idea is often more important than waiting for that “right” idea to come to you.

You may think you have the best idea in the world, but if you can’t put it to action then it’s worthless.

And you may have a mediocre idea, but when you begin playing with it, something beautiful can begin to grow.

The key to developing good ideas is to take what you have and start from there.

Don’t wait.

I know you have ideas. And you know you have ideas. So just grab one of your many ideas and start working with it. Play with it – and see what it transforms into. You’ll probably be surprised with what you come up with.

Mind Opener MP3

This is just one example of how our expectations (or lack of) can play a significant role in what we take away from our experiences.

Richard Bandler once said, “disappointment requires adequate planning.” And I think he touched on a really important truth about the downfalls of having certain expectations about life.

Because when you really think about it, we can only be disappointed or dissatisfied with something if we go into that experience with a prior judgment of what that experience “should” be like.

If we don’t expect to get anything for our birthday, but we end up getting a new car, we will usually be really happy with it regardless of what kind of car it is. But if we expect to get an expensive sports car, but instead get a minivan, we are probably going to be much less satisfied with the outcome.

When you go into some situations with no expectations, then it’s impossible for you to be let down. And, at best, you actually end up walking away pleasantly surprised.

But we shouldn’t get rid of ALL expectations.

I definitely can’t say that we should get rid of all expectations. Expectations can be good and useful, and it’s important to have some expectations before entering certain situations.

For example, if we expect there to be a final exam on a certain date, then we should plan on it by studying and making sure we are as prepared as possible.

Projecting into the future and determining what to expect can be an important tool in preparing for certain situations – just not all situations.

I just wanted to get this quick caveat out of the way before diving more into the “power of no expectations.”

The Benefits of No Expectations.

In many situations, going in with no expectations (or at least very low expectations), can greatly benefit us. Some of the things I find the “no expectations” mindset helps us cultivate include:

Open-mindedness

If we go into a situation, such as meeting a new person, with a certain prejudice on how that person should be (especially if it is based on stereotypes involving race, gender, religion, career, etc.), then we are already putting limitations on how we connect with that person.

However, if we decide to meet a new person without prior expectations or judgment, then we are much more open to receiving that person for who they really are, and therefore not letting our prior thoughts muddle the interaction.

From my experience, I’ve found the “no expectations” route is one of the best ways to meet new people.

Spontaneity

When we go into a situation with strict expectations and a steadfast guideline for how we expect a situation to unfold, then we greatly limit room for spontaneity. But if we go into a situation with no expectations, we give ourselves the opportunity to act in unexpected ways.

Letting go of expectations is a great way to open up the door to new opportunities. Often our assumptions can narrow our perspective and limit our choices. But when we get rid of these assumptions and unnecessary restrictions, a new perspective and a new flexibility in our thoughts and actions emerges.

Creativity and problem-solving

Just like “no expectations” can open the door to spontaneity, it can also aid in our creativity and problem-solving. This is because when we open up our narrow perspective, we give ourselves room to think of different potential solutions to problems that we may not have been able to think of without first dropping our previous expectations.

All revolutionary problem-solving requires some rebellion against the norms and standards that dictate the status quo.

But we can’t achieve this kind of progress until we first drop all of the unhelpful social norms, stereotypes, and expectations that have been embedded into our brains. In order to first do that, we have to be willing to suspend these unhelpful beliefs.

Questions.

• In what situations have “no expectations” helped you?
• What tips and strategies do you use to help minimize your expectations more effectively?

This is because opportunity is just as much based on our way of seeing as it is based on external circumstances.

Opportunities are a lot like self-fulfilling prophecies.

If we keep our eyes open for new ones, we are more likely to spot them when they actually pop up in our lives. But if we never look for opportunities, we often don’t see them – even when they are actually there waiting for us.

Of course, opportunity has a bit to do with luck and chance, but it also has a lot to do with our beliefs and perspective.

Here are some of the main beliefs and attitudes that correlate with opportunistic thinking:

Believe in free will.

Those who don’t believe they have any will-power or control over their life are going to automatically inhibit themselves from taking advantage of the opportunities that pass us by on a daily basis.

We must not view ourselves as puppets on strings, subject only to the whims of external forces. Instead, we are conscious thinkers and actors that participate with our environments.

Life is not just something that happens to us from the outside, it is also what we choose to make of it. We shouldn’t ignore this power and responsibility.

For more on my take on free will (a compatibilist approach): The Illusion of No Control.

Have an openness to possibility.

To be an opportunist, we can’t be stubborn in our thinking, and we can’t limit our beliefs and map of reality to a single narrow perspective.

Instead, we have to at least show openness to new perspectives, new ideas, and new beliefs that we may not have previously considered.

It’s important to have this sense of flexibility in our thinking, because it opens us to more creative ways of interpreting the information we get about our world, and how we can apply that information in new and unconventional ways.

Opportunistic thinking can often be enhanced when we allow ourselves to view the world a bit more differently than others.

Take quick action.

Sometimes we miss out on opportunities because we keep thinking there will be “something better around the corner.”

Opportunists avoid this trap by taking quick action.

An opportunist doesn’t spend too much time waiting, hoping, or praying for some ideal situation. They know that the quest for perfection often leads to procrastination.

So instead, they stay vigilant for the little (but imperfect) opportunities that pass us by on a daily basis, and they take advantage of these opportunities soon after they present themselves.

They know that if they hesitate too long, they may never get a second chance.

This can be just as true for filling out a job application as it is approaching a good-looking girl at a bar, or buying tickets for an upcoming concert, or following through on a business plan.

An opportunist knows that opportunities don’t sit there and wait for us – we have to take action while they are still available.

Be aware.

Our ability to discover new opportunities is intrinsically dependent on our awareness of our environment and our surroundings.

Techniques that help build awareness (mindfulness exercises like: 100 Breaths Meditation or STOP) can help us process information we get from our environment with a greater scope and clarity.

Having this increased awareness greatly increases our chances of discovering new opportunities. And it also improves skills in problem-solving and creativity. Be aware of your awareness, because it plays a huge role in how you process the world.

Learn optimism.

Optimism is a positive perspective we hold about life that encompasses beliefs and thought patterns like:

• “Good things will happen to me.”
• “I can overcome obstacles.”
• “Life and people are generally good.”
• “I am capable of achieving my values and goals.”

Interestingly, positive psychologists are discovering that our optimism is not something we are predestined or born with, but something we can learn and cultivate on our own. And by cultivating this positive attitude, we often invite good things to happen to us.

This doesn’t mean that a positive attitude alone can give you everything you want (see my post on Dangerous Trends in Personal Development to help avoid this unhealthy thinking). However, I do believe that positivity within reason can be a very constructive outlook on life.

Questions.

• What are some other tips and advice you may have for becoming a better opportunist?

Share them in the comment section below!